Cataclysm-BN
Cataclysm-BN copied to clipboard
cataclysmbnteam
Horses/Dogs afraid of zombies, other animal issues and considerations (Win)
I recently decided to give horses a shot, considering my last experience with managing pets was in DDA (namely dogs, so I can't attest, for absolute sure, this will apply to them in BN, but given my experience with horses, it will). The opportunity presented itself on my sheltered start being reasonably close to a big farm. Had to do a bit of Survival grind to be able to put on the tackle and ride, but regardless, it was done.
It eventually became apparent one issue though: horses are afraid of zombies. They will buckle and refuse to approach when they are within range of the zombie (wasting a turn if you try, fairly realistic), and straight up throwing you on the ground to flee if they get too close. This presents a challenge to whoever was hoping to play knight charging on zombies, but luckily for me, I decided to go cowboy, and for this, the horses are fairly adequate.
However if they refuse to approach and will panic entirely when zombies get too close, even before melee range, this raises the issue that all horse armor is outright obsolete, because they will never see combat. Sure, it might increase the horse survivability marginally if you get cut out between two zombie hordes and the thing bails you, but first, if you lose the horse entirely in the confusion and can't retrieve it, the armor (and saddle bag and its contents) are gone, and secondly, you are now hurt, downed, and in the middle of two hordes you couldn't avoid with the added mobility of a horse. Godspeed.
On horse storage. You can put about anything with an storage space in a horse as a saddle bag. A backpack, a hiking pack, your pants, whatever, seems to work, as long as you keep in mind it is only one item. What does that make of purpose made saddle bags, with inventory of 30? I am not sure, but a spare hiking backpack is going to see some good use. However, using the horse to carry your stuff can be a little finicky. Every item you put in takes in-game time and seems to be more than your usual inventory, which can be troublesome if you expect to put battle gear in the horse. To make this even more unlikely, you can only take all the horse cargo off, can't chose, so more time, so just keep your horse as a loot bag. Also, only interact with it when not riding. Regardless, the problem here is that whenever the horse moves while you are putting stuff, it will cancel the action, and the horse moves a lot. Tying the beast still fix that entirely, but you will have to carry rope with you all the time.
Carry weight, the horse can't be ridden if your total inventory weight seems to be above 19.5kg. That seems little, but you get a fair bit of milleage out of that. Probably some basic clothes + backpack + essential tools to shot a Barret with two spare mags from a saddle, which seems absolutely worth it. Whats in the saddle doesn't matter at all, the horse can be carrying 30L of lead, what matters is only your inventory.
Final, minor issue. Like the player, the horse got 3 movement modes, from a slow walk to a race gallop. Problem is, changing these do absolutely nothing to the movement speed. The horse will still move at 59TU on cardinal directions, which is very good speed for a ranged player (about Running, but you won't tire) and will outrun about everything you can face.
Overall I think the horse is a fine thing for ranged combat. Not being able to reload on the move as you would with a bicycle (or monocycle) sucks a little bit, but you get absolute control over your movement with no collision risk. I will keep this thing with me this game, and I only wish it's related systems were a bit more refined. At least beast my experience with dogs that did absolutely nothing for me.
nitpick: there are other things that might attack a horse, horse armor isn't obsolete just because they're afraid of Zs
Well, they are afraid of Zombies and giant insects. These two make 90% of what you will be seeing in game, with the majority of the rest being Mi-Go and otherworldy horrors, that also scare your horse. From what remains, the only significant minority are bandits, and I guess the barding can help with the onslaught of small caliber fire. Anyway, yeah, I presume all the riding systems got sorta grandfathered the moment they implemented animal morale/fear.
Good solution for uselessness of horse armor would be training your horse like it was done IRL.
@AngelicosPhosphoros: You'll have to be more specific, IIRC very few contributors have had anything to do with horses IRL
Good solution for uselessness of horse armor would be training your horse like it was done IRL.
So training it to be a war horse? Not the worst idea in the world, TBH.
You'll have to be more specific, IIRC very few contributors have had anything to do with horses IRL
I haven't too : ) I am just suggesting general direction for what to do if somebody wants to solve this issue.