Summary: Some Animals could be Tamed. Horses / Mules could be used for early offroad Transportation but which drop manure, a pollutant. Animal Husbandry would become a new specialization under the Hunter/Butcher tree. Players could own one or more Pets (Dogs) which grant an XP multiplier (alongside their House & Nutrition) as long as you take them on walks to socialize with players and other animals.

Each Horse / Dog animal entity (including Mules / Wolves and Coyotes) has an invisible, unique per-player “Compatibility” score. One wolf might not like you but does like your friend, so would be a good pet for your friend (a little bit like Food Preference, but per-entity instead of “I dislike/like/love dogs”)

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:HORSES:

Horses with High Compatibility steer well and have a general increase to stats, Low Compatibility gives the player input delay when steering them.

Tamed animals could be bought and sold out of a player-built kennel or stable. (Buying/Selling would function the same as putting a Painting for sale while it’s hanging on the wall. Check the box and set the price).

Animal Husbandry Specialists could breed horses for desirable traits like riding speed, cart & carriage pulling speed, endurance (time before getting tired out), and stomach size. However, a buyer may be more interested in a Horse that THEY are Compatible with over a Horse that’s technically better by raw genetics. Thus, the Horse Breeder doesn’t “”only”” get to sell the absolute best horse they have in stock.

Horse-Drawn Carriages can carry people and more stuff in weight and size than a regular cart. Horses can also just be ridden by a solo player and, unlike a car, can travel offroad. They have two big drawbacks.

-They drop manure, a pollutant (see ‘Negative Externalities’ below)

-They get tired and will need a break, perhaps a drink of clean fresh water.

Players can build Stables, or semi-outdoor areas with water and feeding troughs which are necessary for regular upkeep of horses and lets them recover quickly once tired out. Extra barn-themed furniture items like haybales could be placed to make recovery even faster / make the room function better as a Stable.

A player traveling on horseback might hopefully decide: “While I’m waiting here at this Stable for the next few minutes while my horse recovers, I might as well browse this player’s Store!”

These are also good locations to rent or trade horses. Players could set up a Horse Exchange (inspired by the real life Mongolian Empire’s Horse Messenger system), where a player can drop off their tired horse and immediately trade it for a new horse that’s fresh and ready, then they can be riding onwards in a matter of moments.

A Horse Exchange, functionally, acts as a Store interface. It looks at the stats of a newcomer’s offered horse and calculates a price.

Example: On a 1-10 scale for horse genetics, a selected Horse’s speed is ranked 4.5, Carrying weight is 5.5, and Endurance is 2.5: The Exchange owner chose to weigh Endurance at 2x because they personally see it as a more valuable stat. If a newcomer brings a horse with those stats to the Exchange, it would be calculated to be worth 4.5 + 5.5 + (2.5 * 2) = 15 Total. This can either be for Barter (if you give me a horse worth 15 Credits, you can have any horse I have in the Stable worth 17.5 Credits or less) or for exact sale in credits of a chosen currency. Horses can also be kept at a Stable temporarily while they recuperate, using a mechanic similar to the "allow people to use your crafting bench, but charge them credits for time spent crafting".

If there are no Stables where you’re going, you can let your horse rest and drink from a river or lake, which speeds up recovery a little bit.

Players can brush each Horse once every few real world hours. This increases your Compatibility with them a bit and gives a hit of XP for Animal Husbandry specialists. It’s just a nice interaction. Stable owners can also brush horses that they're keeping in their care temporarily, used for the XP bonus.

Another new animal, The Ox (maybe represented as just any bull / male cow), could also be used for pulling Oxcarts as a draft animal, but are not used for solo riding like a horse.

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:PETS:

Pets (Dogs/Wolves/Coyotes) have a pie-chart for their XP multiplier. Socializing/Travel/Feed/Play.

Each Pet also has a Personality, which weights these 4 categories more or less heavily for that animal. (I.E: Instead of the Ideal balance being 25% in all categories, a particular dog might prefer 40% Socializing, and 20% in the other 3 categories. This is shown on the HUD)

Socialize benefit comes from your dog being in proximity to other players and pets, increasing more from meeting a large variety of new people. Owning 2+ dogs allows them to Socialize with each other, even while you’re offline.

Travel benefit comes from travelling long distances to visit new places / taking your dog for a walk.

Feed benefit comes from the quality and quantity of food you give your dog. Can have automatic feeder.

