PSA: This bug can Destroy a Volt Goat Herd

[lakhnish]

Suppose you have a world that has two volt-goat herds, whether it be a Day 1000+ world, or a Day 1 world. 

What this bug can do is permanently remove a volt goat herd from a world not because they died, but because they merged together. The is how the bug works.

1. First off, you need a world that's given you two volt goat herds, whether it be a 1000+ day world, or a Day 1 world.  
2. Then both goat herds need to be close together (within 20 wall units, or 5 turf tiles).
3. From there, if at any point in time when both goat herds are close together and only ONE herd is low in population (like 1-2 goats in said herd), then guess what, your two goat herds decide to merge together, meaning that your world that had two goat herds now becomes a world with only one goat herd. To reiterate, this can happen on a newly generated world, or a day 1000+ world. 

This is a video back in October showing what I mean. Pay attention to the console/text on screen, since it states how many goat herds are present in a world during the process.

If you wish to see if your world starts with two goat herds, or your long standing two-volt-goat-herd world has been affected, you can use the following command (your character will say how many goat herds are in existence).

ThePlayer.components.talker:Say(tostring(c_countprefabs(”lightninggoatherd”)))

This bug was most likely introduced as an unintentional consequence to a bug fix made in Game Update 280490 in early August. The specific fix that was made was "Fixed bug preventing herds from merging properly". There was an issue in herd.lua that was not allowing herds to merge together, and this fix solved the overpopulating beefalo bug. However, beefalos are not the only ones that use herd.lua, volt goats also use herd.lua. That means that goat herds can merge together when they couldn’t before.

This also affects the console versions (PS4 update 129, Xbone Update 119).

I've reported this bug a few times already since I’ve learned of it (during the Celestial Update, the Hallowed Nights Event, and most recently, this Winter's Feast), but so far no response. To me, it either means there is no current solution for it (which I completely understand), or there's no plans on fixing it (which makes no sense since one, it only became a bug after that update, and two, there'd be no point in giving a world two goat herds only for them to merge). I couldn't tell you since there's been no official response to the bug and I couldn't figure out a solution myself as I'm not great at coding in general.

I know quite a few people whose long-standing worlds have been affected by this, and it’s all that has been on my mind since I learned about it. I've been too scared to touch goat herds in ANY world, and I really don't want to cheat and/or constantly check if a world's given me two goat herds to begin with (console players don't have this luxury either). I felt that it was especially important since there are plans for new content for the game next year, and I've been reporting it only after each major update in hopes that it would be addressed.

This ain't to say that bugs are not fixed, as the vast majority of bugs that I've reported have been fixed. Its just that I felt that this specific bug was not going to be addressed, even if I kept reporting it after each major update as I have been doing. Thanks! : -) :'(.

This spoiler leads to a more technical understanding of what I believe is the cause of the bug.

Spoiler