Trained wolf to pull travois

[klafnon]

I saw other posts about pulling sleds to facilitate transporting more weight, but why not keep your hands free and have a pack animal pull your stuff?

The travois is simple enough to be craftable, can be pulled by hand, by horse, or by dog (wolf).

This was the method used by some native american tribes to pull their gear.

So, to get a wolf to pull your gear would be ideal, but you would want to make it difficult and risky.

Here's what I was thinking:

WOLF

• You catch a wolf in a snare/trap with raw meat as bait - snare/trap crafted with two snares, meat, and maybe some additional stuff
  
• You feed and water it for a number of days - dog food or raw meat
  
• The wolf would have a friendliness/hostility meter (not sure which one I'd go with)
  
• You feed the wolf to decrease hostility / increase friendliness
  
• At some point you may choose to release the wolf - perhaps you collar him at this point so he is visibly distinct from wild wolves
  - As you release the wolf, you do a hostility check and if it fails then the wolf attacks you right away, so make sure the hostility is low (friendliness is high) before releasing him
  - At this point the wolf would continue to use patrol behavior but uses your current location as the center point
  - as you move past a certain range, the wolf runs after you and then resumes exploring
  - The wolf will still attack and kill game that he sees
  - The wolf will have same behavior towards other wolves???
  
• A hostility check is made against the wolf every so often - as the wolf gets hungry, hostility increases, as wolf is fed, hostility decreases
  - If the wolf hits a certain number on the hostility check, he attacks you! So make sure you keep your wolf fed. This introduces an element of risk in keeping a wolf pet.
  
• Perhaps you can stake the wolf down using a tie-out (crafted - must use metal or he chews his way free)
  
• When entering a building wolf stays outside and patrols around the building (unless tied up outside) (or do we want the wolf to follow player inside buildings??)
  
• When entering a new area, wolf follows

TRAVOIS

• Travois can be crafted
  
• Must train the wolf to use the travois after you have befriended him
  - This could be similar to crafting, takes several hours - you must have crafted the travois first
  
• At end of training, wolf can be fitted with travois
  
• Travois acts as a container

WOLF + TRAVOIS

• Wolf behavior changes while wearing the travois
  - wolf follows player
  - wolf sits and waits when not moving
  - wolf will still chase game if he's hungry enough, otherwise he waits
  - wolf will still attack player if fails a hostility check, but he is less capable of inflicting damage because he is hindered
  - other wolves will attack him while wearing the travois - he will fight back, but he is less effective
  
• As travois is weighted down, wolf travel speed slows
  - wolf may not be able to keep up
  - if left too far behind, he will lose the player's trail and will just sit and wait (and howl)
  
• Travois can carry up to a certain amount of weight before stopping the wolf altogether
  
• Wolf generates hunger faster with heavier loads (and hostility increases more quickly as a result of hunger)

QUESTIONS

• How would the wolf reaction to other humans?
  
• What will the wolf do when the player is attacked by a wild wolf?
  - Perhaps we make a check against the friendliness/hostility and either attack the wolf or attack the player!
  
• Wolf behavior when human fires a gun??
  - Friendliness check and stay or run away?
  
• Wolf behavior when we encounter a carcass? (Perhaps we just shot something or another wolf left a kill behind)
  
• If the wolf attacks the player, what happens to the travois? Does the wolf run off after the attack, leaving a broken travois behind?
  
• Would you allow players to train more than one wolf and potentially have a train of wolf drawn travois to carry an endless amount of supplies?
  - Would they fight amongst each other?

Anyways, something like this could be tremendously useful. With something like this, it opens up capabilities for carrying heavier loads.

How about a hauling around a teepee?

[Scyzara]

First of all, welcome to the forums, klafnon!

Regarding your suggestion:

I very much doubt you would ever be able to train a wild wolf to pull a travois or a sled, not even if you spend years to train it. They're about as difficult to train as cats because they don't understand human mimics, body language and gestures, avoid eye contact, etc. (I don't want to say it's impossible, its just way more difficult than training a dog. And even training a dog to pull something can be far from easy, depending on breed and general character of your dog^^).

