Fortunately, I had a second keyboard lying around. I understand this is alpha and there will be a few frustrations, but they're really starting to add up, and these are not bugs we're talking about; they're the result of the way the game is designed, which is much more troublesome. To wit:
A raider attacks. One. Early game. He's armed with grenades.
I send my two hunters out to deal with him. One of the hunters is the one with a high animal score. As a result, she has a half-dozen bonded animals following her around. I don't want them bonded to her, but they're force-bonded whether I want them bonded or not. I have my farming area walled off with wooden walls to keep animals from eating my devilstrand. The raider heads straight for the wall and blows a hole with a grenade. Fair enough.
My two hunters arrive and start shooting. The raider throws a grenade. We move. ALL THE BONDED ANIMALS head to the spot where my hunter WAS standing. Where there is now a grenade. They all die. All of them. Simultaneously. I finish off the raider and suddenly a STAMPEDE of animals head for the hole in my wall. Entire HERDS of animals charge for the hole in my wall like there's free candy on the other side. I'm guessing the random location where they WANT to be is somewhere on the other side of my farming area wall, so they all telepathically and instantaneously notice the path to the Promised Land and stampede through and start gobbling up my devilstrand. I blueprint repairs to the wall and instantly four of my five colonists get malaria, including both doctors. The only colonist without malaria is mourning an entire petting zoo full of bonded animals I didn't want or need bonded, and will probably go berzerk or hide in her room until the end of time.
It's about then my keyboard went flying at the wall.
The main problem with this stuff is that it's all WAD. I'm used to playing roguelikes and I enjoy challenge. I also recognize that roguelikes should be slightly unfair. But an increasing amount of challenge in Rimworld is coming from micromanagement trying to overcome metagame challenges which have nothing to do with the game scenario and everything to do with game mechanics.
*sarcastic smiling*
Learning by doing.
Ok, you got maybe a bad accidents in a row, and special at the beginning this can be very frustrating.
- Animals, you shouldn't tame any animal you see, not even for pratice. They will eat all your food, and your pawn's just need to work to get enough food for them and not to improve the colony.
If you got enough food, get 1-2 animals which can fight/haul or 2-5 who can support you with eggs,milk or wool.
Except on the desert or ice, you should have enough animals to hunt for your fine meals.
- About bond animals, ok the bond status you can't undo, but at the animal tab, or at the animal training you can just set the master to none, then they don't follow them anymore on fights.
Special when a horde of chinchilla's follow the master into fight, to bad the raiders can't die from laughing :-)
- Grenade,rocket launcher, yes they can be a threat, special when you didn't notice them.
But a single raider with grenades arn't a big deal, just don't shoot him, mellee him and he don't throw any grenade.
And you should have 3 pawn's vs. 1 raider, even with fists they should overwhelm it.
Or when you realy want to shoot him, check what target got the raider and let the target move around the raider, while the other shoot.
Don't forget to build early a prisoner room, in case you find an interesting raider you may want to recruit :-)
Animals bond at random even when set to "none." The first thing I generally do is recruit a herd of boars and train them for hauling. In my case, I have only two out of my five colonists who are willing to haul, which means hauling animals are pretty much a necessity. Since I had only one colonist with animal skill, that's the one I set to do the training. As a result, she ends up with a bunch of unwanted bonded animals even when the animals are set to "none." You can set a bonded animal to "none" and prevent it from following your colonist around, but that gives your colonist a permanent "not [animal]'s master" debuff. During a raid, you can manually remove all your bonded animals and restrict them to base, but having to remove and add every single animal before and after every single raid is a royal pain in the ass, so I generally don't: an example of the kind of irritating micromanagement which results in metagaming challenges to which I was referring, where it's the game mechanics and not the game which create difficulty.
Yep, I've become enraged countless times because of suicidal animals running into my own lines of fire, or frustrated every time I have to un-master each animal when a raid or threat appears. I would recommend quality of life mods that fix annoying mechanics (the game is still alpha) or reduce micro-management.
"Pet Follow" allows you to choose when pets should or should not follow their masters (when drafted, while hunting). (https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=24422.0)
"Wildlife tab" and "quality builder" are also essential for making the game less tedious.
@Canute
Yes, of course there are fiddly workarounds (most of them being nonparticipitation in that part of the game). That does not make the actual complaint Boba has invalid. In fact, it reinforces it.
