[A14] Silage: A meal for your animals! V1.2 (12/8/2016)

Started by Loki88, October 15, 2015, 12:27:40 PM

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Balaaance

Holy OP ManBat! Dial it down a little.
Should cost more. It is unrottable food after all.
Sweet spot of balanceiness.
A little to expensive for my tastes.
WAY too expensive! I'll keep a hay pile in the fridge!

Loki88

This mod was created out of a suggestion by Brigadon.

Tired of having to refrigerate hay for your livestock and allowing them into your fridge to eat it only to have them bypass that sumptuous pile of hay and go strait for your meals?!

This mod adds a recipe to the brewery to craft silage for your critters to eat! Silage does not need to be refrigerated, though it does need to be kept inside out of the elements. Silage is a fermented foodstuff (hence the brewery) used to feed livestock.

Silage is a compressed nutrient dense animal feed. Animals will normally eat 10-20 hay depending on hunger. They will eat 1-2 silage depending on hunger as a sort of "meal". It is very space efficient for storage.

Counts as a plant food to prevent your little Derps colonists from eating it (I hope)

Recipe: 50 Hay + 20 Corn = 20 Silage



License


  • This mod may be included in mod packs as long as credit is given and forum rules are followed
  • Derivative mods may be made based on this mod

Updated to A14 by: kaptain_kavern. Thank you very much!

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TLHeart

Do the animals eat the silage as a meal, and only consume 1 silage, or do they eat it like hay, and consume 9 to 15 at a time?

MisterVertigo

Quote from: TLHeart on October 15, 2015, 01:49:57 PM
Do the animals eat the silage as a meal, and only consume 1 silage, or do they eat it like hay, and consume 9 to 15 at a time?
That was exactly my question, but you worded it much better than I did in my head!
"In vertigo you will be..."

"Relax, people. It's a teeny indie game; don't kill it with love." - Bozobub

Loki88

Currently has the same nutrition as a simple meal so they only consume one at a time. I'm thinking this might need to be dialed down so they need 2 or 3 a day or so?

TLHeart

okay one silage at a time... now for some math...

a cow eats twice a day, and consumes 10 hay each time so 20 hay per day.
Each silage takes 5 hay and 2 corn, total 7.
A cow will eat 2 silage per day, or the equivalent of 10 hay and 4 corn per day.

Just ran a test, and yes a cow will eat a silage every 12 hours, if that is their only food source.

Now silage is a better food source than hay, and that is why it is used.

edit: Cows seem to prefer to eat the hay over the silage though if they have access to both.

Loki88

Quote from: TLHeart on October 15, 2015, 02:25:28 PM
okay one silage at a time... now for some math...

a cow eats twice a day, and consumes 10 hay each time so 20 hay per day.
Each silage takes 5 hay and 2 corn, total 7.
A cow will eat 2 silage per day, or the equivalent of 10 hay and 4 corn per day.

Just ran a test, and yes a cow will eat a silage every 12 hours, if that is their only food source.

Now silage is a better food source than hay, and that is why it is used.

edit: Cows seem to prefer to eat the hay over the silage though if they have access to both.

I will look in to them preferring the hay once I'm done work. As for consumption, that works out to a 30% savings. Silage in reality is a more nutritious food source since the fermentation process makes more nutrients available for metabolization. I'm still not convinced I guessed the balance right on my first try.

MisterVertigo

Honestly, make it 10 hay and 10 corn, so the resources are the same. The "cost" of making it so it doesn't decay is the time you have to dedicate to making it. Just a thought.
"In vertigo you will be..."

"Relax, people. It's a teeny indie game; don't kill it with love." - Bozobub

TLHeart

I think you are close on the recipe, when you figure in the time the colonists take to make it. At first I thought you were way off, that is why I ran a test with cows, to see how much they ate a day.

So then it becomes a question of, do I grow more raw food, since I don't have the time to process it into silage? or do I have a cook who can dedicate enough time to turn the hay and corn into silage to feed my animals, therefore reducing the amount to be grown?

The brewing table is a low priority cooks job, so a low skilled cook could do it.

And do NOT put it on the cook stove, that is just yuck.... :)

Loki88

Quote from: TLHeart on October 15, 2015, 04:39:46 PM
The brewing table is a low priority cooks job, so a low skilled cook could do it.

And do NOT put it on the cook stove, that is just yuck.... :)

Seemed gross to me to. Plus I felt tying up a stove to make animal fodder instead of colonist meals didn't seem like a good idea. I also didn't want to add a whole new work station just for silage. So brewery it is!

Cataphract

Nice job! Personally I'd make the material cost a little lower, but that's just my preference.

Loki88

Quote from: Cataphract on October 16, 2015, 05:54:55 AM
Nice job! Personally I'd make the material cost a little lower, but that's just my preference.

I'll see about lowering the cost once I get a few more poll results in. The general consensus seems to be that the "meals" are to expensive, but breaking down the cost it's only 7 food per meal.

And here I was worried that they were too cheap!  :o

Loki88

V 1.1 = Attempted balance...

So after a little bit of testing...





I've discerned that the critters if locked up with nothing but a pile of hay or a pile of silage will eat either of them at random with a preference for hay... at first I thought this might be based on proximity to food but that didn't seem to be the case ( more testing required ) the only thing I could think of was that they were choosing based on nutrition vs hunger level to most accurately fill their hunger ( more testing required ). To try and combat this I cut the nutrition in half for the silage from 85% down to an even 40% to see if that will affect anything.

I've tweaked the recipe to reflect the nutrition level as well as to try and balance a bit. Input is the same but output has been doubled to 20 silage as I wanted this to be a large bulk recipe anyway.

I will reset the poll, please give me feedback  ;D

Thank you all for your suggestions! cheers!

1000101

I found that if you never let your animals into the colony freezer, you don't have to worry about things like them eating meals.  I keep a small stockpile just for hay in the animal pen area with a higher priority than the freezer so it will stay stocked.  Hay takes a long time to rot so it's a matter of not over-stocking the animal pens.

That being said, it's rather annoying when the animals do eat your meals and I always thought there should be some form of processed food stuffs for animals, but I was thinking more of the colony dogs which have unrestricted access (so they can haul) than the livestock.

Great mod, downloaded and will be used.
(2*b)||!(2*b) - That is the question.
There are 10 kinds of people in this world - those that understand binary and those that don't.

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Loki88

Quote from: 1000101 on October 17, 2015, 05:50:02 PM
I found that if you never let your animals into the colony freezer, you don't have to worry about things like them eating meals.  I keep a small stockpile just for hay in the animal pen area with a higher priority than the freezer so it will stay stocked.  Hay takes a long time to rot so it's a matter of not over-stocking the animal pens.

That being said, it's rather annoying when the animals do eat your meals and I always thought there should be some form of processed food stuffs for animals, but I was thinking more of the colony dogs which have unrestricted access (so they can haul) than the livestock.

Great mod, downloaded and will be used.

The good thing with dogs being omnivores is they will still eat plant based foods such as hay and silage :) I'm glad you like the mod and hope everyone enjoys it!

TLHeart

I noticed on my present colony that the change from 85% nutrition, down to 40% nutrition did not change the eating habits, the animals just eat 2 at a time.  So long as I keep the silage closer to the barn door, and the raw hay in the back of the barn, the animals eat the silage, so long as there is a stack available to be eaten from.  It has made keeping my wool ranch much easier to keep fed... 12 muffalo, and 14 alpacas, are being fed via a 5x10 corn field, and a 10x20 hay field. And the hay field is part of the pasture, so they wander over there to eat also.