Mount hunger?

[Alnir]

What about a command to feed mounts? Instead of just roleplaying it, actually have to come up with the food to feed your hungry beasts of burden?

[Ghost]

When you stable your mount, I consider they are feeding it there.

And I am considering, usually no one (other than rangers) are actually keeping their mounts out in the wastes more than one day.  So there is no need for that.

For rangers though, they can handle feeding them through RP.  I don't think we need a hard coded command for something like this which can be RPed very very easily.

[Armaddict]

Are kanks carnivores?

Sunbacks?
War beetles?
Inixes are herbivores.  Or omnivores, at least.

[RunningMountain]

Most domesticated mounts I would deduce are like camels. Well not really. But they evolved over thousands of years in the desert, so they take in little water, and eat very little, this applies to all domesticated mounts.

-RM

[Maybe42or54]

No it doesn't running mountain.
Inix will eat everything in sight and their mother.

[Tlaloc]

I rather like that idea. It could be cool to add a script attached to 'give' or something, where the mounts may respond more or less favorably depending on what you feed them. Sadly, the script I had written to control mount defication has been put on hold for the time being...but this could be a good seguay back into it.

Kanks are herbivores, and I believe a document mentions they really like pech grass (might be wrong on the actual grass type, though...I would recheck the plantlife documentation for it). I've actually heard somewhere that they're a bit like goats, in that they can survive on almost anything you feed them (aside from rocks). I'm not 100% on that, though, and it could just mean that they're omnivores.

Sunback and Warbeetles are carnivores, feeding on small game.

Inix, as you said, are herbivores.

[Revelations]

It could be cool to add a script attached to 'give' or something, where the mounts may respond more or less favorably depending on what you feed them.

Could that mean it's easier to ride them? If that's the case, for higher up ride skills, there should still be a percent chance of failure of riding, even for long-time rangers, to have a mount be something more than a brainless NPC. The more of a bond you have with your mount, which also means the longer time you've spent with it, could determine how much easier it is to ride him. So by switching to a new mount, you'd have to start that process all over again, and so more chances of the mount not obeying your commands. So you're really never going to have the chances of riding from Allanak all the way to Tuluk without having the mount disobeying a few times with a new mount, but with a mount that you've spent alot of time with, the chances would be better.

...I've repeated myself a couple times already...so I think you guys got the point.

[Sir Diealot]

I really like that idea, Revelations, however.. it sounds like it'd be difficult to code.

[Maybe42or54]

You'd have to start the process over everytime you log on.

[RunningMountain]

No it doesn't running mountain.
Inix will eat everything in sight and their mother.

Where does it say that inix will eat their parents?!

[Maybe42or54]

as per http://www.armageddon.org/general/beasts.html#inix

Inix : These large lizards are capable of carrying even half-giants, albeit under duress. Plodding slowly along, they have voracious appetites, and usually only the rich, or those living in the green lands of the far North, can afford to keep them. They have developed a protective shell that grows across their backs, and they have a tough hide, both useful and sought-after as raw materials.

[RunningMountain]

Yes, they have voracious appetites, but they aren't necessarily a domesticated animal either. I was talking about the domesticated desert mounts, kanks, erdlu, beetles.   Question though, if they eat all this stuff, how come anyone can just buy it and never feed it?

Maybe it should cost more to stable an inix then a kank or an erdlu? What do you think? It would make sense for something so huge, eatting the stablemaster dry would piss him off.

-RM

[Maybe42or54]

Personally, I always let them eat my hair.

But that would make sense. But then I couldn't have those 13 mounts in the stables as a Sargeant in the Bynn. Maybe I could.