AoE weapons on enemies (and to a lesser extent, sniper rifles) are ridiculously hurtful and common and therefore prone to lead to frustration (In the case of nades, mostly because you have to micromanage your guys to do anything but stand there and shoot at the first thing coming into sight).
Almost everything about animal behaviour, training and usability is simply bad. So bad that it reaches the point where the most common (and best) advice is to mostly ignore animal taming besides some specific cases (an indoor chicken farm usually works if the zones are set correctly).
The auto-bonding and auto-drafting and auto-suiciding of pets is aggravating, to say the least - and the only real workaround is to add all your animals to one guy that will never, ever, participate in combat. Usually you do not even need the enemy to kill them - friendly fire does that just fine since they just have to stand one space in front of your shooters.
These kinds of things have to be fixed sometime by the base game - "just use a mod" cannot be an excuse for baseline gameplay behaviour issues.
Quote from: Boba Phat on October 18, 2016, 06:03:22 AM
I finish off the raider and suddenly a STAMPEDE of animals head for the hole in my wall. Entire HERDS of animals charge for the hole in my wall like there's free candy on the other side. I'm guessing the random location where they WANT to be is somewhere on the other side of my farming area wall, so they all telepathically and instantaneously notice the path to the Promised Land and stampede through and start gobbling up my devilstrand.
They were starving to death and suddenly had access to food.
The pawns have a mind of their own somewhat, they will make bonds...you seem to want a pure sim where you control every detail it seems. This game doesnt do that.
1. Try the PetFollow mod. By default, it stops pets from following your pawns when drafted and when hunting, and you can toggle these behaviours back on whenever you like.
2. If you're going to keep animals at all, you need to have an area restriction for them. It's like an invisible pen which keeps them from nomming on your shrooms, and it's super effective (if you remember to snag the PetFollow mod).
3. Malaria is treatable. But you might need to manually intervene so that treatment and feeding time happens.
4. While it may seem like there are many events happening in the example of the OP, only two events were actually fired. The animal disasters were an emergent result of gameplay, not the result of a malevolent AI. Things could have gone differently.
5. A drop pod just burst through my ceiling and crushed my leg. Why you do this, Tynan? WHY?!
:D
Edited for accuracy.
It's at this point that I would like to reiterate my point about a need for commands pawns can give to pets so that they don't suicide in their attempts to "help".
Quote from: MarvinKosh on October 18, 2016, 11:55:20 AM
4. Events happening all at once is just bad timing. There isn't really a malevolent design behind it.
This is incorrect. Multiple events happening at the same time is by design. The game periodically decides that it is time for some "fun" and will slap you with a dozen events in a short period of time. Between these high threat periods things slow down a bit -- more so on Cassandra than on Randy.
I think forcing bonded animals to still follow zone restrictions regardless if they are bonded would be an easy fix.
Everything else in the OP is just Rimworld working as intended if you ask me. The animals went for the food (Why rimworld animals eat devilstrand seems strange but OK I can see it) when the wall got destroyed.
Yes, unbonding animals before each combat is tedious, but you were early in the game you said and this really doesn't take much time at all if you have 5-6 animals only at this point. Honestly, it's not even that annoying in my colony with 25+ animals.
Can you not just set bonded animals to a zone inside behind your defences, instead of to follow, like you use to be able?
I mean who brings a dog to a grenade fight anyway?
Nope, animals ignore areas when following their drafted master.
I'm so sorry, but I laughed my ass off at this post. XD
1) set them to an animal safe zone during combat
2) remove their master
3) profit
Fluffy animal tab mod helps to make this easier
My point isn't that these problems are insoluble, but that they're not the kind of problems I want to deal with. It should be the game scenario which creates challenge, not the game mechanics. I know a lot of people play games "to win," and that for someone whose goal is racking up kills or score or achievements or whatever, it makes no difference where the challenge comes from. You'll just have to take my word for it that some of us play games to immerse ourselves in an imaginary experience, and for us it makes a huge difference. Struggling with game mechanics totally ruins the experience for us.
On a related note, are we absolutely sure that there's nothing sneaky in the code which deliberately causes caravens to park their muffalo on devilstrand patches? Take a look at the attached screenshot. Two caravans arrive, both of which completely bypass my enormous gardens, pass right through my entire base, and occupy BOTH of my mountain devilstand farms where they are devastating my (nearly mature) crop.
