Do tamed animals just disappear if you have too many?

[zachareeh]

Throughout my game I've noticed some animals just... aren't there anymore... Back when I had muffalo, I'd see some numbered muffalo show up in wild herds. I've lost some thrumbos too but those are rare enough I've never seen one come back wild. I have plenty of animal trainers and I'm keeping up with training, so I'm pretty sure it's not that. I know theres a limit where wild animals will stop spawning, but will it also cause tamed animals to despawn if you push past it?

[Cannenses]

Never had that experience. Or, maybe I haven't hit the limit. So, what is the limit for tamed animals?

[Raymond]

no, there is a limit for sure on how many animals you can have, but your game will most likely crash before you hit the limit.

[zachareeh]

Originally posted by YariMurai:

no, there is a limit for sure on how many animals you can have, but your game will most likely crash before you hit the limit.

Assuming it doesn't crash, what would happen if I were at that limit and had animals giving birth? Just counting thrumbos, I have 70 currently. 200-ish total animals. I had previously cleaned it up a bit, but now I'm running out of unbonded / not pregnant (slaughtering those just feels wrong to me) animals to get rid of. My last options are to either get ride of my 52 chickens (pretty sure I'd start running out of food without those eggs) or start slaughtering and/or selling unbonded thrumbos (which would make me wanna cry...)

Is the limit global or just for each settlement?

[WhattyWhatWhat81]

I've had hundreds and hundreds of animals. I decided once to see just how many chickens were possible and the limiting factor seems to be producing enough food.

Re "numbered" animals showing up in herds, this is due to a lack of taming (1st stage of training). I know you say you have enough trainers but this suggests otherwise. It could be that you have a lot, but they may simply "miss" a subset of animals who become wild again.

Animals also get attacked and killed by wild animals but you usually get an alert for that

[beep]

^^ This is exactly it. Not enough trainers. If they vanish, its probably because they couldn't get enough food and left the map.

[MayoCulpa]

+1 to not enough trainers. If the animals aren't *successfully* trained regularly, they lose all their skills over time, including Tameness. When the last point of Tameness degrades from lack of training, they revert to being wild. Like early game if I get a self-tamed megasloth or rhino I sell it as immediately as possible. If I don't have any trainers with high enough skill to regularly succeed in training them they're gonna lose tameness for certain.

They won't leave for lack of food if they're still tame. They'll hang around wherever you zoned them and starve to death. Only reason they'd leave is from not being tame anymore.

It works in the other direction too. Apparently NPC settlements never have enough trainers either. So animals you've sold to towns might show up again as wildlife if they're of a species that can naturally spawn in your biome. You'll have to re-tame them, same as any other wild animal. But I always get a kick out of checking the wildlife tab and seeing "Muffalo 2."

[WhattyWhatWhat81]

Originally posted by beep:

^^ This is exactly it. Not enough trainers. If they vanish, its probably because they couldn't get enough food and left the map.

Agree, but just to be clear only wild animals leave the map due to lack of food. Colony animals die of starvation like a colonist would.

So a colony animal ---> wild animal (lack of training in tameness ----> leave map (death, lack of food or general migration)

[WhattyWhatWhat81]

Originally posted by MayoCulpa:

They won't leave for lack of food if they're still tame. They'll hang around wherever you zoned them and starve to death. Only reason they'd leave is from not being tame anymore.

Yep, should have read your post before replying to @beep haha

[Carlucio]

I had a farm a with hundreds of muffalos once and the only side effect was that wild animals stopped spawning.

[WhattyWhatWhat81]

Originally posted by Carlucio:

I had a farm a with hundreds of muffalos once and the only side effect was that wild animals stopped spawning.

Yes, but you need to feed and maintain them (keep them tame). I've had similar, with a variety of beasts but it's keeping on top of them that becomes the challenge.

I once decided to breed predatory animals on one side and "food" on the other. I had dozens of predators but when I got caught out by an attack I couldn't maintain them and ended up with a map of very hungry predators with very little to eat other than colonists... Was fun to watch

[Carlucio]

Originally posted by WhattyWhatWhat81:

Originally posted by Carlucio:

I had a farm a with hundreds of muffalos once and the only side effect was that wild animals stopped spawning.

Yes, but you need to feed and maintain them (keep them tame). I've had similar, with a variety of beasts but it's keeping on top of them that becomes the challenge.

I once decided to breed predatory animals on one side and "food" on the other. I had dozens of predators but when I got caught out by an attack I couldn't maintain them and ended up with a map of very hungry predators with very little to eat other than colonists... Was fun to watch

Yes, overtime they will need more and more food but are there are things you can do to keep going pretty until you get bored.

1- Like in a real ranch you can separate your map into several different pastures and keep rotating which one they are allowed to graze. That will keep the animals safe from raids and will also allow the vegetation to recover fully.

2- I suggest creating your ranch base on arid shrubland since it doesnt rain too much while still having enough places to grow haygrass. You can place sunlamps on the ground in this biome and they won't zap all the time. Sun lamps greatly increase your hay production and you pretty much need it to keep going up. The thing is you need to produce enough hay to feed your animals but also to keep a stockpile. 200 muffalos will require tens of thousands of stored haygrass during a toxic fallout.

[Sugar Show]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2064456179

[zachareeh]

Since yal can't read, I'll reiterate:

It. Is. Not. The. Training.

I'm about 99% sure of it. The remaining 1% accounts for freak coincidences. Fact is, training has been going smoothly for quite awhile now. When training does decay, it typically gets re-trained within a day. The muffalos were very early game, so it's very possible that's the case for them, but it doesn't explain the thrumbos or other animals that have gone missing.

It's not food either, I have over 100k kibble on my map and it's been slowly building for the past 5 years. My food management is better than yours.

I'm no stranger to huge mega colonies. I'm not asking how to play the game, you can stop condescending. I'm asking what, within the inner workings of the game, could be causing this given that I'm keeping my animals well fed and well trained. It usually happens when I'm just afk-ing and letting my animals breed out of control (like my thrumbos for the past 10 years, or when I added in paragon timber wolves, basically anytime I'm trying to establish a population of new animals and want alot of bonds,) or when hatching large stacks of chicken eggs. Which is why I think it has something to do with some kind of limit.

[Narrowmind]

Yeah, I heard you the first time, but I wasn't going to get in it with you. LOL

[WhattyWhatWhat81]

Originally posted by zachareeh:

Since yal can't read, I'll reiterate:

It. Is. Not. The. Training.

I'm about 99% sure of it. The remaining 1% accounts for freak coincidences.

Not sure who "yal" is but seems a shame that he/she can't read. I am not sure your reading level is that high either as you clearly said you were "pretty sure" which isn't an absolute, as you are stating now. As you seem to think general offers of help to be condescending, I'll offer up some free sarcasm in a second, but before that, how do you know training is all up to snuff if the problem happens when you're "afk-ing and letting my animals breed out of control"

Regarding the rest of your tirade, I'll wish you good luck. As your food management is better than mine (apparently) it can't be that. I mean, I've never had the issue you're facing so maybe it's a control mechanism in the game... if you're too good it starts to f*ck you over. Either that or arrogance is driving away the herds...