Quote from: Tynan on August 08, 2018, 05:01:29 PMQuote from: Polder on August 08, 2018, 10:53:23 AM
I agree. I'm trying to make it more worthwhile to keep animals for things other than defense or hauling.
I totally agree with the goal, once upon a time I did a ton of analysis and balancing to try to make the farming case viable (several alphas ago), but it's hard as hell to actually get all the balance points working. Especially given how straightforward hunting is, and how manhunter packs deliver mass meat/leather. It's hard for raising animals to compete with that without being ridiculous in other ways.
Hmm...thinking over it, wouldn't the best idea to have a sort of generation level system with farm animals, where animals that spawn from the wild start at level zero, and as animals breed, their kin will be a higher generation level, and as the higher an animal's generation level, the greater returns on animal products like meat, eggs, etc. (or maybe faster rates or higher nutrition value). Perhaps those with differing generation levels will have an increase from the lower level parent, or the average between the parents, to encourage to keep moving onto next generations instead of the same parents over and over. I believe this system would encourage farming to be a stable, controllable, high-yield, albeit slower method of obtaining meat. The yield returned from farming will eventually flatten out over the course of a few generations. Higher generation animals could also possibly sell better.
(i.e. the longer these animals have been farmed over generations, the better)
Or, you could use a different, although more complex, system where every animal has a "fatness" that deterimines the meat yield (and stuff like "lactation factor" for milk producers, or something similar to that), and animal multiple offspring will have varying "fatness" deviating from the average of the parents. The "fatness" is shown on the animal screen and the adults' "fatness" should be the important one for the player to focus on. The player will be encouraged to pick the animals with their preferred traits (like "fatness" which influences meat yield) and make them breed.
(i.e. selective breeding)
Disclaimer: I planned out this idea with turkeys in mind, so results will likely vary if implemented. Perhaps, the increase in yield will be adjusted for those that breed rapidly and those that breed slowly, so that everyone can progress appox. equal rates.