PSA: Pacus cannot be quickly domesticated using seeds

[ravalox]

As alluring as the idea of taming your colony's first pacu with seeds sounds, you'll never get your pacu tame before it lays its egg.  Klei has intentionally nerfed the feeding to once per two cycles, which nets only a 10% reduction in wildness.  I noticed something "fishy" right off the bat when the pacu only fed for the second time at age 7, so I spent the next hour determining their feeding schedule.  Once I determined the schedule, I only had to do the math to see by age 21 it would still be 30% wild.  All tolled, it takes 2 generations and 41 cycles to taste that first tame pacu using only seeds.

You can, however, ramp up fish farm production using seeds without decimating your algae resources.  One simply must use algae in order to quickly get that first domesticated pacu and save a ravenous Terra colony.

 

[ghkbrew]

On 11/21/2020 at 11:29 PM, ravalox said:

nerfed the feeding to once per two cycles

What are the mechanics of that? Do they simply refuse to eat for the next 2 cycles? Or do the eat enough for 2 cycles every time?

If you contrived to feed them less than 0.3 of a seed do they eat again sooner?

[MinhPham]

The egg will be at 30% wild, and the 2nd generation pacu will hatch at 30% wild .....

[ravalox]

6 hours ago, ghkbrew said:

What are the mechanics of that? Do they simply refuse to eat for the next 2 cycles? Or do the eat enough for 2 cycles every time?

If you contrived to feed them less than 0.3 of a seed do they eat again sooner?

They will only eat from the feeder every other cycle.  Each feast is ~125g when wild, so the value shown has been rounded up from 0.25K per cycle when tame and one seed is good for 4 cycles.  Regardless of the amount fed, hunger is always set to occur at a given kcal count.

6 hours ago, MinhPham said:

The egg will be at 30% wild, and the 2nd generation pacu will hatch at 30% wild .....

OK, but that still means it will take 36 cycles before a tame pacu egg is laid vs 7 cycles with algae. That's a lot of dead ravenous Terra colonies.  I've edited my last statement.

[jlarner]

On Terra, can't you feed them algae instead of seeds?

[pether]

6 minutes ago, jlarner said:

On Terra, can't you feed them algae instead of seeds?

you can

[ravalox]

8 minutes ago, jlarner said:

On Terra, can't you feed them algae instead of seeds?

Yes, but only after breaking through the granite and into a convenient nearby jungle biome.  A ravenous colony can easily die without the latter.

[jlarner]

Right, but that was true pre-DLC too.... Maybe I'm missing your point.... Are you saying that Pacus aren't currently viable as an early food source because they need too much algae, and that the DLC doesn't fix this 'problem' because seed don't work because they take too long to tame?

[ravalox]

If you have a stable food supply and sufficient algae resources, you will not have issues.  But if a ravenous Terra colony is desperate for food and you don't wish to be dependent upon RNG seed drops....

[Steve8]

It's probably just meant as a way to easily get rid of excess seeds. People have been wanting that for a long time

[goboking]

Ranching has been the go-to for min-maxers for a while now, so hopefully this swings the pendulum in the other direction a bit since farming skills boost the likelihood of seed drops and farming stations increasing the rate of harvests.