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Ostentatio

Allow all domestic animals to use the hitching post

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Right now, hitching posts work like vehicles, requiring a certain amount of Body Strength for an animal to be hitched. For a hitching post, this is roughly 15 Body Strength, based on the hitching post's weight.

Unfortunately, this means many domestic/common animals cannot be tied to them, including:

  • Pigs
  • Hens / Roosters / Chicks
  • Pheasants
  • Foals
  • Calves
  • Lambs
  • Human children

 

(For the sake of brevity I've only listed domestic animals; there are other tameable creatures that also cannot be hitched.)

 

I was really hoping I could use hitching posts for some of these, especially hens and pigs, since the trough would help out a lot, and the post itself helps position the animals to avoid overcrowding without having to use tons of fence posts.

 

 

So, why not just disable the Body Strength check, either for domestic animals only or for all animals?

The gameplay argument: There's no real detriment done to the game by allowing things like hens or pigs to be hitched to a post, or for Body Strength to be the limiting factor, and expanding the number of animals that can use it would make it more convenient to raise animals like pigs and chickens. Moreover, when a player attempts to hitch an animal to a post, it's not really clear why it would fail.

The realism argument: You can tie off damn near any animal to a post if you really want to. People even walk hens on leashes and harnesses (or you could tie a rope around its leg if you were desperate). It doesn't really depend on how strong the animal is, although it's obviously a bit trickier for smaller animals. Either way, it's certainly more obviously realistic than some other things we can already do with animals, such as hitching a giant insect to the yoke of a cart.

 

So basically... it's unintuitive on multiple levels why it works this way, and removing the Body Strength check would also improve gameplay applications without causing problems, so why not?

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I'm not sure about the birds. I'm sure you can do it physically in real life but it would still look weird. For the other animals it makes plenty of sense though.

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1 hour ago, Lisimba said:

I'm not sure about the birds. I'm sure you can do it physically in real life but it would still look weird. For the other animals it makes plenty of sense though.

 

I agree with Lisimba - I don't think its needed or practical for birds (though I'd love to be able to keep pheasants in a coop), but we do already have the chicken coops for hens. Young farm animals, deer and pigs though, I can see the benefit (and can't see the harm in denying them). In particular, this would help with management of foals for horsebreeders who don't want their paddocks subdivided with hundreds of fences which are both ugly and clutter the (otherwise quite lovely) view.

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6 hours ago, crimsonearth said:

 

I agree with Lisimba - I don't think its needed or practical for birds (though I'd love to be able to keep pheasants in a coop), but we do already have the chicken coops for hens. Young farm animals, deer and pigs though, I can see the benefit (and can't see the harm in denying them). In particular, this would help with management of foals for horsebreeders who don't want their paddocks subdivided with hundreds of fences which are both ugly and clutter the (otherwise quite lovely) view.

 

I don't like using chicken coops because the food mechanics don't really make sense (it works completely differently from normal eating) and the egg quality is different. I'd rather just keep them on tiles.

 

A chicken coop would still be useful since it allows you to fit a lot more chickens onto a single tile; even a 30QL coop lets you have 3 chickens on that tile, which would normally result in disease. They also produce eggs more reliably, albeit at lower quality.

Edited by Ostentatio
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I'd also love to see cats and dogs added to this list. I had to leave a pile of meat on the floor for my tamed kitty because he was too weak to hitch. Poor little guy.

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Pigs.. makes sense as they'd eat unnoticed dead bodies if pigs are left freely around other creatures
Can't think of a reason to rope a pheasant.. unless I had a grudge from several years ago.. when these were fierce enemies of the new players..
I'm afraid last kind is freely able to do anything in the game.. as long their parents allow them

 

I get that the main idea is to stop making fenced pens, but idk, it's trading 1 for the other kind of exchange here.

The idea of having a normal plotted farm with no extra fence walls/gates to stop you from normally farming if the tile is within reach... is pretty tempting.

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On 11/17/2019 at 11:34 AM, Finnn said:

Can't think of a reason to rope a pheasant.. unless I had a grudge from several years ago..

I breed pheasants. They give a nice change from the chickens, and they give feathers when murdered.  I hold a grudge.

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Just realized I can't hitch pigs to a post either for easier breeding/management.

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