New Pack animal mechanic is disappointing

[Sgt Chibbles]

I like the idea of Ideology, I want to try the new events, but the removal of the ability to zone animals to where I want them right now is frustrating, I loved my alpaca police, worse are caravans 0.0 I bought Ideology the day it came out and only now has my colony gotten to the point of sending out shopping crews. Everything is fine, the caravan members go get my donkeys from the animal pen, then load them up at the caravan spot. But the problem comes when something goes wrong or you are trying to unload your caravan. My pawns put the donkeys in the animal pen, then some pawns try to unload them..... Storage isn't anywhere near the pen, it was a nope nope nope moment for me. Before I wold just zone all the animals into or near my stockpile zone, unload then go. This new way would take DAYS. I think I'm just going back to royalty. I like the silliness of using donkeys and other animals to "win the war" it for me was a huge part of the draw of the game. I do love the auto-slaughter system though, and it isn't tied to animal pens. IMHO animal pens need to go, this should be a mod option, as it is I'm looking for a mod to make pen animals the way they used to be.
I guess I'm back to 1.2 I hope they bring back the alpaca police and leave pens as an option or a mod.

[Astasia]

Escrito originalmente por MrChibbles:

It's WAY WAY more tedious then being able to select 3 donkeys and have them move to spot A, now you have to build a pen, remove animals from being allowed in pen A, so they will be put in pen B, then you need your pawns to actually do it. It just seems like a much more frustrating way of zoning animals, plus any maddened animal will just snap your fences and then all your animals run away and vanish. It removes flexibility and gives you fewer options. Sure people were cheesing the game, but I don't see why that's bad, once a dev tries to force you to build your base a particular way this kind of game looses a lot of its charm. Now to caravan I MUST build my animal pen near my stockpile,

You untick one thing and tick another. That is the extent of player interaction (tedium) required, the rest is handled by your pawns. You just leave the pens in your freezer and storage room, forever, and tick what you want in there at any given time. It definitely takes more time and pawn work, it's definitely a downgrade in efficiency, but it sort of makes more sense and integrates into the game better. It's certainly going to take time to get used to though.

Have you seen an animal break a fence? I haven't seen anything attack/break any of my fences yet. Animals also take days to wander off the map usually, I think they have to get near the edge and then once there they have a check if they are going to leave once every couple days. I started with a horse in my game and I ignored them for like a week before getting around to building a pen.

Escrito originalmente por MrChibbles:

Caravaning isn't a small part of the game, it's basically central.

While there are plenty of opportunities and reasons to caravan to missions, pack animals are rarely needed. I usually have none in my colonies, if I need to move a lot of something I use pods. Having pack animals and big caravans is more of a niche thing, and might be something you should be planning around from the start. Maybe it does make a lot of sense to have your caravan animals permanently penned in a location right near your main stockpile if you use them often. The more things you have to factor into base design the better, usually.

[Sgt Chibbles]

Escrito originalmente por Astasia:

Escrito originalmente por MrChibbles:

It's WAY WAY more tedious then being able to select 3 donkeys and have them move to spot A, now you have to build a pen, remove animals from being allowed in pen A, so they will be put in pen B, then you need your pawns to actually do it. It just seems like a much more frustrating way of zoning animals, plus any maddened animal will just snap your fences and then all your animals run away and vanish. It removes flexibility and gives you fewer options. Sure people were cheesing the game, but I don't see why that's bad, once a dev tries to force you to build your base a particular way this kind of game looses a lot of its charm. Now to caravan I MUST build my animal pen near my stockpile,

You untick one thing and tick another. That is the extent of player interaction (tedium) required, the rest is handled by your pawns. You just leave the pens in your freezer and storage room, forever, and tick what you want in there at any given time. It definitely takes more time and pawn work, it's definitely a downgrade in efficiency, but it sort of makes more sense and integrates into the game better. It's certainly going to take time to get used to though.

