Why bother with ranching?

[Lacost]

Currently I don't see the point in ranching. The only thing it efficiently does is to provide coal from Hatches and that's it in my opinion. Even meat production is a luxury since stuffed berries provide all the morale you might ever need.

 

Downsides of ranching:

• Wastes a big amount of Dupe time (also not helped by the ranching stat levelling being bugged)
• Huge space requirements
• A lot of critters are usually needed causing considerable lag or fps issues
• Extensive automation is required to save Dupe time and kill off superfluous critters
• Gas and temperature need to be controlled for most critters (increases building time or causes maintenance)
• Ranching has to compete with normal industries and here is where it is mostly outclassed in my opinion

 

1. Shine bugs:

They used to be EXTREMELY powerful but, unfortunately, were nerfed some patches ago. Previously there was no cap for decor which you could abuse to create bedrooms with decor in the +10,000s using shine bugs. Now they are completely useless since a painting and a statue here and there will likely reach the decor cap. I haven't tried the solar panel shine bug farm though but I think it's just a gimmick.

 

2. Hatches:

The coal production is actually useful if you forget Sage Hatches exist. This is further enhanced because they are so easy to ranch. However, compared to petroleum generators and solar power, the coal that is produced is not really competitive.

 

3. Pacus:

I don't think you can call it ranching because all you do is put them in your water tank and farm the free meat. But since there is literally no effort in doing it I would say it's pretty good.

 

4. Pufts:

Bleach stone is useless, oxylite is easier produced in the oxylite refinery and later replaced by liquid oxygen. Slime is produced in large enough quantities but you likely want to switch to higher quality food than mushrooms for morale reasons by the time natural slime runs out. And for algae production you are better off using an electrolyser for oxygen. There is a valid point to use Pufts for polluted water generation since 24 of them can provide 400 g/s of water which is really good. However, you likely won't be able to supply enough polluted oxygen without an army of morbs (50 if no poxygen vent) which in return may reduce your fps (about 75 critters in total).

 

5. Dreckos:

A joke in my opinion. They need very elaborate setups with their diet and gas management but don't give you anything useful in return. Reed fibre and plastic are both too easy to produce with normal industries. By the time you have set up your Drecko stable, you will likely no longer have to produce reed fibre/plastic because your farms/polymer press already did the job. And if you want to produce large scale insulation or painting then thimble reed farming is still superior because it is so easy to scale up which can't be said about Dreckos.

 

6. Slicksters:

Given that the wiki is not outdated (I like to live dangerously) slicksters only produce 16.6 g/s of oil/petroleum. This is just too low. A single oil well can produce 3,333 g/s of oil which is roughly the equivalent of 200 slicksters. Granted, water might be a limitation but so is late game lag. And I do not want to build stables for a couple hundred slicksters. You also need a lot of ranchers to groom them otherwise they will become glum and stop producing oil and ranchers in return will add to the lag because of pathfinding issues. I haven't crunched the numbers on how many rancher you would need and how much oxygen = water they would consume but the numbers just seem to be too high.

 

7. Shove Vole:

Pretty useless. They produce a lot of meat but Pacus do the same thing completely for free.

 

8. Gassy Moo

They don't reproduce so you need space missions to maintain your population and they don't produce meat in a competitive way to other critters due to this. I haven't crunched the numbers but their stable requirements seem to be pretty demanding. They supply a decent amount of natural gas but usually by the point you get a significant amount of them, you will have access to solar power and petroleum generators which should provide all the power you might need.

 

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So all in all: Where is the point in ranching?

Are my assessments correct or have I blatantly misunderstood the usefulness of some of the critters?

Whats's your opinion on ranching? Is it useful or just a pet project for your Dupes?

[Coolthulhu]

1. Decor cap is fake. You can go over the cap, it just doesn't show on display. It still makes dupe "average decor per cycle" go up faster. Still, no reason to have shine bugs since they lag more than just having a row of statues on glass floor above barracks.

2. Hatches are available early and can live in any sane temperature, unlike plants. Also, early lime.

3. Pacu farming is great: no effort at all, can overcrowd them just fine in an open "ranch", tons of lime.

4. Pufts are genuinely useless.

5. Reeds are incredibly expensive on low water seeds. Dreckos are labor-only. And if you only shear and don't groom them, that's low labor.

