Let's discuss the new critter moods and strategic ramifications

[blakemw]

So the latest public testing build introduces an exciting and highly impactful change to critters.

Now there are now four main states of mood:

• Happy: the critter has full metabolism and increased reproduction. Achieved with Grooming or Critter Fountain.
• Satisfied: The critter has full metabolism but replacement level reproduction. Achieved most straightforwardly by having an uncrowded ranch with a Critter Condo.
• Glum: the critter has greatly reduced metabolism and replacement level reproduction. Easily achieved by not giving the critters nice things.
• Miserable: the critter has greatly reduced metabolism and no reproduction. Easily achieved by a high degree of overcrowding.

This has large strategic ramifications, it would seem:

• The Purpose of happy is to increase populations, or to produce surplus eggs for large scale omelette/meat production.
• The Purpose of Satisfied is for resource conversion with population replacement without the need for grooming labor or critter fountains. Satisfied allows this conversion to be done with 1/5th as many critters compared with previous glum unranched populations.
• Glum may still find a purpose for critters like Dreckos and Plug Slugs which have a secondary production not effected by metabolism, it's something of a no-brainer to get full secondary production for 1/5th the calories (personally I don't like this mechanic, there shouldn't be very strong incentive to neglect critters). 
• Miserable seems to mainly prevent "remove the eggs" concentration camps. You can still put like 8 critters in a 12 tile room but it avoids excesses like putting 100 critters in a 12 tile room. Miserable may have applications for Drecko starvation ranches where the doomed critters never get the chance to lay an egg anyway, though this isn't so much a use for miserable, just a callous indifference as to whether the critters are glum or miserable. Note: Wild critters don't seem to be able to be miserable, they're just glum.
• Starvation, as it carries a -10 happiness penalty, now kills reproduction unless the critter has bonus happiness from groomed or critter fountain, allowing it to be Glum. Cozy by itself is not enough to prevent a starving critter from being miserable. However since starvation reproduction has always relied on grooming, except pacus, I don't think this actually changes anything.

What critters can get the Cozy buff?

It seems:

• Flying critters can not use the Critter Condo or Water Fort, meaning Gassy Moos, Pufts and Shine Bugs are not able to get the Cozy buff (Is a flying critter equivalent coming?)
• Most ranchable critters that don't swim or fly can use the Critter Condo, the exception is Pokeshells.
• Pacus obviously use the Water Fort.
• Pokeshells only use the Water Fort and not the Critter Condo, despite being amphibious.
• Plug Slugs, including Sponge Slug, only use the Critter Condo and not the Water Fort despite being amphibious. 

Ranching for resource conversion

For those who ranch mainly for resource conversion rather than food, Satisfied is going to be the new Happy, it's better in every way for resource conversion. This makes ranching a very un-important skill and attribute for critters which can get the Cozy buff, you have to do a little grooming to build populations, but once the population is at the desired level ranching is only needed for odd wrangling jobs as the resource conversion critters will replace themselves with 1 egg per lifetime.

The most useful way of getting Satisfied would seem to be using a non-crowded ranch with a Condo.

You can technically also achieve Satisfied with a crowded ranch and grooming/brackene, I don't see this being very useful, but it would technically be possible for example to pack 6 critters into a 24 tile ranch (or 32 tile for Pufts etc) if the critters are groomed/fountained. This allows for much more resource conversion in a small space and I guess it could have some micro-base applications perhaps like getting a bunch of Slicksters in a small place to convert CO2 from a micro petroleum boiler, or if you don't care about labor and want to make micro-builds for fun. But overall doesn't seem terribly useful.

(note that none of the above applies when the critters are cramped by an egg. Cramped is not a mood and doesn't effect and is not effected by happiness. Critters can be crowded but still happy, but those things which compensate for crowded do not compensate for cramped).

Ranching for food

It doesn't seem to be a huge change when it comes to ranching critters primarily for food, but there are some effects. You can fit an extra critter in a breeder ranch if you have a Condo, hence having 9  critters in a 96 tile ranch instead of 8. This +1 critter is more significant for small ranches, where you could go from 2 to 3 critters in a 24 tile ranch. If flying critters could get Cozy this would be slightly more impactful for them as they require 16 tiles per critter instead of 12.
 

What critters benefit most

My hunch is that the critters that benefit most from this patch is those critters which exist primarily for resource conversion rather than for meat/omelette or for secondary functions.

I think these are the main critters that become more useful thanks to Satisfied:

• All Pufts, but mainly if flying critters become eligible for Cozy.
• Slicksters and Molten Slicksters.
• Smooth hatches. if you use them
• Other Hatches if you don't care about food but do want coal.
• Pips possibly if you are serious about dirt consumption.

