[POLL] Transportation Alternatives


SteveP

Transportation  

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_animal

Transportation

220px-Chatillon_treuil_carriere_Auboin_2
 
The horse-drawn winch of a former limestone quarry (France)

Some animals are used due to sheer physical strength in tasks such as ploughing or logging. Such animals are grouped as a draught or draft animal. Others may be used as pack animals, for animal-powered transport, the movement of people and goods. People ride some animals directly as mounts; Alternatively, one or more animals in harness may be used to pull vehicles.

Riding animals or mounts

They include equines such as horses, ponies, donkeys, and mules; elephants; yaks; and camels. Dromedary camels in arid areas of Australia, North Africa and the Middle East; the less common Bactrian camel inhabits central and East Asia; both are used as working animals. On occasion, reindeer, though usually driven, may be ridden.

Certain wild animals have been tamed and used for riding, usually for novelty purposes, including the zebra and the ostrich. Some mythical creatures are believed to act as divine mounts, such as garuda in Hinduism and the winged horse Pegasus in Greek mythology.

Pack animals

220px-Lloyd_the_Llama.jpg
 
A pack llama
Main article: Pack animal

Pack animals may be of the same species as mounts or harness animals, though animals such as horses, mules, donkeys, reindeer and both types of camel may have individual bloodlines or breeds that have been selectively bred for packing. Additional species are only used to carry loads, including llamas in the Andes.

Domesticated oxen, bullocks, and yaks are also used as pack animals. Other species used to carry cargo include dogs and pack goats.

Harness animals

220px-Mule_in_Morocco.JPG
 
Donkey used to pull a wheeled vehicle in Morocco

An intermediate use is to harness animals, singly or in teams, to pull (or haul) sleds, wheeled vehicles or plough.

  • Oxen are slow but strong, and have been used in a yoke since ancient times: the earliest surviving vehicle, Puabi's Sumerian sledge, was ox-drawn; an acre was originally defined as the area a span of oxen could plow in a day. The Water buffalo and Carabao, domesticated water buffalo, pull wagons and ploughs in Southeast Asia and the Philippines.
  • Draught or Draft horses are commonly used in harness for heavy work. Several breeds of medium-weight horses are used to pull lighter wheeled carts, carriages and buggies when a certain amount of speed or style is desirable.
  • Mules are considered to be very tough and strong, with harness capacity dependent on the type of horse mare used to produce the mule foal. Because they are a hybrid animal and usually are infertile, separate breeding programs must also be maintained.
  • Ponies and donkeys are often used to pull carts and small wagons, historically, ponies were commonly used in mining to pull ore carts.
  • Dogs are used for pulling light carts or, particularly, sleds. (e.g. sled dogs such as Huskies) for both recreation and working purposes.
  • Goats also can perform light harness work in front of carts
  • Reindeer are used in the Arctic and sub-Arctic Nordic countries and Siberia. During World War II the Red Army deployed deer transportation battalions on the Eastern Front.[1] In the twentyfirst century, Russian soldiers continue to train with reindeer sleds in winter.[2]
  • Elephants are still used for logging in South-east Asia.
  • Less often, camels and llamas have been trained to harness. According to Juan Ignacio Molina the Dutch captain Joris van Spilbergen observed the use of chiliquenes (a llama type) by native Mapuches of Mocha Island as plough animals in 1614.[3]

Assorted wild animals have, on occasion, been tamed and trained to harness, including zebras and even moose.