[attachment deleted by admin - too old]
As far as challenge goes, I can definitely see your point about how the mechanics necessitating micromanaging can be frustrating. For me personally, I kind of like all the little details to keep in mind, as it feels much like real life; the Devil is in the Details as they say, and to me it simulates the challenges of logistics and management, and how it's the little things that get you, not the big ones. However, I'm also an odd one, and even with my odd duck preferences, I can still see your point that for many, this style is merely frustrating, particularly when a simple button that says "restrict all animals to zones regardless of master" would do the same thing as all the micromanagement.
In particular, I can empathize with how it feels like jumping through hoops to turn your simple command into actualized game effects. I could compare it to having a bill that says "make simple meal" versus having to make a series of bills such as "prepare meat" "dice vegetables" "combine ingredients" "roast" and "remove from heat" all to do the same thing. Both do the same thing, but one requires much more player work to get it done. And, just because my odd self would kind of enjoy that level of control (I could make sure my colonists use only the cheapest, most filling ingredients and save the others for export!) it seems fairly clear to me that it would be extremely frustrating for the majority of players.
On the topic of devilstrand patches, I've encountered something similar. That patch isn't, by chance, closest (as the crow flies, not by pathing) to the map edge the traders came from, was it? For me, the issue was that my farm plots seemed to be geometrically closest to some traders, despite being path-wise the farthest. Although, looking at your setup, it looks like it'd be very difficult to move it anyway. :/
For what it's worth, everything you've described has happened to me as well. I also applied the solutions that others are suggesting.
I think animal behavior does need a rework as the game progresses to make it slightly more animal like.
Restrictions do work, but there are not enough zones for large maps or big herds. The UI also needs to be altered to manage them.
Basic commands for the animals also have to be possible or fences need to be introduced. There is a reason we can lock animals into areas in RL. The colonies are on hostile worlds. Not being able to control movement just means the animal will be dead.
Since these are RL strategies, it makes sense that some form of those controls would be present in the game.
Devilstrand--
I have noticed the preference of some animals for devilstrand and healroot. I seem to get non-stop thrumbo visitations when I have patches of it. Those furry guys love to chow on it.
My solution has been to not grow it or cover a big part of the map with it.
Devilstrand has a lower nutrition value than other plants. So the problem may just be that once they start eating they inhale everything in sight. You could try planting other crops next to the devilstrand and see if that slows them down. Hops and Cotton provide 8x nutrition to grazers; other crops might be even better.
(You *can* put growing zones of different crops adjacent to each other without one attaching to the other. The trick is to create a growing zone, then exit out of the zoning menu, then go back in to create the next one)
I find that I only need (broadly speaking) three areas for animals: Dogs, Herbivores, Animal haulers.
This is because dogs generally won't eat live plants, so there's no need to restrict them as much as the herbivores - even if they do eat the harvest, that's better than the plant and the harvest being lost.
I need animal haulers to be restricted less, and if they happen to eat some of what they're supposed to be hauling, again that's no huge loss, as long as they're not eating the human meals.
Obviously, if you want to separate out males and females to reduce or stop breeding, that's a whole other problem. Personally, I don't do that, but I control the animal population and make more food (after a while, one butchering table just isn't enough if you're making kibble).
Quote from: steenhole on October 19, 2016, 07:50:13 PM
I think animal behavior does need a rework as the game progresses to make it slightly more animal like.
Restrictions do work, but there are not enough zones for large maps or big herds. The UI also needs to be altered to manage them.
Animal behavior does need work. But what do you mean "there are not enough zones" ? Is there a limit to the number of Animal Areas you can make?
Quote from: steenhole on October 19, 2016, 07:50:13 PM
Basic commands for the animals also have to be possible or fences need to be introduced. There is a reason we can lock animals into areas in RL. The colonies are on hostile worlds. Not being able to control movement just means the animal will be dead.
Since these are RL strategies, it makes sense that some form of those controls would be present in the game.
the "strategies" you speak of are commands and fences. How many farm animals obey verbal commands? none at all. How many fences are on a farm? shitloads. Only dogs, siberian tigers, and Russian circus bears obey humans. Haven't u seen Planet of the Apes? You get enough monkeys together, next thing you know:
humans obey
them. Probably the same goes for the tigers and bears, but no one ever gathered enough in one place. Extended Woodworking (https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=7893.0) mod has fences. I know this stuff should be vanilla, but it aint. If you don't want the mod, use walls instead.
