Some thoughts about ranching

[Fishslap]

Being a bit slow I am still working quite a bit on the ranching. But the economy of much of it is starting to bug me, and it is considerably less rewarding than it was before the three last updates.

1: Hatches. Not productive enough in captivity compared to wild ones. They seem to eat little in both cases now and thus produce less than they previously did, But wild ones are at least maintenance free. Smooth hatches do not provide a reliable, heat-free alternative to forge/crusher for of similar reasons. They just don't eat enough to be worthwhile for the space you have to use on them. Sage hatches just have the worst diet possible and are utterly useless. I know the return 100% rather than 50%, but of things that are better than or equal value to coal. Considering that hatches are the only renewable source of coal in the game I really wish they were more productive and practcal than they presently are.

2: Shine bugs. They look nice, which would matter if decor was still effective at keeping stress down, which it isn't. So their only use now is to turn phosphorite into power. But that requires glass and is therefore basically a late-mid game thing, at which point you probably don't really need solar power anyway. There is no benefit at all until you can build solar panels. And even then, why are there different kinds? Decor bonus? But decor doesn't matter and you could just build a painting instead. Doesn't make any sense anymore.

3: Pufts. Just the worst. Fiddly to ranch and completely superfluous. No one needs more oxygen or chlorine in this game now. If you find one PO2 vent you're set, and the map will soon be better aired than your base. Just plop some deos next to a vent and off you go! Ditto for chlorine. A single vent provides roughly a billion times more chlorine than I typically need. My problem is getting rid of O2 and keeping chlorine in the right places, not acquiring more of it. And the way the pufts breed makes little sense as well, with squeaky pufts appearing in Po2 environments where there is no chlorine at all etc.Why?

4: Dreckos. Work fine, but probably more hassle than they are worth in the end. I mean you can just build a pump and a polymer press instead here, and so far I have never ran out of phosphorite. I have enjoyed designing ranches for glossy dreckos but, you know...Also, no one anywhere needs more reed fibers.

5: Slicksters. Fun but also a bit redundant. You have to go down there to get them anyway, so why not simply build a couple of pumps to get the oil directly? Longhairs are nice. But also a bit useless. Decor = nothing for practical purposes.

6: Pacus. More buggy than ever, and fish will get stuck in squares or small areas of pools and secretly be unable to use feeders. Feeding also doesn't seem to consistently result in pooping out the polluted dirt one was hoping to turn one's algae into. It is all a bit frustrating at the moment. I could throw all my remaining algae down this fairly random hole, but I probably won't.

 

In general the ranching seems now almost dysfunctional. Some of it clearly made more sense before the morale patch, etc, but now makes no sense whatsoever, specifically the decor critters. Not promoting dupes (Please don't get me started on this nonsense. Still don't know what you were thinking) is how we deal with morale and stress now, not with shine bugs, tropical fish and longhairs. Similar problems with the O2 critters, which were made redundant with the vent changes. But more fundamentally problematic: much of the rest of it is useless or at least ineffective anyway. Trying to ranch the three arguably useful critters the game now contains; hatches, dreckos and pacu, is like slow torture or simply not reliable at all. If you restrict them to confined rooms, which you encouraged us to do with the room templates and buildings requiring it, it becomes cramped etc way too soon. The default setting on the drop off is 20 critters. But you can't have 20 critters in the same room without all sorts of debuffs. No, you can have six of them, almost completely unproductive. In a 96 tile large room. Maybe seven. The space to production ratio is absolutely ridiculous. I could be using this space for all sorts of less useless things. This is what I am thinking while ranching right now. My main obsession in the game recently has been to have all-organic plastic production with glossy dreckos. And that has been fun, and I've developed a great blueprint to do it : . But at the same time it's such a massive hassle for any normal player and the mother of all bottlenecks that I can't imagine many would be interested. If I wasn't obsessive I would never have bothered myself. Like I said: I could just dig down, build a ladder and a pump and make plastic myself in a tenth the time. And why even have size restrictions on the ranches in the first place? 96 tiles is a tiny, almost pointless ranch that apparently can house about six critters before they become unhappy, not to mention the endless time the dupes have to spend grooming them, cleaning their cages, shearing them and running back and forth with eggs etc until you can get conveyers in, if there is even room in their tiny abodes for such things. You need like five of the hatch ranches just to keep up with three coal generators, which requires constant work by dupes to service. And coal is the only reason you're ever ranching hatches to begin with. If you could build one gigantic ranch it would make life a lot simpler. Or just as large as you need, which is the realistic thing. Everything just feels cramped and frustrating. And why is any of it there? You probably need hatches, frustrating as they are. But nothing else. You can ranch dreckos if you would like a new ulcer. And you can breed fish if they don't bug out on you so you have to reload the game. But you don't need to, and probably shouldn't.

I love the idea of ranching in this game. Just not the current reality of it. Back in earlier days I would staple floors so all the hatches and debris would fall to the bottom of my base. They would live happily there forever, eating stuff off the floor. I almost think I prefer that version of ranching to the one I have now. Almost all of it is in dire need of rebalancing if it is to be of any use, other than to needlessly confuse and distract players. So many good ideas though. It's just not working. And I'm sorry that I haven't gotten to the space beasts. I usually never get that far because of lag. Which is another problem. At least for me.

[Sasza22]

21 minutes ago, Fishslap said:

no one anywhere needs more reed fibers.

At least until you start doing the end game molecular forge that needs 5 reed fibers per 100kg of super insulator. They might come in handy there once you get enough isoresin.

Building a glossy drecko ranch early will nt you enough plastic towards later in the game at a steady pace. If you want transport tubes at cycle 150 they are too slow but if you don`t mind waiting until 400 they`ll do fine.

Slicksters are great when you start relying on petroleum power. You get a ton of excess CO2. Large slickster farms will recycle it bck into oil. It will make a difference later on when oil reserves start to run low.

Hatches are still good to have early. It`s hard to sustain coal power off of just hatches but the kiln can alwyas use extra coal for ceramics or steel production. Best to ranch stone hatches. They eat igneous that you always have too much of and change it into something useful.

Also all critters are a source of eggs and meat. They just take a lot of dupe time.