And that about it I think. Not to say that other critters aren't useful for resource conversion, but you probably get enough resource conversion "on the side" when ranching them for another reason.

I think right now, Slicksters are the biggest winners, as they can easily be made Satisfied, and a ranch of 8 Satisfied Slicksters will perform as much resource conversion as 40 Glum Slicksters, that's a huge deal.

Pokeshells can be used for resource conversion, but their appetite is so voracious relative to food supply that even glum ones have done a perfectly good job of resource conversion. However I guess you can now get away with having just like 1 Pokeshell, in a 3 tile deep pond with a Water Fort (it needs to be fully submerged, though you can use layers of thin films of liquid), and it'll do all the resource conversion you ever need. Doesn't save many critters or much labor though and often Pokshells are not ranched for conversion but for molts.

Flying critters are in an awkward place at the moment. Gassy Moos seem to gain nothing at all from being Happy rather than Satisified (hopefully this changes so their accu-moo-lation is higher when Happy than Satisfied), but the only way to make them Satisfied is to combine grooming/fountain and crowding. Pufts seem like they could really be much more useful with Satisfied, but presently the only use is packing more Pufts in a small ranch, you can't escape the need for labor/brackene.

What Critters are the biggest losers

(in terms of gameplay advantage to the player, not their living conditions)

Definitely Pacu. But is starvation ranching impossible? Nope. A Pacu starts adulthood with 400 kcals. Being glum they lose 20 kcal/cycle. They gain egg chance at 7% per cycle. After 14 cycles they lay an egg, at this time they still have over 100 kcal in the bank. So it's not even close, a glum Pacu still lays an egg even if it never sees food.

However, some versions of starvation ranching of Pacu are nerfed. You now have to limit crowding so they don't become miserable. You can put 8 unfed pacus in a single isolated tile of water, but no more. "Flopper" builds still work, when you have 'infinite' pacus flopping on the floor, and occasionally submerged so they can lay eggs, flopping pacus don't experience crowding/cramped and don't have any happiness penalty (I kind of hope this changes).

Also as far as I can tell, the Water Fort is not that useful to Pacus. The most obvious use is cramming one extra Pacu in a breeding chamber of a given volume. I don't see why you'd ever want Satisfied Pacu, you either want Happy to produce many eggs, or Glum to minimize metabolism. Actually, I can see one perverse incentive. Pacus are notoriously annoying to kill prematurely to turn into fillet quicker. Normally players just don't bother killing them, since why not let them live out their life and lay an egg and still drop a fillet. But if you REALLY want to kill them, then giving them a Condo will cause them to starve to death a little quicker (unfortunately starvation timer is still 10 cycles).

OMG TL;DR

Flying Critters can presently not get Cozy.

Slicksters are a big winner with this patch, because you can put 8 in a ranch with a Critter Condo and get as much labor-free resource conversion as 40 Glum Slicksters. Big win. Other resource conversion critters win less because you don't need nearly as many but there are minor savings to be had on critter count or labor.

You can always stuff an extra critter in a Groomed Ranch by adding a Condo, so you can have 9 Hatches instead of 8. Without adding an extra critter, a Condo doesn't do much as "happy is happy", but if the groomed buff falls off they can still be Satisfied and do full resource conversion.

Pacu "infinite" starvation ranching is still possible, some variants won't work due to miserable, some will still work. 

[cyberwarlord]

Flying critters home?

Hanging building.

[Primalflower]

shame that pacu starvation ranching isn't quite fixed totally yet, although made a decent bit harder. with delecta voles throwing a little bit of a wrench into shove vole starvation ranching, It'd be nice congruency was met in pacu.

[blakemw]

Let's look at ranch layouts.

Is this the future of Pacu torementation? Group cells with 8 of the worst criminals known to duplicant-kind locked in each cell.

Of course flopper builds are better. But I wouldn't mind if flopping made Pacus miserable. I mean, if 10 Pacu in a tiny puddle of water are miserable. I know it sounds very big brain to "just take away the puddle" so they aren't miserable anymore. But I dunno, kind of seems fish would be more miserable flopping around on dry land. But that's just me.

 

On a lighter note. Now there seems to be slightly more incentive to use small ranches. Obviously economy of scale is always going to be worse with small cells, but sometimes you may not need a full ranch.

For example I could easily imagine using something a lot like this:

A single satisfied Pokeshell should eat all the polluted dirt produced by an average Water Sieve unless the base has some really serious polluted water conversion going on. There's no need to manage the population, the cell is a generous 32 cells, so even when the Pokeshell lays its egg, it is not crowded. When the egg hatches there will be two Pokeshells, probably no big deal.