Thrumbos
do seem to love devilstrand, but they wont break down a wall to get at it. Or a fence.
Quote from: MarvinKosh on October 20, 2016, 02:00:14 PM
I find that I only need (broadly speaking) three areas for animals: Dogs, Herbivores, Animal haulers.
This is because dogs generally won't eat live plants, so there's no need to restrict them as much as the herbivores - even if they do eat the harvest, that's better than the plant and the harvest being lost.
I need animal haulers to be restricted less, and if they happen to eat some of what they're supposed to be hauling, again that's no huge loss, as long as they're not eating the human meals.
Obviously, if you want to separate out males and females to reduce or stop breeding, that's a whole other problem. Personally, I don't do that, but I control the animal population and make more food (after a while, one butchering table just isn't enough if you're making kibble).
once i have enough chickens, i butcher all but 2-3 roosters, assign hens to a room and roosters to another, make kibble stockpile in each room and that's the end of story.
same about fences... what do you people mean fences need to be introduced? they are already in the game!
surround an area with a wall, make a restricted zone inside and assign animals to that zone. there. fixed.
and why do you people complain about the zone amount limit? did you know you can invert zones?
- all my animals except chickens are set to a zone that covers ALL MAP except crops and steel traps (inverted zone, then removed placed i dont want them to go)
- chickens are separated into 2 zones
- then i have a safezone to send animals there in case of attack or toxic fallout
that's all you need really!
Animals tend to cause problems. The moment any show up in my colony I kill them. I MIGHT keep one around for milk and then never train it if I'm swimming in food.
Quote from Dwarf Fortress Wiki:
"Conventional catsplosions are an insidious poison which operate by using a lethal psychological attack known as "Cuddly Wuddly Syndrome". Dwarves, ordinarily content to manage an overpopulation of cats by employing butchers, tanners, soapers, leatherworkers, and cooks, may suddenly find themselves appropriated by a cat who employs mind control waves in order to take the dwarf hostage. The dwarf, now considering the cat its pet (when in fact the opposite is true), is no longer able to butcher the cat and will absolutely not tolerate anyone butchering his "bewuv'ed cuddlebug". Through this psychological technique, an insurgent is thereby successfully implanted into the fortress."
Animals deciding to own a colonist is a terrible affliction upon the colony and is best dealt with by immediately putting the animal in the soup.
"Prepare for the worst, hope for the best, and anticipate both." - me.
Pretty much that. Try zoning them. You can outrange them, even with the pistol. Micromanage your troops around their max range, rush from multiple angles, do ANYTHING other than sit and watch. The storyteller doesn't play fair, but you're (probably) way smarter than it is.
Adversity leads to experimentation leads to failure leads to experience leads to success leads to adversity...
Quote from: Shurp on October 18, 2016, 06:30:40 PM
Quote from: MarvinKosh on October 18, 2016, 11:55:20 AM
4. Events happening all at once is just bad timing. There isn't really a malevolent design behind it.
This is incorrect. Multiple events happening at the same time is by design. The game periodically decides that it is time for some "fun" and will slap you with a dozen events in a short period of time. Between these high threat periods things slow down a bit -- more so on Cassandra than on Randy.
Just want to point out that Marvin said
malevolent design not just design so he is right in that the design choices where not made with malevolence in the Dev's heart.
*shrug*
A lot of the fun in this game is more the Dwarf Fortress-ey "Fun™". Shenanigans happen.
Personally, I run a heavily-armed art colony that breeds lots of bears (I sell and eat the excess). And Huskies, for low Animal Handling scores =). I generally run high enough moods that the death of one, or even two bonded animals is only annoying, not a threat (from mood breakdown cascades).
Of course, I came to this game from Dwarf Fortress, so I farm the CRAP out of mood buffs xD.
I like to play these games not quite so min-maxed, keeping a bit of roleplay. If the colony had dogs, would YOU be able to resist making at least one of them your own dog? I couldn't. Nor would I be able to resist friendly bears.
For every strong colony, I usually end up losing 2 others. That's just how the cookie bounces.
Well, my mod resolves just this problem without affecting the vanilla code.
