Are Dogs Supposed to be Underpowered?

[Pidge Gauss]

This is something I've noticed in my 20-ish hours of play on this game. Other than the novelty of the fact that they're a dog, you basically never want a dog in your party.

They can only carry one item which they drop frequently, where a human can carry 3 (if they're not some special character.

They generally cannot use items, espeically not guns that you NEED to be able to beat the game.

They can never (as far as I can tell) learn any meangful or truly useful skills like medecine or mechanics, and can also never have other useful traits like being paranoid or charming.

All of these coupled with the fact that they eat just as much as a human does, and, unless I'm in some seriously dire straights, usually just deicde to hold out my food for a human who will put it to better use. While I understand most of these complaints do make logical sense in terms of physical limitations for a dog, they don't really contribute to a fun alternative to human companions. They're more like just a gimmick that you can use to make the game harder.

If there were more pros and cons to dog companions (that were mroe easily accessable, and not through some ultra-rare event that teaches them to use guns), that would really add a special dynamic to having dog-companions. Like if they only ate 1 unit of food per meal instead of 2, or if they had better or more varried physical attacks that would make them better late-game assets, or even if they could just carry more stuff to be more effective pack-mules.

Maybe I'm missing the point that perhaps dogs are meant to be some kind of shock-trooper, which I guess I would understand, but the fact that they feel like they're taking a potential human's place in the group just always bugs me. Dogs just being quicker humans with strong-ish melee attacks just isn't enough for me to ever consider using them.

(Also, I'm still looking for those dog-human centuars. Haven't found any yet ;p)

[Dave]

Dogs are awesome! They are quicker than humans and can melee, and they can do it from the moment you pick them up, with no training, and if they didn't sleep the night before, they are still fast.

You only need one person to fix the car and put Ice packs on the bruises, so you only need one human, another one to put the codes into the safes is useful, and then 2 dogs to do all the other stuff. Speed over the map and the ability to fight is awesome. I'm just sad you can't start with a dog.

(The dogtuar isn't as good as a regular dog, in my one mission I was able to keep him alive for, I couldn't get him to move quick enough. Not sure if that was before or after the last patch)

[ScarletCinder]

Yeah dogs aren't meant to be as functional as humans. Aside from supertrained dogs (like if the dog is the last living member of the group) dogs can only carry an item in their mouth meaning they can't bite without dropping it. It makes sense no? Dogs have no hands what do you expect from them.

They do have particular uses, for instance in the first raid after each time you lose your vehicle. By making them the only character going into that raid you can use their great speed, natural melee, and kiting bark to make running through the destroyed cars siphoning gas a breeze. You don't risk injuring your other group members to bad pathing nor risk losing weapons as the dog doesn't need one to attack and there are none that spawn in those raids. And yes when the dog gets to the end he can drive your new vehicle away alone. (wish my dog could do that lol)

As Dave stated above, they can be useful if you don't have decent weapons yet (like during an unlucky start) but I personally don't use them for this. The food cost of having more than two characters up until maybe 5 days left is WAY too high, you wouldn't be able to stockpile food for the big purchases. But end game you take whoever RNG-sus gives you as an extra attack during the final sieges/raids.

[srg01]

Dogs are amazing. A single player with firearms and two dogs on attack AI can make short work out of nearly everything including massive sieges.

[Rocketcat Games]

They don't scale too well, though I doubt they ever will compared to humans. We talk about making them take half the food of a human, sometimes, but that'd probably come with some future disadvantage (like difficulty with opening doors).

Right now the main advantages of a dog are their incredible runspeed and that they're better at fighting than a low-stat bad-weapon human. That and the occasional dog-only option for events.

[Danowar]

Every time I finish a session, it seems like one of the dogs I recruit always carries hard at the end. Also, I don't know if its a glitch or what, but if you save and reload a game with dogs in your party, they suddenly gain the ability to carry extra items like humans can. Kind of feels like cheating for stashing extra guns/bombs on dogs this way, but if you still think they're weak, at least you can use them as pack mules.

[Rocketcat Games]

Paul fixed this for next update.