Upcoming Cats and Dogs DLC Changes

[Zantai]

Hey all! We are glad to see so many of you are adding beloved companions to your settlements and enjoying their unique vibe. We did see some feedback though that we will be looking to address ASAP.

This is what we are working on for a small patch coming in the next week or so:

• Manually commanding villagers will allow them to shoo pests (Groundhogs and Foxes)
  
• Adding a new Disable Pests option, similar to Pacifist Mode, that disables that half of the DLC for players that want a chill experience with dogs and cats more for the immersion and ambience and less for the gameplay loop.
  
• Increase Dog health and armor so they are more durable after their duels with foxes.
  
• Fix a critical issue where foxes and groundhogs show up much sooner than intended for existing saves.

[Jeruzalem]

so, will the groundhogs and foxes behave more like deer when villagers approach them, or will they really run towards the nearest forest area?

[veowar]

trying not to rush grow my town just built a trader and the ground hogs pretty much ate my 2 crop fields could you lower the cost of buying dogs from the trader.

[Reni Pelmeni]

It's a little game breaking that dogs are the ONLY means of shooing or killing groundhogs and foxes. Villagers, hunters, soldiers should be capable (while maybe less effective) at doing so. I haven't had a trader bring pets yet and these pests have basically decimated Ag for a population of 800 lol. HELP

[Baumwollmund]

as I like the Idea of foxes .... they appear way too often and aggressive. Ive lost about 30 chickens by now. I keep rebuying them, some hatch and all get killed by autumn. Maybe add that hunters also can kill them by chance for some meat or pelt ?

[Fido]

Originally posted by Reni Pelmeni:

It's a little game breaking that dogs are the ONLY means of shooing or killing groundhogs and foxes. Villagers, hunters, soldiers should be capable (while maybe less effective) at doing so. I haven't had a trader bring pets yet and these pests have basically decimated Ag for a population of 800 lol. HELP

Just experienced this myself, over the course of one season, groundhogs ate over 8000 crops, just 3 groundhogs eating about several literal tons of food, and you can't do anything about them if no traders have dogs in stock.

This is absolutely game breaking, and game-ruining in fact, do you still get groundhogs if you fully disable the DLC for now? It's not even about wanting a 'chill experience', it's just that this creates a yearly punishment for having bad trader cycles, by literally giving you no, none, zero, zilch, nada food from farming.

[Ooka]

I also think the number of foxes needs to be reduced a bit, especially as foxes usually hunt alone. This is just one entrance, there are just as many on the other side of town. (The one fox with the arrow is retreating, all the others are coming in. One more is hiding behind the bushes.)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3727515450
It’s only quieter in winter; otherwise, I always have 4–6 battles against foxes going on simultaneously across the map.

My chickens (3 chicken coops) are now safe again, though.
At first, I only had two chicken coops; all the chickens were killed before I could buy a dog. After that, for years I couldn’t find a single vendor willing to sell me new chickens. With no eggs and no cakes, several buildings fell into disrepair... (lol)
That’s why I increased the number of coops to avoid another total loss.

I have also built four kennels since then, so I bought and bred 48 dogs, 15 of which are right next to the chickens. But I noticed the most significant improvement after changing the setup: the chickens are protected by a stone fence, and I then built further stone fences ensure that the foxes have to run a sufficiently long way past the pack of dogs and cannot approach from all sides. This way, the dogs can guard the critical areas together, and individual dogs can retreat and survive as well.

I reckon I can reduce the number of dogs a bit now, with that many of them, the meat consumption isn’t exactly low. If that works out I will also reduce the chicken coops to 2 again.

TLDR: Doable, but the constant attack is a nuisance and unrealistic.

[Zantai]

Originally posted by Ooka:

I also think the number of foxes needs to be reduced a bit, especially as foxes usually hunt alone. This is just one entrance, there are just as many on the other side of town. (The one fox with the arrow is retreating, all the others are coming in. One more is hiding behind the bushes.)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3727515450
It’s only quieter in winter; otherwise, I always have 4–6 battles against foxes going on simultaneously across the map.

Could you please send this save to [e-mail]?

Saves are located in:
C:\Users\YOUR USERNAME\Saved Games\Farthest Frontier\Save
Zip up the entire TownName_###### folder along with the .map file and .sav that reproduces the issue. If the files are too big, you can use a service such as Google Drive to share it with us or we can provide an upload link.

Thanks!

[Ooka]

Originally posted by Zantai:

Could you please send this save to [e-mail]?

Did that. Thanks for your reply.