The Starving = No Reproduction Hiccup

The only possible hiccup is that now starving critters don't gain reproduction unless they are being groomed (which I think is dumb, starving critters should just always be miserable), and the Condo/Fort doesn't provide enough happiness. So if the offspring spends too much of its life starving, it may never lay an egg. That would almost never be an issue with Glum critters because their metabolism is so much lower, they can get a fair chunk of the way to laying an egg before their starting calories run out.

But it should be possible to use tactical glumness to reduce calorie burn, for example the Critter Fort is very easily disabled by lowering the water level. So for example something like this:

Where unless the Pressure Plate detects a certain mass of food (with a FILTER gate to eliminate noise from the Pokshell walking over it), the Mechanical Airlock remains open and the Water Fort non-functional. When the door closes, the Water Fort is activated, the Pokeshell becomes Satisfied, and eats a lot more food. This setup automatically allows the Pokeshell to be Glum if there isn't enough calories to sustain a Satisfied metabolism.

It's common to use a trick where a building is built on a Mechanical Airlock to selectively disable the building, that can't be used for Water Fort because both Pacus and Pokeshells will get trapped in Airlocks. But it can work for the Critter Condo, specifically Hatches and Voles can unburrow from Mechanical Airlocks so the Airlock can be used for them.

But for non-burrowing Critters other strategies are needed - strategies which may also work for the Water Fort. Limiting access is one such strategy.

So like the door is in such a position where a Critter can't get trapped in it. The door closes if the CO2 pressure is too low. A weightplate allows any Slicksters in the Condo chamber to leave, once all critters have left they can't get back in until CO2 rises high enough again.

Similar schemes can be devised for wall-climber critters, though for wall-climbers the Condo chamber actually has to be a separate room. Of course a Condo could also be selectively flooded, though I feel that's more annoying that selectively flooding the Water Fort.

The Satisfied Starvation Dilemma

It seems that 0 reproduction Starvation introduces an interesting challenge, but I always feel a disquiet when there is a large strategic advantage to making critters unhappy, not just in the sense that "you can get away with neglect and it doesn't cause too much harm", but "neglect is actually way better". It's like, can't it just be straightforwardly advantageous to be nice to critters? Sure, maybe only a small advantage, but not making builds way worse. (for example Dreckos builds are SO MUCH RIDICULOUSLY BETTER when heavily neglecting most the Dreckos)

If deliberate deprivation of comforts is not really a desired gameplay feature, a relatively easy solution to making Satisfied critters more forgiving would be introducing a third state of hungry. At the moment there's only not hungry, which has no happiness penalty, and starving which has a huge happiness penalty.

An intermediate state of hungry, let's call it "Famished" for argument sake, could apply at some calories threshold, say 25% but it doesn't matter too much, and apply a happiness penalty, even just -1 happiness. So then Famished critters wouldn't be made Satisfied by the Cozy Buff, instead they'd be Glum. It'd also make perfect sense that Critters should need both some comforts and some food to be Satisfied. It would also have an effect on groomed starvation ranching, by causing the groomed creature to be Glum instead of Happy.

I'm also going to say it again, that I wouldn't mind at all if Starving critters were always miserable with nothing the player could do other than feeding them be able to make them not miserable.

[ghkbrew]

On 11/5/2023 at 8:24 AM, blakemw said:

"Flopper" builds still work

I thought the lack of crowding while flopping was patched out a while back. Or are we thinking of different builds?

[lich46]

1 hour ago, ghkbrew said:

I thought the lack of crowding while flopping was patched out a while back. Or are we thinking of different builds?

It was fixed and then back again. Maybe another fix later

[blakemw]

7 hours ago, ghkbrew said:

I thought the lack of crowding while flopping was patched out a while back. Or are we thinking of different builds?

Yeah it's weird. At the moment flopping Pacus are "Crowded", but the Crowded penalty is for 0 happiness. Seems to me there could just be a simple bug with calculating the happiness penalty for flopping, probably that the critter is sharing "the water" with 0 other critters.

