Useless fences?

[Bosh]

So what exactly are the point of fences when they do basically nothing? Yes they keep animals in, but every single predator can and will easily climb over and attack your animals.
Why would you use fences instead of standard walls unless you're desperately low on resources or you're stupid? They're not even that much faster to build.

[Tiberius Rex]

Fences are significantly cheaper to build. I think it's a good mechanic especially for more realism, but I recognize it changes a lot of playstyle. I was using the piggies to fetch my rocks across the maps, I had a pretty good system, I'll have to come up with something new. But like the animal changes as I get more play.

[Cormac]

wall 5 wood, fence 1 wood

but yeah, i know what you mean, i think fences are more for us roleplaying types (if i want to build a farming town, i want fences for my animals...
after you build a whole wall around your base, you can use fences, or inside the mountain to create 2+ areas within that areal

but if you start in a predetor rich environment, yeah, those fences are useless

[RCMidas]

Question: do walls ALSO allow for the creation of pens, which have a different use to barns, in which case I don't see the need for fences either?

Ugh, I really need to stop procrastinating and actually run those tests on ranching again.

[Astasia]

Raiders ignore fences. If you make a giant walled pen on your map using 5 times the resources there's a good chance raiders will decide to just bust through it letting your animals out. Fences are great for something like horses or similar sized+ animals which don't really have to worry about predators, you can save resources making a giant pen and not have to worry about constantly repairing it. You'd definitely want to keep chickens within a walled area though, which kind of makes sense, a wood fence wouldn't realistically contain chickens or other small animals anyway.

[Cryptic]

Originally posted by Cormac:

wall 5 wood, fence 1 wood

but yeah, i know what you mean, i think fences are more for us roleplaying types (if i want to build a farming town, i want fences for my animals...
after you build a whole wall around your base, you can use fences, or inside the mountain to create 2+ areas within that areal

but if you start in a predetor rich environment, yeah, those fences are useless

This. I agree.

[Syndicake ☠]

Looks better, cheap and quicker to build (because they don't have to haul as much wood.)
Stops predators. So you can easily make vast grazing areas safe from predators.

[Jay and Silent Rob]

Originally posted by Astasia:

Raiders ignore fences. If you make a giant walled pen on your map using 5 times the resources there's a good chance raiders will decide to just bust through it letting your animals out. Fences are great for something like horses or similar sized+ animals which don't really have to worry about predators, you can save resources making a giant pen and not have to worry about constantly repairing it. You'd definitely want to keep chickens within a walled area though, which kind of makes sense, a wood fence wouldn't realistically contain chickens or other small animals anyway.

In my experience, any stray bullets in a fight destroy fences, as do lightning strikes and quick fires. Sapper raiders sometimes also seem to divert to destroy parts of a fence.

I make fences early but then quickly surround them with stone walls when I can spare the blocks and the labor because real walls are just infinitely better.

The one thing I like fences for is cosmetics. They look great around growing zones or along the sides of paths. And if they get destroyed it doesn't endanger your food supply.

Originally posted by RCMidas:

Question: do walls ALSO allow for the creation of pens, which have a different use to barns, in which case I don't see the need for fences either?

Ugh, I really need to stop procrastinating and actually run those tests on ranching again.

Yes. Walls work just fine for pens. I currently have my pens all surrounded by stone walls with fence gates instead of doors on them and the game properly recognizes them as pastures and doesn't try to roof over them. Then I can still build barn-style buildings inside those pens without a problem as well.

[Lelila]

You can use normal doors too and still have it count as a pen. I quickly discarded the fences in favor of normal walls and doors.

[Clam Slamwich]

Build the pens inside your walled colony.

[in god we thrust]

I mean, not everything needs to be optimal.

[qualified turtle ship]

Another use for fences is keeping animals out of your crops. I often just have one giant external wall which means my animals and crops are inside, so the fences keeps the animals from grazing the crops but doesn't prevent my farmers from efficiently sowing and harvesting.

[Bosh]

Originally posted by Syndicake ☠:

Looks better, cheap and quicker to build (because they don't have to haul as much wood.)
Stops predators. So you can easily make vast grazing areas safe from predators.

They don't stop predators though.