Animal Pens and Rotting Feed

[Seriously Unserious]

After taking a break from RimWorld for a few months, I came back to find the animal mechanics had been completely changed, with pens now being the required way to keep livestock animals. Fine, improves realism that animals actually need someone to lead them to their proper spot.

The problem is that the pens, under their current vanilla mechanic are forced to be either 100% indoors or 100% outdoors. The problem is indoors, natural grasses won't grow, so my colony must dedicate resources to grow ALL of their food. If outdoors, ALL food MUST be supplied by natural grass growth, any animal feed, such as hay, left outdoors rots away every few days.

I've tried adding a mod that adds in animal troughs, but the troughs are still treated by the game as "outdoors" and the food rot situation persists.

I tried building an indoor feed shed for each of my pastures, but as soon as my feed shed meets the requirements to be considered "indoors" thus saving my feed from rotting every few days from being "outdoors" the game insists that's no longer part of the animal's pen, so the animals can't even reach the food anymore, which defeats the whole purpose of this structure.

The developers seem to have added no solution to this problem, at least none I can find, other then just keep using developer mode to cheat the rotting food back into existence, which is not really a solution at all. I want to be able to play the game properly without using that crap. But if I can't feed my animals because of a broken mechanic that offers NO solutions, what else am i to do?

What I want is something I can build inside an outdoor pen that will protect the food from rotting, other then the RimFridges, which would be obnoxiously gammey and gimmicky to
use, and requires resources I shouldn't have to spend on protecting my animal food, assuming even they resolve the rotting because outdoors issue anyways.

Alternately a mod that allows more control over the boundaries of animal's pens to allow for mixed indoor+outdoor pens, by being able to designate what areas a pen marker is tied to. EG, I build an outdoor pasture, so animals can roam outside and graze on grass, with an indoor barn section so feed like hay can be mad available to them but be stored indoors so it doesn't rot away every few days, and animals can have a dry, climate controlled shelter to use if it gets too cold or too hot for them.

Anyone have any suggestions? Any mods that fix this issue?

[RCMidas]

Animal flaps can be used to separate interior and exterior parts of a pen. Then just stockpile all the feed on the inside near to their sleeping spots.

[ᖇIᑎ]

Were you using normal doors or animal flaps? Animals can go through animal flaps but not normal doors.

[Rheth]

As far as I know Kibble does not rot, and you can put it on a shelf outdoors and it will not deteriorate. You can also use Hay as nutrition in Kibble so you only have to supply some extra meat.

[Markus Reese]

Ahh, what you are missing is there is the new type of animal doors! There is a cloth door to help maintain insulation value, but does not act as a barrier to the animals. Additionally, pens are adaptive. So if you hold a door open, then the adjoining room/pen area is considered also part of the pen.

Below is my chicken farm. Where my base is, winter can get harsh. So once the snow falls and no grass on the ground, I close the fences to the field, open the fences to the silos. Note I have two pens. One for a few roosters, the rest for hens. The pens can be designated for male and female. But if I open the gate between the two, it allows them to mingle should I want to breed more.

The green ghosting is the primary pen. The white means it is a joined section they have access to.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2592103082

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2592103097

[Seriously Unserious]

Originally posted by Stariali:

Were you using normal doors or animal flaps? Animals can go through animal flaps but not normal doors.

I used the animal flaps, but when I checked the pen area, found out my feed shed was outside the pen all of a sudden. They can't get to the feed, not because they can't go through the animal flap, but because it's not in their pen anymore. Maybe I wasn't clear enough on that point, but that's the problem, the animal flaps don't appear to be working as intended.

I used them specifically BECAUSE I expected the shed to still be considered a part of the pen, and was shocked to see the boundaries of the pen had shrunk to exclude the sheds, even with the animal flaps.

[Markus Reese]

Originally posted by Seriously Unserious:

Originally posted by Stariali:

Were you using normal doors or animal flaps? Animals can go through animal flaps but not normal doors.

I used the animal flaps, but when I checked the pen area, found out my feed shed was outside the pen all of a sudden. They can't get to the feed, not because they can't go through the animal flap, but because it's not in their pen anymore. Maybe I wasn't clear enough on that point, but that's the problem, the animal flaps don't appear to be working as intended.

I used them specifically BECAUSE I expected the shed to still be considered a part of the pen, and was shocked to see the boundaries of the pen had shrunk to exclude the sheds, even with the animal flaps.

All I can think then is that it must be some sort of mod if you have mods. What does the pen show for their pen zone?

[Seriously Unserious]

Originally posted by twistedmelon:

Ahh, what you are missing is there is the new type of animal doors! There is a cloth door to help maintain insulation value, but does not act as a barrier to the animals. Additionally, pens are adaptive. So if you hold a door open, then the adjoining room/pen area is considered also part of the pen.

Below is my chicken farm. Where my base is, winter can get harsh. So once the snow falls and no grass on the ground, I close the fences to the field, open the fences to the silos. Note I have two pens. One for a few roosters, the rest for hens. The pens can be designated for male and female. But if I open the gate between the two, it allows them to mingle should I want to breed more.