[zach123b]

the annoying part to me is the condo requires to be in a stable.  would be amazing to have an open room with a condo for infinite critters and full metabolism

most of my designs in a base use a 9x4 ranch cause 4 tiles high rooms and 9 tiles for an auto sweeper.  that makes only 3 critters and with a condo, that'll make 4 critters for 36tile ranch.  you might be able to squeeze it down to 24 tiles for 3 total but that just makes it too cramped imo, you'll have to drop food or critters in

so, you get more critters per tile with a condo in a smaller design.  typical ranch is 25x4 with walls/doors around it for 8 now 9 critters.  add 3 tiles for 28x4 and i can have 3 9x4 stables with 4 critters each, that's 12 critters.  or 28x4 tiles for 8 total critters.  that's for meat, add another 4 to each stable for only food conversion.  that 25x4 now houses 13 total critters max vs 8 critters per 9x4 ranch, making 24 total critters in a 28x4 area.  now that's with grooming, grooming is only truly necessary for meat production without brackene.  if no grooming, you're back to 8 critters in a 25x4 and 9 in the 28x4 area for full metabolism which feels moot.  i'd only recommend 9x4 stables if you're grooming/giving brackene

the thought of restricting use of the condo for putting the critters on a diet sounds interesting, i'd consider using an automated airlock to control it

i really hope they add one for flying critters for the pufts, having a max 6 in a 96 tile room puts a hamper on the production

[ALCRD]

On 11/6/2023 at 2:10 PM, blakemw said:

Is this the future of Pacu torementation? Group cells with 8 of the worst criminals known to duplicant-kind locked in each cell.

What are they in for? Littering?

[CastleCustodian]

3 hours ago, ALCRD said:

What are they in for? Littering?

Flopping without a permit.

[blakemw]

With the latest patch, now Pacus need to be in an 8 tile body of water to not be automatically confined, and flopper builds are definitely terminated.

Of course since you can still stuff 9 pacus into the 8 tile body of liquid, is this the new future of Pacu tormentation?

Luxury Accommodations for 36 glum pacus.
Of course there isn't a major downside to just giving the things free reign of their 8 tiles of prison, but they normally end up stuck in one tile anyway.

[Henlikuoth]

I am happy Klei finally speaks a power word and finishes off starvation ranching and other exploits of game mechanics.

Starvation ranching did not make sense anyway, and it was never intended like that. It only ridiculed the mechanics of ONI.

The critter condo, water fort, and milking station motivate me to create reasonable critter places that fit the style of ONI—no more strange exploits and animal cruelty.

I hope Klei will do the same with infinite storage. Infinite storage is, in a way, game-breaking, and it undermines building strategic storage systems with storage bins, etc. 

[ALCRD]

4 hours ago, blakemw said:

With the latest patch, now Pacus need to be in an 8 tile body of water to not be automatically confined, and flopper builds are definitely terminated.

Of course since you can still stuff 9 pacus into the 8 tile body of liquid, is this the new future of Pacu tormentation?

Luxury Accommodations for 36 glum pacus.
Of course there isn't a major downside to just giving the things free reign of their 8 tiles of prison, but they normally end up stuck in one tile anyway.

Still bigger tank than what my pet Betta initially had - minus the industrial machinery.

[cyberwarlord]

3 hours ago, Henlikuoth said:

I am happy Klei finally speaks a power word and finishes off starvation ranching and other exploits of game mechanics.

Starvation ranching did not make sense anyway, and it was never intended like that. It only ridiculed the mechanics of ONI.

The critter condo, water fort, and milking station motivate me to create reasonable critter places that fit the style of ONI—no more strange exploits and animal cruelty.

I hope Klei will do the same with infinite storage. Infinite storage is, in a way, game-breaking, and it undermines building strategic storage systems with storage bins, etc. 

Don't touch my solid mass storage. My system can't handle it.

[Henlikuoth]

1 hour ago, cyberwarlord said:

Don't touch my solid mass storage. My system can't handle it.

lol  

[blakemw]

5 hours ago, Henlikuoth said:

I am happy Klei finally speaks a power word and finishes off starvation ranching and other exploits of game mechanics.

It\s worth noting that at the moment the only form of starvation ranching which has been addressed is the "infinite starving pacus in a small space" variant. You can still starvation ranch Pacus, Shove Voles and some other critters with the right setup which doesn't make them miserable.

Though with respect to Pacus, especially the change from 200 -> 7.5 algae per cycle is really a big "carrot" ffor encouraging feeding Pacu. For example now a the poop of a Puft would feed 2 happy Pacus, along of course with the starting algae/slime lasting A LOT longer. On the other hand their appetite for seeds has been increased 3.33x, this makes them better as seed disposers but makes seeds go less far.

