Pets on Ice Sheet

[Flubberj]

So the ice sheet has been my favorite map to play on for awhile now. I always prepare carefully and drop my single colonist, Dmetri, onto the frozen map and I'm able to get hydroponics done long before food becomes an issue. The struggle I'm now facing is how to keep a pack of animals alive when you can't grow haygrass in a hydroponics bay, can't let them graze, and barely have any useable dirt, much less quality dirt.

[Lady Wolf]

So the ice sheet has been my favorite map to play on for awhile now. I always prepare carefully and drop my single colonist, Dmetri, onto the frozen map and I'm able to get hydroponics done long before food becomes an issue. The struggle I'm now facing is how to keep a pack of animals alive when you can't grow haygrass in a hydroponics bay, can't let them graze, and barely have any useable dirt, much less quality dirt.

There's a mod called "hydroponic hay" that lets you grow hay in the hydroponics bay that might help you.

https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=15410.0

Otherwise you could try feeding them another type of vegetable such as corn, potatoes or rice?

[b0rsuk]

If the animals in question are omnivorous, maybe you could chop some raiders up and feed them to animals ? Every little bit helps! Especially if you have enemies among tribes. I think the penalty is mostly on cannibalism, not chopping corpses. It won't work with cows, but huskies and pigs will be happy.

[FMJ Penguin]

Yerp gotta be ok with doing not so tasteful things to survive ice. Feed pawns to pets, feed pets to pawns, etc.  Also where's my damn penguins!?!

[b0rsuk]

In all honesty, ice sheet is an extreme environment, so don't be surprised if extreme measures are required to survive there.

But I just checked and hay is THE cheapest material to buy. 0.50$ per unit. And because of rounding errors, you can buy 1 hay for free! Now in late game, 5502, a trader arrived with 3120 hay. It's totally feasible to buy hay for animals, you just need to make sure every animal pays for itself. Or have a team of artists, crafters, etc.

Lady Wolf:
What's the point of playing extreme biomes if you refuse to deal with them and find solutions ? Why not a mod which makes devilstrand grow on snow ?

[Lady Wolf]

What's the point of playing extreme biomes if you refuse to deal with them and find solutions ? Why not a mod which makes devilstrand grow on snow ?

It's more that I find the inability to grow hay in the hydroponics bay unrealistic, if the bay can support rice, corn, etc, then it should certainly be able to grow hay.

Even with being able to grow hay, you still have to survive long enough to research hydroponics, and have enough power to handle the hydroponics bays, plus the sun lamp and heater. So just being able to grow the hay doesn't make ice sheets suddenly super easy, it just gives you a way to feed your farm animals provided you can manage to live (and keep them alive) that long.

[TLHeart]

What's the point of playing extreme biomes if you refuse to deal with them and find solutions ? Why not a mod which makes devilstrand grow on snow ?

It's more that I find the inability to grow hay in the hydroponics bay unrealistic, if the bay can support rice, corn, etc, then it should certainly be able to grow hay.

Even with being able to grow hay, you still have to survive long enough to research hydroponics, and have enough power to handle the hydroponics bays, plus the sun lamp and heater. So just being able to grow the hay doesn't make ice sheets suddenly super easy, it just gives you a way to feed your farm animals provided you can manage to live (and keep them alive) that long.

hydroponics can not grow corn either in vanilla.

[SaintD]

Omnivorous pets can just eat rice. *shrug*

[HalfmoonSmile]

Hydroponics can't grow corn in the game, which is actually fairly realistic for the tiny hydro set ups we run. I assume Tynan did it for balance because corn is a better producer than the other plants, but you can justify it with pollination requirements (corn HAS to be spaced out or it can't really produce, and poor air circulation compounds the issue). Haygrass would also be worthlessly inefficient in our set ups--you'd never get enough nutrional value to make it worth growing over another crop; its low requirements are its biggest advantage, but it needs lots of space to be economically viable.

The (real) major benefits of haygrass is how little you need to seed a field once it has been established, relatively low soil requirements, and low amount of work to process it for storage. A few sowings ought to lead to fairly persistant pastures, and haygrass grows fairly uniformly relative to soil quality (which is part of why haygrass usually gets planted when demanding crops like corn are rotated out). The high hay yields we get seem to represent those benefits without overcomplicating the game. Growing something like straight alfalfa (sometimes a componant of what we call hay) might make sense, but then colonists could eat it... 

Realistically, why do dogs even eat hay? If it's nutrionally viable for a dog, a colonist could survive on it too. And every snake on earth is an obligate carnivore, what kind of space cobras are we dealing with here?!

[MultiDavid]

Hydroponics can't grow corn in the game, which is actually fairly realistic for the tiny hydro set ups we run. I assume Tynan did it for balance because corn is a better producer than the other plants, but you can justify it with pollination requirements (corn HAS to be spaced out or it can't really produce, and poor air circulation compounds the issue). Haygrass would also be worthlessly inefficient in our set ups--you'd never get enough nutrional value to make it worth growing over another crop; its low requirements are its biggest advantage, but it needs lots of space to be economically viable.

The (real) major benefits of haygrass is how little you need to seed a field once it has been established, relatively low soil requirements, and low amount of work to process it for storage. A few sowings ought to lead to fairly persistant pastures, and haygrass grows fairly uniformly relative to soil quality (which is part of why haygrass usually gets planted when demanding crops like corn are rotated out). The high hay yields we get seem to represent those benefits without overcomplicating the game. Growing something like straight alfalfa (sometimes a componant of what we call hay) might make sense, but then colonists could eat it... 

Realistically, why do dogs even eat hay? If it's nutrionally viable for a dog, a colonist could survive on it too. And every snake on earth is an obligate carnivore, what kind of space cobras are we dealing with here?!

Y know, if the game was realistic, those snakes would go to sleep for a very long time after eating, yet they do not.
Its possible their more active lifestyle makes them need more food, and as such they have turned omnivore.

[b0rsuk]

Cobras are omnivorous most likely because there are no predators in this game. When a wild warg comes to the map, he will soon leave because he's too stupid to hunt anything. Don't try to do a sixth replicant here. Don't try to justify a defect with story.

I'm with Tynan here. Hydroponics should have some noticeable downsides, like inability to grow haygrass and corn. Solar flares don't count because eating raw rice for a day doesn't kill your colony, and you're likely to have simple meals anyway. If you don't have a cook, you can be smarter and freeze some strawberries. Currently incentives for open colonies are very, very few.

[HalfmoonSmile]

I agree, hydroponics should and do have appropriate balances.

I realize the game's probable reason for omnivorous cobras, but that doesn't make it any less needlessly silly. Why even represent something that acts like a slightly more aggressive hare as a snake? 

[Flubberj]

In my opinion, there needs to be some sort of food that can be grown on a hydroponics for animals. I understand that its an extreme environment and at the end of the day I can just feed them other things, but I'm just going to play with hydroponics hay.

[Futrettamer]

Corn (maize) also grows about 8 feet tall IRL, so that's hardly practical for hydroponics