unload caravan animals

[amjadken]

does that happen automatically? So far it seems I have to manually have a pawn unload a pack animal.

[gimmethegepgun]

Hauling tasks will be used to automatically unload them.

However, there's a far better option. If you select their inventory you can drop their gear instantly, so you can use zones to tell the animals to go to the appropriate stockpiles and then unload everything instantly instead of making pawns haul it around.

[Cannenses]

Depends on how often you send caravans. I do a lot. The logistics of going to each zone one-by-one does not work for me.

I do this:
1. Create a zone, “Caravans” or something suitable. It should be centrally located.
2. Use it to SEND and RECEIVE caravans, exactly because it is centrally-located.
3. If it’s a short trip, the animals’ zone does not change when they return, they’re still assigned to “Caravans”. So, just drop all items there and send them away from this zone after it’s done.
4. If you have efficient hauliers, e.g. dogs, etc, the items will be hauled to appropriate zones.

This is basically a “set & forget” system. My “Caravans” zone is indoors and no other hauliers have access except dogs. Others tend to eat the dropped stuff. Be careful of beer, dogs take them.

[Astasia]

In my experience, when a caravan returns one of my dedicated hauler pawns will run out and unload one thing from a caravan animal right away, often before they get into the door, and then they are done and ignore the rest of the items on the animals. Several days later I see the animals still with their packs on and I manually drop everything they are carrying. I've been assuming this was probably a mod related issue, though I'm not really using anything related to hauling, and it's been an issue as long as I can remember. Colonists are fine at unloading all their stuff, though they rarely put it in the right stockpile.

[amjadken]

Originally posted by Astasia:

In my experience, when a caravan returns one of my dedicated hauler pawns will run out and unload one thing from a caravan animal right away, often before they get into the door, and then they are done and ignore the rest of the items on the animals. Several days later I see the animals still with their packs on and I manually drop everything they are carrying. I've been assuming this was probably a mod related issue, though I'm not really using anything related to hauling, and it's been an issue as long as I can remember. Colonists are fine at unloading all their stuff, though they rarely put it in the right stockpile.

Yeah, thats been my experience, I play vanilla

[HunterSilver]

It should happen automatically, yes. There are a couple of bugged scenarios that can occur though, and a few that were fixed in the 1.2 update. For example, if you have the dlc and use the farskip psycast to teleport a group back to your base, they will not automatically unload their inventories.

If there are no open storage spots or if a colonist is interrupted while attempting to empty their inventory, they seem to not re-select the job of emptying their inventory again until they are put into another caravan and return to the colony. This is commonly an issue if you draft your colonist while they're unloading.

Mods such as Pick Up and Haul can create similar issues.

Unfortunately, the solution for all of these scenarios is to manually empty the animal/colonist's inventory. I don't know a better workaround.