Dwarf Fortress > DF Dwarf Mode Discussion

Which animals SHOULD be war trainable?

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IndigoSnake:
Bit of a subjective question, but Ive been pondering what the deciding factor should be when deciding whether an animal should be war trainable or not. Are there logical reasons why any one particular animal should not be capable of war training? A lot of the animals that do or do not have war training capability appear to be chosen arbitrarily to me, dwarffortresswiki.org/Ocelot for example.

I know I can just mod the raws to make everything war trainable but I am interested if there are patterns or thoughts on this that occur to anyone else on this matter.
What are your thoughts?

anewaname:
Consider that history has shown that some animals were used in warfare and some were not. Those are the easy to declare as trainable or not. The remaining animals would all be arbitrary.

When you look at real world methods for training war animals, there are animals that obey commands (dogs, horses, elephants) and animals that were pointed at the enemy and let loose (bears, big cats, hornets). DF implements the first method, players implement the second method. There is a lot of room for arbitrary in all this, especially when you add different fantasy elements to this concept.

pamelrabo:
I've always thought many more animals should be war trainable, just because I would enjoy the game more. Crocodiles, gorillas, other monsters... Not from a historic perspective of course, but we're in a world where cooks can do ant brain cookies, so...

Maybe it's time to get into raw editing

IndigoSnake:

--- Quote from: anewaname on June 15, 2019, 01:09:20 pm ---Consider that history has shown that some animals were used in warfare and some were not. Those are the easy to declare as trainable or not. The remaining animals would all be arbitrary.

When you look at real world methods for training war animals, there are animals that obey commands (dogs, horses, elephants) and animals that were pointed at the enemy and let loose (bears, big cats, hornets). DF implements the first method, players implement the second method. There is a lot of room for arbitrary in all this, especially when you add different fantasy elements to this concept.

--- End quote ---
Thank you for the well thought out points! I don't believe the historic angle is one that I considered.

Training a hornet to do much of anything, much less attack designated foes, would seem unfeasible to me, but I can see them being useful in battle as you imply. Contrastingly, I could imagine a bear being trained to defend an entrance, but calling specific targets on a confusing battlefield might be somewhat beyond them. And then you have dogs which are much more focused and quite advanced in what you can get them to do. The distinction of what constitutes a war animal is an important one I think, especially when it can refer to so many of the things we have already mentioned.

The point about fantasy elements is well observed as well, dwarf-kind may have some advantages in animal training that we lack.

--- Quote from: pamelrabo on June 16, 2019, 04:52:44 am ---Maybe it's time to get into raw editing

--- End quote ---
Apparently the [TRAINABLE] token can be added to creatures mid-playthrough, and speaking from personal experience creature tokens are quite simple to add. Just need to edit the raws in the save folder.

Shonai_Dweller:
The historical viewpoint is very useful, but at the same time Elves, the main users of warbeasts, are meant to be very different from anything historical. They're not "dirty hippies who live in trees" much as the community likes to label them so, but mystical beings in tune with nature. To deny them war hornets, just because humans couldn't conceive of how it's possible would be detrimental to the game as fantasy world sim.

(Of course, that's possibly a bit beyond modding, to add "magical" training that only certain races get. Maybe post-Mythgen).

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