Way to check animals defense stats?

[PyroMancer]

I know you can click on "i" and it gives a lot of info about the animal but it doesn't really give me what I want to know. I wanna try and figure out how good the animal might be in combat related to another. I know there is a bit of RNG so anecdotal evidence of a few fights is no guarantee of better overall stats.

There is DPS and Armor Pen status which is great if that's all you care about and don't mind glass cannons. But I want to pick animals for front line tanking duty not just their DPS. Thus I wanna know what kind of resistances they have and total HP instead of just the % bar.

Online charts are common recommendations aren't much use as I play with Vanilla Expanded which adds a TON of new animals and even genetic manipulation, along with other mods that also add more animal types.

So I wanna know how these animals all stack up as I find, tame, and breed the new animals. But short of risking them in combat and hoping they come out on top don't know how to get a sense of how tough they might be against other unknown animals and even vanilla ones.

[Goldtooth™]

If an animal has armor (like tortoise and bugs for example) then there will be stats on that menu about blunt and sharp armor.

Other than that its just common sense, elephants not only take alot of hits to knock down but have tougher skin than a panther

[PyroMancer]

Originally posted by Dwarf King Dude™:

If an animal has armor (like tortoise and bugs for example) then there will be stats on that menu about blunt and sharp armor.

Other than that its just common sense, elephants not only take alot of hits to knock down but have tougher skin than a panther

There was a wild Thrumbo in my camp and was able to see it had "Appeal" section. This list resistances but it seems really rare as even Rhino doesn't have any Appeal defense.

But it still begs the question on HP. As since it seems like MOST don't have any armor it does seem some animals can take more damage than others even though they both seem to have no Appeal/Armor.

[Astasia]

Animal health is based on their health scale, it used to be tied directly to body size but it was moved to another stat for better balance on some creatures. In most cases it's going to be very close to their body size factor and you can use that as a general rule of thumb when determining which animals have more or less health. I believe body size is listed in their i menu along with any potential armor (very few animals have armor, mostly like turtles, insects and thrumbos). Conveniently DPS is also largely based on body size as well, so for the most part the larger the animal the better it is at combat in all areas.

Basically as far as raw combat stats go, factoring health and DPS, the strongest animals in the game are as follows:

1. Thrumbo
2. Megasloth
3. Elephant
4. Rhino
5. Bear

That list is accurate for most health, and most DPS.

[glass zebra]

Keep in mind that big animals also get up to a 200% multiplier to getting hit by bullets and will often end up with brain damage or other scars/missing limbs. Pawns usually don't have much issues if you replace veteran animals with undamaged ones, so a fast breeding army of medium sized animals can perform very well, especially since they can also bind more ranged enemies into melee combat and some of them (like cougars) are very fast to reach this goal too.

As stated most vanilla animals do not have armour and thrumbos are basically the best tank because of the bit they have. The list of the 5 animals Astasia provided are also probably the 5 animals you are happy to relive or their services because of their rather useful leather. But since you will need to replace the animals at some point, tanking can also be looked at with "How many battles can these be useful per food eaten, pawn training time and how quickly can they fill up their ranks again", rather than pure hp.

You don't need to compare 1 thrumbo to 1 animal of another species for tanking or dps purposes. 8 cougars still eat less than a single thrumbo (though can't eat hay or grass), 2-3 will already do more dps, though they only have ~ 1/7 of the hp and no armour. They also reproduce twice as quickly and mature a lot faster too.

Reproduction speed combined with health and movement speed is a form of tanking for animals.

[Cannenses]

I believe trial and error for your fight/play-style is still the best approach. Stats do not reflect RNG well, and you would probably be frustrated if stats don't match your expectation.

This is from a savegame where I used to go for 'brute-force' fighting with the big-5 animals. The Thrumbo is a tank and I'll tame them should I do that fightstyle again, but I tend not to nowadays.

Picture below is a quick glance of the hits Thrumbos can take, and survivability.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2055513030

[PyroMancer]

Originally posted by glass zebra:

....
You don't need to compare 1 thrumbo to 1 animal of another species for tanking or dps purposes. 8 cougars still eat less than a single thrumbo (though can't eat hay or grass), 2-3 will already do more dps, though they only have ~ 1/7 of the hp and no armour. They also reproduce twice as quickly and mature a lot faster too.

Reproduction speed combined with health and movement speed is a form of tanking for animals.

I'm comparing them across multiple factors, the issue is more a lack of knowledge to make an informed comparison. Thrumbos are obviously high tier in combat but they are too hard to get, breed too slowly, and worth too much.

The swarm approach is viable sure but it has it's own issues. Typically animals have market value of 300-600 depending on the species. So if you have a lot of them it can really elevate the wealth level of your colony meaning larger raids. So you get in a cycle of larger raids needing more animals to defend having more losses and needing to breed more.

I tried the Boar horde on my last play through back in 1.1 and while it was quite effective it became a maintenance nightmare. There are a lot of other things to take into account. Animal Training has to be done and maintained. The more animals you have the more time you colonist have to spend training and can't do other things. Crops are super easy to grow in mass, plant HUGE fields of corp and every 15 days you pull in yields of several thousand raw food. It's easier to maintain that than a lot of animal training so I don't care if 8 of some animal eats less than 1 of my big animals.