By a push of a button it sets your animals in such a way that bonded animals don't follow. All without changing vanilla animal behaviour, etc. This means bonded animals should not be assigned to a master and restricted to a safe area. My mod automates this process. You will need to create the safes areas. This exact problem was the trigger for me to create the mod. I didn't like would Pet Follow was implemented.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=775061248
Being raided? Active the policy. Raid done? Set it back to the previous policy. It works perfectly for me.
Quote from: VouLT on November 09, 2016, 08:37:56 AM
Well, my mod resolves just this problem without affecting the vanilla code.
By a push of a button it sets your animals in such a way that bonded animals don't follow. All without changing vanilla animal behaviour, etc. This means bonded animals should not be assigned to a master and restricted to a safe area. My mod automates this process. You will need to create the safes areas. This exact problem was the trigger for me to create the mod. I didn't like would Pet Follow was implemented.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=775061248
Being raided? Active the policy. Raid done? Set it back to the previous policy. It works perfectly for me.
I love your mod but I do also love the Animal tab mod, any way to use them together?
Quote from: Shurp on October 18, 2016, 06:30:40 PM
Quote from: MarvinKosh on October 18, 2016, 11:55:20 AM
4. Events happening all at once is just bad timing. There isn't really a malevolent design behind it.
This is incorrect. Multiple events happening at the same time is by design. The game periodically decides that it is time for some "fun" and will slap you with a dozen events in a short period of time. Between these high threat periods things slow down a bit -- more so on Cassandra than on Randy.
Don't get me started about Randy. He is more than capable for brutality. Sometimes it's easy breezy coasting and sometimes it's to hell with him.
Quote from: Boba Phat on October 18, 2016, 06:03:22 AM
Fortunately, I had a second keyboard lying around. I understand this is alpha and there will be a few frustrations, but they're really starting to add up, and these are not bugs we're talking about; they're the result of the way the game is designed, which is much more troublesome. To wit:
A raider attacks. One. Early game. He's armed with grenades.
I send my two hunters out to deal with him. One of the hunters is the one with a high animal score. As a result, she has a half-dozen bonded animals following her around. I don't want them bonded to her, but they're force-bonded whether I want them bonded or not. I have my farming area walled off with wooden walls to keep animals from eating my devilstrand. The raider heads straight for the wall and blows a hole with a grenade. Fair enough.
My two hunters arrive and start shooting. The raider throws a grenade. We move. ALL THE BONDED ANIMALS head to the spot where my hunter WAS standing. Where there is now a grenade. They all die. All of them. Simultaneously. I finish off the raider and suddenly a STAMPEDE of animals head for the hole in my wall. Entire HERDS of animals charge for the hole in my wall like there's free candy on the other side. I'm guessing the random location where they WANT to be is somewhere on the other side of my farming area wall, so they all telepathically and instantaneously notice the path to the Promised Land and stampede through and start gobbling up my devilstrand. I blueprint repairs to the wall and instantly four of my five colonists get malaria, including both doctors. The only colonist without malaria is mourning an entire petting zoo full of bonded animals I didn't want or need bonded, and will probably go berzerk or hide in her room until the end of time.
It's about then my keyboard went flying at the wall.
The main problem with this stuff is that it's all WAD. I'm used to playing roguelikes and I enjoy challenge. I also recognize that roguelikes should be slightly unfair. But an increasing amount of challenge in Rimworld is coming from micromanagement trying to overcome metagame challenges which have nothing to do with the game scenario and everything to do with game mechanics.
Its your fault you knew he was weilding a grenade why send someone with many animals. send a sniper or rifle you have one at start grenades are short range. You haven't played skyrim like ever at start you should be weak not strong thats a brawler way there same as here
Quote from: w1r3dh4ck3r on November 10, 2016, 08:11:10 AM
I love your mod but I do also love the Animal tab mod, any way to use them together?
Tried almost everything and it is not possible to do it in a clean way. The only way possible would be for my mod to include the entire of Animal Tab mod. And I'm very reluctant to do it for maintenance reasons AND assuming Fluffy (Animal Tab author) allows me.
Animals are useless in every case, if you think you need hauler animals because you don't have enough hauling pawn you should have done better recruitment in the first place. on top of eating non stop, the time spent to train animals will be better used for hauling. I even kill the first animal you get in crashlanded at the first occasion possible (party or mariage...)
