All chickens dead, all rabbits escaped

[Xenomorph]

Yesterday, everything was fine. Cleaned up the barn and the hutches, made sure water and feed were topped off, went off on a brief 2 day expedition to get materials for metalworking. Drove back, quick check on the critters, everything was fine. Everything was fine for the past two game session days.

Come back today, simple update. Cows and sheep are fine, all chickens are dead in the hutch and all wabbits escaped. Spend one hour gathering all the wabbits around, some turned wild so lots of running. Turned on god mode and invisible, caught some.
Shame for the chickens. I can get some more. Checked the critter areas still existed, just in case.
Turn away for a bit, all wabbits escaped again. The ♥♥♥♥??? Water is topped off and plenty of feed. THEY ARE WITHIN SOLID WALLS, HOW, WHY?????

Every single day, some ♥♥♥♥ happens with chickens and wabbits. Every.single.day. I've just stared at the frog until today because we know, whatever the ♥♥♥♥ they call unreliable, unpredictable, unstable, whatever. B42 has just been a pile of ♥♥♥♥, sorry to say it. Someone has to.

Sorry if this sounds like a rant, it kinda is, because this is very frustrating. Could be mods, sure, but them cows and sheep would be affected too? Why do chickens die and wabbits ignore walls?

If anyone playing vanilla is experiencing the same thing, please drop a comment here. If you're having no issues, it's not very helpful. Bugs may not affect everyone.
I noticed that seemingly unrelated mods like zuper carts broke (was working fine yesterday), so it's remotely possible it's mod related. But it wasn't yesterday.

Today's changes: heatmaps, Stendo's and smoker coughs.

And please, don't post stuff like "do you run mods" or "check file integrity" or regurgitated stuff like that. I'm not looking for a solution, i'm looking for a straight answer or something that helps figuring this ♥♥♥♥ out. Besides ignoring chickens and wabbits, except for roadkill, which will totally flip a box van on it's side while wrecking the hood and windshield.

And please, keep posting patch notes such as "coughing no longer scares animal farms" while it still does. And if you blame this on mods, i blame it on spaghetti. This one paragraph is personal, ignore it.

Anyone in TIS reading this, PLEASE, just please, take some time and fix all the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ issues we have been talking about. Just please, someone has to say it and i just did. Ive been having the NAN issue with several character parameters related to water and food every day. Every single ♥♥♥♥♥ day.
I've made a routine of running zomboid and going to the general debugger to check on that, it's every time. Randomly. Temperature and wetness are NAN and the sliders not even responsive to change, i'm immune to weather. May the gods of kobol bless us all. And the animal cheat cheat is also bugged, it activates every time we use any other cheat, so we have to cheat to toggle off the cheat.

[p3st|cIdE]

sorry to hear about your critter troubles. And we thought the zombies were a problem!
just checked my animals; they're all fine. Rabbits don't seem to fully respect the designated zones, can wander outside, but they do seem to respect fences. Maybe a zombie scared them away somehow? I hear the bucks will fight each other..
The chickens, could have been that the hutch needs cleaning? I hear that bird droppings are bad for 'em. Deadly even. Though I haven't been able to mop my hutch. Hasn't happened to me. I thought my chickens all died or escaped one day; no, they all were just inside the hutch, hanging out laying eggs.
The rabbits won't use a chicken hutch.
My pig's happy too.

[Armagenesis]

Dirty hutch will kill chickens.
Animals can climb stairs and somehow escape enclosure using them.
There are some cases where the pathfinding seem to be broken as well. So when you open a gate/door and the animal decides to go to the other side, they will go to the other side. They will ignore the fact that you've closed the gate/door before they pass through.

[Xenomorph]

You're right about one important thing, zeds are the least of our problems right now 😒

[Xenomorph]

Originally posted by Armagenesis:

Dirty hutch will kill chickens.
Animals can climb stairs and somehow escape enclosure using them.
There are some cases where the pathfinding seem to be broken as well. So when you open a gate/door and the animal decides to go to the other side, they will go to the other side. They will ignore the fact that you've closed the gate/door before they pass through.

A hutch should not, or will not get filthy in a couple days. I have 2 hutches, had 1 cockrel, 3 hens and keep chicks to 5. Not standing for chicksnpocalypses or eggpocalypses, where half day is trashing eggs.
No stairs. Cows love stairs, so i banned them in the barn.
I'm familiar with critters flashing through open doors. Grass is always greener on the other side?
As much as i'm familiar with how ♥♥♥♥♥ frustrating it is to close a ♥♥♥♥♥ door when critters are around, because petting #1 and ♥♥♥♥ doors. Barns require some crafty engineering to prevent preferred wall and fence hopping, and critter petting.

Thanks for your insight, though, those were issues that could have slipped.

[eMYNOCK]

you feel better after ranting it out?

my guess, its something map generation and npc location/state related.

because i have seen something similar in an almost vanilla save,
i use recraftable axes, training by dragging corpses and something that adds a VHS that i still have to find to learn generator usage from it.

as i am modified i am certainly unqualified for a proper bug report, means i won'T pull the "its the mods blah blah" on you.

however, when i noticed it it was in a world that was a few real days old and converted to match the game version... i haven't encountered it in a world that was made using the current version yet.

will keep my eyes open.

what i've also seen... literally all water containers (pots, buckets, gerdening cans, to name a few) that were left in the world were suddenly changed into an unusable state.

so, no big deal to transfer my build up character from the world of unusable pots into a newer version.

[Xenomorph]

Originally posted by eMYNOCK:

you feel better after ranting it out?

Yes, thank you. The frog has been digested and flushed, walls have been rebuilt slightly differently, animal areas redone and and life at the farm again has a semblance of normalcy.

