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Author Topic: Animal Husbandry skill  (Read 1391 times)

falcc

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Animal Husbandry skill
« on: February 19, 2015, 01:11:30 am »

Condense Milker, Gelder, Sheerer, Animal Hauling, and the currently useless Animal Caretaker into a single skill and handle their particulars with knowledge checks.
 
While the diversity of skills makes sense, and no amount of milking will ever make gelding obvious, it's kind of unusual that a farming society wouldn't have more general knowledge of all of the animals they raised and used for industry. If a society has managed a domestic animal and industries resulting from its byproducts any Dwarf capable of working with that animal at all should have an understanding of how to milk, sheer, geld, collect its eggs, and care for it by the time they're adult farmers (potentially even butcher it, but needing to be familiar with an animal to do that could destroy the meat industry right now). A single Animal Husbandry skill could serve for the skill check, since none of the individual skills has quality modifiers anyway, and the particulars would be required in the same way knowledge of poems are. A society/Dwarf would need to know sheering in general, or have a way to learn it, but once they're familiar with the concept and the animal (this could go by how trained an animal is, or the civilization's familiarity with a species, or eventually an individual check if civs start springing up based on adventurers with a particular knowledge set) the whole interaction of moving it from a pasture, getting it into place to sheer, and sheering it should just be one skill. Unfamiliar animals should be harder to move or more likely to bolt instead of following, and should result in more failed milkings and sheerings until more familiarity is gained. This could translate to an increased rate of domestication if your Dwarves are raising a sustained population of something that you don't have a lot of opportunity to train.

Condensing the skills removes some clutter in the labor menu or its eventual successor, leads smoothly into more knowledge based checks for skills, and makes some Dwarves less worthless. With animal hauling attached to a skill, and having that shared with other essential farming skills, a whole group of peasants suddenly has a lot of new interactions available to them. Every time animals need to be led somewhere, whether they're pulled or herded it could require the Animal Husbandry skill, and subsequently lead to quicker milking, sheering, and gelding just from being more comfortable working with animals (or that particular species, in theory). Moving animals should already require skill checks, since it's not really obvious to someone that hasn't raised a particular animal how to get it to move when it's got several hundred pounds on them. This will make it more valuable to have a whole crowd trained in the skill, since you usually end up with a glut of these skills already, but could use numbers like that when you need to get your herd inside before a goblin raid.

Animal Husbandry could have negative quality results once those are implemented. Animals being guided could run loose, or ones being gelded or milked might attack. Once Dwarves attain a certain level of ability this should be more of a speed check, and assume a legendary Animal Handler or whatever is just going to know how to guide that sheep in any given instance, and at the animal's top speed perhaps.

All of the subsequent parts of the animal industries would remain on the same skills, because there can definitely be qualities to cheese and thread in ways that don't translate as well to gelding.
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taptap

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Re: Animal Husbandry skill
« Reply #1 on: February 19, 2015, 03:19:06 am »

Agree, consolidating some skills would have been great instead of adding new ones, while an available one is still unused. I don't think a knowledge based agriculture with lots of failed milking and shearing would be much fun, however. Most forts avoid fortress made cheese and wool already, that's why cheesemakers are so popular after all.

Plugin for related (animal husbandry) proposals: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=145357.msg5791985#msg5791985

Badger Storm

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Re: Animal Husbandry skill
« Reply #2 on: February 19, 2015, 12:21:13 pm »

I like this idea.  I'm frankly getting impatient waiting for the animal caretaking fix.  I know Toady has other things to do, but it's disheartening to see a dog go around with a rotten leg after killin a giant rattlesnake.  There's also the consideration that wounded female animals won't become pregnant.  Don't these creatures deserve better?