Quote from: Vincent on November 11, 2016, 06:49:34 PM
Animals are useless in every case, if you think you need hauler animals because you don't have enough hauling pawn you should have done better recruitment in the first place. on top of eating non stop, the time spent to train animals will be better used for hauling. I even kill the first animal you get in crashlanded at the first occasion possible (party or mariage...)
Eh I would say hauling animals are almost vital depending on how bad the RNG gimps you with backstories. I also like to keep chickens (for eggs, very useful on huge maps were hunting is very time consuming) and muffalos (milk, wool and meat shield champs), which will subsist off hay happily at little cost to the colony.
Quick or tanky carnivores like wolves, big cats, the forum-favorite bears, and even elephants all make excellent pain trains when you field them in numbers. When your handlers are brawlers they become beastmasters and can lay waste to raids in moments. Even if you don't train them up they can be useful with zoning.
That being said, without a lot of micro or savescumming, you will lose trainers if you're recruiting large amounts of wild animals. Best to get a breeding pair and keep them out of harms way. Unless you're playing a long game they'll probably provide babies for the lifetime of the colony.
Quote from: Vincent on November 11, 2016, 06:49:34 PM
Animals are useless in every case, if you think you need hauler animals because you don't have enough hauling pawn you should have done better recruitment in the first place. on top of eating non stop, the time spent to train animals will be better used for hauling. I even kill the first animal you get in crashlanded at the first occasion possible (party or mariage...)
agreed.
almost all animals are useless, they are not worth the time or space.
Quote from: cmitc1 on November 12, 2016, 02:00:45 PM
Quote from: Vincent on November 11, 2016, 06:49:34 PM
Animals are useless in every case, if you think you need hauler animals because you don't have enough hauling pawn you should have done better recruitment in the first place. on top of eating non stop, the time spent to train animals will be better used for hauling. I even kill the first animal you get in crashlanded at the first occasion possible (party or mariage...)
agreed.
almost all animals are useless, they are not worth the time or space.
You guys are just not using animals to their potential. Hauling animals are optional, if you have excellent workflow and some haulers. But there are massive benefits to livestock. Turn hay into eggs, meat, milk, wool, leather... just tons of valuable stuff from something completely worthless.
Animals are a consistent source of frustration for me. On one hand, I love having animals. On the other hand, I can't justify a good reason for it. They get in the way in combat without mods, they eat my crops without careful zoning, and they track dirt everywhere if allowed inside, causing a lot of mood debuffs unless I keep someone assigned to cleaning detail. I tend to keep some on hand for hauling duties because I try to justify keeping pets, but that's about all the use I have for them that isn't eating them. And in forest maps at least, they take too much time and too much space to breed when I can just go out and shoot two dozen deer on a whim.
Except bears. Bears are just awesome and I will never turn them down.
Quote from: sadpickle on November 12, 2016, 08:21:03 PM
Quote from: cmitc1 on November 12, 2016, 02:00:45 PM
Quote from: Vincent on November 11, 2016, 06:49:34 PM
Animals are useless in every case, if you think you need hauler animals because you don't have enough hauling pawn you should have done better recruitment in the first place. on top of eating non stop, the time spent to train animals will be better used for hauling. I even kill the first animal you get in crashlanded at the first occasion possible (party or mariage...)
agreed.
almost all animals are useless, they are not worth the time or space.
You guys are just not using animals to their potential. Hauling animals are optional, if you have excellent workflow and some haulers. But there are massive benefits to livestock. Turn hay into eggs, meat, milk, wool, leather... just tons of valuable stuff from something completely worthless.
Livestock is useful on extreme map but what's the point on normal maps ? Eggs = Milk = Meat, and you just have to get 2 meter out of your base to kill an animal
Quote from: Vincent on November 12, 2016, 08:30:02 PM
Quote from: sadpickle on November 12, 2016, 08:21:03 PM
Quote from: cmitc1 on November 12, 2016, 02:00:45 PM
Quote from: Vincent on November 11, 2016, 06:49:34 PM
Animals are useless in every case, if you think you need hauler animals because you don't have enough hauling pawn you should have done better recruitment in the first place. on top of eating non stop, the time spent to train animals will be better used for hauling. I even kill the first animal you get in crashlanded at the first occasion possible (party or mariage...)
agreed.
almost all animals are useless, they are not worth the time or space.