6. Lag is a problem, but if it wasn't, you could have hordes of un-groomed slicksters eat up all that useless CO2 you have massive excess of and produce cheap petroleum and small amounts of meat+lime.

7. Pacus produce 1/4 of the meat/cycle that voles do, so voles could cause less lag at same meat production.

[chemie]

file ranching under "do it because you think it is fun or cool or whatever" vs doing it because it is meta

[Nightinggale]

I tend to ignore ranching. It's my impression that they are too much hassle compared to what you gain, both in dupe and player time. They also have the problem that they need food to survive. Machines will stop if they run out and start once you find more resources. Critters will die and they won't undie when you find more.

I tend to hoard wild slickers because they serve a dual purpose: oil and getting rid of excess CO2. I build something like 4 mesh tiles, walls they can't climb and then a big room on top. That limits their movements and keep the lag as low as possible.

Wild pakus are great too. You can dig a small hole for them, fill it with water and you get a source of food and lime without doing anything else. If placed right, you can gain 8 at a time from the printer and they will move into the water without you doing anything. Alternatively you can exploit that they can fall through doors.

I don't find any other critters useful. Hatches can be ok if you happen to be low on coal, but that happens rarely. I have however encountered a low coal world where I didn't even have enough coal to keep the ceramic production going, though I would dare to say that's rare.

[Saturnus]

Pacu farming is primarily for egg shells to produce lime for steel making.

Pacu eggs are 4kg each. Twice as much as most other critters. Half the weight is egg shells, the other half is raw eggs.

Eggs turn into raw eggs automatically without an egg cracker by sticking them in a storage of any kind.

Raw eggs turn into omelettes automatically without a grill by heating them to 71C or above.

Doing this lets you get rid of all the algae (and slime with algae distiller) on the map while making it into something useful.

[Nightinggale]

8 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

Doing this lets you get rid of all the algae (and slime with algae distiller) on the map while making it into something useful.

And here I thought oxygen would be useful

[Saturnus]

5 minutes ago, Nightinggale said:

And here I thought oxygen would be useful

It's not. At least not from algae deoxidizers beyond the first 50-60 cycles, 100 cycles in extreme cases, before you've set up a proper electrolyzer set up.

It's a terrible waste of resources to use algae deoxidizers longer than absolutely necessary to get a electrolyzer set up running because you're using a (mostly) non-renewable resource to get nothing useful in return. Water is a renewable resource, available on all maps.

[Nightinggale]

I would still argue that getting oxygen from algae is more useful than feeding algae to pakus even if I have an electrolyzer setup, particularly if you use the piped algae terrarium mod.

[Sasza22]

Ok so shinebugs aren`t terribly useful. But you should have a tiny ranch with lets say 3 or 4 so you can get the sun eggs for the zombie spore cure. No need to manage it just let them stay cramped. Even leave it at a low priority they bugs shouldn`t die off.

Hatches are useful as mentioned. Even sage hatches can be useful later when you set up electrolizers and got a ton of algae leftover that you don`t want to feed to pacus. Smooth hatches are kinda fun to get refined metals without power and heat. Also hatches don`t care about the atmosphere.

Pufts are pretty hard to manage. The lack of a reliable polluted oxygen source is a problem for those. Dense pufts are useful for free oxylite but you need to keep a prince there so it`s annoying to manage.

Dreckos are actually useful. You can setup a drecko ranch pretty early and get plastic from it way before you get to oil. Especially if you like to keep the base low tech. Again no power or heat requirements. Gas management can be tricky but once it`s in place is pretty effortless.

Slicksters can be just kept on the lower levels of your base to get rid of CO2. They actually recycle it back to crude oil if you use petroleum gens. It reduces the amount of oil you need. The ranch setup is super easy.

Shove voles are more of a pest than a ranchable critter. But apparently you can ift infinite amounts in a super small room withoout overcrowding them so maybe that`s the way to go.

The moo is a funny thing to have in the late game but someone did the math and they produce less power than solar paner would in the same space. I`m waiting for them to add more things to it. Like space milk or something.

All in all ranching can do the same industry can but without using as much power and prodcuing as much heat. On the contrary it requires more dupe time, space and is not as effective. You can go either approach. Go low tech and hard on ranching or full tech with less dupes and just ignore the critters (or turn them into meat).

