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[Victuz]

So yeah as in the topic, I'm wondering if animals can actually "train". I think yes because I remember a bronze colossus getting WAY better during my fight with him (to the point where we were both basically invincible) and he is also considered a creature for all I know.

The thing is that during one of the sieges I assigned a few meatshields war dogs to my soldiers, I forgot you can't "unassigned" the dogs later on so they ventured afer my brave man into the danger room. Not knowing what to do I decided it's time to test the theory of evolution make my dogs into real badasses so I turned the switch and... well 3 out of 4 dogs died very very fast. (2 impaled on a stick and one suffocated having his both lungs pierced) but the 4th one survived the whole thing. After he left the danger room it took him some time to regenerate but after some time he was up to speed again.

Than a few seasons later (and the dog was still going into the danger room, only now he didn't have any trouble surviving) I got ambushed again and so I sent my soldiers to charge the foolish goblins. A soldier to which the dog was attached died (sadly he was my best man) so not wanting to have any more losses I quickly took out rest of the soldiers from the squad (through the military screen I basically unassigned them) so they were treated like civilians and ran back to the safe burrow.
But the dog stayed there.

And the awesomeness ensued.
The "hardened" war dog took out 4 goblins ALONE and than proceeded to chasing the scattered rest (which seeing the war beast in front of them just turned around and ran like hell), he lost both his ears, one eye and few fingers in his left paw but he SURVIVED AND KICKED ASS.

Not wanting to loose him I assigned him to a restraint in my barracks and now he scares all the rookies that get drafted that decide to get into my military.
I'm so proud of him :>.


So do you think it's actually a good idea to let the war beasts "practice" in the danger room as well?

[Peewee]

...

 

If this really works, you're my hero.

[Internet Kraken]

Most animals can not learn skills. In order for an animal to build skills, they need the [CAN_LEARN] tag in the raws. This tag is not found on most of the animals you can tame in vanilla DF, if any. So using the danger room to train common war animals is pointless.

[Victuz]

So I guess he's just an extremely bad ass individual

[Urist Imiknorris]

Do dragons have [CAN_LEARN]?

I can see some potential here if I modded them to breed.

[Internet Kraken]

Do dragons have [CAN_LEARN]?

I can see some potential here if I modded them to breed.

No, DF dragons appear to have the intelligence on par with most animals. Though if you're modding them for breeding you might as well throw that in as well. Though a danger room might be completley unnecessary when a Dragon would have over 1000 years to build skills on its own.

Can't dragons breed already though? I mean, I can't see anything in their raws to suggest otherwise. The problem would just be acquiring both a male and female.

[Organum]

I'm pretty sure being a megabeast means it cannot breed.

[Stardrinker]

The fact that the dog has no problem surviving in the danger room unarmoured suggests that he was bad-ass to begin with and not a result of danger room training.

[slothen]

If I ever manage to get a breeding population of tigermen I am so doing this.

[Peewee]

STAND BACK!
I'M DOING SCIENCE!

Started with 30 female and 20 male dogs, trained them as war dogs, threw them in a 1-tile pit with a single menacing tower-cap spike.

3 dead total after 1 lever pull.
7 dead total after 2 lever pulls.
12 dead total after 3 lever pulls. (3rd Felsite (late spring))

Removed bodies from pit, let dogs loose for a while before caging them, and am now waiting 'till late summer.

24 Felsite - Removed 2 dogs from the cage to check on wounds. One has two broken bones and some short straight scars, the other still has open wounds.
1 Malachite - Access to health screen! 13 dogs have nerve damage.

Apparently, I was visited by Bonobos before I started my test...

Spoiler: log excerpt (click to show/hide)

The Bonobo shakes The Stray Dog around by the head!

Ok, on 2 Galena (late summer), I started pulling the lever 3 more times.
1 - 2 bodies
2 - 4 bodies
3 - 11 bodies (!!!)
20 of the remaining dogs have nerve damage.
Removed bodies and caged dogs again.

7 sandstone - Bored! Pull ze lever!

1 - 2 bodies
2 - 6 bodies
3 - 7 bodies
23 of 29 remaining dogs have nerve damage.
Still bored, so... lever on repeat!

As expected, only 11 9 dogs survive several dozen more stabs.
I'll test whether they're super-doggedly hard to kill tomorrow.

Oh, and many, many dogs were harmed in the making of this post.

[CinnibarMan]

Well, since they are unarmored, I would think the training spears would be much more deadly and less train-ifying. What war animals have a lot of natural armor?

[Internet Kraken]

Well, since they are unarmored, I would think the training spears would be much more deadly and less train-ifying. What war animals have a lot of natural armor?

None that I can think of off the top of my head. So the most likely to survive would be the large animals like elephants.

[Mechanist]

i remember some crocs in real armor >_>

[jei]

Dragons ought to be smart. And elephants too. Weapons and armor users.
I had an FB that learned how to use a spear and killed lots of antmen with it.
I don't see why an elephant or a dragon couldn't do the same.

[The Grackle]

It shouldn't learn skills w/o the tag, but an animal might train its stats up due to a danger room.  All that dodging might make it extra fast and super-doggedly tough.