Fences or walls?

[P O P]

Literally everything is getting in there. I have to keep killing things that get in so they don't eat my food. Would walls work better? I only have 2 yaks and goat.

[apud.harald]

Fences only work for tame animals, and anyway, just build some walls.

[Khan Boyzitbig of Mercia]

Walls stop everything, fences will stop predators hunting your animals from outside them and prevent certain critters from entering the pens. I prefer a perimeter wall with fences inside to split specific animals up.

[MadArtillery]

Fences are for when you don't have to worry about predators and don't want raiders messing with anything in animal pens as they'll waltz right past. walls for any other situation

[Steelfleece]

I normally go with walls. Fences are for subdivisions, like if you have a separate smaller paddock for male breeders you don't need just now.

[XelNigma]

Sounds like you already have your answer.
If the fences aren't doing what you want then build walls.

[Red Bat]

Fences and barricades can both be used to wall in pen animals. You can use fencing on sides unlikely to take any damage and barricades on a side facing invaders if you think you might have to use the pen for cover. Alternatively you can just use walls on the side facing enemies if you don't plan to fight from within the pen. Walls need to be used within the pen to establish a "barn" if you want to temperature controlled area where your animals can go to, or just somewhere they can avoid toxic fallout and blood rain. You can just put an animal flap as the entrance to your barn and then floor the inside with hay.

Fences can be passed by most things, but they also slow everything that passes over them, so you can use them in killboxes and a few other situations in order to slow down enemies. This can be useful to buy more time for your defense force to position, to abuse gas mechanics, or to slow enemies down after activating a deadlife trap so they actually are targeted by shamblers.

Fences can also be used to bait enemies into very bad cover, and be combined with spike traps on the other side. But there's usually better options for that.

Fences have an absurdly low material cost, so high beauty materials like jade can be used to make fences to add beauty to an area if you don't feel like waiting for a sculpture to be made.

Fences will actually block enemies from standing on the tile they are on. So if you are worried enemies might hide behind a wall for cover, you can put fences in the way so the enemy is forced to move out into the open.

Walls add a lot of cover, but when your pawn steps out of cover to shoot they get the cover bonus of whatever they stand in front of. You can split wall and fence tiles up so every other tile is a wall, and effectively make a bunker so you still have cover when your pawns shoot. However fences have low cover value and very low health, so they are actually significantly worse than barricades for this unless you are very low on materials. Still better than just having empty tiles between the wall tiles.

[Triple G]

Fences are crap. Maybe they might have uses for visuals. The pawns wouldn´t even use the fence gates and just climb over the fences anywhere. The only "real use" they have is that if You only use fences, and no fence gates, the pawns wouldn´t put wool or milk, or anything into the door tile to leave it open. Or like said above if You want to temporarily separate females and males.

Originally posted by Red Bat:

Fences will actually block enemies from standing on the tile they are on.

That doesn´t always work. Maybe it used to work like it, but now they´re able to shoot from it - or a barricade for that matter. While this only happens in rare cases.

Originally posted by Red Bat:

Fences have an absurdly low material cost, so high beauty materials like jade can be used to make fences to add beauty to an area if you don't feel like waiting for a sculpture to be made.

Yes - like uglyfying the room for the in game beauty value. tbh i never felt the need for it - and i rarely build sculptures. Actually i also build carpets pretty late in the game, and the only sculptures i regularly do is an "forever" order at the workbench to make small ones out of stones which aren´t on the tile, so the stones from the deconstructed structures get used and don´t pile up. Then again i give everyone decent bedrooms.

Originally posted by Red Bat:

Walls add a lot of cover, but when your pawn steps out of cover to shoot they get the cover bonus of whatever they stand in front of. You can split wall and fence tiles up so every other tile is a wall, and effectively make a bunker so you still have cover when your pawns shoot. However fences have low cover value and very low health, so they are actually significantly worse than barricades for this unless you are very low on materials. Still better than just having empty tiles between the wall tiles.

They actually lean out from the wall - it doesn´t matter what is in between. Having something there is useful if You have a melee pawn between them. There´s no reason to "step aside" when You do one tile wall, and one tile something they can shoot from. A barricade still has look uses - but one shouldn´t do it all around the base, or in front of every entrance, because the neutral caravan animals (or Yours if You want to go on a caravan) can´t pass the fences or barricades. I´ve been there...

Like if the pawn stands behind the wall he can´t get hit, as the enemy would hit the wall - and if he leans out he gets the cover bonus from the wall.

TL;DR
In most biomes it´s better to just build wooden walls - they´re also fast to build, and wood is no problem on most maps, except for arid for the commonly played biomes - while i guess that more than half of the players do mountain bases anyways, so stone is no problem.

[kaiyl_kariashi]

I usually only do Fences if it's inside my base wall and i don't ahve to worry about wild animals entering it.

While it stops animals outside of the fence from seeing stuff inside the fence, it doesn't stop them from entering it.

If I'm not doing a base wall, I'll just do an unroofed walled pen with a small roofed shelter area.

[Melkor]

only Fences.

[Steelfleece]

Originally posted by Melkor (FJATLN):

only Fences.

Only Fence sounds like a really weird website.

[Chris!!]

Originally posted by Steelfleece:

Originally posted by Melkor (FJATLN):

only Fences.

Only Fence sounds like a really weird website.

It's an explicit site for people on the fence about it.

[Forsythe]

Walls. So useful