pros and cons of animals

[VayneVerso]

I'm very torn on animals in this game, but I recognize that I've never gotten far enough in a save to really see things through. Here's what I've seen so far, but please correct me if I'm wrong.

PROS

• They're awesome. I feel like I need to start with this. Going into combat with an arctic wolf at your side is just cool.
  
• Can be trained to release in a fight. Double-edged sword, really. Good for catching fleeing enemies and can occasionally save your bacon when you need to put some space between yourself and an enemy. Kind of annoying when they get into your line of fire and get themselves shot. Even when you don't release them but just bring them along with a drafted pawn, they have an annoying tendency to get in the way.
  
• Can be trained to haul. Very useful for preventing things from deteriorating outdoors and causing all kinds of dumb stacking issues.
  
• Textiles from shearing. Meh. Camelhair is great in the desert, but is it worth all the care and feeding of a dromedary? Probably not.
  
• Food from eggs, milking, and slaughter. Again, meh. I'm sure there are some efficient producers, but my experience with animals like chickens is that they eat way more than they produce while also requiring a lot of micromanagement.
  
• Caring for them increases your animal skill, which improves the stealth level of your hunters. Nice, but after a point, you probably don't need stealth too much to kill anything.
  
• Nuzzling. Positive mood bonuses from forming a bond. Decent, I guess.
  
• Sell to traders for profit. Maybe. But honestly, it seems like in my games, the traders that come along that are actually willing to buy my animals are few and far between, so I'm stuck caring for them in the meantime.
  
• Herbivores can be set to largely take care of themselves if zoned outside of your base area.They'll find grasses to eat, etc. Works better, obviously, in forests, jungles, etc. It exposes them to danger, but probably worth it to not have to worry about them.
  
• Animals are great distractions for enemies. E.g., when I had an infestation recently, I was saved by the fact that a few spiders got distracted attacking the self-tamed sows I had wandering around outside my compound. Raiders will do the same, wasting time trying to kill that dromedary you don't even care about while your fighters get into position. Probably the best thing about them, honestly.
  
• They get injured a lot, and patching them up is a good way to improve Medical skills. Even euthanizing them improves Medical when you simply want to eat one.

CONS

• They're a huge time investment. Once you get even a small handful of animals, you almost need somebody dedicated to caring for them full time.
  
• Training deteriorates. Just to keep them from going wild again, you need to train them quite regularly. Training uses food from your stockpiles, and you can't restrict animal diets, so sometimes you'll see your trader feeding your animals your precious corn or even cooked meals while six stacks of kibble are sitting in the barn.
  
• They eat a lot. Turn that 20 meat into 4 fine meals for your colonists, or five kibble meals for turtles. Come on. Yeah, I think haygrass has good nutritional density per crop square, and better when used to make kibble, but I'm fairly convinced I could use the same space in my garden to grow something like hops or psychite, process it to beer or tea, sell it to every single trader that comes by, and be sitting on a huge pile of silver in no time.
  
• Some animals have extremely annoying dietary needs. I sold my warg because I don't have a refrigerator, and I just couldn't be bothered having a constant supply of raw meat around for them, and I bury the human corpses. Minor issue, admittedly, with a niche animal.
  
• They factor into the wealth of your colony. Not sure how much. I play a pretty lean game and don't need raiders seeing me as an even juicier target just because I own a few dromedaries.
  
• Micromanagement. To prevent them from overpopulating, collecting their eggs from the weird places they lay them, moving them into safe zones during raids, bringing them back out when raids are over, etc.
  
• Infrastructure. Basically going to need to build a barn of some sort just to house their food so you don't have to let them into your pantry and dirtying up your house, to keep them warm in the winter, cool in the summer, etc. It's space in your compound that has to be maintained like anything, and again, goes back to factoring into your colony wealth.

Ultimately, I don't really like them, and usually end up selling any animals I buy or that self-tame to traders. I do like to have one combat pet assigned to each of my pawns, though. I'm keeping my retriever, my arctic wolf, and my cougar. The only other pet I want now is a bear. The only reason I've kept any of my other pets is to improve animal handling skills in order to be able to handle the animals that are actually cool (there are almost no animals ever on my map except rhinos and elephants).

[martindirt]

A few pros:

Shearing: Im already forgot which animal is vanilla, but im sure alpacca is one of them. Awesome in cold biomes if u have some alpacca wool parkas. (Or when winter is coming)
Hauling: Makes your haulers life ez.

