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[youngbab]

Not certain 100% where this belongs, since the animal I used (Giant Muskox) was modded to allow for war training and since its training was made possible through such means, it might be best to put this under the purview of the modding board, but since this has more to do with a general question (since elephants are war trainable grazers) I felt that it should be placed here. As the title says, I'm curious if grazing animals given war training will starve if left to follow around a dwarf, or if after their training they don't need to eat from a pasture. My muskox has been wandering around the fortress for several seasons, so this question may be pointless, but it is still best to ask just so I don't lose a valuable animal. Anyone know whether or not he needs to be pastured? Thanks in advance.

[PatrikLundell]

Grazers need to graze, whether war trained or not, or will starve if wandering around where there's nothing to eat (and possibly if they decide to wander rather than eat as well).
I had a pastured war trained elephant for a couple of years before buying another elephant from the pointy ears. When I war trained that one both of them started to desert their pasture and roam the fortress instead. One starved to death, and the other one was slaughtered just before it would have died of starvation.
My conclusion from that was that you shouldn't war train grazers...
It MIGHT be possible to have war trained grazers if you can lock them into the pasture, but then you run a significant risk of suffering from the "pathing through pet locked doors" FPS killer bug.

[youngbab]

Grazers need to graze, whether war trained or not, or will starve if wandering around where there's nothing to eat (and possibly if they decide to wander rather than eat as well).
I had a pastured war trained elephant for a couple of years before buying another elephant from the pointy ears. When I war trained that one both of them started to desert their pasture and roam the fortress instead. One starved to death, and the other one was slaughtered just before it would have died of starvation.
My conclusion from that was that you shouldn't war train grazers...
It MIGHT be possible to have war trained grazers if you can lock them into the pasture, but then you run a significant risk of suffering from the "pathing through pet locked doors" FPS killer bug.

Hmm. How long did you have the animals unpastured for before they starved? I have a new surplus of cave moss growing absolutely everywhere in the fortress, will he eat that even unpastured? Or do I need to keep him somewhere and hope he obeys my commands?

[anewaname]

It MIGHT be possible to have war trained grazers if you can lock them into the pasture, but then you run a significant risk of suffering from the "pathing through pet locked doors" FPS killer bug.

That bug only kicks in when the door is only pet-locked. When the pet-lock FPS bug is occurring, you will see the pet adjacent to the pet-locked door; the pet will be stationary and will have the blinking ? over it. If you give them an enclosed pasture and "normal"-lock the door after the dwarfs get out, they will stay in that room without triggering the pet-lock FPS bug.

I have a new surplus of cave moss growing absolutely everywhere in the fortress, will he eat that even unpastured? Or do I need to keep him somewhere and hope he obeys my commands?

I am not certain how "unpastured grazers" handle food needs, but they do seek out meeting areas. The "pastured grazers" seem to eat until the tile is stripped, then wander 1 tile within their "assigned area", which is their pasture zone. An "unpastured grazer" might treat all available meeting areas as their "assigned area" and might just wander from tile to tile looking for food when hungry, so if all your meeting areas are mossy, they might mow those lawns. You could test it by creating a 3x1 room around three tiles of cave moss, pasture the giant muskox in a 1x1 pasture zone on one end of the 3x1 room, lock the door after the dwarf leaves, then create a 1x1 meeting zone on the other end of the 3x1 room, and release the musk ox from the pasture zone (unassign him, don't just delete the 1x1 pasture zone, there might be a difference). He should cross the room to the only meeting area he can reach. He is a giant muskox and will likely eat a 1x1 tile of moss faster than it can grow, so you can watch as he destroys the cave moss in the 1x1 meeting area tile (or refuses to eat), and when he is done eating that, you can watch to see if he steps out of the 1x1 meeting area to get to the moss tile in the middle of the room. You can also can replace the 1x1 pasture zone with another 1x1 meeting zone, to see if he will travel between meeting zones to reach the other cave moss. This should let you assess if it will eat moss if it is standing on it, and also if it will travel to other meetings areas to find moss.

I also don't know if assigning the war grazer to a dwarf will trigger pet-feeding jobs when it is hungry. To test this, you can lock up a dwarf and the war grazer with a barrel of plump helmets, then assign the war grazer to the dwarf.

[PatrikLundell]

I didn't have them unpastured: they violated their pasturing order to roam the fortress, probably looking for whichever dorfs happened to have trained them (I don't assign specific dorfs to specific animals). Also, I suspect grazers chasing their trainers ignore starvation, but I didn't have any moss growing 100 levels down on bare rock.

[youngbab]

It MIGHT be possible to have war trained grazers if you can lock them into the pasture, but then you run a significant risk of suffering from the "pathing through pet locked doors" FPS killer bug.

That bug only kicks in when the door is only pet-locked. When the pet-lock FPS bug is occurring, you will see the pet adjacent to the pet-locked door; the pet will be stationary and will have the blinking ? over it. If you give them an enclosed pasture and "normal"-lock the door after the dwarfs get out, they will stay in that room without triggering the pet-lock FPS bug.

I have a new surplus of cave moss growing absolutely everywhere in the fortress, will he eat that even unpastured? Or do I need to keep him somewhere and hope he obeys my commands?

I am not certain how "unpastured grazers" handle food needs, but they do seek out meeting areas. The "pastured grazers" seem to eat until the tile is stripped, then wander 1 tile within their "assigned area", which is their pasture zone. An "unpastured grazer" might treat all available meeting areas as their "assigned area" and might just wander from tile to tile looking for food when hungry, so if all your meeting areas are mossy, they might mow those lawns. You could test it by creating a 3x1 room around three tiles of cave moss, pasture the giant muskox in a 1x1 pasture zone on one end of the 3x1 room, lock the door after the dwarf leaves, then create a 1x1 meeting zone on the other end of the 3x1 room, and release the musk ox from the pasture zone (unassign him, don't just delete the 1x1 pasture zone, there might be a difference). He should cross the room to the only meeting area he can reach. He is a giant muskox and will likely eat a 1x1 tile of moss faster than it can grow, so you can watch as he destroys the cave moss in the 1x1 meeting area tile (or refuses to eat), and when he is done eating that, you can watch to see if he steps out of the 1x1 meeting area to get to the moss tile in the middle of the room. You can also can replace the 1x1 pasture zone with another 1x1 meeting zone, to see if he will travel between meeting zones to reach the other cave moss. This should let you assess if it will eat moss if it is standing on it, and also if it will travel to other meetings areas to find moss.

I also don't know if assigning the war grazer to a dwarf will trigger pet-feeding jobs when it is hungry. To test this, you can lock up a dwarf and the war grazer with a barrel of plump helmets, then assign the war grazer to the dwarf.

I THINK that he has been eating grass. I took a peek at the "status" (aka flashing icons on creatures) wiki page to see if animals flashed the brown-down arrow symbol when they were hungry, and he hasn't show any symbol of that sort. I think I'll consider the experiments at some point but I think for the time being the muskox should be sound, given it's been roaming for a good year without dying.

[mikekchar]

If you put grazers on a restraint or in a cage, they will be fed by any dwarf with "Animal Care" skill (using either plants or prepared food from your inventory).  I can't remember if you can restraint/cage war beasts, though.  Restraints are particularly nice because animals will continue to breed if they are adjacent.

[Dunamisdeos]

They do flash that orange/brown down arrow when starving, so sounds like you are fine.