(After two more major attacks, during which my dogs all retreated and I lost about half my chickens, I’m now building another kennel. I think I’ll take back that ‘doable’ comment from earlier ;))

[athinai]

I continued existing save (vanquisher, pacifist mode) with DLC, and I have also problem with foxes being too many and too agressive. I requested dogs from trader so I had them early, but my 7 dogs did nothing to foxes, they were still injured and retreating and chickens all dead. To keep chickens alive, I had to load previous saves many times to experiment and finally came up with the solution (with loss of only 15 chickens, which were lost during the relocation) - I relocated my 3 chicken coops into one walled area in the middle of the city and keep them walled almost all year with no entrance. Every year, in the autumn/winter when chickens got inside the coop, I deleted one piece of wall to let people in and out, take out eggs and waste and bring in winter feed. Before chickens would get out to grazing area again, I built the wall again and keep them inside. I hoped that after I breed enough dogs, I could build a permanent gate instead of deleting and building wall all the time. But even 24 dogs, with 8 doghouses directly next to chicken coops could not prevent foxes getting in. Usually all dogs chased after one group of foxes, and in the meantime another fox(es) got in the walled area and started killing all the chickens...

[『 Kuma 』]

Looking forward to the DLC changes coming soon!

Even though it‘s a small DLC, it‘s nice to add more lively mechanics to the game so the town feels more alive.

As much as I get why people are disappointed that this mini DLC isn‘t what they were hoping for a first DLC, I can also understand why some are frustrated with the new pests and leaving criticism left and right. I also felt extremely frustrated with how pests (groundhogs+foxes) added more issues to the game right from the start that couldn‘t be entirely managed.

- Even if you place dog kennels right next to fields, dogs will attach themselves to hunters and foragers even if the hunting cabins are further out on the outskirts of your town, leaving fields unprotected. The fix to make pests targetable by villagers (in the same way as deers) is at least a good compromise for now
- Were pests supposed to appear later during certain game progressions? I think I had my first harvest within the first 5 years and then 2 groundhogs started invading it (Tier I town, less than 50 pop). Can‘t remember when foxes started appearing. I bought two chickens maybe before my 10th year (between Tier I - II town center) and after a few minutes of owning them, they were gone, eaten up before I could even notice.
- as much as I like the challenge of pests, it would have been good if they scale with difficulty like enemies. Have one show up and then later on as you unlock Tier III, you get packs of them. Playing on Vanquisher mode, already pushes you to focus on military to survive invasions. Having your struggling agriculture destroyed by aggressive pests early on forces you to either forgo chickens or split your resources.
- it would have been nice to have one of the two dog kennels be a sorta guard house where the dog stays in the vicinity (perfect for guarding farms) and the other dog kennel allowing them to roam free or attach themselves to humans but I get that that might require too much work.


There is another issue I‘ve noticed but wasn‘t sure if it‘s just me. I‘ve built a barn with 2 cows, they increased to 7 cows, then I've built a new barn next to it and was about to split my cows only to find that the barn with 7 cows was suddenly reduced to 1 cow! Within the blink of an eye. The barn was fully managed, had plenty of hay, was very healthy, there was no enemy invasion, I had killed all the predator nests nearby, and it was in a stone-walled area. Just like that, 6 cows gone without an explanation. Do foxes or dogs eat cows? I also noticed that even after 10+ years, the area the cows were grazing on didn‘t increase in fertility at all.

I will start a completely new map to see if I encounter this again or if it was just a glitch. But I haven‘t seen anyone else complain about cows or fertility issues so far. Before this DLC, I had sunk over 100 hours with 7 different towns into the game and never had seen it before.



This was on all a new game I started with this DLC. Enemies were set on Vanquisher mode but wildlife was set on Trailblazer.
As frustrating as the new pests are, I really enjoy that cats and dogs are assisting the population so thank you for the mini DLC.


suggestions regarding future updates unrelated to the DLC:


- 1x indestructible wolf or boar den on Trailblazer mode and 2x indestructible wolf or boar dens on Vanquisher. Easy and Peace mode can have them all be destructible. To distinguish destructible from indestructible den, make the indestructible ones bigger or intimidating

- Either on Vanquisher mode or introduce a Siege mode where there‘s an indestructible enemy fort that scales with your own town center so it becomes farmable for veterancy and increasing loot. But should be a lot stronger so it gives a perpetual challenge

- introducing more cattle like sheep or donkeys that can enable the villagers via the tech tree to carry more and transport wares faster. I know Cats and Dogs is a mini DLC that introduced pests (foxes+groundhogs) but hopefully future updates can expand on agriculture

[Zantai]

Originally posted by 『 Kuma 』:

- Were pests supposed to appear later during certain game progressions? I think I had my first harvest within the first 5 years and then 2 groundhogs started invading it (Tier I town, less than 50 pop). Can‘t remember when foxes started appearing. I bought two chickens maybe before my 10th year (between Tier I - II town center) and after a few minutes of owning them, they were gone, eaten up before I could even notice.

