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[praguepride]

I like pets to a point. I like cats and kittens and dogs and puppies...but by the time it gets to be a problem it's too late, the fortress is already built.

I don't care if they're removed from screen or not, just that their pathfinding is removed easily.

[Granite26]

Fair 'nuff... you just pushed my 'let's simplify things to deal with current problems caused by other simplifications' button

[praguepride]

@Fixing pathfinding w/ doors -> This would be a big step in the right direction, but I still feel that it would fall short of the goal. By having it be an artificial set up, it still makes things...interesting. Once you build your ranch and lock your doors you still have to get your dwarves inside, and make sure the doors stay closed (i.e. keeping monarch butterflies away from the door inner workings).

And there's the added problem if you just want a single pet removed, you'll either have to be really good/lucky to unlock the doors at just the right point for just the right pet to escape, or you've unleashed a storm of pets. And even if you ARE that good to get out a single pet, as soon as you unlock those doors the pathfinding will resume. You'd have to build a series of airlocks to filter out the pets, but again that feels like a half assed solution.

I like the idea of "pet homes" where you can assign pets to them. I also like the idea of nobles demanding accomadations for their pets, as that is something deliciously decadent. While the majority of your peasants are sleeping in barracks or on the dirt, your King's favorite cat has a fully engraved, legendary pet house that fills up a 5x5 room with statues and toys for it to play with.

[Granite26]

I think the point was 'Animals don't TRY to get out the doors' rather than 'make the doors work beter'

Part of the lag with pets is they keep trying to pathfind to places, even if they are locked up.

[praguepride]

I know about the pathfinding part. My point is that if animals don't pathfind through doors at all, what happens if you DO want your kittens following your champion. Maybe you're just a sadistic man, maybe you think it's funny, but if you want your pets following dwarves everywhere, it should be as easy as it is now (i.e. default).

If you don't want the clutter, you should be able to selectively store them (like with cages) but expand that to "pets" as well.

Finally, breeding should be allowed in captivity. Right now the game penalizes those of use with inferior machines because we can't have 30 horses just wandering around pumping out foals. Making a meat farm should be as easy as super-optimized machines as well.

[Granite26]

That's easy, just don't let them pathfind through 'no-pet' doors.  Make dwarves going through no-pet doors intentionally keep animals from following them

[praguepride]

Yes, but like I mentioned before...what happens if you want to choose your pets?

For example:

Say you have a simple airlock at the front of your base to capture animals

########
+  animals +
########

Whenever a dwarf goes in or out, the pets get captured in the corral.

But wait! Your awesome tame dragon/war dog/war giant eagle just passed through there and got caught. How do you get them out without releasing your dozens and dozens of cows/goats/mules/horses/camels?

[Granite26]

doesn't make sense to have your dwarves walk through the corral on their way outside?

Alternately, War/Hunting (or other tagged?) animals should be excempt from no pets doors

[praguepride]

But what if you DO want them contained?

For example

1) Your hunters are wandering around. You want your hunting/war dogs out there to watch his back, and heck, why not the horses and camels can come too

2) An ambush! Quick, bring out the war dogs, lock away the useless/valuable pets (horses, camels, cats)

3) Siege! Lock all pets down. (I've found that war dogs like to just charge at the enemy as soon as they're spotted which often gets them horribly murdered.


With my method of basically having a larger "cage" you can assign which pets go in and out of the "cage." I'm not saying it should be instentanous and will probably require the large animal hauling task, but it allows you to seperate out your pets without elaborate air lock systems.

[irmo]

(many things)

So you want to (1) keep your kittens and other domestic pets contained so that they aren't at risk in battle, (2) except when you don't; (3) allow your war dogs and tamed dragons and giant eagles and such to move around freely, (4) except when you don't; and (5) exploit the hell out of the bug that allows you to produce infinite free food from a pair of horses, (6) all without the animals ever trying to pathfind, (7) except when they need to (war dogs, etc.).

Sounds like you just need to build a whole lot of cages and micromanage them.

[praguepride]

I'd apparently like the option too? 

Apparently my 3 scenarios were too complicated, so we'll try and boil it down to some neat bullet points

• Cage Pets - the ability to throw pets into a cage would be great
• Nobles Demand Pet Homes - whether it be a dedicated cage or a whole bedroom, I think decadent nobles would demand luxuries for their pets as well. What happens when the Queen brings her "favorite" pets and kicks out all the peasants to make room for 'em
• Ability to Breed w/o pathfinding - I don't care how, just to be able to breed animals without killing your FPS. If you feel that breeding livestock is an exploit, then that's another topic for another thread. I don't care if it gets me 100 cows or 1 cow, just the ability to breed without it taking up my precious FPS

That's about as clear as I can make it.