[Angela Christine]

It would be ok, but most of the normal mount types should also be able to forage for themseleves, so in addition to feeding them directly you should have a command where they forage for themselves.  Or have them forage for themselves any time they are not spam moving (which could include while resting, in appropriate environments).  Horses do not remain healthy and perky if all you do is let them eat grass at night, they need to spend a lot of time foraging or else you have to carry oats to feed them (which may be why they didn't survive as popular mounts into modern Zalanthas, well that and that they taste good -- people would probably rather eat horse than kank).  But if I understand correctly, mounts like mules and camals can remain healthy for some time eatting just whatever scrub and grass they happen to come accross, they are far more oportunistic and less fussy than horses.

That would give people 3 choices for supporting their mounts:

 1. Buy fodder for your animals.  This is sort of assumed witht he current stable code.  But if mounts were really eating, then perhaps the longer you leave your mount in, the more they should charge you?  Well, unless you aren't getting back the same animal you put it, just one of the same type.

 2. Give them food you have hunted or foraged yourself.  This could be tricky because some things that are not coded as food for humanoids can be food for some other animals.  Most herbavorios or omnivorious mounts will be able to eat grasses, vines and perhaps even small branches.  Carnivorious and omnivorous mounts should probably be able to eat bodies, without needing you to skin it first (they are better able than you to determine what parts of the body are edible for them.  A cat will eat an entire mouse fur, bones and all, but may leave the intestines.)  Each mount type would need to have its own list of edible items.  Not just each speicies either, it is quite likely that northern bred kanks and perhaps Red Storm bred kanks would prefer grasses (presumably RS's wheat production produces a lot of grass and straw as a by-product) while a 'Nak bred kank might be more likely to eat anything at all, having been raised on a disturbing array of scraps of organic material.

 3.  Spend valuable time letting your mount forrage for himself, in appropriate environments (sand dunes and salt flats might have nothing, but most environments will have something edible, and many areas describe ample grasses or scrubby vegetation that would let an herbavore get full faster).  This isn't a total loss, since you can be resting, foraging, crafting or even fighting while your mount -- a single wilderness room is typically huge, so there would be no need to move around to feed him.  The possible downside is that hunters and wanderers would be spending even more time in the wilderness, probably solo-playing, while waiting for their trusty kank to get full.

This is really one of those things, like "how did you light that torch?" that I prefer for the code to not define.  Doing it right would be complicated.  Many carnivores can survive for a while without meat, you can now by vegan dog food (but not vegan cat food, cats are obligate carnivores) and most normal dog food contains corn and rice and all sorts of non-meat ingredients.  In the long-term a carnivore may not be able to live on a totally meat free diet, but many of them can survive for a while without meat.  Most herbavores will avoid eating meat, but you can grind it up in their feed and they'll eat it (then you can get mad cow disease).  All of the common mounts, the ones you can buy in town stables, probably lean toward being omnivores even if they prefer certain foods.  But not all omnivores or herbavores can survive on all kinds of plants -- a human _can_ eat grass as long if she chews it for a while to suck out the juices and then spits out the dry celulose, you can get some vitamines that way but you probably wind up with negative calories.  Cats can eat grass, but it tends to come out the other end looking like slightly bleached grass, they don't grind and chew it enough to free much of the nutrients, and the rest of their digestive tract is pretty much useless for digesting grass.  A human has no trouble eating lettice and celery, but couldn't actually survive on a lettice-based diet.

If the mount diet code was as simplistic as the PC diet code, where a person can be big strong and healthy on a diet of nothing but water and handfuls of flour, then there probably wouldn't be much point.  It would penalize people that leave the city or collect mounts, encouraging people to sell off unused mounts and to spend resources keeping up the mounts they have, which isn't a bad thing but wouldn't add much to the overall experience.  It would sap a little money out of independants, but presumably a lot more money out of clans.  Though it would be vaguely amusing to go into one of those "loose" stables many clans use and find that all the mounts have starved to death or gone crazy and killed eachother so that there is just one fat, happy kank left -- and he's looking at you like you are next on the menu.   :twisted:

Personally, I'd rather see mount defication code.  I've got an urge to build a kank-patty based industrial giant.  Fuel, fertalizer, building material, chemistry, decoration . . . is there anything dung can't do?


Angela Christine