Do tamed animals attack when left to their own devices?

[The early worm deserves the bird]

Just a quick question. If you tamed a bunch of dogs and set their area to just outside your base will the dogs attack raiders etc. or do they have to be following their master to do so?

[desrtfox071]

They will not unless they have been trained to do so, and then they need to be drafted at which point if their master gets attacked, they will attack, or if you have trained them to be able to be sent way from the master to attack, you can send them to attack. All of that requires that the master be drafted though.

[The early worm deserves the bird]

Originally posted by desrtfox071:

They will not unless they have been trained to do so, and then they need to be drafted at which point if their master gets attacked, they will attack, or if you have trained them to be able to be sent way from the master to attack, you can send them to attack. All of that requires that the master be drafted though.

That's exactly what I figured. Does the mechanic only work if they are bonded to that animal? So like only one dog per colonist or is there no limit?

[desrtfox071]

Originally posted by The early worm deserves the bird:

Originally posted by desrtfox071:

They will not unless they have been trained to do so, and then they need to be drafted at which point if their master gets attacked, they will attack, or if you have trained them to be able to be sent way from the master to attack, you can send them to attack. All of that requires that the master be drafted though.

That's exactly what I figured. Does the mechanic only work if they are bonded to that animal? So like only one dog per colonist or is there no limit?

As long as they are trained to do so is enough, and they do not need to be bonded to be trained for fighting.

[marcusaddamsson]

Bonding is a both good and bad. If a Bonded animal has enough training to be a guard, it and the bonded Pawn want to be master/pet; it's a mood thing, you'll see it in the master's needs (positive and negative).

In the short-term, a Bonded animal is a good thing, sorta. Your pawn gets the mood bump, and you get a rhino named Zoom. Long-term tho.. it can cause issues. If that Bonded animal is killed, then that colonist gets a major mood debuff that lasts for days (weeks?). And if you sold that animal... it would be even worse/longer debuff. If the master were to die... then the bonded animal may go on a rampage, killing anything in its path.

I don't like it when it happens, but I regard Bonding as one of the things that just happens. Most of the time, it's a good thing. Two things: One, don't let Bonded animals be attack animals (select the red icon for attack on animal tab). If they already know attack, still select no attack and wait for the training to expire. Once an animal is engaged in melee combat, it's nearly to the death... so Bonded animals should only guard, at best.

Second, consider making a new zone called Safety. When the alarm bells goes off, re-zone any Bonded animals to that zone so they're not wandering into the crossfire.

IMHO, the worst Bonded animals are small, useless critters (yorkshire terrier?). They can't fight back, and they just seem to get crushed to death/whatever over the course of a game... And the whole time they're eatin' yer food! ;)

Finally, any animal that's been trained to guard (at least) can be assigned to a colonist, assuming that colonist has the Animal skill necessary for that critter. Animals like Rhinos/Megasloths/etc will need 10+ to be assigned to a colonist, whereas a Labrador can be assigned at a much lower animal skill level.

[Grundlator]

I haven't bothered with animals in a while, but it used to be you could set the zone for them to right near where the raiders are and the raiders would attack them, which would force the animals to defend themselves.

This was really effective in just buying you time, inflicting some decent pain on the raiders, etc. albeit at the sacrifice of your animals. It made boomrats extremely useful though.

[climbingeastofwinter]

It's been awhile since I have played but animals do not need to be specially trained to engage in violence. I'm fairly certain that if an animal is attacked in melee (by raiders for instance) it can attack back. I seem to recall being able to restrict some animals to an area a few tiles long in a chokepoint raiders had to pass through as a means to force conflict between the raiders and animals. This is just a self-defensive behavior though, and it's been awhile, sorry I can't recall the details.

[marcusaddamsson]

Yea, that doesn't work so much any more. If you tamed/zoned a bunch of boomrats/X into the chokepoint, they'd just sit there... and when an attack came, they'd just retreat in 95% of the cases. Your animals can be teased into combat.. but it's pretty rare.

And raiders will mostly ignore animals. I'm not sayin' they never attack 'em, but it doesn't appear to be high on their to-do list; they'd much rather set an egg-box on fire than bother killing the chickens.

Hehe. Does make me remember the days of yore when you could train boomrats/lopes to attack... It never worked the way you wanted it to... but the idea of trained explosive rats is still very evocative.