Who isn't into mass meat production

[axxel]

Hello, I was wondering if there players out there who don't intentionally let their critters strave and drown them after they reached adulthood. There are many ways to play the game but if I read about beginner's question on reddit there's usually at least one post that implies a meat farm is necessary (is that the case on the hardest difficulty or for the archievements?)

This isn't a meta question but what about make them happy, domestic them for their non-meat products and let the dupes eat the eggs. The dropped meat after they die a happy death is just a useful by-product. Butchering them when a famine happens is an ok and a dupe live is more important than a critter live.

 

[GluttonyMain]

Yeah, I  hate starvation ranching, feels exploity, I usually go with plants and have no problems. But i dont go for all achievements colonies.

[sirloxley]

A couple of (subjective) observations which may explain the meta:

• The meat from the critters during early game is a very easiliy obtainable source of food, especially so on the more difficult asteriods (eg. radiated ocean)
• All the drowning nastiness reduce the drain on your most critical (early) game resource: dupe labour time (there are ways to avoid that).
• Critter droppers are easy to build fire&forget mechanisms.
• OTOH stable population management is much more challenging when actively egg cracking.
• Cracking eggs loses a huge amount of calories for most of the critters, notable exceptions are Shine bugs, Sweetles, Pacus and Pokeshells
• Omelette does not count towards Carnivore achievement

Late game I am drowning in meat which my dupes are ignoring because there are better food types available: the critters' byproducts are much more valuable than the meat (except Hatches). And although Mushroom Quiche is probably the better food option, it's not exactly high on my priority list.

The game does not encourage chicken pen style ranching, players wanting to do that have to put in extra effort.

 

TL;DR: (most likely) the more difficult population management is the real egg cracking deal breaker for new(er) players.

Edited April 23 by sirloxley

[Primalflower]

I'm not sure why beginners guides are describing a meat farm as necessary. Full achievement runs will involve the large consumption of meat because two out of the three early-game-dominating achievements (locavore & carnivore) will require the player to ignore farm plants and consume a large amount of meat before cycle 100, however in normal gameplay meat farming is something that requires more strategy/pre-planning from the start than I would say is beginner-friendly.

The path of least resistance that a player may wish to learn before exploring more difficult strategies is far, far from engaging in meat farming early. It is a good idea to ranch in general, but really, I think that mealwood and abstaining from microbe mushers as much as possible on all but the hardest difficulties is what you should be teaching new players.

5 hours ago, axxel said:

what about make them happy, domestic them for their non-meat products and let the dupes eat the eggs.

this is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, and something that will simplify the amount of automation/research necessary for an emerging player, however you will receive significantly less calories overall, as mentioned above. If you choose to egg-crack, you need not use sweepers or anything of the sort to remove eggs from a room, all that is necessary is an  unpowered incubator or two set to a higher priority than an egg-cracking station, which will gaurantee a sustained population while cracking any excess.

Edited April 23 by Primalflower

[Gurgel]

No interest. I am all Berrysludge for the endgame.

[sheaker]

I am not starving my critters at all.

On 4/24/2024 at 10:16 AM, Gurgel said:

No interest. I am all Berrysludge for the endgame.

Spoil time, right:D? Me too..

[Gurgel]

5 hours ago, sheaker said:

Spoil time, right:D? Me too..

Yes, definitely. And building a large stock to feed that cyber-tree. I do find that berry-sludge is also pretty easy to do wild-planted and that the morale-bonus is completely enough for my playstyle. One effect is that I can do missions to other asteroids that lasts a few hundred cycles without managing food at all. Just dump a few 1'000'000 kcal into the rocket and forget about it.

[ThatOtherGuy54]

Unfortunately, late game with many dupes, its either that or wild farms. You just don't have enough water to run a very large farm. If you luck out on water, then you have even less to work with. Not to mention, farming can be very labor intensive. 

[asurendra]

In early game I tend to use farms as they dont need any labor and also dont need skilled dupe (which may be a problem at start). Also farm is faster to build

 

In late game... It doesnt really matter as there is abundance of recourses anyway... 

Edited April 26 by asurendra

[myxal]

On 4/23/2024 at 6:19 PM, Primalflower said:

(locavore & carnivore) will require the player to ignore farm plants and consume a large amount of meat before cycle 100

A note on this - the first time I've gone for these was on a baator map, and I got locavore before even properly spinning up the ranches, just from having dupes eat mush fries to tie them over.

On the subject of meat farms - looking at the current options, I think it's possible and even desirable to stay away from meat-producing ranches. I still get meat from ranches that focus on resource production/conversion (dreckos, pufts), but on that baator map I'm in the middle of walling off and consolidating the base, and the hatch ranches will not survive the make-over. Pacu omelettes for everyone, until I secure renewable salt water, then mushroom quiche.

I've been in the sludge-or-bust camp for distant planetoid/rocket food, but I might give the dehydrator a try if I manage to spin up mushroom quiche (and radbolt) production quickly.

 

Edited April 26 by myxal

[axxel]

8 hours ago, ThatOtherGuy54 said:

Unfortunately, late game with many dupes, its either that or wild farms. You just don't have enough water to run a very large farm. If you luck out on water, then you have even less to work with. Not to mention, farming can be very labor intensive. 