You guys are just not using animals to their potential. Hauling animals are optional, if you have excellent workflow and some haulers. But there are massive benefits to livestock. Turn hay into eggs, meat, milk, wool, leather... just tons of valuable stuff from something completely worthless.
Livestock is useful on extreme map but what's the point on normal maps ? Eggs = Milk = Meat, and you just have to get 2 meter out of your base to kill an animal
It's compressed meat you don't have to manually tag, send a pawn outside the base, risk them getting predated or stampeded by a pissed herd to get. On huge maps, after the first winter, all the animals are on the edge of the map, which means an enormous walk if you like to start building near the center. On huge mountain maps it can take a pawn practically all day to hunt one animal, depending on obstructions.
Also, animal wool is better than anything else for insulation, and is a fairly valuable material on it's own. Again, zero risk involved.
Of course they're totally optional, you don't have to raise them at all, you can totally ignore that aspect of the game. But for me the advantages far outweigh the burdens. The greatest burden is probably CPU cycles.
Quote from: sadpickle on November 12, 2016, 09:16:57 PM
It's compressed meat you don't have to manually tag, send a pawn outside the base, risk them getting predated or stampeded by a pissed herd to get. On huge maps, after the first winter, all the animals are on the edge of the map, which means an enormous walk if you like to start building near the center. On huge mountain maps it can take a pawn practically all day to hunt one animal, depending on obstructions.
Also, animal wool is better than anything else for insulation, and is a fairly valuable material on it's own. Again, zero risk involved.
Of course they're totally optional, you don't have to raise them at all, you can totally ignore that aspect of the game. But for me the advantages far outweigh the burdens. The greatest burden is probably CPU cycles.
I heard that milking/shearing animals have a chance to make them bond. I never had the case but you need to consider it.
Quote from: Vincent on November 13, 2016, 11:04:00 AM
Quote from: sadpickle on November 12, 2016, 09:16:57 PM
It's compressed meat you don't have to manually tag, send a pawn outside the base, risk them getting predated or stampeded by a pissed herd to get. On huge maps, after the first winter, all the animals are on the edge of the map, which means an enormous walk if you like to start building near the center. On huge mountain maps it can take a pawn practically all day to hunt one animal, depending on obstructions.
Also, animal wool is better than anything else for insulation, and is a fairly valuable material on it's own. Again, zero risk involved.
Of course they're totally optional, you don't have to raise them at all, you can totally ignore that aspect of the game. But for me the advantages far outweigh the burdens. The greatest burden is probably CPU cycles.
I heard that milking/shearing animals have a chance to make them bond. I never had the case but you need to consider it.
Never happened to me either. A female muffalo is a good thing to have if you have the food, the wool is fantastic for cold winters and the milk lets you make decent food. Also it can solo people in melee.
God damnit Catherine 'Cat' Lavoie.
Level 18 builder, mother dies. Neurotic, so she breaks and eats ALL THE WAKE-UP. She then proceeds to do nothing but go berserk, constantly, because no wake up is somehow worse than having your fucking mother die.
This goes on for a while, then some guy gets his kidney shot out and gets infected. She immediately falls in love with him and he dies because he only has one kidney literally the next day.
THEN, she goes on MORE berserk rages, until she decides to shoot up some go-juice and despite the chemical high instantly go berserk AGAIN, beating two people unconscious before dying because what is pain.
Fucking christ...
THIS is why my colonies don't tolerate abuse of sales stock ^^'. They won't stay off the smack, they're a delicious roast. And fashionable boots. Oo, maybe a duster!
So far, it's been slow enough that I've been able to counter all the negative moods from doing so, as well.
Might be a bit late for the original topic, but animal pathfinding works differently than pawn pathfinding.
When I send a colonist to haggle with a caravan, his destination is updated every few seconds according to the movements of the trader. Animals don't have that when they follow their drafted master. The just go to the spot where the master is/was, when he got drafted. Next it will go where the master is right now (again no updating). And so on.
Other than that I don't see bigger problems with the mechanics. They're part of the game and need to be dealt with, the same way as raiders. *except for that manual un-/assigning of masters
PS: To all the people who say animals don't pay off, how do you make Parkas without the -20% workspeed penalty? My Alpaca Dusters are stronger than cloth parkas and also work in the other temperature direction!