Stop building adobe/stone sheep pens.

[GrotZogga]

I see this all the time in high level colonys and i always make it my mission to replace it with a wooden fence, constantyl I see people accidently pick up one of the stones, or somebody will let the berry bush in the corner die and either way, all the sheep gets out and you ♥♥♥♥ the colony. I wont call it an exploit but it clearly makes no sense, nobody ♥♥♥♥ing understands how to fix/build them, and it just looks bad.
Either way I hope jason has some kind of plan for this, because wooden fences are super tedious/expensive to make if you dont have a horse cart, and i get thats why people are building them like this, but its a weird meta that doesnt help new players understand the game IMO

Maybe he should make a non permanent cheaper sollution, like building waddle and daub walls, and a stepping stone to get in and out of it for humans. and over like 3-5 hours it will decay and could be repaired with more adobe, so people actually have an incentive to build a permenent wooden fence.

[Bee]

I would also prefer if fences were the best way to go about it. But while that doesn't happen, I will keep building pens as fast as I can, with the materials I can get more easily, and I think it is unreasonable to expect anyone to stop.

[Tarr]

As you said players use the cheapest materials to make sheep pens no matter what. Before the adobe base/tower base pen meta we used to make them out of trash pits which were even more counterintuitive. Back then new players would literally ruin sheep pens by dumping lamb bodies into the side since the first option when picking up a lamb says to use on the trash pit walls.

As long as fences are so expensive they'll never make for good sheep pens. However, nerfing the other options will just lead to a shift in pen materials. Nerf bell bases? Shift to adobe. Nerf adobe? Shift to grave pens. Fence pens will never be meta unless everything else is dead.

[Spacey]

Fun fact, I invented the sheep pen design back in march!

[(BB) Potjeh]

Stone walls and even plastered adobe walls are easier than fences and more resilient. The issues is they make it hard to expand the pen, so people use bell tower bases to allow easy expansion.

[GrotZogga]

then jason should nerf the other options, make it so animals can pass through bell tower bases, graves, and adobe, like they could irl.
Maybe he should make a non permanent cheaper sollution, like building waddle and daub walls, and a stepping stone to get in and out of it for humans. and over like 3-5 hours it will decay and could be repaired with more adobe, so people actually have an incentive to build a permenent wooden fence.

[Tarr]

I'm pretty sure people would still move onto other things instead of building fences. The fact you can grief a fence pen by sticking on a short shaft to make it a gate and just swing it open for the sheep to escape just shows how bad they are.

People who wanted fences to be meta in the first place is what got trash pits nerfed which didn't make fences viable followed by buffing fence pens to stop people from pulling out the middle shaft which didn't make fences meta.

Then Jason made it so you could add short shafts to make gates which also didn't make fences meta. They're too slow to make, too expensive to make, and too easy to grief to ever be meta.

[thundersen]

Stop making "STOP DOING XYZ" suggestions before you have played the game for more than a month. It's irritating and probably misleading for new players.

It's nice to see you are enthusiastic enough about the game to open threads like this, but it wouldn't hurt to research why things are the way they are before you go complaining like this. Or how about "why are people building bell base pens when we have fences?" instead of suggesting a worse alternative.

[GrotZogga]

Originally posted by thundersen:

Stop making "STOP DOING XYZ" suggestions before you have played the game for more than a month. It's irritating and probably misleading for new players.

It's nice to see you are enthusiastic enough about the game to open threads like this, but it wouldn't hurt to research why things are the way they are before you go complaining like this. Or how about "why are people building bell base pens when we have fences?" instead of suggesting a worse alternative.

I dont see how what I offered as a suggestion is a worse altenative, consider its litteraly just a cleaner more refined version of the adobe oven base pen.
It doesnt take research to see that fences are much too expensive to optain in the first place to make them viable, nobody is denying that, Its just that making these complicated fences that nobody can use an offical resource for isnt very intuitive to new players, hell Ive learned pretty much every recipe in the game at this point, but i still dont understand how to make one of these pens.

[GrotZogga]

Originally posted by Tarr:

I'm pretty sure people would still move onto other things instead of building fences. The fact you can grief a fence pen by sticking on a short shaft to make it a gate and just swing it open for the sheep to escape just shows how bad they are.

People who wanted fences to be meta in the first place is what got trash pits nerfed which didn't make fences viable followed by buffing fence pens to stop people from pulling out the middle shaft which didn't make fences meta.

