Animal Taming

[Wolfsong]

I'm pretty sure this has been brought up numerous times before in one way, shape or form - but I'm going to post about it again because I'm not certain if anyone has suggested it quite in the same way as I plan to. Simply put: animal taming.

I basically just want to suggest one additional option when hunting animals, and a new skill to go with it. Currently when you hunt, you have the option of attacking a group (to kill an individual) with a weapon, and you have the option to set the force you want to use. I'm proposing that in addition to force, another option exist in the bubble list - Tame. When choosing this, you forgo actually attacking the animal and are instead echoed with "You attempt to tame a mouflon." or etc. Taming would be variable and probably work off animal aggressiveness - the more aggressive an animal, the less likely you'll be able to tame it. Failed taming attempts will result in that animal immediately attacking the person attempting to tame it - either a normal animal attack, or one that deals additional damage.

Now, say you do manage to tame an animal - what then? The only way a tamed animal and a domesticated animal would differ would be in name (a mouflon vs. a domesticated mouflon in the hunting menu) and the fact that the domesticated animals wouldn't migrate (ie, they would only vanish due to old age or over hunting) or attack characters like their wild counterparts.

Example: 20 bighorn sheep
Failure to tame: 1 bighorn sheep attacks you. 20 bighorn sheep remain.
Successfully tamed: 1 bighorn sheep becomes domesticated. Produces in hunting menu:
19 bighorn sheep
1 domesticated bighorn sheep
Migration would only affect the undomesticated sheep.
Characters could roleplay penning up the domesticated sheep, etc. It'd make roleplaying pets, etc., easier.
Taming would take up hunting for that day - so if you try to tame an animal and fail, you cannot immediately attack it, either.

Certain animals should be untameable - or have a chance every day, week, whatever, to revert to wild nature - or both: tigers, wolves, elephants.

[Sunni Daez]

Well, the idea is cool enough, but I see no point. What do you do with a tamed squirrel? You are going to get people hunting the tamed one.. just because it is tamed. I think the programing would be a bit tough. I don't know programing at all really, but it would seem to me that it would be difficult putting all those exceptions in there.

[Wolfsong]

Knowing shit all about programming, I'd probably have created an additional animal type (tedious, yeah) and morphed 1 of wild variant to tamed variant which has different building preferences and back and forth.

As for usefulness - it'd mostly be for roleplay purposes, and for highly built up towns to keep their animal populations in check without killing them all off, without having to worry about certain historic animals migrating away.

[Sunni Daez]

I recall, way back when I first started.. William had a buffalo that was his pet.. (anyone remember William? Raised by animals I do believe.. ran around on all fours) He role played with the buffalo a lot.. and it worked just fine. He tried to get my girl to not be afraid and to pet the buffalo.. as she was reaching her hand out to finally pet it.. and she was attacked by the buffalo! Sorry.. I just don't see a use for taming the animals that way, it isn't as if they will be able to get on your tandem or in your station car, or even your boat.. What happens when you leave? Is the animal tamed to the town or to you? Does the animal revert to wild when you leave? Die ? I still think it is a cool idea, but I think just RP is the way to go... animals migrate, it is natural.

[ also, animals that are tamed, don't usually find food on their own anymore, they are fed. who will feed tamed animals?]

[Doug R.]

The only point to domesticating animals is if they can be used for a purpose. The proposed domestication process is pretty much the same as what you proposed, but it got complicated-to-death by talk of barns and corrals and moving them onto ships, etc. Under the current system, managing domesticated animal reproduction would be about as difficult at managing deer populations, for example, so it would be best to just shut reproduction off for domesticated animals all together until we get the bugs worked out.

[Snickie]

Domesticating horses could be used to make small wooden carts a little faster by having them pull them. Fuel: corn or cornmeal, maybe grass, maybe figure out something for oats (and later have oatmeal!). Maybe have domesticated oxen (are there are oxen in the game?) or donkeys or mules pull plows through a field to increase farming output.

Domesticated pigeons could be caught and be used as carrier pigeons, carrying notes and envelopes (one at a time) to somewhere one town over, getting there faster than walking Cantrians could. The person would attach the note or envelope to the pigeon's leg and then send it off down the road in one direction, and then when the pigeon gets there it just drops the note/envelope in the middle of the town, and flies back after an hour or so.

Other than that, I don't know what else could be done with it.

[Wolfsong]

My thought process here was to suggest a basic idea, and not over complicate it with what ifs until it actually existed - foundation before the tower. But, since a purpose was asked for:

1. Currently animals have to be killed to drop materials. Why not have domesticated animals produce resources on the ground (milk, eggs, possibly even wool) every x many days, or x times a year?

2. Domesticated animals would not migrate, and would not be aggressive, thereby allowing a town to keep an animal population without having to hunt it to extinction.

3. Roleplaying perk. It allows those who wish to roleplay taming animals to have some code back up to justify it, as well as prevent people from force emoting unrealistic things.

4. If this was introduced, further code changes could be introduced, such as: (reiterating what Snickie said)
- Consuming animals in projects to produce things like rideable horses (it'd be easy to hack this - just have some sort of fuel tank that requires grass/some organic, edible material. If the material hits 0 and the tank empties, the horse vehicle vanishes, ie, 'dies'.)
- Requiring certain projects (not limited to animal riding, taming, etc.) to check vs. domesticated animals in the area. Example: farming projects could be sped up if domesticated oxen are in the area, though additional tools like ploughs may also be required.
- Using domesticated pigeons to send messages between towns, like a one-way, note-dropping radio with a day or two delay.

[Doug R.]

Animal domestication has been intended for quite some time. This is not a new suggestion.

However, it's not going to happen anytime soon.

[Greek]

Some things never change, but I want to see animal taming in game Maybe we'll do something about it soon. Of course, first the animal system should be fixed, but then I see little problems to do something with it. ;]

[Mr. Bones]

Implemented.