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[se5a]

War animals seem a little useless right now, but what if they attempted to drag unconscious and immobile dwarfs out of a fight?

[MrWiggles]

Uh, they only seem useless to your playstyle then. I find them fairly useful for early forts, and watch dogs for entrances, and easy way to add numbers to my militia while only using one dorf to do so.

Outside that, yes more antics would be awesome of any kind.

[Steely Glint]

Hopefully once their teeth are harder than skin they'll be able to actually do damage to armored foes. Barding would make them more survivable, but it would be a pain to code different options for all possible war animals.

As it stands, even war elephants are likely to die to a handful of armored goblins.

[Collic]

I really like that idea. I'd keep war animals around simply for that if they dragged the wounded inside. It seems to be quite a low priority task; I often see wounded dwarves just lying there, waiting for help, even when there isn't anything around to spook my civilians.

[se5a]

Somone might want to check, but I wonder if dwarfs are only collecting unconscious dwarfs, not lamed ones?

[catsplosion]

There's an unnecessary gap at present between grasping inventory and grasping bodies; there's no reason, in principle, that the engine wouldn't let you grasp bodies and move with them, or even stuff them in your backpack if they're small enough.  A dog should indeed be able to grasp your cloak in its teeth and pull you; of course, at present, that would just take your cloak off you.  This is certainly something that will get attention in the near future.

[se5a]

now that we've got different animals to train, I wonder if you could do fun stuff like some types of animals prioritize dragging it's owner to safety vs fighting. a dog for example might be more intent on helping it's owner, whereas a bear's bloodlust might just cause it to fight till there's no more enemies in sight.

[MrWiggles]

If it was implemented, I would imagine it would be a different animal class, with a different set of antics different from the war animal.
[

[Flaede]

If it was implemented, I would imagine it would be a different animal class, with a different set of antics different from the war animal.

The rescue dog! It would carry a barrel of booze around its neck as well!

http://www.k9-sar.com/history.php

[Pilsu]

I don't really buy dogs being capable of this. A guy in a suit of armor isn't going anywhere just because Spot tugs at his cape.

[Flaede]

but what about the part about bringing rations to the wounded?
And if not Spot, what about more... exotic pets?

[se5a]

Depends on the size of the dog, and these ARE dwarfs we're talking about.

[MrWiggles]

And we arent limited to just dogs. A rescue boar could do it or a rescue elephant.

[Urist McCheeseMaker]

The rescue bear! It would carry a barrel of booze around its neck as well!

this might work?

[Ilmoran]

The rescue bear! It would carry a barrel of booze around its neck as well!

this might work?

Not if you put booze around its neck.  They'd be too busy trying to drink it to go rescue anyone.

But yeah, I could see different capabilities of rescuers.  Make it like building destroyer, where there are 2 levels to it. [RESCUER:1] would allow the animal to assist injured/crippled/disabled but conscious dwarves off the battlefield.  Sort of like being able to lean on the dog for support.  [RESCUER:2]  would be something like an elephant, where it is capable of lifting the injured dwarf, and would be able to carry unconscious dwarves inside.  Depending on how robust the behavior was, you might end up with some silly situations where an incredibly tough dwarf lost both legs but remained conscious and a dog was able to assist him back inside, but overall I think it would be reasonable.

Also, I think things with [RESCUER:2] should have a chance of accidently causing slightly more injury to unconscious dwarves they pick up.  Cause lets face it, you might train an elephant to drag the bleeding dwarf inside, but I don't think you can train him to be gentle about it.