I can see your point. But isn't water/resource/labor management a matter of playstyle and difficulty/asteroid? It's not we couldn't afford an alternative for blossoms and wheat, use farm stations or spread different food types for duplicants to save water. The game throws enough at you.

Also, I like to see my dupes working - it's cute and they serve their purpose: labour. Again, it's a matter of playstyle.

[blakemw]

14 hours ago, ThatOtherGuy54 said:

Unfortunately, late game with many dupes, its either that or wild farms. You just don't have enough water to run a very large farm. If you luck out on water, then you have even less to work with. Not to mention, farming can be very labor intensive. 

With multipliers (Fertilizer applied by high agriculture dupe, and Grubrubs) farms get pretty small. In Spaced Out you don't need to be lucky at all because there's always an abundance of water and sulfur (in fact a super mega omega abundance of sulfur). Base game it's a lot more random though you can easily end up with plenty of watery geysers, like I wouldn't be surprised to have on average 10 kg/s of water. You could easily support like 50 normal hunger dupes with that, or like 30 max hunger dupes.

[asurendra]

When it comes to vanilla game (or SO classic style) you dont even need to build ranches to get carnivore. Hunting wild voles gives more than enough meat for this. You need only to kill 20 of them (actually even less as there are pacus dying from old age thats counts too)

Edited April 27 by asurendra

[ThatOtherGuy54]

10 hours ago, blakemw said:

With multipliers (Fertilizer applied by high agriculture dupe, and Grubrubs) farms get pretty small. In Spaced Out you don't need to be lucky at all because there's always an abundance of water and sulfur (in fact a super mega omega abundance of sulfur). Base game it's a lot more random though you can easily end up with plenty of watery geysers, like I wouldn't be surprised to have on average 10 kg/s of water. You could easily support like 50 normal hunger dupes with that, or like 30 max hunger dupes.

The problem I have with space out is just how much effort it is to transport all that stuff.  Also, looking at the wiki, the outputs seems way higher than I remembered. I remember steam gas was outputting 333g/s during the active period.

16 hours ago, axxel said:

I can see your point. But isn't water/resource/labor management a matter of playstyle and difficulty/asteroid? It's not we couldn't afford an alternative for blossoms and wheat, use farm stations or spread different food types for duplicants to save water. The game throws enough at you.

Also, I like to see my dupes working - it's cute and they serve their purpose: labour. Again, it's a matter of playstyle.

True, i think i should try to stick with smaller colonies.

[Bluefoxfire]

On 4/26/2024 at 11:34 AM, myxal said:

 just from having dupes eat mush fries

 

Mental image achieved

[Sasza22]

Personally i never relied on meat in my colonies even on the hard hunger settings. It was more of an emergency food rather than the main food source. Early mealwood is easy enough to maintain and later i just switch to a mix of crops based on the available resources. My goal is to have as many types of food available as possible so a problem with one type won`t doom the colony.

[melquiades]

On 4/23/2024 at 6:40 AM, axxel said:

I was wondering if there players out there who don't intentionally let their critters strave and drown them after they reached adulthood.

I don't let them starve, but i don't let them reach adulthood, i drown them right away if i don't need them. The only ones i keep around are the ones in my repository ranches. I figured the cpu hit from having all of them around would be significant (though i already have a lot of critters roaming around ._.):

Spoiler

 

I keep them mostly cause i use coal, sucrose or the plant rubbing they do. Their meat is not that important, dupes only eat mixed berry pie. Meat is for the experiment 52B, mixed with grubrub preserve (i am in the process of swapping for frost burgers for the experiment right now).

Satellite colonies eat whatever they can, mostly just gristle berry.

[axxel]

13 hours ago, melquiades said:

I don't let them starve, but i don't let them reach adulthood, i drown them right away if i don't need them. The only ones i keep around are the ones in my repository ranches. I figured the cpu hit from having all of them around would be significant (though i already have a lot of critters roaming around ._.):

I really thought that the critters' statuses (cramped) will adjust a stable population. Correct me if I am wrong. I just don't get the reasoning of your  statement "if I don't need them".

[melquiades]

12 hours ago, axxel said:

I really thought that the critters' statuses (cramped) will adjust a stable population. Correct me if I am wrong. I just don't get the reasoning of your  statement "if I don't need them".

Mine don't cramp cause the room of the repository ranch is open to the outside, and i said "if i don't need them" because i like dumping at least 4 grubrubs and sweetles in some of my farms, that way i am constantly renewing their populace, so if i don't need one egg at one moment, it goes to the drowning chamber.

Spoiler

 

Edited Wednesday at 08:19 PM by melquiades

[6Havok9]

Mushroom quiche is the superior choice. Egg cracking and cooking can be automated, while the relatively small amount of waterweed needed can be wild planted and auto harvested. It also has the best Kcal density per kg, doesn't have a penalty to athletics and saves your conscience from the adverse effects of unspeakable acts of cruelty towards cute pixel animals.

It also gives you a reason to ranch pufts. That alone would be enough for me: it's like mushrooms, just... Better!