Have you seen an animal break a fence? I haven't seen anything attack/break any of my fences yet. Animals also take days to wander off the map usually, I think they have to get near the edge and then once there they have a check if they are going to leave once every couple days. I started with a horse in my game and I ignored them for like a week before getting around to building a pen.

Escrito originalmente por MrChibbles:

Caravaning isn't a small part of the game, it's basically central.

While there are plenty of opportunities and reasons to caravan to missions, pack animals are rarely needed. I usually have none in my colonies, if I need to move a lot of something I use pods. Having pack animals and big caravans is more of a niche thing, and might be something you should be planning around from the start. Maybe it does make a lot of sense to have your caravan animals permanently penned in a location right near your main stockpile if you use them often. The more things you have to factor into base design the better, usually.

Yes a single maddened buck smashed my slate fence on it's way to me.
I almost fell out of my chair "pack animals are rarely needed" 0.0 yeah so I guess you have never mined a compacted lump of components or jade or gold or steel or plasteel or..... I could go on -_-

[MagWolf11]

I havent even gotten so far as to unload, I cant even form. Just 3 or 4 colonists, maybe 20 pack animals (planning on buying up a lot of raw resources) and a bunch of silver, nothing else but despite having the packing spot in my storage room, the colonists bringing all the animals to the packing spot, it took so long that as they took the animals to the edge of the map half of them passed out from exhaustion. Now the colonists are all at the edge of the map with half the pack while the now awake animals are just wandering.

[Astasia]

Escrito originalmente por MrChibbles:

I almost fell out of my chair "pack animals are rarely needed" 0.0 yeah so I guess you have never mined a compacted lump of components or jade or gold or steel or plasteel or..... I could go on -_-

Not usually no, deep drilling is easier especially for common resources like steel. Using a LRMS to target a specific material like plasteel I do sometimes mid-game, a couple cargo pods or a squad of 4-6 handles that. This quickly becomes pointless because quest rewards start dropping thousands of plasteel/gold/uranium on you each.

[Sgt Chibbles]

Escrito originalmente por Astasia:

Escrito originalmente por MrChibbles:

I almost fell out of my chair "pack animals are rarely needed" 0.0 yeah so I guess you have never mined a compacted lump of components or jade or gold or steel or plasteel or..... I could go on -_-

Not usually no, deep drilling is easier especially for common resources like steel. Using a LRMS to target a specific material like plasteel I do sometimes mid-game, a couple cargo pods or a squad of 4-6 handles that. This quickly becomes pointless because quest rewards start dropping thousands of plasteel/gold/uranium on you each.

Yet despite caravans becoming "pointless" as you say, the devs still make it a primary part of the game. Unless you only play turtle then I guess it wouldn't matter. There are still a whole bunch of mechanics designed for it though not least of which are long range resource piles. Most of those couldn't be carried home without pack animals. For the devs to make a system they have worked on more clunky and frustrating just to say they have animal pens is pointless.

[Sgt Chibbles]

Escrito originalmente por magwolf11:

I havent even gotten so far as to unload, I cant even form. Just 3 or 4 colonists, maybe 20 pack animals (planning on buying up a lot of raw resources) and a bunch of silver, nothing else but despite having the packing spot in my storage room, the colonists bringing all the animals to the packing spot, it took so long that as they took the animals to the edge of the map half of them passed out from exhaustion. Now the colonists are all at the edge of the map with half the pack while the now awake animals are just wandering.

Yeah, and now they will wander off the map within a day or two unless you rush some handlers out there. I liked the elegance of zoning animals, pens might be more "realistic" but its also more frustrating and limiting then zoning. It means that now all my pack animals are disposable and feel more like crops then animals.

[Astasia]

Escrito originalmente por MrChibbles:

Yet despite caravans becoming "pointless" as you say

Where did I say that? You said they were a central part of the game, I merely said they were optional, and something that if you plan to use you'd want to design around.

[Sgt Chibbles]

Escrito originalmente por Astasia:

Escrito originalmente por MrChibbles:

Yet despite caravans becoming "pointless" as you say

Where did I say that? You said they were a central part of the game, I merely said they were optional, and something that if you plan to use you'd want to design around.