It feel like I was always in a rush to train up the new boars fast enough so they would be ready for combat. Plus having to maintain the training on the current ones. Then making sure they were all zoned properly, though the new pens should help with that, and etc.

Eventually in that play through I got tired of them and just let them all die in glorious combat and stop breeding them. I switched to breeding Elephants instead as they were not only good in combat but also replaced my Pack animals so they became kinda a all in one animal. Sure they breed a bit slower but I found I rarely needed to replace them as they died far less often and were simply injured and needed some medical attention. Rarely was it debilitating as well.

But I don't wanna just fall back to elephants and want to see what some of the new animals capabilities are as well. That's why I'l looking for more info on their stats.

[Cannenses]

Originally posted by PyroMancer:

I'm comparing them across multiple factors, the issue is more a lack of knowledge to make an informed comparison. ... There are a lot of other things to take into account. Animal Training has to be done and maintained. The more animals you have the more time you colonist have to spend training and can't do other things. ...

This discussion/thread is actually a set of questions that is quite fundamental to developing advanced colonies. Colonies that are self-sufficient, although small in size, but strong enough that can withstand invaders numbering about 5 times the colony size (i.e. 50 invaders against a 10-pawn colony). And do it without the perennial worries about pathing/traps/kill-boxes.

I don't see questions like these often enough. Rimworld's game mechanic encouraging emergence is, for me, fascinating. And OP is on the right path.

[PyroMancer]

Originally posted by Cannenses:

Colonies that are self-sufficient, although small in size, but strong enough that can withstand invaders numbering about 5 times the colony size (i.e. 50 invaders against a 10-pawn colony). And do it without the perennial worries about pathing/traps/kill-boxes.

Yeah and that's why I like animals.

I hear a lot of tips on wealth management and how much of it should be "defendable wealth" as it it contributes to defending the base.

When I started Rimworld I used the pathing/traps for defense as I had a long path into my base with traps which worked great at first for couple raids. Then the AI seem to get smart so I watched a few vids on defense and there were claims if raiders survive they remember where traps are don't fall for them on following raids. It seemed to be true as trap paths started to get ignored on future raids in favor of breaking walls/doors that my colonist use even though no raider saw them use it and the path never changed so should be any change in pathfinding calculation.

In the tip vids I also saw great examples of kill boxes holding off massive raids. However I found that it was extremely rare of raiders to go to my kill-box. They would often just bust through the wall in another part of colony. Or worst yet drop pod into the middle of my base. Siege raids I'd try to mortar back but those have such poor accuracy it often wasn't fast enough as they would still lob a few in my base causing havoc and once their mortar is broken they still have the assault which again rarely goes to my kill box but instead bust through the wall of least resistance.

Animals are more expendable than colonist because they don't take years to train up to high skills. But still can't just use any old animal for defense as needs to be ones that can be trained to follow commands, able to sustain food/taming, easy to manage in cavarans, and etc. Because they are mobile I can attack sieges, sleeping mechanoids, or other events that don't charge a static defense like kill boxes. And I can take them on raids of other settlements and quest. The result is my towns tend to be open village types without much in terms of walls since when a raid shows up I can summon a swarm of anger animals to attack followed by some back line sniper colonist.

[glass zebra]

A lot of animals have lost trainability in 1.3 and I'd say most of the animals that you can train now are at least decent in combat instead of just having a niche use. They do however overlap with animals that are mostly just there for low skill hauling like Labradors.

[Cannenses]

Originally posted by PyroMancer:

... Because they are mobile I can attack sieges, sleeping mechanoids, or other events that don't charge a static defense like kill boxes. And I can take them on raids of other settlements and quest. The result is my towns tend to be open village types without much in terms of walls since when a raid shows up I can summon a swarm of anger animals to attack followed by some back line sniper colonist.

+1

This is the way. (I do the same)

[Goldtooth™]

Originally posted by PyroMancer:

Originally posted by Dwarf King Dude™:

If an animal has armor (like tortoise and bugs for example) then there will be stats on that menu about blunt and sharp armor.

Other than that its just common sense, elephants not only take alot of hits to knock down but have tougher skin than a panther

There was a wild Thrumbo in my camp and was able to see it had "Appeal" section. This list resistances but it seems really rare as even Rhino doesn't have any Appeal defense.

But it still begs the question on HP. As since it seems like MOST don't have any armor it does seem some animals can take more damage than others even though they both seem to have no Appeal/Armor.

Thats based on size for animals

[glass zebra]

Originally posted by Dwarf King Dude™:

Originally posted by PyroMancer:

There was a wild Thrumbo in my camp and was able to see it had "Appeal" section. This list resistances but it seems really rare as even Rhino doesn't have any Appeal defense.

But it still begs the question on HP. As since it seems like MOST don't have any armor it does seem some animals can take more damage than others even though they both seem to have no Appeal/Armor.

Thats based on size for animals

Animals have a health scale that dictates the HP of the body parts. Thrumbos have the same size as megasloths yet more than twice the have.