Grow zones in pens?

[gtgiygus]

My colony is in an arid shrub land, and I have a healthy breeding population of Donkeys (and one elephent!) The pens nutrient consumption far outpaces its nutrient growth. I have a field of hay grass to help, but I had read that planting dandelions inside the pen will help as well. The wiki itself mentions this, but gives no math or other hard info for guidance on how much should be grown.

What is your experience planting food inside pens? Does it merely help some, or can it be totally sustainable?

[HunterSilver]

I used to have the math for this written down but updates have changed things and I never went back and fixed it. In short, it's never a good idea to let animals eat crops from a field. They extract less nutrition per point of labor spent compared to growing haygrass to maturity and feeding that to them instead.

In reality, your farmers will also have to spend a lot of time running into the fields to replant 1 or 2 tiles, running back to their normal duties, and then running back to replant 1 or 2 tiles when your animals graze. So it's even worse because of added time spent on movement.

Edit: Ignoring labor and movement input, a dandelion will produce 0.25 nutrition over 2.5 days, or roughly 0.0675 nutrition per day.

Haygrass will yield 0.9 nutrition over 7 days, or roughly 0.0835 per day.

[LookToWindward]

How about laying a Grass floor? I'm not sure if grass floor are a base game or if it's VEP, but regardless of where its from. will animals eat it?

[HunterSilver]

Originally posted by LookToWindward:

How about laying a Grass floor? I'm not sure if grass floor are a base game or if it's VEP, but regardless of where its from. will animals eat it?

I'm afraid that's not a vanilla feature, so I can't verify the numbers for that. My kneejerk reaction is to say that it's probably the same as planting dandelions, but mods aren't balanced against vanilla features, so for all I know they modded grass could be significantly better.

[Astasia]

If you mean the "lawn" floors from VE then no, that's not something animals can eat, it's just green colored soil basically. VE Plants does allow sowing grass, but you still run into the problems HunterSilver mentioned of your growers constantly having to run over and replant it unless you micromanage it and turn sowing on and off as needed. Grass is much better than anything you can normally plant though.

Edit: Grass is like 0.11 nutrition per day.

[LookToWindward]

Originally posted by HunterSilver:

Originally posted by LookToWindward:

How about laying a Grass floor? I'm not sure if grass floor are a base game or if it's VEP, but regardless of where its from. will animals eat it?

I'm afraid that's not a vanilla feature, so I can't verify the numbers for that. My kneejerk reaction is to say that it's probably the same as planting dandelions, but mods aren't balanced against vanilla features, so for all I know they modded grass could be significantly better.

No not lawn grass which takes time, this is just called "Grass" and it takes a very small amount of time to sow. As it's a Floor and not a grow zone I'm not sure if it can be eaten, I'll give it a go next time I load my game.

[LookToWindward]

Just tried it! It looks like it doesn't do anything except make the field more beautiful, not that my Yaks appreciated it! I checked the pen marker before and after and it didn't change. I'm really not sure what effect it has if you lay this "floor" in a pen

[gtgiygus]

Originally posted by LookToWindward:

Just tried it! It looks like it doesn't do anything except make the field more beautiful, not that my Yaks appreciated it! I checked the pen marker before and after and it didn't change. I'm really not sure what effect it has if you lay this "floor" in a pen

Planting dandelions does not change pen marker either. But the animals clearly eat them, and the field has to be replanted on a regular basis. May want to keep an eye on it.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by LookToWindward:

I'm really not sure what effect it has if you lay this "floor" in a pen

None. It's a decorative floor from Vanilla Furniture Expanded Architect, it's for making beautiful outdoor areas for your colonists. Functionally it is identical to soil other than the higher beauty and green color.

[Kasa]

Slap on VGP Vegetable Garden grass growing and Grazing Lands and stop worrying about it.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2007061826


https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1770268130

[LookToWindward]

Originally posted by Kasa:

Slap on VGP Vegetable Garden grass growing and Grazing Lands and stop worrying about it.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2007061826


https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1770268130

Nice Mods, cheers!

[Playzr 🐵]

I made a large patch of tall grass growing zone in the middle and the nutrient amount for the pen didn't go up, but they do seem to be eating it. As for farmers having to waste time replanting 1 or 2 tiles when they have filled it I switch planting off for a while.