Yes, that is one of the bugs being addressed where the delay was not triggering for some players.

Originally posted by 『 Kuma 』:

- as much as I like the challenge of pests, it would have been good if they scale with difficulty like enemies. Have one show up and then later on as you unlock Tier III, you get packs of them. Playing on Vanquisher mode, already pushes you to focus on military to survive invasions. Having your struggling agriculture destroyed by aggressive pests early on forces you to either forgo chickens or split your resources.

The do scale with difficulty. The DLC was tuned on Vanquisher, then spawn rates scaled down on the lower difficulties.

Originally posted by 『 Kuma 』:

- it would have been nice to have one of the two dog kennels be a sorta guard house where the dog stays in the vicinity (perfect for guarding farms) and the other dog kennel allowing them to roam free or attach themselves to humans but I get that that might require too much work.

That is the purpose Doghouses serve. It puts the dogs where you want them to be.

[Girlbrush]

Originally posted by Ooka:

I also think the number of foxes needs to be reduced a bit, especially as foxes usually hunt alone. This is just one entrance, there are just as many on the other side of town. (The one fox with the arrow is retreating, all the others are coming in. One more is hiding behind the bushes.)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3727515450
It’s only quieter in winter; otherwise, I always have 4–6 battles against foxes going on simultaneously across the map.

My chickens (3 chicken coops) are now safe again, though.
At first, I only had two chicken coops; all the chickens were killed before I could buy a dog. After that, for years I couldn’t find a single vendor willing to sell me new chickens. With no eggs and no cakes, several buildings fell into disrepair... (lol)
That’s why I increased the number of coops to avoid another total loss.

I have also built four kennels since then, so I bought and bred 48 dogs, 15 of which are right next to the chickens. But I noticed the most significant improvement after changing the setup: the chickens are protected by a stone fence, and I then built further stone fences ensure that the foxes have to run a sufficiently long way past the pack of dogs and cannot approach from all sides. This way, the dogs can guard the critical areas together, and individual dogs can retreat and survive as well.

I reckon I can reduce the number of dogs a bit now, with that many of them, the meat consumption isn’t exactly low. If that works out I will also reduce the chicken coops to 2 again.

TLDR: Doable, but the constant attack is a nuisance and unrealistic.

This is crazy. Waaaay too many foxes! They remind me of the packs of deers on their way to munch crops. The thought of having 15 dogs to protect 3 chicken coops is hilarious to me. I was imagining we'd need like 3-4 dogs! It seems like the scale of the fox/chicken/dog ratio is way out right now.

[Ooka]

I’d like to share two more screenshots. The foxes are attacking the chickens (there are actually more foxes than you can see) whilst the dogs from all five kennels are retreating at the same time (despite being in good health).

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3728354243
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3728354752

[Fido]

I do hope improving health and armor of dogs compared to foxes also won't make them too good against wolves and bears.

Maybe there could be a few research options for wolfhound/bear dog that gradually increase health, armour, and attack.

[Hungerburg]

Originally posted by Zantai:

Hey all! We are glad to see so many of you are adding beloved companions to your settlements and enjoying their unique vibe. We did see some feedback though that we will be looking to address ASAP.

This is what we are working on for a small patch coming in the next week or so:

• Manually commanding villagers will allow them to shoo pests (Groundhogs and Foxes)
  
• Adding a new Disable Pests option, similar to Pacifist Mode, that disables that half of the DLC for players that want a chill experience with dogs and cats more for the immersion and ambience and less for the gameplay loop.
  
• Increase Dog health and armor so they are more durable after their duels with foxes.
  
• Fix a critical issue where foxes and groundhogs show up much sooner than intended for existing saves.

I even built a "chicken fort" but foxes don´t count as enemies, so all my chickens get killed while behind the wall, with 24 dogs around them and plenty of hunters... maybe you coult just make them less aggressive? dogs and cats hardly ever kill rats, they should be more aware of their job to make them at least helpful ^^

the idea to have them as assistents is really nice in my opinion, thx for your job!