On topic, I'd definitely like to see all those little labors consolidated into one or two, as well as a distinction between farmer (plants) and rancher (animals).
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Dirst

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Re: Animal Husbandry skill
« Reply #3 on: February 19, 2015, 01:17:11 pm »

On topic, I'd definitely like to see all those little labors consolidated into one or two, as well as a distinction between farmer (plants) and rancher (animals).
But which do you use if the carnivorous plants suggestion is implemented? :)

For the record, I like having a single Animal Caretaker or Rancher skill with some knowledges that intersect for task and animal.  Animal Husbandry is a little too specific to be the catch-all skill.
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falcc

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Re: Animal Husbandry skill
« Reply #4 on: February 19, 2015, 08:17:57 pm »

On topic, I'd definitely like to see all those little labors consolidated into one or two, as well as a distinction between farmer (plants) and rancher (animals).
But which do you use if the carnivorous plants suggestion is implemented? :)

For the record, I like having a single Animal Caretaker or Rancher skill with some knowledges that intersect for task and animal.  Animal Husbandry is a little too specific to be the catch-all skill.

I'm not attached to the name. Mostly it would just be nice to collapse more into knowledge. Similarly farmers working with crops are going to need to deal with whatever Toady throws in once that's finally overhauled. Weeding or watering or whatever. That's specific knowledge of how to handle particular plants or.. I mean tilling a field by hand is kind of like mining, harvesting the maximum possible out of each plant.. those would be silly skills but could theoretically make a difference with some simpler check of whether they know how to harvest/plant/care for wild plants or domestic ones.
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vjmdhzgr

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Re: Animal Husbandry skill
« Reply #5 on: February 19, 2015, 08:33:03 pm »

I like most of the ideas, but I don't think putting animal hauling in as well makes much sense, mainly because that's not a skill it's a labor used to move animals and I'd much prefer to just have all my idle dwarves move animals rather than only any idle milkers/shearers/whatever. Also I think animal caretaking should be more like a doctor for animals which would probably seperate from, but maybe be used in combination with Rancher or whatever it's going to be called for healing animals.
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Dirst

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Re: Animal Husbandry skill
« Reply #6 on: February 20, 2015, 06:44:52 am »

Also I think animal caretaking should be more like a doctor for animals which would probably seperate from, but maybe be used in combination with Rancher or whatever it's going to be called for healing animals.
That's more like a veterinarian, and I suppose it depends on how detailed medical knowledge should be.  Do we want the animals to have their own suturers and bone doctors and such, or just a general vet?

In that case, would we want to collapse all of the "real" doctor skills and just use knowledge of various treatment types and species?  Like Dr. Zoidberg, who is "an expert on humans."
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Deepblade

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Re: Animal Husbandry skill
« Reply #7 on: April 01, 2015, 03:58:33 pm »

Medical knowledge carries over pretty well from animals to humans. It's just the very specific things that don't carry over. This means we could train up the doctor skill using injured animals. For those familiar with the walking dead, you'll remember their medical guy was a veterinarian.
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Ops Fox

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Re: Animal Husbandry skill
« Reply #8 on: April 01, 2015, 04:35:43 pm »

I'd favor cutting out animal caretaker completely and just let our regular dwarven doctors practice on them. Maybe even stick gelding under the surgery skill.

I could see shearer and milker be condensed into a husbandry skill, but I agree with the early post that animal hauling gives idle dwarfs something to do.
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El_Stono

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Re: Animal Husbandry skill
« Reply #9 on: February 10, 2016, 04:17:52 pm »

I have thought about this too. I like the combination of milking and shearing jobs, but it could be even better to  merge milker and cheesemaker into dairy worker and Shearer and Spinner into Shepherd (or some other names). Some job combinations are necessary to make the skills important again, no one right now ever needed a shearer or a legendary cheesemaker.
I also suggest the merging of gelding and animal caretaking into one job and letting animal hauling be an unskilled job, Gelding alone will never be done many times in a fort and big herds need a lot of workers to move them around. I also think it wouldn't be a good idea to combinate doctor and animal caretaker skills, it isn't really fitting and could make doctors save a  random cat instead of dwarfs (but the idea of cows in hospital beds is kinda funny)
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Dozebôm Lolumzalìs

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Re: Animal Husbandry skill
« Reply #10 on: February 12, 2016, 03:54:43 pm »

Doctoring SKIlLS will be used for both dwarves and animals. NOT labors. They will still be separate.
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