(This quickly becomes pointless because quest rewards start) your words. That's the whole point though, with these changes now one HAS to design things a very specific way to use pack animals, less possibilities. I also find the "dump in pen and auto cull" system makes me care about the animals less, they seem more like crops, raiders don't target them, they reproduce faster and are always running away. There are just way to many negatives with pens and maybe only one or two positives. They make nothing simpler, they take away options, they make everything involving pen animals more difficult. Maybe they give one the sense of being able to have a pen?? I think making Caravaning more frustrating will only make people use them less, and there are a lot of interesting mechanics involving caravaning. They even made animals "ride-able" now so your movement speed on the map isn't hindered by slow pawn. Honestly I think they just wanted animal pens and tried a very clumsy implementation for it.

[ZS Maeklos]

Escrito originalmente por MrChibbles:

Honestly I think they just wanted animal pens and tried a very clumsy implementation for it.

They could have done that simply by making the fences solid (like the fences in Medieval Times) and adding the Roaming trait to herd animals. That way, the fences would be solid, and if a herd animal with Roaming wasn't in a solid enclosure, it'd wander off. Make it so that Roaming would only kick in when an animal wasn't part of a loading caravan so that they'd still be able to be moved to where they could be loaded easily, and BAM. Easy way to implement a pen-like system.

[Astasia]

Escrito originalmente por MrChibbles:

(This quickly becomes pointless because quest rewards start) your words.

I was very obviously talking about me using the long range mineral scanner post mid-game.

[Sgt Chibbles]

Escrito originalmente por ZS Maeklos:

Escrito originalmente por MrChibbles:

Honestly I think they just wanted animal pens and tried a very clumsy implementation for it.

They could have done that simply by making the fences solid (like the fences in Medieval Times) and adding the Roaming trait to herd animals. That way, the fences would be solid, and if a herd animal with Roaming wasn't in a solid enclosure, it'd wander off. Make it so that Roaming would only kick in when an animal wasn't part of a loading caravan so that they'd still be able to be moved to where they could be loaded easily, and BAM. Easy way to implement a pen-like system.

Even simply making your animals scatter but NOT vanish off the map would be a lot more acceptable to me. wild animals stay on your map, but once you tame them they wander to the edge and vanish, yeah that makes sense. Realistically it's a QOL thing. Or another option would be to implement pens for non pack animals, cows sheep, chickens ect ect, that way you could have pens without messing up caravans. I'm still hunting for a mod that lets me change what animals follow pen rules vs zone rules.

[Oatmeal]

it seems like you probably need to just build the pen just for donkeys next to your storage area if its that much of a problem, I wouldn't be mad at the DLC for it. I mean you can't expect to play the same way you did before after a huge update and what not

[Sgt Chibbles]

Escrito originalmente por Oatmeal:

it seems like you probably need to just build the pen just for donkeys next to your storage area if its that much of a problem, I wouldn't be mad at the DLC for it. I mean you can't expect to play the same way you did before after a huge update and what not

First off it's not confined to the dlc, it changes the core game. Secondly I purchased the core game for what it was, I think this comes with a certain expectation of sameness, or consistency, balancing like nerfing turrets ect are normal especially if introducing additional content, but this is a rather large change to some very core mechanics.
So now I must have a donkey pen near my stockpile zone, and this must be near fertile land so the donkeys don't starve or I have to grow hay-grass to feed my donkeys that now must be penned near my stockpile zone permanently, all this does is channel me into a very specific base design, removing flexibility or diverse design in favour of a specific one. It also makes settling a new map an absolute nightmare, one pawn must go in harvest resources build pen or all your "trained" donkeys will wander off the map. Nah, I'm not buying it.

[Zalzany]

So make a stockpile near their pen or make the pen near the stockpile problem solved...

[liosalpha]

IS there a way to sort animals in a pen with the new system, like by gender to early birth controle?