Dogs in Twilight 2000
Dogs tend to occur in three different situations in Twilight 2000; as guard dogs, as war dogs and as wild dogs.
Guard dogs are one of mankind's oldest early warning systems.
A dog's hearing is about 2.5 times better than a human's and they can pinpoint a sound to within 5º of its origin. In fact this is accurate enough that at close ranges you can use a dog to 'point' and direct grenade launcher fire and expect a fairly good chance of a hit on the source of a sound within 100m. Similarly dogs have been used at close ranges to direct machinegun fire at unseen targets.
A dog's sense of smell is of course legendary and comes in at about 40 times better than a human's admittedly poor sense of smell. Dogs can detect not only a target but can also track the scent trail and fully understand how this corresponds with the target's movement.
Guard dogs are extremely valuable, it would not be unusual to find settlements trading pups with a good guard lineage and breed. Settlements would utilise guard dogs to not only provide early warning against human threats but also wild dogs and similar animal threats. Note that guard dogs can be trained to alert handlers silently of threats.
War dogs are used by all combatants in Twilight 2000's Polish theatre. Using their senses noted above a war dog can track a target off to the side of the target's line of movement on the downwind side. This is incredibly useful as small foot patrols will often pause and set up an ambush to surprise followers. In Vietnam Australian tracker dogs could allow combat patrols to parallel a target and intercept them while being totally out of contact with the enemy. War dogs can be used in a shock attack and their fast movement and ability to knock down even quite large people is not to be underestimated.
War dogs can also be used as messengers. Well trained dogs can quickly, quietly carry messages unseen to other areas.
Another use of war dogs is mine detection dogs. These dogs work especially well against IEDs and above-ground munitions.
Wild dogs are extremely formidable. Usually in Twilight 2000 they are depicted as charging the players at first sight. From experience hunting dangerous feral dogs in Australia* I can say that this would be extremely rare. Usually a wild dog utilises its superb senses to observe threats from out of contact. Wild dogs learn vey quickly by observation that humans can kill dogs if they can see them so they avoid this at all costs, often you barely see any movement. Their prey of choice would be wounded, distracted or sleeping larger prey or unaware juveniles. They attack from ambush from multiple directions and have anecdotally used distraction pack members to occupy a prey's attention while the actual hunting dogs get close into position. Wild dogs are well known for using many different hunting styles from long pursuit to leopard-crawling up close before assaulting in without warning.
Dogs are mankind's oldest domesticated animal and the only domesticated animal we can be sure we have undertaken significant evolution alongside. People form strong bonds with dogs and this can have positive and negative effects in warfare. Dogs are extremely good for reducing stress in humans and historically soldiers and survivors have adopted dogs when they can. Conversely, dogs are relatively fragile in regards to modern weaponry and having a wounded or killed canine companion can have adverse morale effects. While players are immune to morale this will have a large effect on non-player characters.
Modern canine body armour, including the modern canine mask/helmet, were rudimentary in the Twilight 2000 setting. All sides have a lightweight ballistic harness that included a webbing system. This would usually hold water for the dog and a medical first aid kit. Some larger dogs can quite easily carry large amounts of ammunition if the load is spread carefully over the dog but this can easily damage the dog if in adverse situations. Loaded dogs are prone to heat stress and if pushed can simply collapse and die in a very brief interval.
(*I adore dogs but feral dogs can pull down and kill children as almost happened to a friend's child. This is why they are culled in Australia along with the immense ecological damage they do.)
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