The green ghosting is the primary pen. The white means it is a joined section they have access to.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2592103082

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2592103097

I have 3 pens in my base. A smaller one that holds a few donkeys, a medium one that holds my alpacas, and a large one for my cattle and turkeys. Currently the grass in 2 of my pens almost feeds my animals, but not quite, so I need that extra buffer of hay, and can't really do the kibble as that would take up too much labour for my colony, which has been struggling to keep up with all the critical jobs as it is.

The Alpaca pen produces enough grass to feed them by grazing alone so far.

[Markus Reese]

Originally posted by Seriously Unserious:

Originally posted by twistedmelon:

Ahh, what you are missing is there is the new type of animal doors! There is a cloth door to help maintain insulation value, but does not act as a barrier to the animals. Additionally, pens are adaptive. So if you hold a door open, then the adjoining room/pen area is considered also part of the pen.

Below is my chicken farm. Where my base is, winter can get harsh. So once the snow falls and no grass on the ground, I close the fences to the field, open the fences to the silos. Note I have two pens. One for a few roosters, the rest for hens. The pens can be designated for male and female. But if I open the gate between the two, it allows them to mingle should I want to breed more.

The green ghosting is the primary pen. The white means it is a joined section they have access to.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2592103082

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2592103097

I have 3 pens in my base. A smaller one that holds a few donkeys, a medium one that holds my alpacas, and a large one for my cattle and turkeys. Currently the grass in 2 of my pens almost feeds my animals, but not quite, so I need that extra buffer of hay, and can't really do the kibble as that would take up too much labour for my colony, which has been struggling to keep up with all the critical jobs as it is.

The Alpaca pen produces enough grass to feed them by grazing alone so far.

My map at current is snow for over half the year. It gets cold enough to kill the chickens which is why I built them on that steam. The muffalo are closer to my main living area. In fact, a few hours after I took those screenshots, a heavy snow hit as it was getting down to -20c already on that date.

Most of that hay in that monument will probably be gone before grass has grown back enough.

[Seriously Unserious]

Originally posted by twistedmelon:

Originally posted by Seriously Unserious:

I have 3 pens in my base. A smaller one that holds a few donkeys, a medium one that holds my alpacas, and a large one for my cattle and turkeys. Currently the grass in 2 of my pens almost feeds my animals, but not quite, so I need that extra buffer of hay, and can't really do the kibble as that would take up too much labour for my colony, which has been struggling to keep up with all the critical jobs as it is.

The Alpaca pen produces enough grass to feed them by grazing alone so far.

My map at current is snow for over half the year. It gets cold enough to kill the chickens which is why I built them on that steam. The muffalo are closer to my main living area.

My map's a bit warmer, has year round growing season. Don't usually take those sort of maps, but forgot to check for growing season before I had already committed to it. So animal freezing isn't a huge concern for me. Summers, other then the odd heat wave, don't seem overly hot either, so again, not too worried about animal heat stroke either.

Mainly it's just maintaining the food, so it does not rot, but animals also are not blocked from it by the game decided to redefine my pens to exclude the food if I try to put it inside.

I thought if I used animal flaps, the game would realise that and keep that shed as part of the pen, but nope.

[Markus Reese]

That is how it should work.

Can you screenshot your setup with the pen selected like in the ones I took? Perhaps something being missed that is causing it not to work. essentially if the path to the storage is enclosed, and no close door/gates then they should just happily wander in whenever hungry.

[Seriously Unserious]

Originally posted by twistedmelon:

That is how it should work.

Can you screenshot your setup with the pen selected like in the ones I took? Perhaps something being missed that is causing it not to work. essentially if the path to the storage is enclosed, and no close door/gates then they should just happily wander in whenever hungry.

That wasn't what happened though. I added an animal flap and the game immediately decided the shed was no longer in their pen. So they technically SHOULD be able to use the door, but they can't leave their pen, so they can't reach the flap TO use it.

The way it's working right now, I'd have to have my builder add a 2nd pen marker inside the shed, to mark is as it's own pen, then manually micromanage the livestock to be manually led in/out of the feed shed by an animal handler. Not acceptable at all, that.

I could use the dev tools with god mode to test it out again with an animal in a pen that has no grass growing and see if the animal can go for the shed. They way the info is presented though, it looks like different pens. Maybe was just misreading the info, would be helpful if the devs would bother to put a legend or key to explain what the info actually means, so new players or veterans presented with a new feature can at least figure it out without having to waste time on trial and error just to work out the new rules of the game.

[Markus Reese]

That is why I was asking for a screenshot. The mechanic of it is very simple. Pen detects room. Open door connects room to pen and so on. If you can grab a picture, perhaps can see what is happening. If animals have access to outside a barn flap, then they should have access inside.

So either is something being overlooked in your build, are having a serious mod conflict, or it is some sort of wierd bug going on.

[Seriously Unserious]

I did my test, using a tiny pen with only rocky ground and no grass, with my donkeys, and eventually one of them did go into the feed shed to eat some hay.

Based on my first pens, It was marking them with a green border, so in the absence of any other information, I assumed the green border meant that's the boundary of their pen, and they can't go past it. I had no idea the white borders were still a part of their pen.

There should be in game text that says what the colour codes actually mean. Would have saved a whole lot of confusion, frustration and grief and reduced enjoyment of this game if they had.