[acknowledged case, not implemented] Dogs eating priorities

[JP_Finn]

When feeding dogs meat, cooked or raw, they tend to choose bone on the tile.
It's not the top most bone on the stack either. I've not figured out the exact selection mechanism, but given option for meat, prepared or raw, not spoiled; that's what any dog IRL would choose over a bone.

Bug: Dog eating bone on the tile, when 1) the tile has meat, 2) more meat is thrown/given to the dog
Expectation: eat meat thrown, or on the tile, before any bone gets chewed.

[paulkorotoon]

I thought of reporting it just this morning. Sure, dogs should eat meat first. At the moment it doesn't matter what do you put on a tile first, meat/fish or bone, your dog is gonna eat bone and ignore anything else.

UPD: It has just given me a thought of eating priority list just being sorted alphabetically (so the order is %animal name% bone — bream  — burbot — %animal name% cut — %another fish name%). Going to test it one of these days.

Also, bones are waaay too durable. Didn't do exact measures, but it feels like four elk bones is enough, for a regular dog, to chew for at least a week or two. While meat seems to be a bit less satiating than it should be.

[JP_Finn]

I’m not sure it’s alphabetical either.
Often the dogs eat hare bones, even if the pile has bear and forest reindeer bones too.. I’ve still not figured the logic. Maybe weight of individual item?

[Privateer]

 I always assumed it was by top of the pile 

[JP_Finn]

I’ve picked up all the bones, drop additional meat types, then drop the bones back, and yet the dogs eat bones over meat, but not always. I can’t figure out the logic for certain.

But I do know for a fact that when I cut meat and give scraps to my dog, she won’t even sniff at her collection of bones and antlers, marrow on them or not.

[paulkorotoon]

I’m not sure it’s alphabetical either.
Often the dogs eat hare bones, even if the pile has bear and forest reindeer bones too.. I’ve still not figured the logic. Maybe weight of individual item?

My belief is that alphabetical sorting is performed by item's base name (bone, cut), not by prefixes like hare/bear, roasted/smoked, etc.

The character I play now has just travelled to Kaumo and bought a couple nets, so I guess soon I'll be able to perform a bunch of tests using various combinations of bones, meat and fish.

[Sami]

Checked out the code, and dogs or any animals, don't take into account the order of items in single tile pile. They tend to prioritize the closest food item on the ground, but if there are multiple items in single tile they're all weighed equally in terms of "nearest" item. What is then picked from multi-item tile is based on internal data order, which isn't always what was thrown on the top the last time, or even what is graphically shown as topmost item. See, the game really doesn't track what would be the real order or availability of items in stack. (For example; drop a cut of meat, then a push heavy tree trunk on top of it. The dog can eat, and we can pick, the meat cut "from the bottom" with no special effort.)

To add checks to come up with desired eating order from multi-item stacks is doable, but requires change of an approach to animal food searching code as a whole, so a bit costly and messy thing to do. We might consider the actual necessity at some point, but the best option now is not to put bones in the same pile if you don't want them to be touched by the dogs, as the priority in the pile can't be figured out beforehand. 

[paulkorotoon]

Thanks for the explanation, @Sami!

And what do you think of just making bones much less durable? So that a dog, say, eats them one at a time (exaclty like meat cuts)? My guess is, that would solve the case.

[Sami]

Thanks for the explanation, @Sami!

And what do you think of just making bones much less durable? So that a dog, say, eats them one at a time (exaclty like meat cuts)? My guess is, that would solve the case.

I think chewing bones is more of a slow leisure for dogs. (Don't they chew the big bones for days and days in real life too?)
In the game bones aren't all that nutritious since it's not actually tracked how meaty each bone is.

[paulkorotoon]

I think chewing bones is more of a slow leisure for dogs. (Don't they chew the big bones for days and days in real life too?)
In the game bones aren't all that nutritious since it's not actually tracked how meaty each bone is.

Got it, thanks. Never owned a dog. I've thought they just crack a bone and eat the marrow immediately :) .

[JP_Finn]

Marrow in a dry split cow femur 6”/15cm piece will last few hours with my dog (55lbs/25kg “puppy” she only 10mo, but definitely a power chewer)
Non-split lasts lot longer. As do antlers. Once the marrow is gone, it’ll take several hours to gnaw the bone away. Antlers last at least twice as long. Rabbit bones, don’t last long at all.

Some dogs aren’t strong chewers and with them the bones last very long time. Dog’s size doesn’t matter.

TL;DR; I think the bone durability is modeled well enough in game.