But the most important: +75 kg weight / muffalo at caravans is realy good.

Im always keep some shearable animals (sheeps, dryads, alpacca, etc) and some caravan animals (zylophodon, muffalo, megasloth, etc).

And im try to keep some battle animals. Last time im released 25 guinea pigs (not the best fighters, but they distracted enemy fire). Rhino -> awesome fighter. Zylophodon, thrumbo.
But the best ifu can tame some feralisk / nightling.. Even better if u tame a nightstalker or a GALLATROS....

Sure, they have lot of cons. Thhe worst are:
Feeding them. No probs if they can graze, but predators need meat. And when winter is coming...
And loosing their train... there is a mod from Xen (forgot the name, but ill search it after this post).

Edit:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1547306080

A bit op, but fix the annoying re-training. Training your tamed animals again and again is not a challange (imo) but a realy annoying waste of time.

[AlexMBrennan]

Turn that 20 meat into 4 fine meals for your colonists, or five kibble meals for turtles. Come on.

Did you plan on eating all that human meat that raiders keep delivering every couple days? No? Then why not feed to the animals?

Some animals have extremely annoying dietary needs. I sold my warg because I don't have a refrigerator, and I just couldn't be bothered having a constant supply of raw meat around for them, and I bury the human corpses.

And if you burn all your rice fields then it's difficult to keep colonists fed so maybe, you know, don't do that?

In fact, wargs are quite useful because they only use raw meat so unlike dogs, for example, they won't eat your cooked meals when they restock your fridge.

Micromanagement

It's Rimworld, so what did you expect? If you didn't enjoy having your time wasted then this is not the game for you.

[M.K.]

You **absolutely need** the cargo-carrying capacity of animals to make caravans practical.

A good set of trained-to-haul dogs really take a LOT of drudge work away from your colonists.

As for the amount of training needed.. If the animal you are dealing with has a low wildness rating (domestic dog breeds, for example), they only need a touchup on their training once per 10 days or so.
It's only when you start trying to try feral Thrumboes that the taming burden becomes harsh.

Aside from aesthetic/roleplay reasons, animals in rimworld do not make sense as a food source. Their dietary input always exceeds their output in meat or milk or eggs.
But for their utility roles as pack animals, guards, haulers, self-mobile incendiary grenades, etc... They are very valuable indeed.

[VayneVerso]

Originally posted by AlexMBrennan:

Did you plan on eating all that human meat that raiders keep delivering every couple days? No? Then why not feed to the animals?

Maybe if I had a psychopath that didn't mind butchering humans. :)

Originally posted by AlexMBrennan:

And if you burn all your rice fields then it's difficult to keep colonists fed so maybe, you know, don't do that?

Who's burning rice fields now? I missed something.

I found it was a hassle to keep wargs fed with raw meat without a refrigerator. Later... yeah. Maybe. With elephants and rhinos dropping ridiculous amounts of meat, it wouldn't be a problem if it's not spoiling.

That complaint was sort of specific to my current game.

[VayneVerso]

Originally posted by M.K.:

You **absolutely need** the cargo-carrying capacity of animals to make caravans practical.

You know, I don't form caravans ever in my current game, and not often in previous games, so I haven't explored this. I kind of need all my people at home to take care of things around the compound, and almost certainly, I know I'll be raided the second I send any of them away. Because the storytellers hate me.

Originally posted by M.K.:

As for the amount of training needed.. If the animal you are dealing with has a low wildness rating (domestic dog breeds, for example), they only need a touchup on their training once per 10 days or so.

Yeah, this is probably true. I love my retriever. I wish a trader would come by with a male, so I could start producing retriever babies.

[Lyrin]

Originally posted by M.K.:

Aside from aesthetic/roleplay reasons, animals in rimworld do not make sense as a food source. Their dietary input always exceeds their output in meat or milk or eggs.

If the animals can graze reliably throughout most or all of the year it can potentially be worth raising them for food. Worst case they make a distraction against a raid and then you just butcher them anyway.

Pretty much agree with the rest of what you said, though.

[Serina]

I agree with most of the cons you listed but I love animals in general and in rl, so the drawbacks doesn't bother me too much.


Some of the cons you listed:
They're a huge time investment - For me, this isn't an issue since I normally have at least one dedicated animal handler because... well, I like animals.

Micromanagement - Generally, I keep only a male and female together if I'm trying to breed some babies to keep for the colony, otherwise I get rid of the male or separate him from the female(s).