[tsen]

• Cage Pets - the ability to throw pets into a cage would be great
• Nobles Demand Pet Homes - whether it be a dedicated cage or a whole bedroom, I think decadent nobles would demand luxuries for their pets as well. What happens when the Queen brings her "favorite" pets and kicks out all the peasants to make room for 'em
• Ability to Breed w/o pathfinding - I don't care how, just to be able to breed animals without killing your FPS. If you feel that breeding livestock is an exploit, then that's another topic for another thread. I don't care if it gets me 100 cows or 1 cow, just the ability to breed without it taking up my precious FPS

Yes please.

[SirHoneyBadger]

I'd like it if intelligent creatures (not just sentients, but anything with an actual working brain) had the ability to choose themselves an area that they consider their "home". Pets with owners would be likely to pick the same room as their owner, while other Fortress pets might pick the dining room (dogs), or anywhere with low traffic and a lot of vermin (cats).

I'd be nice if we could build quarters for domestic animals (barns) to use, also, and (to a limited degree?) designate that specific area as their 'home'.

Cowardly or untrained animals might choose to flee and hide in their home area, during a seige, or even during a caravan (they might view them as similar events). Brave animals, and animals with progeny (or just animals that have lived there for a long time), might defend their homes to the death, and guard/war animals might defend their *owner's* home to the death--or just the dining room, where they get all those delicious scraps of food.

Dwarfs and other sentients might also have a sense of home, which they might then feel compelled to defend, even when not in squad-mode.

Animals unattached to Fortresses could have 'home areas' as well, fleeing to/defending a particular tree, rock, cave, bend in the river, etc. while others (herd animals, and domestic animals without a designated "barn" area) might attach themselves to several of the oldest members of the herd, instead.

Setting something like this up might make ranching/managing animals a little bit more intuitive, and possibly easier, in several instances.

Some animals might also be trained to recognise dwarfs (and other sentients) as their leaders/owners, with a varying degree of recognition for their owners' friends/acquaintances, with different familiarity leading to different reactions.

Animals could return home at the end of their diurnal/nocturnal cycle, store food/hide things there, bear young there, and retreat there to heal wounds/illnesses.

This could differ from territorialism:

Animals might have a greater or lesser sense of territorialism, depending on species(bees)/gender(bull elephants, or just certain types of bulls), so their reaction to an invasion of their "home" may be more or less severe, but I think it could be a good idea to keep 'territorialism' and 'sense-of-home' as separate traits, since not every animal species will automatically fight to the death over the loss of a "home", and not every animal species needs a strong sense of "home" to have an excuse to attack beings encroaching into "their territory".

Strongly territorial animals might retreat to their homes to die, however, while ones who are weakly territorial, but more strongly home-oriented, might specificially instinctively travel away from their homes to die, in order to not pollute an area their young might also inhabit.

Some animals, in future updates, might be pragmatic enough to flee from their home if it's on fire, while others might have to be physically dragged out of burning buildings, refusing to leave even if terrified of the flames (I'm thinking of horses specifically).

[Eidalac]

I notice that idle animals will tend to go to the meeting hall.

So, lets say there is a Ranch zone you can define, either for all animals or a specific kind.  Animals selected should tend to go there, much like they currently do to the meeting hall.  Further, once in such a zone, the pathfinding cost to step outside of it should go up (not by a huge degree, but enough to make them prefer to stay in over going out).  Building a wall/fence around the area is the only way to ensure the animals stay in.  Maybe dwarves with Animal Care or Animal Training jobs will be able to herd the animals into the correct ranch as they wander.

As for doors... well, I think that setting a door to not permit pets should work.  As is, any time a dwarf passes, at least one of his pets can follow him, if not all of them, which makes it kinda pointless.  So long as the doors block pets from entering, you don't have to worry about them getting stuck inside.

So, now if you have a defined ranch with walls and a door, and you want to get a critter out?

Build a cage inside, put the animal in and have it haul off for... whatever.

[praguepride]

@SHB: It would be neat for animals to have working personalities. You might not want to make your cowardly dog a war dog because it just runs away instead of actually fighting

@Eidalac: Even if the pets stuck to their zone, they'd still be pathfinding, which would still tax the FPS one larger fortresses.