Designation for farm animals to prevent bonding.

[NolanSyKinsley]

I am trying to run a muffalo farm, but and quickly realizing that I cannot, because the handlers all get bonded to every single muffalo. Already half of my adult muffalo and a third of the children of a decent sized heard have been bonded to someone. One of my handlers became bonded to 3 new ones on a single milking trip through the herd.

We need a way to designate that these are farm animals, they will die, do not get attached, these are food, not pets.

[Franklin]

I think making a needs-nulling rule like that would go against the spirit of the 'complex, emotional simulation' basis of the game. People are gonna fall in love with their cows and chickens like they do their coworkers, it happens. That's how vegetarians/vegans are born.

But yeah, there should be a sub-layer of utilitarian understanding amongst the colonists and the various animals. Like the chance of bonding should be x-times less likely amongst utility animals vs. companion animals, or at very least there should be a 'dislikes animals' trait you can then leverage and make those people the husbandry workers.

[NolanSyKinsley]

yes, some person will get bonded to a stray animal or two, I can handle that. But since I posted this, i have had two other instances of one person going out to milk or shear the muffalo and bonding with 3 of them. That is simply not sustainable, the options are don't eat or put your animal handlers through psychoses. There is no way to have a meat farm, save for eggs, that will not end up destroying the mental state of several of your farmers.

This is coming from someone who had turkeys, one was named frank, all the others remained nameless because we knew that they were going to be eaten on one holiday or another. Along with complex, emotional interactions one of those interactions needs to be setting limits.

[cultist]

Animal bonding is a mess in general. The only good thing about it is the tiny mood boost if you can match the animal with a colonist whose Animals skill is high enough to even control it. In every other case, bonding is a liability and something to be avoided. Which is a shame.

[Kegereneku]

Well, at least you can avoid bonding entirely if you don't select an handler. Even if it mean you can't train them.

[Wex]

Wait. Are you training your muffalos?
I have something about 20 of them, none had bonded.
DO NOT TRAIN THEM.
I also had a snowhare farm, I made the mistake of training the first 2, they instantly bonded.

[Pax_Empyrean]

I think making a needs-nulling rule like that would go against the spirit of the 'complex, emotional simulation' basis of the game. People are gonna fall in love with their cows and chickens like they do their coworkers, it happens. That's how vegetarians/vegans are born.

This is basically just modern sentimental bullshit. Best friend growing up had a farm, they raised cattle. No tears were shed when it came time to butcher them. It takes work to anthropomorphize something like a chicken, and the idea that my tribal colony would suffer psychological trauma from butchering chickens is ridiculous.

[SpaceDorf]

I just came up with this in the Cheapest Idea thread :

To slow down bonding with walking meat, the animals base intelligence should reflect the chance of bonding ( high with intelligent animals, low to none with others )

[cultist]

Well, at least you can avoid bonding entirely if you don't select an handler. Even if it mean you can't train them.

Nope. I was playing a game yesterday where a pawn bonded with a muffalo that got shot up in a firefight while healing it. I tamed it earlier that day and had not assigned it for training. That muffalo was very likely to die, ruining that pawn's mood for days for no real reason.

The current state of the bonding/relationship system heavily favors avoiding any sort of social interaction. Every marriage and friendship is just a ticking mood bomb waiting to go off. Every bonded animal becomes another thing you have to care for and worry about or face severe mood penalties. The best action to take with incapped hostiles is nothing, if you try to heal them and they die, you get punished again. I'm fine with good intentions going unrewarded, but despite all the recent social additions, the game encourages a colony of cannibal psychopaths more than ever. The mechanics in place simply destroy and punish any form of humanity or good intentions towards hostile factions, which I think makes the game less complex than it could be.

Tynan has promised mood values will be balanced in the future. I hope it's on the A15 schedule, because if you read the steam reviews it's clear that the currently rather punishing mood system (compared to previous alphas) is causing a lot of problems and annoyance for new players. A14 pawns seem to have trouble keeping all their new emotions and relationship options under control, and I think it's currently one of the biggest balance issues in the game.

[Vegtamr]

I kill terriers and cats because bonding animals are such a pain in the ass D;

[Kegereneku]

As someone else said, I have yet to see animal-trainer bond if the animal is NOT trained/taught to do anything.
I don't know if something have changed in the code or if I was lucky, but I have correlated "not creating bond" with "not training"

[Franklin]

I think making a needs-nulling rule like that would go against the spirit of the 'complex, emotional simulation' basis of the game. People are gonna fall in love with their cows and chickens like they do their coworkers, it happens. That's how vegetarians/vegans are born.

This is basically just modern sentimental bullshit. Best friend growing up had a farm, they raised cattle. No tears were shed when it came time to butcher them. It takes work to anthropomorphize something like a chicken, and the idea that my tribal colony would suffer psychological trauma from butchering chickens is ridiculous.

The anecdotal example on why this is just 'modern sentimental bullshit' is appreciated, but as someone myself who was raised on a farm and then taking from it a disgust of the practices became vegan, it happens more often than you think. And isn't this game set in the future? Wouldn't humans in-game be more modern and progressive than us now?

Anyway, I'm not saying the odds are high that every cow becomes a loved one when you're a crash-landed labourer trying to survive, right now bonding is perhaps too frequent, but it happens, and I'm glad it's represented in-game. It adds complexity to the game's underpinnings, beyond some min/maxing function-assignment simulation. So hopefully we see it balanced.

[cultist]

As someone else said, I have yet to see animal-trainer bond if the animal is NOT trained/taught to do anything.
I don't know if something have changed in the code or if I was lucky, but I have correlated "not creating bond" with "not training"

I still don't think that's true but I see why you might have that impression. Bonding (apart from starting pets) generally only happens when a pawn is spending a certain amount of time near an animal, usually training/milking/shearing it etc. This means that usually only trainers will bond because they're the only available target. But doctors will spend a good amount of time standing next to a resting animal, creating ideal conditions for bonding (the doctor is the nearest target and the animal is not moving). I don't know if the fact that the pawn is healing the animal  increases the odds of bonding even more, but it makes sense.

[SpaceDorf]

Healing could definitely raise the opinion of the animal quite a bit.
Getting Rescued and Botched Operations Certainly show up in the Social Tab.

[cultist]

Healing could definitely raise the opinion of the animal quite a bit.
Getting Rescued and Botched Operations Certainly show up in the Social Tab.

Do animals have opinions about pawns? I've never seen anything apart from bonds in their social tabs.