All livestock being killed by wildlife

[Joonyah]

I'm pretty frustrated losing all my livestock in 3 minutes. Every wild carnivore on the map attacked simultaneously. It was a bloodbath and I'm left with zero livestock.

I appreciate the updates but can we have a grace period or something when major changes like this are implemented? Even 10 minutes would allow the player to take action to prevent things like this. Seems a bit reckless from a dev standpoint.

[Flagg134]

I have an issue with the fact that foxes can go through fences, What is the pint of having fences if they will not stop your animals from being killed? I currently have 3 different animal pens that are fenced in, I am afraid the same thing will happen to me when I start up the game.

[Joonyah]

I was lucky because I had walls about 90% done, so I was able to reload an older save and finish my walls while fighting off 6 foxes who weren't even hungry.

Without the walls the foxes rush right in and kill every animal you have. I have about 25 animals so If I didn't have the walls ready I probably would have abandoned the game. Good luck!

[Sir Snuffles]

yeah in the new update it says wild animals will now target domestic animals when hungry and foxes can sneak through fences. not sure if wolves can or not. perhaps pet dogs can kill wolves? i havent played long enough yet to find out

[polterchrist]

Wow, glad I came here to read this. Haven't logged in today yet but am real excited to lose all my domestic animals and possibly settlers. (sarcasm)

[tlsrace]

I set priority for hunting to 1 for at least 3 settlers. I don't seem to get large amounts of wildlife after year 1. This is on hard setting in the mountains. I did lose all my chickens early on, but then had a pen set up for them in the middle of my settlement. I find cats and dogs seem to reproduce very fast.

Also with my set up of the scenario i have everyone start with accuracy of 15. My reasoning is would you go to start a settlement with a bunch of settlers with little survival skills.

[Solaire]

I spent my last game play building walls around my pens and setting all wolves that spawn to be hunted.

[Joonyah]

I just want to say that I exaggerated a bit in my OP. It wasn't every carnivore on the map. But I did have a group of 6 hungry foxes just outside my base when the update took effect and they went into absolute war crimes mode immediately.

[galadon3]

So basically we now have to build a wall around our lifestock pens, because foxes exist... yay that sounds like a usefull change

[Joonyah]

Another solution is to have trained carnivores as pets, and set them to Vermin Control. Once I got that set up it's actually pretty fun watching your dogs and wolves chase down pesky foxes.

[tlsrace]

Foxes love chickens, who would have thought of that. Good job Dev's.
You don't need to wall all livestock, just keep the chickens in an area where the foxes would have to go through a gauntlet to get to. Note the changes to the animal screen and new jobs you can set for your animals.

[galadon3]

Originally posted by tlsrace:

Foxes love chickens, who would have thought of that. Good job Dev's.
You don't need to wall all livestock, just keep the chickens in an area where the foxes would have to go through a gauntlet to get to. Note the changes to the animal screen and new jobs you can set for your animals.

yea great...
"hey I saw a cartoon of a fox stealing a chicken, we should totally have that in game, them sneaking into pens"
"does that make any sense gameplay-wise? Will ppl not just wall in the pens, so its just more of a hassle?"
"FOXES.... STEAL...CHICKEN = GENIUS"

Always great when gamedesign is dictated by 60s cartoons instead of asking yourself if that adds any meaningfull challenge at that point of game progression.

Well just one more reason not to bother with animals save for carry-dogs, but I bet the new routines for them to check what they attack will bog the lategame performance down again... yay

[HauntedShadowsLegacy]

Gonna add a +1 to this discussion. I have to slaughter all foxes, even the one-day-old cubs, upon starting a map because they instantly target my chickens. They're not even hungry. Thankfully, I haven't gotten that issue with wolves' ai, but it's still super annoying. I have to closely monitor the animals/wildlife tab to make sure no new foxes have spawned in without the game telling me, cuz any new spawns will also instantly target my chickens. I have to reload an auto-save and lose a day of progress just because a fox cub spawned without me knowing and slaughtered another chicken.

What sucks even worse is that not all animal types spawn wild in every map, so if I remove all the livestock from my custom gamemodes, I just won't get certain animals at all. It's a total toss-up whether traders have the animals I'm missing or not, and the 'group of [animal]' spawns are sparse and usually not what I need.

[Joonyah]

For the time being I've given up keeping chickens and cats. Whenever a fox gets hungry it kills 90% of them, and having several trained dogs set to vermin control doesn't catch the fox every time.

Oh well, I'll RP it as an egg free diet and cat allergies lol.

[tlsrace]

Chickens are easy to buy from settlements later. You can plan a coup that is relatively safe. Keep in mind chickens do not live long. I would only buy if they were under 5 days old(also you do not need many males as 1 or 2 roosters go a long way). Goofed initially and had some die before they got home. ALso since they come back at the edge of the map they need to be roped to be brought back. Be ready to have your settler go into hunt mod right away to clear a path. Send some settlers high in animal to rope your chickens.

[Joonyah]

Originally posted by tlsrace:

Chickens are easy to buy from settlements later. You can plan a coup that is relatively safe. Keep in mind chickens do not live long. I would only buy if they were under 5 days old(also you do not need many males as 1 or 2 roosters go a long way). Goofed initially and had some die before they got home. ALso since they come back at the edge of the map they need to be roped to be brought back. Be ready to have your settler go into hunt mod right away to clear a path. Send some settlers high in animal to rope your chickens.

Yep, the biggest challenge of the last couple of days has been getting my newly purchased chickens from the edge of the map(when they arrive with the caravan) to their secure field. It's a major ordeal and usually involves several reloads and dedicated attention. I have to dedicate several ropers and guards, draft them and micromanage them the whole time or I lose animals I just bought.

I don't think this was the intention of the devs to turn livestock management into a full fledged mini game, but I have faith it will be adjusted properly in the future.