Boomalopes: Eat or Sell?

[Reno Story]

Hey, I'm kinda new to this whole rimworlding thing. Got about 15+ hours into the game and already encountered an interesting situation where a boomalope self tamed. Shortly after, I decided to get it a mate, and have since been raising the two in a simple barn, where the first calf was born.

So far, having a steady source of chemfuel is nice and all, but as the population grows, I eventually am going to have to figure out what I'm gonna do with these creatures. As I learned while hunting wild boomalopes, they tend to go BOOM real easily when shot at, and while the fires aren't the scary part, it's the BOOM that is... And since they do it when they die, I don't know if slaughtering them for meat is such a good idea, even if they do give off a decent amount of meat.

Thus, as the population grows, I contemplated selling excess boomalopes and keeping a limit of 4-6 of them at any time, since my colony isn't all that large (and in fact has endured a tragic raid where nearly everyone was kidnapped by pirates). Would that be a good export, though? Would it be a waste? Or is there a safer way to harvest them for food?

[Khan Boyzitbig of Mercia]

Farming boom(thing)s for food requires zoning the critter into a fireproof room maybe even with a firefoam popper to prevent injury and excessive flame. Better idea is to separate males and females unless you want to expand the population. Selling the chemfuel is better than selling boomalopes and more traders will buy the chemfuel.

Can also use them as organic incendiary bombs, boomrats are better for that due to how fast they reproduce and being smaller makes them more useful/likely to get to the target intact.

[olympe]

Boomalopes are fun. Really fun. They're great for chemfuel, but also for attacking raiders if trained to do so. Just make sure they're not guarding your pawns, but actually attacking the enemy far from your own people.

And, yes it does make sense to kill them for meat if there's nothing else available or there are too many of them or, well, you don't have enough food to get them through the winter. And I've found two convenient ways of killing them.
1) Create a very small zone in the middle of a swamp/bog/river/lake that you send your sacrificial boomies to. (Also, make sure this zone and the surrounding 3-5 tiles are not part of your home zone!) Then shoot them from afar. Once one of them explodes, it might cause a chain reaction (killing another boomie, then another...) Only when all of them are dead, return this piece of land to your home zone, have the fires extinguished (if there are any), then collect your meat.
2) Use a geyser to create a 5x5 heated room with several exits. Send your boomies in, close the doors and wait. Once they're all dead, retrieve your boomies. You won't need to work with your homezone though, since you can simply forbid the doors. The disadvantage is that it gets really hot inside, so devilstrand clothes are recommended. ;)

[Astasia]

Slaughtering them for the +50% meat is going to take a while to be worth it, you'll want like +200% heat resist from high quality devilstrand clothes. If you assign them to an area that is on water/marsh you can remove the risk of fire or burning up of the corpses, just assign them in groups of like 3-4 and have your pawns execute them with ranged weapons from a safe distance.

Base meat is 135 at a market value of 2, so there's 170 value, the 45 plain leather has a market value of 2.1 for another 94.5, that's 264.5 market value compared to the 350 market value of selling the live animals. If you can get the +50% meat from slaughtering while using heat resistant clothes that will bump it up to 349.5 raw value. If you can turn the leather into decent clothes that could add substantial value, as can turning the meat into survival meals (this boosts the value of the vegetables rather than the meat, you get about +6 silver per 12 units of meat/vege).

[davidcjr]

Really depends on what you need.

All.you need is 2 to farm chemfuel for half a dozen generators. My only addition to this discussion is to keep them in a 5x5 or 6x6 stone wall ( no roofs ) with Daisy' plot to feed them. Keep a check up on their age as you dont want them to die of a sudden heart attack or old age.

You should be able to get enough meat from the environment unless it's an extreme one like desert

Edit: also you can assign them to an small area where raiders are to "attack" them without having to spend time training them.

[Reno Story]

goodness, I know they tend to produce a lot of chemfuel, but only needing two for aprox 5-6 gas generators? I never thought about that. I haven't got to that stage in my game yet, am still adjusting to things before I start utilizing energy in my colony.

I'll have to keep that in mind when I move on to the next technological step.

[gimmethegepgun]

Feeding boomalopes grown food is an extremely inefficient usage of food. You should only keep them for chemfuel production if they can freely graze for grass instead of feeding them.
They produce 12 chemfuel every 2 days, at a cost of 2.08 nutrition per day (0.35 nutrition per chemfuel). By contrast, a biofuel refinery turns 3.5 nutrition into 35 chemfuel (0.10 nutrition per chemfuel). So feeding them rather than grazing is much less nutrition-efficient than biofuel, even if you use the exploit that allows you to stockpile the 300% efficiency nutrient paste meals and feed them with that, and probably about the same amount of labor invested per chemfuel.

[davidcjr]

Chemfuel generators draw in 4.5 chemfuel per day. Each boomalope can support about 2.5-3 generators at 2500 watts each.

