I know that in many a preppers research and preparations, rabbit farms, chicken farms, fish farms, etc are considered as a very reliable method of meat sourcing, fur, bones, etc.
I feel like like if animals breeding is something that could happen in game, possibly by there being a chance for 2 or more of the same animal being in close proximity to have a chance to ‘multiply’ and spawn another animal, then you could feasibly build yourself a nice little fenced in meat/fur/bone/feather/fat farm.
some sort of ‘Hav-A-Heart’ trap would go a long way toward making this a reality by allowing you to capture wild chickens, rabbits, etc and release them inside your fenced area.
something like this idea would make it SOOOO much more imperitive to actually build and maintain your fenced areas and not just demolish them for materials.
The problem is mostly feeding them outside reality bubble.
If they were just infinite food factories, it would be pretty simple. Likewise if they were always inside the bubble.
The problems start when you load a “frozen” chicken and need to have it check if it starved to death or not, did it have enough food to lay eggs, was it killed or did it flee etc.
Those checks aren’t easy when you can’t say much about the area the chicken is in, can’t load the entirety of it yet, can’t even rely on this data being saved in correct order.
I don’t imagine Mobs would target it, and I imagine the way it would function would be something like taking your ‘old’ but not ‘rotten’ meat, veggies, etc and ‘Loading’ them into the fish farm( as food). then, say 24 hours later, you can 'E’xamine the fishfarm and remove an appropriate number of fish corpses.
the logic behind this is your survivor feeding the fish with the food that’s about to go bad and then harvesting one or more of the fish from the farm.
this might need some tweaking, but I think it would be manageable. Just treat it like a Kiln or something. like how you load in one item and get another out.
If you put you critters in an enclosure, we could possibly have some simplified logic for them exhausting whatever resources they need. Otherwise updates can just be deferred until the next time the tile is loaded.
It’s not that it’s impossible or even prohibitively difficult, it’s just quite a bit of work.
It’s also not obvious how to actually do it.
The biggest restriction is that the critter can’t move freely to reach food. This means that, depending on the system used, it could starve to death if unloaded too far from the place with food.
It would have to be an Undertale style goat, because NPCs have human limbs, ability to put on clothing and wield weapons, and need to be able to talk to trade.
It’s also not obvious how to actually do it.
The biggest restriction is that the critter can’t move freely to reach food. This means that, depending on the system used, it could starve to death if unloaded too far from the place with food.[/quote]
That’s why I suggested stashing the animal in a hutch/coop/whatever to restrict it’s movement, then when processing it offscreen, the entire contents of the enclosure are available for it to consume.
Just throwing in an idea because I really like the suggestion and would like to see in the game at some point, so:
What about zones? Could they be used to ‘feed’ animals off-screen (as long as both the animal and the food are in the same zone) or are they not processed when outside the reality bubble?
zones could do this sort of thing, but it’s just a nicer interface to have something the pc interacts with in the game instead of an abstraction that the user interacts with directly.
Some kind of zoning interface might be necessary for e.g. cattle that require a large field. You could put cattle in stalls, but if you aren’t supplementing with grass it’s crazy resource intensive to grow them. Then you’d need to be out harvesting hay and shit on an almost daily basis to stock up their feed sources.
Eventually zones are going to be a pretty necessary part of the game, I think, for several reasons. Designated farm zones could be a really useful feature.
Animal husbandry (and most aspects of farming, really) make more sense as a “faction” kind of thing. Secure enough space for a large enough group (and possibly deliver initial breeding stock), and animal husbandry products become available for trade in a renewable fashion (milk, wool, eggs, meat, etc).
Of course, that would involve solving how areas become “secure” first, which is a fairly significant issue. Nice long-term thoughts, I guess…
Not necessarily. Both in real life and in a possible implementation in the game, some animals could easily be fed and bred by a single person. Chickens for example can be kept in a person’s backyard, while goats don’t really require a lot of maintenance either (though I have no idea how common goats are in New England). The amount of food you can produce even with a handful of animals is still quite a lot, but then food isn’t really a concern in the game past the first few days.
I agree, keeping small numbers if animals as an individual makes sense, I but there are some common situations where it doesn’t scale. We wouldn’t want to keep track of more than a dozen or so animals, and it doesn’t make sense for an individual to manage that many. For numbers larger than that we’d want to push it into the faction system.
Introduction of animal NPCs, which would require food on a regular basis, but would produce e.g milk as a result (you get the idea). - Quite easy to implement, but a bit wonky and unrealistic.
Kiln-based animals, which would be just charcoal kilns, but mobile and with different inputs and outputs. E.g: food + time -> milk (for a cow/sheep/goat). - Also easy to implement, but IDK how the game would react to moving animal-like kilns. (Moving kilns, what?!)
Proper animals with realistic mechanic (thirst, food and environment at the very least), whose growth rate depends on the satisfaction level of those needs. They could be slaughtered and butchered, but could also die of natural causes. It would look like this: Food + water + appropriate temperature -> growth + milk + wool (if a sheep or a goat, only milk in case of a cow). - Harder to implement. but the behaviour would be the most realistic out of all of the options.
We really should have animal hutch/barn stalls for feeding while away from the bubble. Should also be able to breed unless male/females are place in different areas X tiles away.
Rezzed the idea because of topics regarding reasons to make a static base. This is my number 1 reason I never stay in one place. This isn’t all about food. I would need a good reason not to travel out of boredom. Taking care of crops and farm animals after I have enough gun/ammo etc. I think most people would really need something to do. Rebuilding the world is great and all, but gimping the game to force players to be stationary sucks. This at least gives a legit reason to stay put and keep busy.