How heavy can I be? I am “Normal” weight, and have 30 kg of of gear. A horse should be able to take that, but apparently I’m too heavy…would be nice if I knew my weight instead of just “normal” to figure this out too!
Find and (a)ctivate a bathroom scale (undress before using it to get your body weight or keep your clothing on to get your weight as a whole).
As for how heavy you at maximum could be (including gear):
player_character.get_weight() >= z.get_weight() * z.get_mountable_weight_ratio() -> Too heavy; or…:
If your weight is higher than the weight of the animal you trying to ride (for a horse: 550 kg) multiplied by the “mountable weight ratio” of that animal (defaults to 0.2), you are too heavy (>= 110 kg for a horse).
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@Valase omg, I had no idea the bathroom scales I kept finding were actually useful for anything! Thank you.
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Holy crap, I can’t ride the horse, I’m 122 kg which seems awfully high for a “Normal” weight. But also I have 200+ lb friends who can definitely ride a normal horse, so what’s with that…
Hm, did you undress yourself and dropped whatever you were wielding?
Do you have some mutations that might add weight?
And… I’m not sure about that, but maybe CBMs add weight too?
I just tried the scale on a newly generated character (build version 10950) and - for a 1.51m large 28 year old female that is “Overweight” - I’ve got 58kg (which I would strongly oppose to call someone like that overweight, but I guess that’s just based off of the “official” BMI definitions).
And I partially agree that horses should be able to carry more than that. Not for long, not for gallop, and (based on some articles I’ve found) take damage for doing so, but not just plain impossible…
Turns out it’s a mutation I picked up. Inconveniently large, makes me unable to ride horses. Without it I’m only 74 kg…that certainly is inconvenient! 
Given that I can’t lead a horse or put it in a building to protect it from zombies it’s not very practical I suppose. Unfortunate. Wish I could lead it with a bit and bridle or a rope.
The horse could still have one use for your character…
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Welp, too bad.
I agree, a lot of animals could use a lead (or just a grab and drag) option.
You could get an NPC to ride it, though (if you have one)…
Yes, it’s very inconvenient that you can’t lead tame animals around, but have to hope they’ll follow you (which they’ll stop doing once they see something scary, in addition to not doing it just because they don’t feel like it).
I also had the issue that horses connected to a vehicle started disconnecting themselves and walk around freely. As far as I could see it was triggered by a chicken… I eventually had to give up on horse carriages because of that.
Horse riding gets rather useless because of the extremely low weight limit (in addition to their inability to be lead around, so you can’t use them as beasts of burden either).
It would be useful if horses came in different sizes, so you had race horses that are fast but can’t carry much (including heavy people), and work horses that are a lot sturdier and can carry (and pull) a lot more, but aren’t as fast.
Horses are, in principle, useful because they are single tile vehicle that ought to be able to handle forest terrain for riding or cargo carrying.
Yeah, being able to lead a pack horse or train of horses would be good. Horses don’t follow the player at all, only dogs and cats really follow. The rest have a flag that makes them specifically not follow. And even dogs and cats are a pain in the ass. It would be nice to have a system to train the animals. And to be able to carry dogs and cats in a vehicle without a pet carrier. Though tragic if we crash.
Well, it SEEMS horses, cows, and sheep mostly follow the player, with dogs and birds following closely (to the point where you can’t lock them in without tying them down). I’ve ferried cows and sheep in a car as passengers (two at a time). And horses and cows can be ridden to be guided to where you want them (assuming Survival is sufficient).
It would make sense to be able to train dogs, while other animals probably shouldn’t be as trainable (possibly with the exception of pigs).
Leading pack horses on a leash would make for a significant improvement, in my view, as that provides some loot/equipment carrying capacity in forests.
(The reason cats aren’t mentioned above is that I’ve seen absolutely no reason to train them, and the only reason I trained the dogs is that I didn’t want potentially dangerous animals around the farm I’ve used as my temporary base, although you can eat them).
Horses and cows and sheep literally have the NOT FOLLOW tag and have never once followed me even a little bit.
Horses and cows can be ridden if you’re low enough weight. Otherwise since they don’t follow you cannot lead them or give them to a friendly NPC to mount.
Well, they’ve sort of followed my PC in 0.E2 stable, even if they’re supposed to not do so (definitely not follow sounds like a cat tag, although it should be based on intent: if you want it to follow it won’t, and if you want to keep it away it should approach and get in the way). You can order your companions to find a mount, although I haven’t tried that (I’ve had the PC ride a couple of times, with a weight failure when fully loaded).
When did that happen? Last year in experimental I led a number of tame cows and horses across multiple overmap tiles back to my base camp. I had to kill anything that looked even vaguely dangerous or they’d stop following and flee, but once the path was clear it was no trouble at all.
I went back to December 2018 and the PET_WONT_FOLLOW flag on cows already existed back then.
Is it possible that they just followed noise/smell? Or that this flad did not work as intended?
Good question, all I know is that they currently definitely aren’t following me. But if there’s a magic smell I can use to attract them that would be interesting.
I’m not sure what was happening. I really don’t think it was 2018 when I did this, so maybe?
If cats follow you, that is either bad programming or a bug. Cats literally have to be dragged in most cases. Even if they know you, cats do whatever random crap they like. My dead granny had well over 30, over 80 years of life. My mother has had 4. My relatives numerous as well. Be it in a city or a country home. They rarely listen unless you give a strong incentive and lots of training from being a kitten. Otherwise, they are belligerent as a drunkard.
I’m not surprised that cats don’t follow you when you suggest to drag them… Animals usually don’t follow anything that is cruel to them.
I could cite some scientific research, but since you seem to enjoy stories more, here are some:
My grandmother grew up and lived with her grandmother (or my great-great-grandmother) who run the post office. They had cats in the house to protect the office against mice and other vermin and aggressive dogs in the yard to protect against two-legged vermin.
Every evening my grandmother and great-great… walked through the village. And every evening, one of the cats tagged along and followed them. No leash, no dragging, no training - it was a pest control on legs, not a cuddle kitten, mind you - and still, it followed them til its death. They were then followed by its litter.
If that’s not enough, here, an other one: I live in a suburban area with too much (domestic) cats (and dogs too, for that matter).
I never feed a single cat, I don’t know their owners, I don’t own a cat myself, but they follow me as soon as they spot me when I go for a walk.
I had it once that one (not a stray, it had a collar) followed me for 3 hours and about 12.5 kilometers - I had to get creative to lose it (and lucky… it got distracted by other people so I started running - I hope and think it found back with no problems). All I had to do to have that happen was to pet it once when it crossed my way.
Turns out they can/do follow you if you treat them alright.
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The weight limit given is for indefinite ride-ability with no negative impact on the horse. Limits could be increased with gradual impacts on the horse, but someone needs to implement that.