[Nightinggale]

One thing, which could turn ranching into something more interesting is to do as Rimworld does: luxury food requires both plants and meat, which in turn makes animal husbandry or hunting interesting. Right now ONI treats meat as a low quality food compared to multiple plant only food, meaning to optimize for high food expectations, you should avoid ranching.

On the other hand, making ranching mandatory for high level dupes might not be wise considering that would require adding more critters to large bases and those bases already suffer from low FPS.

[Saturnus]

11 minutes ago, Nightinggale said:

I would still argue that getting oxygen from algae is more useful than feeding algae to pakus even if I have an electrolyzer setup, particularly if you use the piped algae terrarium mod.

I don't use cheats*, so no.

 

 

*before you ask, yes, I consider all mods without exception, even those that do not change any aspect of the game, as cheats. Because it's easier to just play the game in vanilla, and consider that the only acceptable option, than to try and evaluate between mods for their game breaking potential.

[Sasza22]

6 minutes ago, Nightinggale said:

One thing, which could turn ranching into something more interesting is to do as Rimworld does: luxury food requires both plants and meat, which in turn makes animal husbandry or hunting interesting

More food types out of meat would be nice. Maybe you could make a soup that requires less meat but some plant based food and a bit of water. It would be a more balanced way of using meat beacause currently it requires a lot of critters to create bbq for all dupes so you can`t feed them only meat moist of the time. A soup would give an option to feed them all with less critters and just a few plants.

I wish there was a 3rd tier cooking station that used water. It could create multiple soup types based on different plants and with just a bit of meat. Also a few vegetarian options (in b4 we create a DS style food station with tons of recipies)

[Nightinggale]

6 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

I don't use cheats*, so no.

An oxygen diffuser could also turn algae into oxygen with not dupe interaction. There is another thread on how to get oxygen from algae terrariums with minimal dupe interaction. Oxygen from algae is viable even without mods.

6 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

*before you ask, yes, I consider all mods without exception, even those that do not change any aspect of the game, as cheats. Because it's easier to just play the game in vanilla, and consider that the only acceptable option, than to try and evaluate between mods for their game breaking potential.

Some mods could be considered cheating, but not all. One of the most recent mods is a bugfix. Klei also fixed the bug, but it won't be out until the next release, hence the mod as a temporal solution to get the bugfix here and now. Calling all mods cheats is missing the point in mods.

[Saturnus]

Just now, Nightinggale said:

Calling all mods cheats is missing the point in mods.

Not in my opinion but it's a single player game, you can do whatever floats your boat.

[Trego]

1 hour ago, Saturnus said:

*before you ask, yes, I consider all mods without exception, even those that do not change any aspect of the game, as cheats. Because it's easier to just play the game in vanilla, and consider that the only acceptable option, than to try and evaluate between mods for their game breaking potential.

Consider the irony of your position:

1. You justify calling mods 'cheats' because it's "easier" for you to do so instead of trying to distinguish between them.

2. However, it would clearly be even easier to simply say you don't use mods without calling them cheats, since the only difference between simply not using mods, and not using mods and also calling them cheats, is that in the latter case you make others feel bad and start an argument.

3. Additionally, as far as I can tell, what would make a mod 'game-breaking' is if it makes the game significantly easier, except your base position above is that you prefer doing the easier thing , so you've avoided distinguishing between mods because it's easier, but now you are left to explain why you prefer doing the easier thing on the forums but it breaks the game to make it easier, which you can certainly do, but wouldn't it be easier not to have brought it up in the first place

4.  You're well known on the forums for some bug-finding and intricate and efficient designs which most would consider difficult 

[Lacost]

1 hour ago, Saturnus said:

Pacu farming is primarily for egg shells to produce lime for steel making.

Right, egg shells for lime is a good point for lategame steel production. But still, I wouldn't consider Pacus as "ranchable" critters since they do not behave like normal ones.

3 hours ago, Coolthulhu said:

1. Decor cap is fake. You can go over the cap, it just doesn't show on display. It still makes dupe "average decor per cycle" go up faster. Still, no reason to have shine bugs since they lag more than just having a row of statues on glass floor above barracks.

This changes everything!