[Xenomorph]

Still at a loss on what the issue was, tbh.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3443891236
The north wall was just against the top trough, making the area 4x10. Wonder if it was too small for the amount of wabbits i had in there, some 15 or so? I don't think i've read anything about the amount of area needed per critter type or size, but still, that would be 2 tiles per small critter with 10 to spare. I redid the 4x10 wabbit area yesterday, a few times, right before i came here crying like a baby, the buggers just kept running off.
If anyone has an insight in this, please share.

I debug destroyed the right hutch first (which is rarely used), and oddly, half of the left hutch also disappeared, even with the space and the rain collector between them. The left hutch is where all the dead chickens were, sure looks like it was bugged somehow. It wasn't too filthy at all, doesn't look like that's what caused the chickens to die, but who knows.
[/quote]

[eMYNOCK]

looks normal to me...
as said, i have no actual idea but i suspect some sort of error in world and character creation or conversion.

i had to haul all my sheep back from the farm near muldraugh and had to haul all living chicken back from across the road near the rusty rifle tavern / motel.

[drogodependiente]

Originally posted by Xenomorph:

Still at a loss on what the issue was, tbh.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3443891236
The north wall was just against the top trough, making the area 4x10. Wonder if it was too small for the amount of wabbits i had in there, some 15 or so? I don't think i've read anything about the amount of area needed per critter type or size, but still, that would be 2 tiles per small critter with 10 to spare. I redid the 4x10 wabbit area yesterday, a few times, right before i came here crying like a baby, the buggers just kept running off.
If anyone has an insight in this, please share.

I debug destroyed the right hutch first (which is rarely used), and oddly, half of the left hutch also disappeared, even with the space and the rain collector between them. The left hutch is where all the dead chickens were, sure looks like it was bugged somehow. It wasn't too filthy at all, doesn't look like that's what caused the chickens to die, but who knows.

The rabbit area seems to have an area they can access without leaving the fence, but it's not marked as a livestock area. The game doesn't remember the exact position of the zombies; instead, it places them approximately in their chunk. I assume something similar happens with wild animals. So I deduce that when your rabbits leave the designated area, even if they don't leave the fenced area, they remain in an unassigned area. Therefore, they are wild animals. When you reload the chunk, it places them more or less in the area but logically doesn't place them in your livestock. It's just an assumption, but I always put up fences or walls to ensure there are no unassigned areas within the fence, and I haven't lost any animals, and I had 10 rabbits in a 3x3 area. The chickens do keep disappearing, so I keep them in a trailer (watering them approximately every two days, but I assume you need to take them out occasionally to fertilize them or something to guarantee continuity when they die of age).

[p3st|cIdE]

yeah I think rabbits need a certain area of designated zone each, if they get overpopulated it seems they can leave the zone or go wild (or both.) haven't figured it out yet, but mine are stable presently, since I expanded the zone.

[p3st|cIdE]

I suspect the build note "they will never leave" their zone while safe, may be a lie, or not the complete truth anyway. @drogodependiente your logic makes sense. Makes me want to make a few changes to my arrangement, which, due to unwanted zone merging, I couldn't have the rabbit and chicken zones right next to each other up to the separating fence, so there's currently a 1-tile gap, where Bad Things could happen as you suggest. I'll fence it off or something, just to be safe. Though I haven't had any trouble w that so far.

[WillieSea]

I had two pigs once. They were in a designated animal zone that was one tile smaller than the tall pipe fence I built around it. No zombies ever in this area.

I leave for half a game day to loot and I come back and both are gone having smashed through the tall pipe fence in two areas. They also smashed my Jeep still hooked up to a horse trailer across my parking lot and on top of my sports car. I am not sure I will figure out how they did that.

They then headed into my base, I assume, to start smashing it down. So I had no alternative then to slaughter them on the spot before they wrecked complete mayhem on my base.

Lets just say I will never have another pig, ever again. The one bull cow I found on a previous game never gave me such trouble.

[Xenomorph]

Originally posted by WillieSea:

I had two pigs once. They were in a designated animal zone that was one tile smaller than the tall pipe fence I built around it. No zombies ever in this area.

I leave for half a game day to loot and I come back and both are gone having smashed through the tall pipe fence in two areas. They also smashed my Jeep still hooked up to a horse trailer across my parking lot and on top of my sports car. I am not sure I will figure out how they did that.

They then headed into my base, I assume, to start smashing it down. So I had no alternative then to slaughter them on the spot before they wrecked complete mayhem on my base.

Lets just say I will never have another pig, ever again. The one bull cow I found on a previous game never gave me such trouble.

I dont have pigs so no experience with those, but i've read around here somewhere that pigs do become violent and destructive when starving or dying of thirst. Maybe that's what happened? Critters good at holding a grudge 😅

Other animals will destroy walls and fences to escape, but will just wonder off.

Careful with rams, too, if they are stressed and have 0 player acceptance. I got 1 shot headbutt murdered by one shortly after starting b42, trying to pet it. Took me a week to tame the one i have, going to the old farm and carefully just keeping my distance to create some acceptance. More terrified of a damn sheep then hordes of zed, go figure.

[Pendah]

I think it is too early to expect having zero problem with animals since they are the newest biggest feature.. I know it's hard I really want to play b42 again but I like longer playthrough and update will ♥♥♥♥ your save it's obvious. Don't involve too seriously in B42 yet, it is here only for testing, not proper gameplay.

[eMYNOCK]

you should be terrified by a ram...
if it don't likes you, sees you as an intruder, it will straight up murder you given the chance.

same goes for geese... of any gender... luckily there are aparently no geese in this game...
these feathered monstrosities are one of the very few animals that terrifiy me... followed by swans.