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now im not sure about camels and reindeer, but i think being able to slap a muzzle on a wild wolf and fear-train him into lugging around your junk for you would be pretty cool. or even a sled, for firewood trips. maybe let me fix up an old truck in CH to haul supplies down the road easily, give me a small train cart on ML to go down the line easily. a tractor for PV. no vehicle for TM, as its too remote.
however being forced to walk around everywhere does have a certain charm to it :P

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30 minutes ago, SteveP said:

I don't think we have a poll relating to the various transportation alternatives so I wanted to address that. The wishlist alludes to transportation in general with a couple of examples.

thumb-draft_moose.jpg

The Bactrian Camel:
2011_Trampeltier_1528.JPG

 

I'm not sure about the utility of these animals in terms of transportation, but they are spectacular images! Dang. :excited:

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Just now, SteveP said:

You might have to get  the wolf's pups in order to tame them. Huskies can breed with wolves so feral dogs would probably run with the wolves (or be eaten by them if too small)

very true. there are wolf trainers out there, but it is impossible to train a full grown wolf. most of these said trainers usually start when the wolves are pups. and even then, after they're grown their instinct could kick in and they still could attack you out of nowhere. you gotta know what youre doing to train a wolf.

but im not sure if they can be fear-trained or not. fear training is basically just showing that animal who's higher on the food chain, making it fear you. most of the time it requires beating, and i personally think its rather cruel. but in a survival situation, thats something we might be willing to do.

im personally in favor of having a wolf. that just sounds badass :P but a better alternative would be finding a dog. maybe a husky, out in this climate. maybe youd find a wolf attacking him and would have to make a choice. save a bullet and walk away, or shoot the wolf to save the dog. the dog might limp over to you in need of help. you might bandage his wounds and take him to your shelter. youd be able to train this dog to hunt and carry supplies for you :)

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8 minutes ago, Patrick Carlson said:

I'm not sure about the utility of these animals in terms of transportation, but they are spectacular images! Dang. :excited:

yeah, I don't think they will be popular but they are neat and just to remind people to think outside the box. Moose were used for draft animals in the past but always when raised from calves IIRC. And if the fans think they are cool, then they would add pizazz!

Imagine the "fun" you could have trying to get a goat or dog into harness for the first time.

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4 hours ago, SteveP said:

I should have included an option for speeding up movement! Walking is tedious!

i rather like the walking. it lets you take in every ounce of the atmosphere, this is a VERY pretty game. even after playing it for months now, i still just gush over how pretty everything is, everywhere i go :P there are some games that i dont mind taking my time with (and thats saying a lot, considering im a very impatient person) and the long dark happens to be one of them :)

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I feel as if walking everywhere is what gives this game it's iimmersion. Maybe adding a small pull/push sled is fine but if you incorporate animals to pull you along it just feels immersion breaking. Not only that, but it will be way too easy.

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I only voted for 2 transport options:

Sled, sleigh or toboggan (human powered)

Hand cart / wheel barrow

I'm not generally in favour of being able to use or domesticate animals in TLD. I just think it's a bit far-fetched for the scenario. Wouldn't pack animals just get eaten by wolves and bears really fast? I also think motorized vehicles would be bad for game balance. Shopping carts (by this I assume you mean the metal-wire trolleys from supermarkets?) don't fit, because there aren't any such shops in the game. Bicycles are just impractical, given all the snow.

For me, having the limited inventory space of manual carrying is part of the experience - it forces you to prioritise your stuff and sacrifice one thing for another, which is a good gameplay element.

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8 hours ago, Fuarian said:

I feel as if walking everywhere is what gives this game it's iimmersion. Maybe adding a small pull/push sled is fine but if you incorporate animals to pull you along it just feels immersion breaking. Not only that, but it will be way too easy.

May I add that you would need to feed tamed dogs/wolves/whatever animal regularly for it to have the strength to even pull your s*it? That at least keeps some of the immersion.

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  • 6 months later...

in the interest of simplicity, the plastic containers should/could be movable like most of the items we can move around inside. If I can move a container, I have a toolbox, I can create string/line/cordage I could pull the container. It would slow me down (no running) and have a limited weight capacity (the heavier it is the more drag, the more tired I get etc (coders could recycle the sprinting affects fatigue logic in the code) The heavier the weight the line might break (think fishing line/hook) and recycle that code there.

something like that could possibly be implemented without taking too much from the game but adding a good deal for certain scenarios.