I think there should still be effective semi-starvation ranching tactics. Pacus still start with a lot of calories, enough for 4.5 cycles of life, and they lay en egg every 1.66 cycles if they are happy. You make a Pacu happy by feeding it literally any amount of food from a critter feeder. So it should be possible to ration out arbitrarily small amounts of algae to Pacu, such that they lay about 3 eggs in their lifetime from their starting calories and then probably a 4th egg while starving glumly (which still has non-boosted egg progress). It'd probably be possible to figure out the precise liquid temperature such that Gulp Fish or Tropical Pacu are frozen / boiled to death after they have laid their 3rd egg, because even though you could get a 4th egg from glum progress, it's poor utilization of the infrastructure. This kind of scheme might be worth considering for those Resin facilities. Instead of using Arbor Trees to make Seeds, have a Puft poopery make a little algae that gets divided up very finely and used to make Pacus happy long enough to use up their starting calories.

I am going to say right here I really wouldn't mind if critters just started with a lot less starting calories, like only enough for no more than say 75% of an egg if groomed. If that makes some critters too hard to ranch, adjust their diet.

[LadenSwallow]

1kg algae -> 2 cycles of ate from feeder -> 4/3 eggs -> 8/3kg raw egg -> 8/3kg + 1/2kg pO2 (via rot pile->pdirt->off gassing and pacu poop) -> 3 1/120kg of slime -> 1 1/360kg of algae + 2 1/180kg pH2O.

Not entirely self sufficient, as this won't be sufficient to account for the egg you need to keep to maintain the pacu population, nor does it do anything but generate some polluted water.

I'm not aware that you can feed pacu packets smaller than 1kg.

[blakemw]

3 hours ago, LadenSwallow said:

1kg algae -> 2 cycles of ate from feeder -> 4/3 eggs -> 8/3kg raw egg -> 8/3kg + 1/2kg pO2 (via rot pile->pdirt->off gassing and pacu poop) -> 3 1/120kg of slime -> 1 1/360kg of algae + 2 1/180kg pH2O.

Not entirely self sufficient, as this won't be sufficient to account for the egg you need to keep to maintain the pacu population, nor does it do anything but generate some polluted water.

I'm not aware that you can feed pacu packets smaller than 1kg.

It's quite easy to generate large polluted oxygen profits from Arbor Tree loops, even domesticated if you sublimate the polluted dirt to feed Pufts you get a very healthy polluted water surplus with "free" algae surplus. The excess polluted water not needed for the Arbor Tree loop can also be turned into Polluted Oxygen and fed to the Pufts to eventually convert nearly all of it to Algae. It's not a simple closed loop of Pacus and Pufts, but basically Arbor Trees to food.

To feed Fish small amounts, you can't set it on the Fish Feeder, it only goes down to 1 kg. But you CAN set a Conveyor Meter all the way down to 1 gram, and a Sweeper has no problem putting that in the Fish Feeder, thus feeding the Pacu 1 gram at a time and stretching 1 kg of Algae out to 1000 feedings. Even if you have multiple pacus sharing the feeder and they don't take turns optimally you can just do like 10x as many feedings and still be using like 1/100th the algae.

[melquiades]

I don't think my current set up of 6-8 critters per ranch and an evolution pool will change in the slightest with this patch.

And pacus, that is some massive cheese that i haven't bothered dealing with, like ever.

[psusi]

Did they change plug slugs to produce power based on happiness rather than hunger?  If not, then keeping them glum is absolutely preferable to satisfied, since satisfied will make them get hungry faster, and thus, produce less power.

[blakemw]

13 hours ago, psusi said:

Did they change plug slugs to produce power based on happiness rather than hunger?  If not, then keeping them glum is absolutely preferable to satisfied, since satisfied will make them get hungry faster, and thus, produce less power.

As I said in my original post, Plug Slugs are one of the two critters you have strong incentive to keep glum if you aren't ranching them for meat (though they are quite good for meat, on par with Hatches, you just have to use a Pokekill chamber to evolve the Sluglets into meat since they don't drown).

[LadenSwallow]

Or you can put them in a battery room to starve, generating some power before they die.

[Crapgame]

I don't see dreckos mentioned much but I'm guessing they would fall under the resource conversion category.  Adding a critter condo to the uncrowded/feeding room gets them to satisfied.  Then I can still sweep all those eggs into my ridiculously crowded shearing room?  That still works right?

[melquiades]

2 hours ago, Crapgame said:

I don't see dreckos mentioned much but I'm guessing they would fall under the resource conversion category.  Adding a critter condo to the uncrowded/feeding room gets them to satisfied.  Then I can still sweep all those eggs into my ridiculously crowded shearing room?  That still works right?

You can shear but you can't collect eggs in the shearing room, they will all be at 0%.

Here is my ranching and shearing rooms:

[Crapgame]

13 minutes ago, melquiades said:

You can shear but you can't collect eggs in the shearing room, they will all be at 0%.

I mean I guess that is fine.  The eggs are already coming from the breeders.  I can live without them laying any of their own eggs in there.