The reason why I mentioned shine bugs for decor was that you can get a lot of morale early in the game before you find your geysers. However, early game morale is not a problem so there goes that. Still, I will try to resurrect my shine bug farm for extremely high decor while sleeping/eating/idling.

1 hour ago, Sasza22 said:

Ok so shinebugs aren`t terribly useful. But you should have a tiny ranch with lets say 3 or 4 so you can get the sun eggs for the zombie spore cure. No need to manage it just let them stay cramped. Even leave it at a low priority they bugs shouldn`t die off.

Yeah, no. I can't ever see zombie spores being an issue in the current patch. Once you breach the oil biome you will have atmo suits anyways and this lowers the infection risk to 0%. Having a precaution stable for something that will never happen is no argument in favour of ranching in my point of view.

1 hour ago, Sasza22 said:

All in all ranching can do the same industry can but without using as much power and prodcuing as much heat. On the contrary it requires more dupe time, space and is not as effective. You can go either approach. Go low tech and hard on ranching or full tech with less dupes and just ignore the critters (or turn them into meat).

Power and heat can be permanently solved whilst Dupe time and fps-efficiency are permanent problems. Ranching would have a place if it was actually less expensive than the industrial approach but in reality it's the other way around. Ranching is expensive and industry is cheap. I wouldn't rank both as equally viable. If anything at all, ranching only can be considered a hardmode for ONI.

1 hour ago, Nightinggale said:

One thing, which could turn ranching into something more interesting is to do as Rimworld does: luxury food requires both plants and meat, which in turn makes animal husbandry or hunting interesting. Right now ONI treats meat as a low quality food compared to multiple plant only food, meaning to optimize for high food expectations, you should avoid ranching.

Barbeque is the best food item in the game with +5 quality and stress reduction due to soul food. Meat is a luxury but still the best food item in the game. I don't see how ONI treats meat as a low quality food?

 

[Nightinggale]

14 minutes ago, Lacost said:

Barbeque is the best food item in the game with +5 quality and stress reduction due to soul food. Meat is a luxury but still the best food item in the game. I don't see how ONI treats meat as a low quality food?

I have a decent memory regarding "good food", but apparently stats have changed for food I rarely/never use. Barbecue used to be like +3. Now I need to relearn all of of the new food stats.

[hypoeffort]

The only useful ranching is a slickster farm to handle your excess co2.  Dont expect much oil, but the co2 scrubbing is nice.

[hacksaw12]

Vole farming is easy, keep them wild like the Pacu pond. Once your roof is built to stop unwanted terrain modifications, build a floor accessible only by ladders, put a critter drop and a sweep only egg storage container there. Wrangle them as you find them, and put the eggs in storage, then empty the storage from time to time to let them incubate. They stay happy, You can use the hopper to drop excess regolith to them, but not necessary, they don't starve since they're wild. Check every now and then for eggs laid while they were on the bottom side of the floor, as these will fall on whatever is below and eventually hatch in the wrong place. Collect the free meat and egg shells from time to time.

[Gurgel]

I don't bother with ranching either.

[Neotuck]

9 hours ago, Lacost said:

So all in all: Where is the point in ranching?

Lime production which is needed for steel

[Nightinggale]

1 hour ago, Neotuck said:

Lime production which is needed for steel

Then what's the point in ranching low lime critters?

[KittenIsAGeek]

9 hours ago, Lacost said:

Currently I don't see the point in ranching. The only thing it efficiently does is to provide coal from Hatches and that's it in my opinion. Even meat production is a luxury since stuffed berries provide all the morale you might ever need.

There are many reasons for Ranching.   I use them frequently as a way to augment other systems.  