There are, however, certain dog breeds that were specifically bred in order to pull sleds. I'm thinking about Huskies or Alaskan Malamutes, they would certainly fit into the landscape. A more inguldent, obedient and for a beginner easier to handle alternative might be a Bernese mountain dog. They don't mind cold temperatures, make good watchdogs and were originally bred to pull carts and sleds.

So while I in general really like your idea to add a travois (or sled as someone suggested in another thread) to the game and make it pullable by a wolf, I would very much prefer to find a savaged farm dog and train this dog to pull the sled.

[Willbonney]

I like some of the ideas here, except the one about trapping a wild wolf to then, tame? it I guess. I think it would be better to refer it as "befriending" and should take more than just trapping it. Say every time you feed a wolf, it raises a "Friendliness" stat, and over time you can build that up high enough where it will start following you around. Then at another level, it would truly "Befriend" you, and you would be able to click on it to see it's stats. Like strength, agility, how hungry it is, how aggressive it is, as well as how close a "Friend" it is to you. Then the trick is to balance it's friendliness with its aggression (reduced by treating it well; feeding, petting, teaching it tricks; aggression raised by treating it poorly; lack of food, lack of sleep, working it, scaring it with gun fire, flares, or torches). The more aggressive it is, the more likely it would be to defend you against other wolves, but also the more likely it would be to attack the player.

Different tricks I would think the befriended wolf could learn:

Killing and fetching rabbits without causing too much meat loss.

Tracking wild game like Deer or other passive animals added later.

Alerting the Player to a nearby wolf or bear(specific growl).

"Stay" command to have the wolf sit and wait where it is. If left too long and the wolf gets hungry, chance of it wondering off, especially if game wonders too near where it's waiting.

Chance of scaring off other wolves or entering combat with the other wolf. Random on which wins weighted by relative strengths of the two wolves. Aided if the player of course decides to protect his friend, and shoots the other wolf.

[JErosion]

You'd have to start with a wolf pup, you could never take an adult wolf and train it. And even if you start with a pup, your going to be fighting hundreds of thousands of years of evolution. You'd have to get luckily with the temperament of wolf pup in question. thats not to say it cant be done. its just highly difficult.

[klafnon]

Thanks for the feedback. I chose a wolf because it was already in-game. Recognizing the difficulty of training a wolf, it sounds like Scyzara's suggestion of a farm dog would be more realistic.

[Ryan CM]

Thanks for the feedback. I chose a wolf because it was already in-game. Recognizing the difficulty of training a wolf, it sounds like Scyzara's suggestion of a farm dog would be more realistic.

Welcome to the forums! If you need any help any time, please feel free to PM me

[Scyzara]

Thanks for the feedback. I chose a wolf because it was already in-game.

You're right about that, I haven't thought much about this aspect. I assume programming a whole new dog model (like you would need it for the dog breed I proposed) would be a lot of unnecessary work to do for the devs. Fortunately, some dog breeds still resemble wolves.

So it might be enough just to change the skin color of the current wolf model to turn it into some husky, malamute or anything similar.

[Willbonney]

Could be a very rare spawn of a "white wolf" that is actually a dog/wolf hybrid. No one else here read "White Fang?"

[JoseyWales]

This is a really nifty idea.. While the game premise is being alone, having a little buddy in the game would be cool and add a whole new element to game play while not taking away the lone wandering aspect of the game. I also think that the white wolf idea is really good as well. I would like to see domesticated animals as well like the farm dog left to fend for for itself that you can befriend. cat's running around would be cool to see as well in the town areas.

the White wolf could be the hard find and rare and domestic dogs here and there, but susceptible to the wolfs and such.. Domestic dogs needing booties and such in harsh weather or they degrade.

It would be nice, after a long day of exploring to sit in the cabin with a fire going, dog at your feet. Sitting in chairs to slow fatigue would be nice.

I saw in another post about not having it lock you into cooking and some of the other tasks. You do other things as your water is boiling, cooking.

[The_Hawk35]

Akkk no house cats! While I love my cats, in a survival situation they are terrible to have around. If they find a rabbit warren they will quite literally kill every single rabbit in it just for fun! They really are furry little mass murders