Food and ranching

[Kerma]

I didn't quite get it or I'm not up to date with the discussions. There was no balance in food or ranching issues in this update, does this symbolize that they are done with those? I was really hoping for some tweaks.

[Sasza22]

We know that there will be more critters and biomes added on release. This might mean some changes to ranching and possibly more food recipies. But we can`t be sure. Food balance wasn`t touched for a while and it seems it`s ok now. Ranching might have some issues but a few were fixed this patch (open ranches no longer work, ranching skill does something now).

[Kerma]

Open ranch doesn't work?? Oh my!
 
Thanks for the info!

[goboking]

Aside from pacu, are there any pressing issues that need to be addressed?

[pacovf]

1 hour ago, goboking said:

Aside from pacu, are there any pressing issues that need to be addressed?

Puft’s metabolism being so slow you need ridiculous numbers of them to matter, probably.

And maybe making sage hatches a bit more useful, they don’t seem to fill any niche right now. Though that may change if pacus are rebalanced.

[JohnFrancis]

Each point in ranching gives +10% to groomed duration now. This is huge, if you get a dupe to 20 ranching they can groom about 36-48 critters. Unfortunately there is no way to level up ranching outside of starting stats and skills.

[pacovf]

4 minutes ago, JohnFrancis said:

Each point in ranching gives +10% to groomed duration now. This is huge, if you get a dupe to 20 ranching they can groom about 36-48 critters. Unfortunately there is no way to level up ranching outside of starting stats and skills.

That has to be an oversight. Dupes should get better at ranching the more critters they groom.

[miauly]

I like Ranching a lot, it fits so nicely in many ways - decor from bugs, plastic from dreckos, refined metal from hatches. An eco-base goes really well for me if I start right away, and Skill changes really help with that. Also leads me to the Slime biome to get smooth hatches and have some fun with Diseases too  I am so much into Ranching I once tested an idea of cooling electrolyzer oxygen and transporting it around the base by feeding it to Dense Pufts. That did not quite work out 

But I second that this system feels incomplete, which is really sad as I would like to rely on it heavily. Pacus are weird in about all ways - they eat too much and too little at the same time, space requirements do not look fine as well. The effective ways of ranching them that I've read about on this forum all feel like non-eco at all to me, sort of breaks the point. Ranching for meat means drowning or starving critters which feels cruel. Pufts don't quite have their own purpose or maybe it's just that I don't see it.

I'd be really happy if pacus and critter-to-meat conversion get addressed at some point.

[pacovf]

25 minutes ago, miauly said:

I’d be really happy if pacus and critter-to-meat conversion get addressed at some point.

I agree that there is no convenient and non-cruel way to kill critters. I have setup my ranch so that eggs get swept and are held in a storage locker, out of reach from dupes. When the critters in the ranch get below the maximum, an egg is sent to an incubator next to the ranch (dupes can access the incubator). Eggs that become unviable get sent to an automatic cooker instead.

Omelettes are less good than BBQ, both in quality and caloric content, but I am happy I don’t drown babies

[miauly]

 

2 minutes ago, pacovf said:

Omelettes are less good than BBQ, both in quality and caloric content, but I am happy I don’t drown babies

Good to know I am not the only one who sticks to omelettes out of compassion for critters 

[Gus Smedstad]

21 minutes ago, pacovf said:

I agree that there is no convenient and non-cruel way to kill critters.

You can always let them die of old age. It's really, really slow, but it involves no effort and isn't cruel.

Of course, you could argue that sticking critters in a room with no food is pretty cruel. That's typically what I do with my overflows. Particularly fish.

[pacovf]

15 minutes ago, Gus Smedstad said:

You can always let them die of old age. It's really, really slow, but it involves no effort and isn't cruel.

Of course, you could argue that sticking critters in a room with no food is pretty cruel. That's typically what I do with my overflows. Particularly fish.

Pacus right now are kind of unbalanced both ways, so it's hard to compare. 

For the other critters, I think the main options that keep critter count mostly constant are:

• Ranch them without controlling egg laying. Eventually, they will alternate between cramped and expecting, and you will only get enough eggs to replace death rate. This is fine if you are only trying to maintain a baseline population of the critter, but pretty inefficient otherwise, since their metabolism slows down when cramped.
• Ranch them while cooking excess eggs. This is fine, if you are ok with getting eggs instead of meat.
• Ranch them while killing excess critters. The two main ways to automate killing are drowning and starving to death. You could also move them outside their livable temperature range. All of these feel kinda cruel to me, especially since it's usually the babies that get killed.
• Ranch some in good egg-laying conditions, and the rest in a cramped ranch (with or without grooming, makes no difference). It's slower and more expensive (in space and feeding) than the previous solution, though arguably less cruel. Note that you will have about 10 cramped critters per each egg-laying one.

I think every other solution will either have you give up egg-laying, or will see your critter population explode, but would be happy to be proven wrong.

[Zarquan]

8 minutes ago, pacovf said:

Ranch them without controlling egg laying. Eventually, they will alternate between cramped and expecting, and you will only get enough eggs to replace death rate. This is fine if you are only trying to maintain a baseline population of the critter, but pretty inefficient otherwise, since their metabolism slows down when cramped.

Not if you remove the eggs, hatch them, then drop them back in the water.  If there are no eggs, they are never expecting.  I usually put sweepers at the bottom of my ranches and set it up so that the critters can get in to the ranch in a 1 way mechanism.

[pacovf]

1 hour ago, Zarquan said:

Not if you remove the eggs, hatch them, then drop them back in the water.  If there are no eggs, they are never expecting.  I usually put sweepers at the bottom of my ranches and set it up so that the critters can get in to the ranch in a 1 way mechanism.

Not sure I understand, is this different from the third scenario I outlined?

[Gus Smedstad]

3 hours ago, pacovf said:

• Ranch some in good egg-laying conditions, and the rest in a cramped ranch (with or without grooming, makes no difference). It's slower and more expensive (in space and feeding) than the previous solution, though arguably less cruel. Note that you will have about 10 cramped critters per each egg-laying one.

That's pretty much what I've done, minus the feeding part. The overhead for critters was wrangling. For Pacu it was running eggs through an incubator, which meant I had to click on it to release the hatched Pacus. The eggs got delivered to the incubator via conveyor.

[miauly]

Minus feeding part means starving them to death, so this feels like back to square one if we are discussing the lack of non-cruel way to get meat. Granted that they all are computer animations of course.

[JohnFrancis]

On 4/18/2019 at 4:43 PM, JohnFrancis said:

Each point in ranching gives +10% to groomed duration now. This is huge, if you get a dupe to 20 ranching they can groom about 36-48 critters. Unfortunately there is no way to level up ranching outside of starting stats and skills.

Would appear I was incorrect I have a Dupe that gained +2 ranching in my current play through. Have not tested it but I'm assuming it's the egg hugging that gives the exp, would also explain why the leveling is so slow.

*Edit I think I see the method here, if you just drop eggs and let them hatch instead of using the incubators your ranchers will not level up. So you have a choice, never have your ranchers improve but zero overhead or have them improve but you have to deal with power/heat of incubators.

[Gurgel]

14 hours ago, JohnFrancis said:

Would appear I was incorrect I have a Dupe that gained +2 ranching in my current play through. Have not tested it but I'm assuming it's the egg hugging that gives the exp, would also explain why the leveling is so slow.

Never thought of that. Thanks.