Hunting Dogs and Gaurds

[Fenrispantom]

While passing the tamed animals of my village i can to the sudden realization that there were no dogs in this game, which made no sense to me at the time, mentioning this odd fact to my fellow village mates i came up with this idea, why not add dogs for such purposes as hunting dogs and as watch dogs. Watch dogs can be used to guard your land while your away be it offline or out exploring the world, they can also be use for hunting both small game with just one and big game with many. I'm still not sure how you would come across a dog in the wild but i still think this should be something added to the game

[Swordmage]

Do you want guard dogs that will rip the throat out of any trespasser or anyone who leaves a scent or just watch dogs that will warn you of trespassers (collect phone call from the server site if you are not on-line?).

[maze]

~throws bones down
HA there goes watch dogs

~watchs as his russian friends storm your claim

...erm I am sorry...
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not a bad idea but i`d have to say they need to be
- hard to get
- need feeding in like a bowl
- need to be walled into an area/claim to guard (cant go off claim)
- need training (I.E. hunting, guard or sniff out w/e)
and make them a dam forest thing and have to tame them there xD

[Fenrispantom]

i agree there are still some holes in the idea as while for letting you know i didn't mean that more like something thak knocks you out and give you damage (not to much damage mind you just enough to scare off lesser thiefs) for a guard dog that would be use as a deterrent for any would be thieves as they don't just come on during the time your on for a reason They don't want to get caught stealing your good so a dog that could maul them is added bonus to reasons why not to go on your claim which means them being claims only as for letting you know about and attemp i think that should only be if your online in game as something like a quick few second flash of text show up saying something like YOU HEAR YOUR DOG BARKING SOMEONE IS TRESPASSING. As for getting the dog well it should be like getting any animal and should have its own skill for raiseing them. I agree there would need to be a food system similar to the other animals, maybe like feeding it raw meat though as you said maze in a bowl would work. So as stated before there are a few holes and i would love to hear other opinions on this as it could be a helpful ad-on to the game


EDITED

[Pacho]

They would be neat, but they have to bark at squirrels and rabbits and other dumb shit like that =V

[EPSIL0N]

I like the idea of hunting dogs as I still don't think the melee combat system is very useful on wild animals.

I imagine dogs would start as wolves (or something similar) and rather than taming them in a submission fight they would be tamed by offering them raw meat and you receive x tameness points, the animal follows you and at some point there is an indication to repeat the taming. Rinse, Repeat, etc and you have your dog. Fail and face the entire pack becoming agro?
(I don't know what to think about bones)

I don't really know what to think of guard dogs. On the one hand it requires thieves to have some combat skills and feps and would probably reduce some of the people who grind stealth and int simply to steal from beginning players. On the other hand if it isn't well balanced there is a chance it makes criminal acts unusable.

One idea is possibly the need for breeding for quite a few generations before the dogs are much of a threat to criminals or wild animals.

[Granger]

I want guard dogs.

You should be able to place a doghouse on your personal claim (or lawspeaker on village ground), for providing fodder it could function like a chicken coop.

Dogs could be assigned to it somehow so they enter it and stay there (to reduce load on server connection by not having them run around). There should be a function to summon the dogs from their house (eg. to move them to another, or take them hunting in case this functionality will be implemented).

The guard function could be that the doghouse covers a certain area (like influence works), but to give some uncertainty for thieves the range should depend on the quality of the dogs in the doghouse. The house should give no indication about the amount of dogs in it, opening it should be a non-stealthable trespass. In case a new visible (to the dogs, checked depending on their quality like normal tracking) scent is created in the influence area of the doghouse the dogs would leave, run toward the scent/culprit and bark. They might also follow the culprit for a while (or up to a certain range).

There should be a slider in the interface of the doghouse to configure from what scent level (trespass, thief, violence, murder) the dogs would not only bark but attack the culprit on their own. The owner of the plot could be excepted from this (so in case he attacks someone and leaves a scent he isn't torn apart by his own dogs), but on the other hand that could be fun too.

Additional ideas:
In case the owner of the dogs gets killed while in range the dogs should go bezerk (with a big stat increase for them, as drawback they die afterwards) on the murderer.

Barking of the dogs could have a range (higher as the detection range) that summons others from nearby doghouses.

[Kahim]

Dogs have been mentioned multipule times myself included suggesting them. The problem is the work with the wolves that you would need to tame in order to get the dogs. Loftar doesnt know how to set it up so they act like a pact instead of sepratly

[ThirdEmperor]

First off, giving guard dogs ranges bigger than your claim is stupid, I shouldn'tget beaten up for stepping to close to someones house, guard dogs should attack anyone with a stealth skill lower than the dogs quality who leaves a scent on the claim they're on.

Second, you should be able to give a dog a crime scent to track, the dog will then go off and try to kill the thief, you can press follow to automaticly follow the dog.

Finally, you should be able to give a dog a chicken feather, raw fox hide or rabbit fur to sniff, after which the dog will hunt down the nearest animal of that type, and once again there should be a auto-follow option.

[Granger]

First off, giving guard dogs ranges bigger than your claim is stupid, I shouldn'tget beaten up for stepping to close to someones house, guard dogs should attack anyone with a stealth skill lower than the dogs quality who leaves a scent on the claim they're on.

Since you mention range and the only post containing that word is mine:

Taken my suggestions dogs would only respond to scents anyway (so criminal act has to be commited).
And no, not stupid. Idea is that doghouses won't cover the whole claim but only a certain part of it.