"Collapsed due to extreme exhaustion"

[Netzach Sloth]

I like that the animals get tied up now for caravan formation, but I don't like that caravans take days to form because the animals keep collapsing from exhaustion because their not smart enough to take a nap while my pawns are loading them up.

Three ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ days it's taking my two pawns to load up this caravan, this is severely un fun.

[Netzach Sloth]

And ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ wonderful; my pawn is miserable because the stupid ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ cows keep collapsing, so she just went nuts, and decided to kill the stupid ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ cows, and so now I can't carry stuff, even if the stupid ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ cows could manage the walk from the stockpile to the edge without collapsing.

[GeneralVeers]

Okay, two pawns. How many pack animals?? Forty-seven? Or, like, three?

(your initial description didn't say, and my psychotic mind conjured up an image of your two pawns loading up an army of a hundred muffalos)

Anyhoo, without more details, I can think of only one good idea for speeding up caravan prep: before setting up the caravan, create a movement area near the stuff you intend to load, and restrict your planned caravan animals to that movement area. Put your "caravan packing spot" furniture thingy in that area, THEN create your caravan. That way the animals will be right up close to the cargo they'll be carrying, and it will take minimal time to load.

Also, load up in the morning, right after everybody has gotten sleep and is well-rested.

[Netzach Sloth]

Originally posted by GeneralVeers:

Okay, two pawns. How many pack animals?? Forty-seven? Or, like, three?

(your initial description didn't say, and my psychotic mind conjured up an image of your two pawns loading up an army of a hundred muffalos)

Anyhoo, without more details, I can think of only one good idea for speeding up caravan prep: before setting up the caravan, create a movement area near the stuff you intend to load, and restrict your planned caravan animals to that movement area. Put your "caravan packing spot" furniture thingy in that area, THEN create your caravan. That way the animals will be right up close to the cargo they'll be carrying, and it will take minimal time to load.

Also, load up in the morning, right after everybody has gotten sleep and is well-rested.

It was like six cows, and they were loaded up pretty quick, it was just one of them was tired, and that one collapsed, which held up the whole thing, and once that one woke up, another one collapsed, and it just kept on like that. I tried restarting the process a couple times, but they just kept doing it.

Then, my pawn went crazy and killed a couple of them, and that was just enough to get everything loaded before they started dropping.

Animal killing spree for the win.

Still; irritating as hell that the animals will just stand there all day until they are literally incapable of standing any longer.

[GeneralVeers]

Were you trying to load up the animals in the middle of the night?

[Netzach Sloth]

Originally posted by GeneralVeers:

Were you trying to load up the animals in the middle of the night?

I had my main combat force off doing missions, got an earth elemental rift (ARoM) that wiped out all of my people, had my fighters stop off to buy some pack animals on the way home, left the animals outside resting while I killed the elementals, brought in the pack animals, with nothing loaded on them, and immediately made a new caravan to grab all my stuff to start a new base with.

The animals should have been near enough to fully rested that it wouldn't matter.

[GeneralVeers]

Then, if all the animals have full rest bars, all I can think is "broken mod".

[Netzach Sloth]

Originally posted by GeneralVeers:

Then, if all the animals have full rest bars, all I can think is "broken mod".

They didn't have full rest bars, they had close to full at the start, and then by the time the pawns were done loading, and had started moving them to the edge, a couple of them were at zero for rest, and then those couple being at zero and collapsing caused a cycle of all the animals collapsing and the game never finishing the caravan load.

The new system sounds better, and it would be, if animals could nap while you were loading their friends; as it is, it requires more micromanagement than the old packing system.

I don't think I'd ever seen an animal collapse from exhaustion before today.

[Celgaming]

I agree with OP, it absolutely sucks. However you can work around it, but only after learning how badly the caravan loading phase is implemented. You'd think just like with pods you could just assign some extra haulers to speed things up, but no. Only the ones you're sending off will haul the animals and you can't take animals out of the caravan or edit what items they are loading, so your only option is to grin your teeth and wait it out or cancel the entire thing and be left with tons of floors full of animal ♥♥♥♥ to clean up.

I installed the mod GiddyUp that lets you mount horses. A waste of a mod slot, since it didn't really speed up caravan runs at all (they already get a speed bonus from animals like horses) and if I set a few of my pawns to mount the animals it would mean an extra step of them go to the pen, mount a horse and then ride to the exit. Sometimes they'd tell a pack animal to "leave to the edge of the map" but because there were doors in the way, some of those pack animals got in an infinite loop because they can't open doors.

Things you can do to prevent this stuff in vanilla, no mods:

1. Beds for animals. They sleep better and are well rested. Hopefully by the time you leave. (Not actually 100% sure of this but would make sense)

2. Caravan spot OUTSIDE your walls. Don't put it inside as pack animals once roped to the spot will not be roped outside 100% of the time and can get stuck.

3. Less pack animals. Just use 4-5 and if you use GiddyUp, have 1 person mount 1 animal and then extra 4-5 pack animals.

4. Transport pods are your friends. You can use these to send heavy stuff, food, supplies, items etc. to your caravan once they are out. Cost is 1 component, fuel and some steel. I often bring 10 components + 200 fuel on all my caravans so I can build tranport pods on steel mining operations so I can just shoot them back to base.

5. Psy power: Farskip. This thing instantly transports your entire caravan from the world map back to your base and all the goods they have. Getting this skill is hard, but will make caravan trips so much more enjoyable. Needs royalty DLC naturally.

6. Royalty transport ship. Once you unlock permits you can gain a ship that can get your entire caravan including all their goods back to base without any issues. Can save you from death out in the world but also can act as a fast haul.

7. Better pack animals. Horses seem to be one of the best ones so far since they provide a speed bonus to the caravan but also can haul. Protip is to take pregnant ones with you and they'll give birth on the go and give you even more haulers. Also slaves can haul items too so grab a few from the couple of raids you do. Even wounded and captured people will haul for you on travels.

[GeneralVeers]

Originally posted by Celgaming:

You'd think just like with pods you could just assign some extra haulers to speed things up, but no. Only the ones you're sending off will haul the animals

Derp. You just reminded me of a neat trick I'd forgotten about.

If you're only planning to send TWO pawns out on that caravan, assign SIX to it. All six will help load things up. Then remove the four extra pawns from the caravan.

Win.