Devs: Can we reduce the filth of trainable animals?

[dande48]

I'm loving the animal rework, especially in making ranching a more viable way to raise food. The new "straw" floors are great too.

Sadly, when training my grizzly bears to follow my pawns and do hauling, they produce WAY too much filth. Is there a way we can add "potty training" to the training of an animal?

[Dreay]

I forbid almost all my animals to move in my base outside of my precious insect

[Raelic]

The ones you can train, can be zoned.

And bears do produce a lot of filth.

[grapplehoeker]

Originally posted by Raelic:

And bears do produce a lot of filth.

Try elephants! ;p

[dande48]

Zoning reduces their ability to haul or follow my colonists around. You think if you could train them, you could train them not to poop indoors.

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by dande313:

Zoning reduces their ability to haul or follow my colonists around. You think if you could train them, you could train them not to poop indoors.

You have to have a cost for the benefits certain things bring. For animals, it's... poop. Well, one of those is, at any rate.

If you want animal haulers, get huskies or retrievers. They don't poop in the house. Otherwise, you can use the Zone mechanics to keep animals out of areas you don't want them to poop in. :)

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by Morkonan:

If you want animal haulers, get huskies or retrievers. They don't poop in the house.

They do now. However, their filth rate is the same as a human (who produces trash rather than animal filth).

[kidofburden]

I would love a potty training mod for the animals! It's the first thing you train them to do in real life!

[ichifish]

Yeah, potty training would be great, but as noted above it removes the cost of animal haulers. You might as well use robots.

I used elephants in my last run and found that having a low-priority zone for them to haul everything to worked really well. I used priority haul to get things picked up from that stockpile, but you could just set everyone’s hauling to 1 temporarily.

[kidofburden]

I mean, it would add the action "run outside to poo" to the animals, and you could do litter boxes for cats...

Oh! what if there was a pet destruction chance so you have to make chew toys and scratching posts! :D

[stevasaur]

Originally posted by ichifish:

Yeah, potty training would be great, but as noted above it removes the cost of animal haulers. You might as well use robots.

Except for the opportunity cost of acquiring a pawn with animal skills, spending food on training above and beyond what the animals eat, haulers only hauling intermittently, most hauling animals being vulnerable to predation and/or weak in combat, etc.

I mean, Huskies are good doggos, and tame bears are cool, but they definitely come with plenty of downsides besides Animal Filth.

[kidofburden]

But you're forgetting the other factor: Fun!

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by gimmethegepgun:

Originally posted by Morkonan:

If you want animal haulers, get huskies or retrievers. They don't poop in the house.

They do now. However, their filth rate is the same as a human (who produces trash rather than animal filth).

...

Fricken heck... Why do developers do this crap? WTF? Now, I'm really ticked off.

(Haven't had a chance to play in awhile, but was so very confident my beloved doggos would survive Ludeon's insanity. Seriously... I'm in WTF Mode. Class action lawsuit? Fraud claims? Why the heck not?)

[Astasia]

I currently have a black lab, last week it decided to play with a skunk. The amount of cleaning supplies and air freshener we have gone through is ridiculous, the house still smells like fabreze and sulfur. This is a bit extreme compared to her usual messes, like spilling dog food all over, constantly moving people's shoes around, occasionally deciding to stand up and pull food off the kitchen counter or table when nobody is looking, etc. The idea that a trained dog doesn't make a mess of your house has always been pretty silly.

Anyway, the amount of filth dogs generate isn't really noticeable. It's mostly just farm animals that cause a problem, or other big animals you would expect to make a mess, other animals produce an amount of filth that is pretty easily cleanable. Bears are sort of on the high end. Wolves and cougars/panthers produce half as much filth as bears, and dogs are like half that again.

[Swordmouse]

The amount of filth animals generate seems pretty reasonable imho. I mean, god forbid my cook ever needs to walk 3 tiles while on duty. Guaranteed to string garbage and dirt, apparently, And if humans are that messy... yeah....

Anyway, as incredible as grizzlies are in virtually every way, from being tanky, having high DPS, hauling, eating less than a husky(?!?!?!) if extra filth is their only downside, they're still stupidly good. My suggestion? Pick up some dogs and zone the bears for hauling outside the base, and use the doggos inside where needed.

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by Astasia:

I currently have a black lab, last week it decided to play with a skunk. The amount of cleaning supplies and air freshener we have gone through is ridiculous, the house still smells like fabreze and sulfur. This is a bit extreme compared to her usual messes, like spilling dog food all over, constantly moving people's shoes around, occasionally deciding to stand up and pull food off the kitchen counter or table when nobody is looking, etc. The idea that a trained dog doesn't make a mess of your house has always been pretty silly.

You said "lab." They are the exception to just about everything. If it was a goldie, I wouldn't be surprised if you got a knock on your door and it was NASA making a complaint about it chewing on a space-shuttle. Nevermind where the dog found it...

My neighbor's two labs talked themselves into escaping and illegally trespassing into another neighbor's house where they commenced to consume an entire roast that was cooling on their kitchen counter. They were released under house-arrest.

(IIRC, they either also consumed a baked salmon as well or revisited the scene of the previous crime in order to do so. They're darn great dogs, though.)

Anyway, the amount of filth dogs generate isn't really noticeable...

Dogs should not generate filth because I love dogs. <- Unimpeachable argument. ;)

In reality, though - My issue is yet another problem with a developer making changes to a game that was already "finished." While I purchased it under EA, it's the general principle that annoys me - A standard purchase transaction agreement where there is clearly implied suitability of the product at the time it was purchased and that the user has used past the point of no return... shouldn't receive substantive gameplay mechanics. It's changing the product that was purchased. I agree on patches and even QoL features as being commonly expected normal changes for these products. I don't agree that "new" mechanics are in the same realm as they can make substantial changes to a game long past its purchase period. It doesn't matter if previous versions are available or not as those will not receive standard stewardship updates.

But, yeah, dogs are great and harming them is wrong... even if it's just in a game, :)