Yeah, there should be an option to auto disable it in combat to move freely.

Sure.

An alternative would be for the pets to always re-appear next to the PC when you enter a new location, even though it isn't realistic it would make companions more useful.

On a tangent, the requirement for the companions to be in an adjacent square when you exit a location should be relaxed, there could be a larger radius in which they are transfered with the PC to a new location.

True, it wouldn't be realistic. The pets would be artificially sped up.

If you go up a staircase while a couple of NPCs are following you the game could perhaps remember their position and calculate the required time for them to get to the stairs and ascend.

The game could potentially compute all NPC actions whilst the player is in an adjacent level (so that you can't just pop up the stairs and stop to regen - monsters might chase after you, and would regenerate themselves). Pets would obviously try to follow you up the stairs unless told to wait. Many monsters would stick to one location/area, or simply forget about you if you go up or down the stairs (all fitting in with JADE's quest priorities for NPCs).

I think, that an option to adjust WALKING speed would be enough to fix this problem. Just something like a slider, with a zero and maximum possible speed as border values.

Yes, I've been thinking something like that too. Additionally IMO most animals in ADOM are too slow. In reality they can move a lot faster than a human being.

Sounds like a good idea. However, if that's too much trouble, it could be possible to introduce a toggle button so that you (and your companions) all walk at the same speed.

Personally, I've ignored pets totally throughout my years of playing ADOM because of the pet walking speed problem.

RFE fixed to incorporate Dorten's remark into it. :)

Pets is one of the best design part of Adom, ton of good details, many points much better done than in most games. Sadly it is underused just because of few design flaw, speed management is one of those flaws. Nezur idea seems good, i like it's simplicity, unlike slider variation manually controlled. But I have to admit that for a veteran and if pets are really useful then idea based on sliders would be better.

My experience is that it's good that you run a little faster than your pets, there's many advantages to this. That's where sliders could be better. Also it's not good if each time you start a fight you need think to deactivate the option. It's like any auto pickup idea and like in many games, the best would be a different behavior when a fight is threatening or is starting than when there's no clouds around. I mean a feature that auto disable once you see a non tame monster, and enable (if activated) once you don't see any non tame monster.

One important point is that 'w' commands works with pets, it's probably an important cause that nobody use pets.

No vote, enough people vote yes anyway and I feel something more sophisticated should be better but I don't have any clear suggestion.

Personally I can't see why these two suggestions couldn't be combined. You would have an accurate slider plus a convenient way to automatically adjust the walking speed. There could also be a modifier that could be applied to the automatic adjustment so that you can walk/run for example 10 units faster than your pet if it's possible.

Doesn't the character always run at the optimum speed in ADOM? The slider could be used to run at full speed but with relatively greater need for food consumption. Slow speed decreases the need and grants stealth-related bonuses.

Because of simplicity. Eventually the slider thing could be a sort of setup, you set the percentage of your speed in comparison with the slower pet. And you activate the mode through a command.

I think that is a great idea. Monsters seeing that the descending/ascending character is too far away might just give up chasing.

By the way I noticed that there has been talk about the movement speed slider a while ago in another thread.

I have another idea more or less related. You should be able to simply pick up smaller and/or calmer pets. Nothing wrong with carrying your pet king cobra around. This way you won't even have to worry about pets going the wrong way etc.

Yep. You should be able to step on very small creatures as well.

or you could lock them inside crystal balls and when you need them you throw that ball and scream 'Go Pikachu!!!'... sorry ;P

Back to the topic (kind of):

Isn't it a bit of unnecessary to implement speed if there's the energy cost anyway? Some kind of overall energy cost could replace the speed value.

I always found it a bit of an irritating irony that bards get seven league boots as their heir gift - from day one your pets can't keep up.