Play benefit, simplest of all, comes from just logging in and petting your dog. Other players can also pet your dog while you’re offline. You can optionally auto-give players Reputation when they do this :].

Like a Food Craving, pets may sometimes crave to come in proximity to a Specific, currently online player (or their pet). This encourages you to go travel and meet people and break the ice, which Eco is really good at facilitating :D.

Alternatively, if that’s too intrusive, the pet might crave to play with a particular toy instead.

Pets are always unkillable (and should have a visible collar or cosmetic slot so that it’s obvious to other players when a particular Wolf is not a wild animal). They may wander off and Play or Socialize with strangers (but they do not exceed their max% fulfillment of the category this way and will stop Playing / stop accepting pets from strangers if continuing to do so would cause your total XP multiplier to decrease (i.e: if it would push the Play slice to be >25% of the pie).

Some dogs may also sit or lay on a Store object, waiting for customers to come by and pet them.

Dogs could have a bit of utility too. Hunter Specialists could use a tamed Dog/Wolf to assist with hunting prey and hinder deer from running away too quickly. Dogs could also be used in Animal Husbandry to herd sheep or other farm animals.

Besides Dogs/Coyotes/Wolves; other animals that would make good pets are Agouti, Hares, Tortoises, Snapping Turtles, Otters, and MAYBE Foxes (all already in the game).

Some animals might be predisposed to different Personalities. Tortoises, for instance, probably don’t care much for Travelling, and so should only have a 10~20% XP multiplier from Travelling. Snapping Turtles would rather swim than travel.

Cats would be a logical addition and would be lovely to see wandering outdoors around town. Iguanas could also be a nice, low maintenance pet from the jungle biome that doesn’t Travel much.

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:Negative Externalities:

Horses, Mules, Cows, Sheep, Bison, and other big animals produce manure which sits on the ground. When taking a Horse or Mule through a town, they will leave manure on the side of the road! Manure causes small amounts of runoff pollution and needs to be stored in stockpiles carefully (~1/10th or 1/20th the effect of Tailings). This becomes an ecological problem for towns to solve with either laws or fines or a dedicated player on street sweeping duty.

Fertilizers (the Specialization) and/or Farmers could craft Manure into a fertilizer item to help grow crops. Fertilizer Specialists can also craft compost boxes which anyone can use and slowly converts Manure into Dirt, for minimizing pollution (meant to be put in a town for public dumping / early sewage).

Farm animals would eat farmed crops that are growing, so you’d need to fence them off from your farms. If you have lots of them, you’ll need to herd them together.

Sheep, Goats, and Cows produce milk/wool more slowly if they’re TOO cramped. It’s also best to move them out to graze fresh fields. Maybe towns will even allocate a public field for Ranchers to graze their animals on (so we can simulate the Tragedy of the Commons!)

Cows and Oxen/Bulls produce methane (their farts), so too many in the world is bad for the environment.

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:Animal Husbandry Specialization:

Animal Husbandry would cover all of the following tasks (or it could be split into multiple specializations like ‘Rancher’, ‘Horse master’, ‘Dog trainer’)

-Taming wild Horses

-Breeding Horses

-Taming other farm animals

-Milking Cows/Goats

-Shearing Sheep/Goats

-Taming dogs

-Crafting animal food

Successfully taming an animal grants a big burst of XP. There probably aren’t too many repeatable XP-farming actions otherwise, so this would be necessary.

Each level of Animal Husbandry up to 7 improves the speed at domesticating wild animals, raises the chance of horse breeding to result in desirable genetics, and increases the yield from milk/wool.

Crafting recipes could include a Lasso (for wrangling farm animals while on horseback / bringing wild animals to your ranch), Horse Saddle and tack (needed for anyone to ride a horse), some other tools to herd and guide animals into a pen, even wild animals. High quality dog food can be crafted, but requires access to a Cast Iron Stove.

Lvl 0 Animal Husbandry (just reading the scroll, but not spending a Star) would unlock a crafting recipe to turn any grain into animal feed: cheap efficient food for filling feeding troughs for animals.

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Outside of the Specialty, there would be

-Owning pets (and gaining a XP multiplier)

-Petting your pets

-Buying/selling animals and pets

-Disposing of pollutant manure

-Farmers using manure as fertilizer

-Carpenters crafting furniture items for Horse Stables and/or pet equipment

-Tailors could craft accessories for your Dog/pets.

-Hunters training dogs as Shepherds or Hunting dogs.

-Some other things too