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Old 04-18-2019, 06:52 PM
Vespers War Vespers War is offline
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Some (slightly) deeper thoughts around dog stats and sled dogs:

In v2.2, dogs are common animal encounters. They're listed as 25 kilos, To Hit 4, Dam 4, Hits 6, Speed 15/30/60 (walk/trot/run).

From talking with mushers, that's probably pretty good for racing dogs. For freight dogs, size should be doubled to 50 kilos. Using Traveller: The New Era's animal tables, that would double Hits to 12 and have no other mechanical effect.

Racing dogsleds (with just a couple days' food and no real equipment) can travel at run speed. As pack animals, dogs can carry half their weight in saddlebags or pull double their weight on sleds or carts (as appropriate). Either way, they should be restricted to trot speed if they're being used as pack animals; overburdened animals can only travel at walk speed.

Food will be a very important factor. Dogs hunting in winter for 3 hours per day (close enough to a period for me to consider it a period) consume 2600 calories per day. During training, sprint dogs consume 4-5000 calories per day and Inuit endurance dogs up to 12,000 calories per day.

A 2011 study of Yukon Quest teams found that during the first half (which has easier terrain and had better weather that year), the average consumption to maintain weight was 8000 calories per day, while the second half increased to 13800.

Food was 50% fat and 50% protein/carbohydrate, so it would come out to 6.5 calories/gram. That lets us estimate food requirements:

Hunting dog (winter, 1 period - 2600 calories) - 400 grams
Sprint training (4-5000 calories) - 615-770 grams
Endurance training (12000 calories) - 1.85 kilograms
Long-distance racing (good terrain/weather) - 1.23 kilograms
Long-distance racing (bad terrain/weather) - 2.12 kilograms

Note that these are per dog, so a racing sled with 14 dogs is going to need between 18 and 30 kilos of food per day for the dogs, plus water.
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