They eat a lot - I used to think muffalos eat a lot. After getting a couple of self tamed thrumbos, I don't even notice how much the muffalos eat anymore. lol.

They factor into the wealth of your colony - Yes, indeed they do. My one thrumbo is worth 4k market value right now and I only implanted a bionic animal brain simulator so far. I want to eventually have full bionic thrumbo(s) to fight alongside my colonists (courtesy of A Dog Said mod).

Infrastructure - The battle and hauling animals I keep in my colonies are treated as part of the family, so they have freedom to go about mostly anywhere on the map. I exclude my indoor farming areas because I don't want them to eat the growing crops and I exclude the bedrooms sometimes because it's less animal filth around the house. The pack animals such as muffalos have their own designated room (usually the textiles/animal corpses room) with their own food since they don't haul or fight.


I do agree with your statement that "Animals are great distractions for enemies". I had some chickens that joined during the summer time. I restricted their area outside and planted some grass for them to eat. I completely forgot about them until a raid showed up shortly after and one of the raiders fried the poor chickens with his doomsday rocket launcher. I felt bad for the chickens but was thankful for their sacrifice. This is also the reason why I have multiple restricted zones for the animals I care about. One for hauling/roaming around when there isn't a raid and a safezone that they can run to when there are enemies around.

"The only other pet I want now is a bear." Bears are great, I personally love them and have had them in most of my games. Whether it's grizzly bear or polar bear, they make great companions and battle animals. If you plan to use your bear(s) as battle companions, you should check out A Dog Said for animal bionics and animal healing.

Edit: Just a screenshot of my animals ^.^
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1663697519

I currently have Ruby & Sapphire, caravan muffalos. Ruby's sister, Topaz died in one of the previous raids. :(

Buttercup and Blossom, sister polar bears born from Snowflake and a male polar bear I tamed. I sold the male bear because I didn't want him to reproduce with his own daughters and I sold their mother Snowflake because I thought it would help with game lag issues.

Austin the bonded and self-tamed thrumbo. He's the second thrumbo in my current game to bond and tame through tending methods. The first thrumbo, she was named Bridget. I had to adopt her off to our allies because I couldn't feed her at the time.

Ideally, I would have more polar bears and maybe even baby thrumbos if I was playing sp. My bf and I have 10 colonists and 9 animals altogether on the same map right now and we have to play the game on x1 most of the time. If there are no caravans or raids, we can manage x2 for a short time if the map is clean of blood/debris. Our last raid was from tribe faction and they came with more than 150+ guys. Lag from that was pretty bad. I imagine adding more animals to the map wouldn't be very good for performance.

Sorry, I typed a lot. XD

[Astasia]

Originally posted by TheWatcherUatu:

They eat a lot. Turn that 20 meat into 4 fine meals for your colonists, or five kibble meals for turtles. Come on. Yeah, I think haygrass has good nutritional density per crop square, and better when used to make kibble

Haygrass is the most efficient raw food source in the game by quite a large margin, even as raw it beats out the nutrition per day of cooking rice/corn into simple meals. Kibble is much worse and is only efficient for carnivores that will not eat hay. Think of kibble as a way to extend meat for animals that require meat, not as a way to get more out of haygrass, because you don't need to get anything more out of haygrass. Some people suggest turning human/bug meat into kibble if you happen to have some, just as a way to get rid of it, but you could instead be turning that unwanted meat into chemfuel which is much more useful/valuable.

Originally posted by TheWatcherUatu:

Food from eggs, milking, and slaughter. Again, meh. I'm sure there are some efficient producers, but my experience with animals like chickens is that they eat way more than they produce while also requiring a lot of micromanagement.

They do eat more than they produce, but they eat vegies and turn them into protein, and animals are the only way to make that conversion base game and create a stable and reliable source of lavish meals. Chickens and cows are the best at this conversion, and as Scooty mentioned on some maps with a lower number of colonists you can just let them graze on wild grass. Grazing is rarely practical long term though and growing a field of haygrass to feed a large barn full of animals is fairly easy and low maintenance.

Originally posted by TheWatcherUatu:

Training deteriorates.

This is what really kills the utility animals though. It was a recent design change, and a bad one. There are a bunch of mods that fix it. I would highly suggest anyone interested in the animal system of the game to get such a mod and disable training deterioration. Without it hauling animals can be fairly useful. You convert food into labor, and it feels right.