1. Shine Bugs.  I don't actually farm them, except to get their population numbers up a bit.  They are a heat-free source of light, so often I'll enclose a few in my berry rooms, or with my algae farm.  It isn't perfect, because sometimes they'll gravitate to one side, but hey..  I also take advantage of their egg shells to get some steel started before I've reached the oil biome.  
2. Hatches.  These li'l buggers are great.  I don't farm them to use coal as a primary source of power, but the coal they produce is definitely useful until I've gotten other power sources off the ground.  Since I also use coal generators in areas that are far from my main base, or only need power rarely, having a continuous supply of coal is nice.  The eggs are also good in the early stages of my base for omlettes to augment my mushroom farm until I've gotten berries set up.
3. Pacu.  Don't exactly need to farm them, exactly.  Just give them decent living conditions and they're fine.  Sometimes I use the gulp fish to clean up some polluted water (free cooling too!), but usually I just gather up the meat from their short lives.
4. Pufts are interesting.  They're a bit complicated, but with the right set-up they can augment other systems.  I've put dense pufts in high-pressure oxygen rooms to produce oxylite early in the game before I've set up (or researched) refineries.  I've also used regular pufts to clean up random PO2 pockets in my base or supplement my mushroom farm.  Haven't had a use for squeeky pufts yet. Except absolute cuteness overload when the babies hatch.. OMG!
5. Drekkos are a nice way to get reed fiber or plastics without using other resources  I wouldn't use them as a primary source, but I have used them when I only needed a bit.  Like, building a micro pump or a steam turbine, or "Dupe's First Painting Canvas."  
6. Slicksters.  OK, Slicksters are cool.  They... still need work, but for the most part, I like them.  My favorite is once I've started breeding Longhairs.  I can put them around in various parts of my base for extra decor.  Again, I wouldn't use them for a primary source of crude, but turning something abundant and almost useless (CO2) into something useful (crude/petrol) is always a good thing.
7. I haven't worked a lot with Shove Voles or Gassy Moos yet.  But I figure I'll find the same: They are useful, but as a way to augment other systems and not as a primary souce.

 

That seems to be what I find most in the threads.  Ranching can't really scale up to be a primary source of anything.  However, they can augment systems that are already in place.  Some turn "waste" materials into more useful ones, some produce useful materials, and some just live, breed, and die quickly.  You don't need to maintain a ranch when you no longer find the critters useful, just as you wouldn't continue to use an Oil Refinery once you've built a boiler.  Sometimes the critters make sense for where you're at in your base progression. Sometimes they don't. Just because you can build a feedlot doesn't mean you MUST.

What's up with #3? Forgot the word "pacu," then used 'exactly" too many times.. .. Am I too old to re-enroll in the 4th grade to re-take basic grammar?

[WanderingKid]

5 hours ago, Lacost said:

Yeah, no. I can't ever see zombie spores being an issue in the current patch. Once you breach the oil biome you will have atmo suits anyways and this lowers the infection risk to 0%. Having a precaution stable for something that will never happen is no argument in favour of ranching in my point of view.

I typically breach the oil biome with ice and no suits.  I only typically get suits when I'm doing strip mining for lime or space, and even then it's eventually.

You can obliterate temperature problems with hatches if you vacuum seal the stone hatches in and heat dump/destroy igneous with them.

Something no one is mentioning (sorry if I missed it) is that Dreckos are a resource-free permanent food source besides mass pacu / vole farming.  Dreckos in chlorine/lily with wild pincha are BBQ for free.  So are voles if you just feed them the 30 billion tons of regolith.

I personally would like it if Pacu's got a development pass.  They either require ridiculous amounts of automation, glitching the feeder(s), or tons of algae.  Would be nice if pufts, shinebugs, and slicksters were more useful as well.  I consider them garbage critters currently. 

In general ranching can be done at industrial levels if you use smart design.  Hatches need 96 cells of space, not 96 cells to walk around in.  Build taller, use it for storage.  However, it really depends on how many dupes you're trying to feed/produce for.  If you're talking 100+ dupes, yeah, the game needs a few optimization passes to really ranch that much successfully.

[Sasza22]

5 hours ago, Lacost said:

Power and heat can be permanently solved whilst Dupe time and fps-efficiency are permanent problems. Ranching would have a place if it was actually less expensive than the industrial approach but in reality it's the other way around. Ranching is expensive and industry is cheap. I wouldn't rank both as equally viable. If anything at all, ranching only can be considered a hardmode for ONI.

As i said it`s a different apporach. It`s ok to just ignore ranching since industry is more efficient. A ranch based colony can do the same in a different way. I don`t really consider fps as balance (maybe i should) it`s just a bad sideeffect of having too many critters.

Actually i consider ranching easier than industry. It requires less setup and no cooling most of the time. Consumes very little power. I had colonies producing most resources being powered by just 2 or 3 coal gens. Anyway it`s just preference. Both ways are good. Use the one you enjoy more.