Daisy's provide 2 nutrients and take 2. Days to grow with minimum upkeep. Feed em that

Your right about the wood portion, but it takes less micromanagement in vanilla than having to constantly cut down trees.

Thanks for that data tho

[Kittenpox]

People are talking about using ponds for killing boomalopes, whereas I just make rooms with stone walls+floors, put my shooter in a (safe) corner, then put a single-tile Zone in the middle. Anytime I want to slaughter a boomalope they get zoned to that area, then the shooter force-attacks the thing and is undrafted to go extinguish any fires afterwards.

But yeah, training them to Attack raiders, while passively producing Chemfuel, is the main use I have for Boomalopes. (Boomrats are also good attack animals for the same reason, but I tend not to use them - bad risk vs reward.)

As for Eat vs. Sell question - treat them as emergency winter food supply.

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by Kittenpox:

As for Eat vs. Sell question - treat them as emergency winter food supply.

Herbivores make for very bad emergency winter food. They all eat so much food per day that they're far more likely to cause a food shortage once the grass freezes than they are to relieve a shortage. At 2.08 nutrition per day and a yield of 135 meat if you don't destroy any body parts shooting them to death, they eat more food in 3.5 days than they give from being butchered.
Compare that to a polar bear, which eats 0.56 per day and gives 194 meat when butchered, and easily gets the +50% from slaughtering them since they don't explode in your face.

[Kittenpox]

Originally posted by gimmethegepgun:

Originally posted by Kittenpox:

As for Eat vs. Sell question - treat them as emergency winter food supply.

Herbivores make for very bad emergency winter food. They all eat so much food per day that they're far more likely to cause a food shortage once the grass freezes than they are to relieve a shortage. At 2.08 nutrition per day and a yield of 135 meat if you don't destroy any body parts shooting them to death, they eat more food in 3.5 days than they give from being butchered.
Compare that to a polar bear, which eats 0.56 per day and gives 194 meat when butchered, and easily gets the +50% from slaughtering them since they don't explode in your face.

Fair point. :-)

[Jpc1023]

Originally posted by gimmethegepgun:

Originally posted by Kittenpox:

As for Eat vs. Sell question - treat them as emergency winter food supply.

Herbivores make for very bad emergency winter food. They all eat so much food per day that they're far more likely to cause a food shortage once the grass freezes than they are to relieve a shortage. At 2.08 nutrition per day and a yield of 135 meat if you don't destroy any body parts shooting them to death, they eat more food in 3.5 days than they give from being butchered.
Compare that to a polar bear, which eats 0.56 per day and gives 194 meat when butchered, and easily gets the +50% from slaughtering them since they don't explode in your face.

indoor growing with Hay next to the barn

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by 『Ω』Ray The Hunter:

Originally posted by gimmethegepgun:

Herbivores make for very bad emergency winter food. They all eat so much food per day that they're far more likely to cause a food shortage once the grass freezes than they are to relieve a shortage. At 2.08 nutrition per day and a yield of 135 meat if you don't destroy any body parts shooting them to death, they eat more food in 3.5 days than they give from being butchered.
Compare that to a polar bear, which eats 0.56 per day and gives 194 meat when butchered, and easily gets the +50% from slaughtering them since they don't explode in your face.

indoor growing with Hay next to the barn

Haygrass isn't THAT much more efficient than rice or corn, and can't be grown in hydroponics or used for the 180% or 300% efficiency meals, only able to be used for 125% efficient kibble.
In regular soil, each plot of haygrass gives 0.07 nutrition/day, while rice gives 0.054. So that's 30 plots of haygrass to support one boomalope, giving no food except if you choose to slaughter it, whereas 30 plots of rice would generate 1.626 nutrition per day for anyone to eat. Those 30 plots of rice would generate the nutritional value of killing that boomalope in a little over 4 days.

These numbers are further in favor of rice in rich soil, and rice is incredibly high yield when being grown in hydroponics, where each plot gives more than twice as much yield as a plot of regular soil haygrass. It fares worse in stony soil, but potatoes fare better in comparison there.

[Wolfguarde]

Let 'em roam. Boomalopes are guilt-free expendable guerilla troops that can tear up an assaulting force simply by doing what they do as they roam around the map and denude it of grass. Keep a breeder pair or two inside the base to continue generating more, concrete your combat areas to dissuade fire spread, and just let raiders wail on them as they zone in on your base. Their melee will likely cop a decent amount of burn damage before they ever get within firing range of your colonists, and each boomalope killed is one less you have to patch up after the fight.

[desrtfox071]

I farm them for Chemfuel.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by Wolfguarde:

Let 'em roam.

Personally I really hate having animals which produce something graze around in a large area as it sends your handlers way out around the map to milk/shear them. Then they rarely haul it back at the time and instead a second pawn has to run out and grab that item at some point. Those are the kinds of pawn antics that drive me mad. =p