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As probably many players, I was a bit dumbfounded when I saw that some predator animals can just go into my pens and kill my animals. In real life, you would have guard dogs (or in some cases even donkeys) to fight those off. Why not have the option to assign guard animals to pens?

Btw: It doesn't make much sense that so many wild animals can enter and leave the pen, but tamed animals can not.

Yeah, I just saw your bug report myself and wanted to thank you, that is very well put and explained!

As for now, choosing Animal Personhood leads to your colonists being disgusted by meat. I think it would make sense if you could also choose to make them completely vegan (seeing animals as persons would imply that it is not super okay to drink their milk and eat their eggs) as an extra challenge.

Thanks for the reply!

Then I will wait for the next patch to see if the egg thingy gets fixed (already filed it as a bug).

To be clear: Animal Personhood in its current state means vegetarianism, so milk and eggs are okay. Then I would suggest that the vegetarian meals in the stove resemble this, as for now the vegetarian meals in the stove are unnecessarily vegan, which doesn't fit to any dietary needs in the game.

[Part 1: What counts as "meat" to trigger the debuff from the precept?]

While I love the inclusion of Animal Personhood as a belief, it feels a bit confusing and not properly tested.

Part 1: What counts as "meat" to trigger the debuff from the precept?

I currently have 3 crashlanders with the belief Animal Personhood and Meat Eating set to abhorrent. For playtesting I started with milk and unfert. eggs.
When they drink milk / eat a meal cooked with milk, they don't get the "ate meat" debuff.
When they eat unfert. chicken eggs (either raw or in a meal), they do get the "I ate meat debuff"

The game clearly states in the description: Eating meat is evil. Not Eating any animal product is evil. Also, the game clearly puts meat and other animal products in different categories in cooking, namely: Meat, Vegetarian, Animal products.

Since eggs are listed as animal products and not meat, they should not give the "I ate meat debuff". On the other hand, since milk eating /drinking doesn't give the debuff, this might just be a bug.

So either the description of Meat eating - precept is wrong or the eating of eggs is bugged.

For Part 2 I assume that eggs are bugged and milk and eggs are ok to eat for believers in the "no meat" precept.

Part 2: Vegetarian or vegan meals

In real life, vegetarian usually means ovo-lacto-vegetarian (so no meat but milk and eggs are ok) and vegan means no animal products at all. The actual book definition of vegetarian rather matches with vegan ("just plants"), but in common language vegetarian = milk and eggs are allowed, vegan = no animal stuff at all.

In the cooking bill section of the game you now have the option to cook vegetarian meals, which is fine, but it goes by the mentioned book definition, so only plant or mushrooms are allowed. While technically correct, this is a little confusing since most people would assume vegetarian = milk and eggs are allowed.

This alone is not an issue, but it gets confusing for whom the vegetarian meals are meant for. If the Animal Personhood believers are allowed to eat milk and eggs (as the description of the precepts imply), then why have an extra option in the cooking bill for meals without animal products at all? For whom is this extra plants-only bill in the stove, if the Animal Personhood believers are cool with milk and eggs? Wouldn't it make more sense to have a meal option just without meat, if the meal restriction is just about the meat?

Sorry for the long text. tl/dr:

1. Either the description of the meat eating precept is wrong or the outplay in the game is buggy. Eggs are not meat but give the "I ate meat" debuff.

2. The option for "vegetarian" meals is confusing, because what it us doing does not match with what the meal eating precept is about. It disallows meat and animal products, but the precept only forbids meat, so why not allow milk and eggs?

Did anyone of you who played around with this have a different experience? Am I just missing something? This issue kind of ruined my vegetarian colony that wanted to rely on eggs.

To be clear: I am fine with whatever way it is designed, I just would like it to be consistent.

I chose Animal Personhood as core belief and set meat eating to abhorrent. I got the -24 ate meat debuff from eating a meal with berries and unfertilized chicken eggs (tested it several times, each time got the debuff anew).

Is this a bug or does count Rimworld all animal products as "meat"? If so, it doesn't become clear from the descriptions, it only mentions meat.

Moderator note:

This has been reworked since this post.