Dog commands

[JP_Finn]

Can we please call our dogs to Come, even when we see them, but are outside of ‘conversation range’

Also, command to ‘Chase’ would be nice, as in: follow/track, bark, not engage.

Side note: badgers should tear up dogs. Albeit dying in the process.

I’ve hunted furbearers with terriers and dachshunds both. From caves and under barns etc. if it is raccoon dog or fox, no problem with either dogs.
If it’s badger and hunt with terrier; it’s always a vet trip to stitch the dog back together; as terriers engage their prey and drag it out. Badger’s claws are no joke.
With dachshund and badger; the dog corners and chases the prey out of the cave (they naturally dig multiple entrances to their in-ground nests) for the hunter to kill it.

[StefanPravda]

How can you call them if they are out of conversation range? Psychic dogs? 

[JEB Davis]

I can't remember if Sami has stated the typical size of the UnReal dogs, but I imagine them larger and more robust than either terriers or dachshunds.  However, I do agree with you that badgers should likely wound most dogs that fight them!

As for the training that was done with dogs in IA Finland (or un-Finland), who is to know if they trained dogs for more complex tasks?

The game's conversation range is shorter than hearing range, I agree dogs could easily be called from further away.  If the game tracks their position in the next world tile then this could be reasonably done, it seems.  If not, then it could be simulated with RNG whether they are close enough to hear.

[PALU]

Dogs have better hearing than humans for starters. Also, when entering villages, the villagers keep greeting you from further away than the range from which you can respond. Conversation is one thing, which shouting is another, so it would be useful to have one range for shouted, simple commands, and another for conversations. Coordinating a posse of villagers in robber quests is problematic because of the short conversation range, where the morons de-aggro while a buddy gets beaten to death in the tile next to them, while your character is engaging another robber further away.

[StefanPravda]

Conversation can be done shouting, so we either get a shouting range, or the conversation range increased, or a new dog/animal conversation range is added. But without those, dog commands outside conversation range need a range themselves, you can't have that, unless... we have psychic dogs

Adding animal conversation range is an issue, because dogs hear better than cows, and various species vary radically in terms of hearing capability.

And I am definitely not for psychic animals.

[JP_Finn]

Stefan, if you have your dog say ~15 tiles from you, you try to Chat: Come, game returns “you get no response, try to get closer. If you turn away, so your character cannot see the dog, you can then call it to come. It makes no sense.
I don’t need the dog to come to me from 5 zoomed in maps away when called (although, shouting at that 500m distance, dogs do hear the call just fine InReal World.
Heck, even my character can hear upland game birds calling across a 200m lake. Yet, the pooch won’t “Come!” from 30m away.

JEB, the image for dogs is pretty close to Spitz, typically a vocal flushing dog. Lot of bark, not a lot of bite.
Ok as herder and great as vocal guard/alert dog. Not best at retrieving, but can be trained for it too. 15”-20”, 15lbs-30lbs, lower halves females, upper half males.
But who* knows how the doggies are in UnReal north. *Apart from Sami and Erkka.

Additional commands for dogs could be “trail/track” (when leashed) by smell, so they won’t break the chase if too far from the character.
And additionally ‘Fetch’, getting in the water with poor swim skilled character isn’t always viable. Not just birds, but floating arrows/javelins too. Maybe even missed arrows on land. But not regular/broad heads from tree hits.