 

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Would you prefer a container like the backpack, a crafted hide bag, a tin can, or a plastic container? What sort of plastic container do you have in mind? there's lots of containers in the game but a portable container? Is that something that has more coding complexity/risk? I don't wish to speculate on that since I have no visibility to the code. What happens if you put one container inside another such as a locker?

Put another way, a crafted container could provide a place to store your rose hips and fiddly bits so that if you drop it on the ground such as during an animal attack, then you wouldn't loose them. It would help you to organize stuff so it's easier to manage things as collections. Collections are tricky things but in C++ we have templates for all forms of code objects that make the code for dealing with collections robust, efficient and so forth. I don't want to see a shoddy implementation of something like that however, if the system is well designed, it becomes quite straight forward. Again, I must defer to Raphael and the devs.

To be honest, I think your idea belongs in a separate proposal AZ, not in the transportation alternatives. It's not a transportation thing.

Moderator, feel free to move this comment to another thread if you want!

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@SteveP I was thinking of a small pull along not a toboggan. you are correct they would be different. the small pull along would be the rubbermade ones we see generally on shelves. You could find something in the toolbox to create holes that you could then string some line thru and it would make a container you could drag in the snow with some food/clothes, smaller items from place to place.

the toboggan would allow you to drag quite a bit or hop on for a heck of a ride down some of the hills in pleasant valley or timber wolf mountain! or haul a deer carcass

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On 11/6/2016 at 1:06 PM, AZHockeyNut said:

@SteveP I was thinking of a small pull along not a toboggan. you are correct they would be different. the small pull along would be the rubbermade ones we see generally on shelves. You could find something in the toolbox to create holes that you could then string some line thru and it would make a container you could drag in the snow with some food/clothes, smaller items from place to place.

the toboggan would allow you to drag quite a bit or hop on for a heck of a ride down some of the hills in pleasant valley or timber wolf mountain! or haul a deer carcass

Rubbermaid is a trade name; I think that's what you meant to say. grammar police gonna getcha.

If you have ever tried to pull anything through the snow, it gets real difficult real fast unless there is a curve to the front end to allow it to ride up on the snow. It would be easy enough to skid along the ice however in cold weather, plastic like that gets brittle and if you drop or toss a log into it, it would crack and break. The really skookum sleds have runners made of wood that has an angle on the front. To decrease the friction, a strip of plastic or nylon is nailed to it so it skids on ice behind your snowmobile. It is an indispensable tool for up North, eh! :)

inuit-hunter-stands-beside-his-snowmobil

Please note that there is no handles on the back; that's for a dog sled. Note the solid hitch to prevent the sled piling into the back of the snow mobile. A sled pulled by a person or dogs would use cords or sinews if no cordage or rope were available. Cordage could be made out of cattail leaf fibers. Here's a video for that. See also threads for "Cordage" (use Search)

 

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The only thing that Im unsure of is I think even domestic animals would be affected by this geomagnetic event. Dogs arent that much different than wolves and it doesnt take much to make them just as agressive. A wolf raised from puphood has both its instincts and the strange geomagnetic situation to deal with so training them would be even harder. 

I am, however, in agreement with a pullable sled or similar to haul junk around, if not, then at least a system where we can drop off our packs to escape threats and setup "checkpoints" (not the save kind, little camps)

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Its sorta funny, i was about to post the same thing there as marrow. i can travel on foot easily between the camp office in mystery lake and the fishing huts in the costal hightway with a full++ between sun up and and sun set. same with the fishing huts and the light house in the desolation point. which seems like a fair and reasonable distance to travel really. so yeah, although i was originally for the idea of some soft of transport. unless the world got substantially beefcaked, then yeah, transportation would only make it feel small and less epic.

but yeah, also like marrow, i think some sort of sled the player can pull around to move heavy items and lots of equipment at once would be good.

 

sled.jpg

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