Ranching preview And Breeding

[Blazmobins]

So, i've been playing through the ranching preview and a few things i've noticed seem a little off, some might be bugs but others seem intended.

Firstly and mostly critically the only effect of a critter starving is a loss of -30% happiness/cycle. Being groomed is the exact opposite effect. Thusly feeding a creature once, and grooming it, allowing it to reach 100% happiness, then never feeding it again, allows it to be produce eggs (and ergo food) entirely from nothing and with no complex mechanisms or heat production. As a result, once a suitable "parent population" is built, it becomes easy to make eggs for food. Now this seems intended (and i think ranching should eventually overtake farming for food) but critters shouldn't be able to produce eggs entirely from nothing. I'd suggest either making starvation slightly more happiness draining, grooming slightly less effective (even by 5%) or making starvation independently effect the reproduction rate, allowing grooming without feeding to keep a critter at max happiness for it's "functions" without needing to feed it, but preventing the creation of eggs in the same manner.

Also i feel (as i've heard many others say) that the new geysers are perhaps a bit too much at once; mostly that they are extremely variable (accounting for dormancy on some iron volcanoes, i found rates from as low as 45g/s to as high 350g/s material) and as this doesn't change and can't be manipulated, some worlds geysers will essentially be inferior. i don't know if the geysers are interconnected (so "bad" geysers means other geysers will be good)  but i assume not. Overall extremely hyped for the update in full and glad for more renewable materials. I think it'd be good if geysers were More certain or that even if their eruption rate, eruption cycle, and dormancy periods were variable, they'd all add up to approximately the "same" output over time. Also while it's easy to calculate this, for that exact reason i think it'd be helpful if the geysers displayed an average yield while Not dormant, and an active yield accounting for dormancy time (so the average yield over say 100 cycles). Finally, it'd be nice if the geyser spawning was more certain and to some degree biome based, so that they're aren't volcanoes melting the ice biome for instance, and that you couldn't not get certain geysers. i think it'd be nice if the geysers were not always the same but if a resource is only renewable via geysers (such as refined metals) i don't think it should be luck based whether it exists in a world.

Woo, Text Wall.