Changes to animals and feeding them.

[Guest Julepalme]

Currently our animal population on freedom.. and also other servers are skewing towards farm animals because of the 30000 animal hardcoded limit. were nearly below 9000 aggro animals and the other 21000 is farm animals.. so gaining fightskill from the tougher creatures on freedom is become a lot harder.

We need to do something.. theres several solutions possible for this..

We could have seperate limits on animals.

I would suggest something like 15000 aggro animals

and a less hardcoded limit on the common farm animals, deer/dog/cows/horses/pigs/hens etc..  (otherwise breeding would be hard once everyone hit the limit)

Also to avoid getting insanely many animals on the server we could have random animal deaths in places with high concentration.. or adjust the way animals feed to make it harder to keep large amounts of them.

And on the same not we need to make some animals a little easier to keep.. ive had a rooster and a hen for a few days now.. left cotton seeds for them and fed them manually with seeds and still they are skin and bones and very thin now. 

The food req. of animals like roosters/chicken are insanely high compared to say the cow atm.. a cow can survive with 2 tiles of gras or farm tile.. while the hen would req. seeds from over 4 tiles of farm to keep them fed (getting 3 pr tile atm.. so 8 seeds for 4 tiles after resowing) .. this is barely enough to keep 1 hen fed untill i can harvest the tiles again.. so either the animals should be allowed to find seeds themselves on farm tiles or stay fed for a longer period of time on the same amount of seeds.. its insane that a tiny chicken would req. more farmland than a cow to feed.

[Danar 0]

The food req. of animals like roosters/chicken are insanely high compared to say the cow atm.. a cow can survive with 2 tiles of gras or farm tile.. while the hen would req. seeds from over 4 tiles of farm to keep them fed (getting 3 pr tile atm.. so 8 seeds for 4 tiles after resowing) .. this is barely enough to keep 1 hen fed untill i can harvest the tiles again.. so either the animals should be allowed to find seeds themselves on farm tiles or stay fed for a longer period of time on the same amount of seeds.. its insane that a tiny chicken would req. more farmland than a cow to feed.

So, seeds are an insanely crappy food source. See how many seeds it takes to feed a cow. Your chickens can eat directly from crops without hurting their growth instead, and they stay fed.

[Guest Julepalme]

No chickens dont eat direct from crops.. thats the main problem atm..

[Othob Rithol 700]

Actually they have, but only sporadically. There is a lot of anecdotal evidence that they only eat from young crops as well.

But with the current settings in place, seeing a chicken or pig over "mature" is a very rare thing. All my chickens died out at mature, and by the time my pigs reached mature, they were all skin and bones despite daily feedings of approx 10kg or more meat fillet per pig.

This is not how things were on the Home servers, but I think it is safe to assume that it is due to controls in place because of the exploding domestic animal population. I believe chickens and pigs were selected as the two least "popular" domestics, and were therefore hit hardest.

Problems:

Chickens,  I have never felt needed any sort of nerf. Their population was held pretty tightly in check due the mechanism by which very few of their eggs hatched. Unfortunately, now a chicken can not lay enough eggs reliably to replace herself before she dies. As a result all domesticated chickens are doomed ultimately to extinction.

Pigs have always been buggy. In the past, they seemed quite impossible to reclaim from "starving" status. Now, unless you are willing to log in every 6 hours to feed them, it is nearly impossible to keep them from starving to death. they simply will not eat enough at once to keep themselves above the "safe" threshold for more than a few hours.

But pigs pose the worst threat to the animal server cap of all domestics. Unlike the horses and cows, a pig is ready to mate at birth. It is quite easy to breed an explosive population. With 4 pigs (2m, 2f) I was able to raise a herd of 80+ in about 2 months. Once the effects of breeding became apparent, I culled approx 60 over the course of 2 nights, and have cut them down to a firm 12. Once I get 34 breeding (just over a point away) I plant o kill them all.

Horses and Cows have unnatural ability to retain nutrition. A villager placed an aged fat horse in one of my spare buildings at least a month and it has only lost its "fat" title. An animal left without anything to eat over a weekend can be brought back to breeding status (full stomach) with a ten stack of veggies. 

Suggestions

Chickens dying at mature seems fine. They give a bit of meat when butchered, and have laid many eggs. However, the rate at which the eggs successfully hatch needs to be increased so that they do not die out with such reliability.

Pigs need to have their needs spread out a little better. they should continue to require large amounts of food to maintain (they are pigs after all) but the time between "being filled to maximum" and "hunger has damaged their health" needs to be doubled at least. Another solution, which has been suggested before, is for some sort of slop trough, where food can be stockpiled for them and which retards the decay of the food. Filling the trough with gulasch, stew, soup, pigfood, and old meals is something a serious pig farmer would be willing to do.

Pigs should no longer give birth to other pigs, but instead to half-size "piglets" to keep them in line with horses and cows. These piglets of course mature (at adolescent piglet) into a young pig. This would have a secondary benefit to pig farmers, giving a way to distinguish the newborns from the old pigs.

Horses and Cows simply need to be able to starve to death quicker. Well maintained herds should not be penalized, but packed dirt, congested feed lots need to be severely penalized. I'd suggest doubling or even tripling the grazing requirements of both animals, but only if two modifications to their AI are feasible: First, that they seek out food sources more aggressively (I have seen starving bulls in fields of grass, standing on a packed tile) and that they stop destroying crop and grass tiles.

The latter is a behavior unique to Wurm. I spent much of my childhood on a cattle ranch, and although the herd would decimate any edible plants in their pasture, they would not eat the plant down to its roots. That is a behavior associated with goats. Further, by drastically increasing the food needed by cows and horses, you have already obliged farmers to either increase field size, or reduce herd size, with no gain in productivity of the farm. Relieving this small, stressful aggravation, players are likely to be much more willing to accept such a huge increase in the needs of their herds.

[flyingmonkey 1]

This is mainly targeting the 50 cows in a 2x2:

Once animal AI is relatively fixed so they don't all go party on a singe tile for you large pen users, there should be an aggravation check in place - where if there is, say, 5 cows on a single tile they will start to become aggravated and either attack each other, bash fences, escape or just plain starve.

[Rocambole 0]

But with the current settings in place, seeing a chicken or pig over "mature" is a very rare thing. All my chickens died out at mature, and by the time my pigs reached mature, they were all skin and bones despite daily feedings of approx 10kg or more meat fillet per pig.

I have 5 pigs, "a bit round" or "well feed". I just make 100 50+ql casseroles every two weeks and drop them at their feet.

[Othob Rithol 700]

I used to do that as well, it was far easier than feeding them gulasch. The point isn't that I can't find a work-around...it is that the game is has a flaw. Hence the suggestions forum. Mine eat meat atm because I am massively culling down my animals to free up server space for aggros, which means a dozen or more animals die each day (if you add in the rejected newborns) so I have enough meat to keep a player fed for a year...but that will not keep pigs fed for a week.

[EliasTheCrimson 348]

This is mainly targeting the 50 cows in a 2x2:

Once animal AI is relatively fixed so they don't all go party on a singe tile for you large pen users, there should be an aggravation check in place - where if there is, say, 5 cows on a single tile they will start to become aggravated and either attack each other, bash fences, escape or just plain starve.

Yes please.

[Guest Torendo]

This is mainly targeting the 50 cows in a 2x2:

Once animal AI is relatively fixed so they don't all go party on a singe tile for you large pen users, there should be an aggravation check in place - where if there is, say, 5 cows on a single tile they will start to become aggravated and either attack each other, bash fences, escape or just plain starve.

this.

<3 FM