Regarding animal companions, their behavior & food

Suggestions
1

With the introduction of the thought system and traits the animal companions seemed lacking in flexibility.There isn’t any problem so to speak but I find a little hard to keep them alive and properly fed, let me explain. I aim the subject at critters like the squirrels, rabbits, raccoons and fennec foxes.

Firstly,
Their behavior is simply roaming about from the point where they spawned or were charmed. It is problematic now more than ever since you can’t protect them correctly this way and it makes for a very sad hearthling if the companion were to die by goblins.

Secondly,
It seems to me they only feed from random food left on the ground or stashed in a stockpile. Not very aesthetic and practical, unless the sound of buzzing flies in the morning makes you calm and serene.

My suggestion would be to create houses and feeding through for them without removing the ability for them to feed on random food on the ground. We wouldn’t want them to starve until we can make the feeding through and the feed for them as well.

I now present in more details what I envisions:

Made by either Carpenter or Potter (So both Ascendancy and Rayya’s Children can make them day 1)

  • Small pet house;for 1 companion (resembling a dog house)
  • Medium pet house; for 3 companions
  • Deluxe pet house; for 5 companions
  • Feeding through; With charges

Made by cook
-Animal companion feed; 1 jerky, 1 corn, 1 carrot.

For the idea of the houses its pretty simple, I see it as a pet gets assigned to it and roams around it. An accurate way of controlling their safety.

For the idea of the feeding through, I see it as a sub-container with per example 20 charges. Where 1 charge is consumed once an animal eats from it and 5 charges are gained when placing animal companion feed.

For the management of the feed i suppose both Workers and Shepherds are qualified for replenishing the through.

I hope this idea can help in any shape way of form this already amazing game!

3 Likes
2

I’m pretty sure that the animals that are pets tend to follow around hearthlings, so they generally stay within the walls and such

But i do agree that we need some sort of pet management, we can’t rely on hearthlings getting food out to eat and sometimes letting them out for the pet to eat be our main reliance for feeding them since it is quite random

I think a simillar suggestion was posted a while ago, can’t remember what it was, but i’m pretty sure it was about he same thing as you mention here

2 Likes
3

Let me start by saying I quite enjoy the pets and really like the new Animal Companion trait! :smile: I am also excited to see where things will go with pets in the future, and if there will be further development for these little cuties (my fingers are crossed!)

One thing I have noticed, however, that does make me a bit sad - whenever I’ve had a new Hearthling join my growing village who has the Animal Companion trait, the pet seems to remain at the ‘spawn’ point… they may perhaps move closer to the village as time moves on (i haven’t noticed that, though…), but more times than not my new Hearthling’s pet has died (one by zombie/skeleton attack, another by the little stone monster guys…not sure what they are called… another by wolves, etc.)

So - one suggestion I would like to put out there is maybe giving the Hearthling a way to ‘call’ their pet to them, much like the Shepherd has (what sounds like) a flute to attract the animals they bring to the village. That way, the Hearthling could ensure the pet follows them to the village (considering the write up says they are ‘inseparable’ anyway!), plus it would be another cute interaction if the Hearthling could call his/her pet to him/her when moving around the village, then talk to them (i.e. use that new interaction with the pet).

A couple things with this (which may or may not present a lot of work/time/issues on the programming end… I won’t pretend to know enough about programming to say! ;))

  1. for those companion pets - versus the Shepherd’s abilities - the Hearthling’s “call” would only attract that specific pet; and
  2. once in the village with the Hearthlings, to help keep the pet safe, perhaps a way to discourage the pet from following the Hearthling outside the village beyond a certain radius… though, to be fair, if the Hearthling could ‘call’ the pet back to the village, that may not be as necessary I guess :wink:

Anyhoo - just some thoughts, and figured I’d jump into the forums with both feet by posting it! (BTW, just want to say, I absolutely love this game!) :heart_eyes:

1 Like