A hard to tame Fluffy (or unique wolf)

[Graize]

Any player with any time in TLC has fond (or not so fond) memories of "Fluffy" - the wolf that resides in the Carter Hydro Dam. I personally LOVE Fluffy, it pains me to kill him so i always just try and scare him...eventually i am forced to take his life.

I had to follow his blood trail through the long dark, hearing his final yelp as his body gave up. Hungry and cold he died alone. Heartbreaking. http://imgur.com/BuCyfc7

I would love to be able to tame a special unique wolf, it wouldn't work on all of them. It also has to be difficult to do (having to visit a spot day after day, leave food and gain his trust etc). Just imagine his survival becomes as important as yours, adding a new dynamic to the game. He needs to be fed, healed/protected if injured. He could track game ,defend you from attack and warn of danger. A constant companion in the game would lend a entirely different feel to your survival.

[SteveP]

Nice idea! A couple of us have already suggested a similar idea of the possibility of taming wolves to act perhaps as companions or work dogs.

[AmericanSteel]

While I would like to have a canine companion, my Fallout memories are coming back, I just don't think it is realistic here. This is not Dances with Wolves. We all know wolves just don't attack people like they do in the game, but the exact opposite is also true. You just don't tame a wolf. Not in a single generation at any rate. Maybe if you got a pup you could work some sort of "magic" but I just don't see it with an adult.

If the devs open up an industrial area and we can find dogs, then that changes everything. Training a feral dog is about as impossible as training a wolf, though saving a pup and training them would be a possibility. However, if we had a dog that was raised by humans and forced to survive, then befriending that animal would be extremely possible and even probable. After all, that dog was accustomed to the human/dog social pack it now misses.

[jackattack]

Yes, this.

If the character encountered an actual dog (slight graphic variation on the wolves), and befriended it by using food drops to get away when it threatened to attack (two or three times), I could see it. This is building trust and transferring loyalty in an animal that was already tame, not taming a wild animal.

But what do we expect the dog to do? Chase down rabbits for us? Fight off wolves? Increase the sleeping temperature bonus? Eat half the meat we acquire?

What is the control/command interface? How many animations/behaviors would be needed?

The easiest thing to program (from my lay perspective) would be a dog we could befriend, but not make a true companion. After one or two food drops, it would stop threatening us, but would "find" us once or twice a day, approach, then sit for a few minutes before running off. If we drop food, it keeps finding us. If we don't, it reverts back to aggressive behavior after a couple-few days.

The benefit would be that a wolf in attack mode would become a target for the dog, who would run in and fight the wolf. The end of the fight should be both running away. Either or both might die, either or both might live. If the dog lives, it starts finding the character again after a couple-few days looking for handouts.