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[Ninjabread]

IRL, barding is the armour that warhorses wore, to prevent cavalry charges being suicidal when the enemy have pikes or longbows. Barding is definitely in-period to an extent, as it was used by a number of ancient cultures such as Rome in the form of cataphracts, though this was scale armour, not plate. It's not outside the in-period tech capabilities to make plate barding, but it wasn't really done IRL until just a little after the cutoff point AFAIK.

It would seem like a suggestion that should be implemented after mounts are a thing for players, at least in adventure mode, but there's no real reason not to allow all warbeasts to wear some kind of armour. It would certainly make them more useful and reliable as actual defenders (and much more fun as attackers when invaders bring mounts and warbeasts), because currently they're little more than meat shields unless you either catch/trade for giants, or (somehow) stuff all 50 of them into a cage linked to a pressure plate/lever. It shouldn't make them too powerful since they still only have their natural weapons, with the exceptions of megabeasts, adamantine barded fully grown dragons will be basically unstoppable, Armok help you if you forget to replace dead animal trainers. Maybe no barding that provides full coverage? Just to keep things balanced, and so having huge and terrifying war trained guard beasts doesn't make fortress defence boring.

Bonus: If barding is applied via the animals screen, and can be applied to caged hostile animals, gladiatorial combat can become much more fun.

[Splint]

Additionally animals used as mounts should have thier use as a battle mount override thier normal behavior.

Can't tell you how many times I've had attackers with uncooperative mounts that only benefited the ranged fighters while melee troops struggled in vain to make thier horses and giant skunks go towards the enemy or dogs that were trained for combat turning and running away instead of pinning foes with thier bites (seriously, a bunch of dogs getting latching bites can make killing a foe so much easier.)

Armored dogs that reliably attack people or needing to keep speardwarves on hand to battle armored cavalry more reliably would be awesome.

[Ninjabread]

Initially I thought maybe that problem was to do with the enemy mounts not being trainable for war (or even hunting) but then you mentioned dogs. I've not had much trouble with dogs, usually mine are really enthusiastic but get riddled with arrows before they can really do anything unless cage mine, but I do tend to field them in ludicrously huge numbers so maybe it's a morale issue? Dogs are pretty small by comparison to basically anything that could be considered a threat.

[Splint]

Dogs are a mixed bag. Some will go charging right in with your dwarves, others turn around and run away. Being able to armor them would go a long way to improving thier effectiveness regardless though.

And some mounts can be war trained, some can't. The problem is that some of them are skiddish animals like horses that run away from danger - even if logically they've been trained specifically to be combat mounts if attackers are using them and should at least stick around while they have someone on them still.

[Grand Sage]

I like the idea, though I think there is one crucial point that needs clarification:

With armor, weather you can wear it or not depends on its size (relative to your own). Would barding be made in the same style, or would it require a "new" system were each type of animal needs barding fitted to its kind?

[Shonai_Dweller]

I like the idea, though I think there is one crucial point that needs clarification:

With armor, weather you can wear it or not depends on its size (relative to your own). Would barding be made in the same style, or would it require a "new" system were each type of animal needs barding fitted to its kind?

Probably wouldn't matter too much at first if it were only size dependent, same as regular armour. Animal-men of the same size can wear the same armour despite having completely different shaped heads or wings or more limbs.

When/if regular armour is updated to be more specific, barding would be too.