Then Jason made it so you could add short shafts to make gates which also didn't make fences meta. They're too slow to make, too expensive to make, and too easy to grief to ever be meta.

I dont think that "well its easy to grief this pen because of X" makes much sense either because you can just pour a bowl of water on an oven to break it, or just ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ pick up a stone by accident which happens much more often IMO then people just putting short shafts on fences, Ive never seen somebody grief by doing that yet.

[Tohtori Leka]

The issue with fences being so expensive to make could be solved with adding the option to make long shafts(or some new fence building material) from boards or some other wood. Like if you used the froe again on the stack of boards, you'd get a stack of 4 shafts(or whatever new material).

But even then the gates are just too stupid and should be replaced by something else or make them so that animals can't pass through them even if they are open. Sheep are actually pretty dumb and they won't even go through broken or removed fences irl if they are used to the idea of the fence being there.

[=] WTF MAN [=]

When I have team built a settlement the idea of using the adobe base is supposed to be a temporary solution to an immediate problem. You want the sheep ASAP so you can start getting all the benefits they provide. We often use the most convenient building material we have on hand with the hopes that later on someone will work on a bigger pen eventually and move the animals over to it. I don't think most people intend for those original adobe pens to be permanent.

I've given some thought to animal enclosures and early on I would like to see pens made from woven willow branch sections.

Right now there isn't much use for the willow so I think it would be nice if you could cut a bundle of branches from them with a sharp stone and then weave them into an enclosure panel that you would use stakes to set in place just like you would in any other fence or wall application.

I'd also like longer lasting baskets to be made from willow branches. Cut a bundle with the sharp stone. Prepare the bundle of branches with a flint chip to make thinner strips. Soak the strips in water to soften them. Then use the softened strips on a set of stakes to finish the assembly process returning a basket and stakes to the crafter.

[Tohtori Leka]

Originally posted by = WTF MAN =:

When I have team built a settlement the idea of using the adobe base is supposed to be a temporary solution to an immediate problem. You want the sheep ASAP so you can start getting all the benefits they provide. We often use the most convenient building material we have on hand with the hopes that later on someone will work on a bigger pen eventually and move the animals over to it. I don't think most people intend for those original adobe pens to be permanent.

I've given some thought to animal enclosures and early on I would like to see pens made from woven willow branch sections.

Right now there isn't much use for the willow so I think it would be nice if you could cut a bundle of branches from them with a sharp stone and then weave them into an enclosure panel that you would use stakes to set in place just like you would in any other fence or wall application.

I'd also like longer lasting baskets to be made from willow branches. Cut a bundle with the sharp stone. Prepare the bundle of branches with a flint chip to make thinner strips. Soak the strips in water to soften them. Then use the softened strips on a set of stakes to finish the assembly process returning a basket and stakes to the crafter.

Sounds good to me. Except maybe the basket process is a bit overcomplicated. Or maybe not. I'm not sure. It could also be a bigger basket. Like that you could fit four items in it instead of three.

[thundersen]

Originally posted by Savage Ogre:

[...] Its just that making these complicated fences that nobody can use an offical resource for isnt very intuitive to new players [...]

You do have a point here. It took me a while to figure pens out myself when I got started. And I would like to see something nicer too.

But until Jason (who is running a one-man operation and is being bombarded with ideas and complaints) changes something the community designs are just better than the fence pens. Efficiency trumps neatness here.

Oh, and bell tower bases can't just be picked up by accident. They have to be dug up with a shovel.

[Tohtori Leka]

Originally posted by thundersen:

Originally posted by Savage Ogre:

[...] Its just that making these complicated fences that nobody can use an offical resource for isnt very intuitive to new players [...]

You do have a point here. It took me a while to figure pens out myself when I got started. And I would like to see something nicer too.

But until Jason (who is running a one-man operation and is being bombarded with ideas and complaints) changes something the community designs are just better than the fence pens. Efficiency trumps neatness here.

Oh, and bell tower bases can't just be picked up by accident. They have to be dug up with a shovel.

But you can accidentally dig them up while getting dung with a shovel.

[Greep]

You'd get better results if you made a guide.

If you were to make a "stop doing x" thread for everything that would make sense for it, you would need to make 1000 threads. Make a guide full of "stop doing x". The forum is not the place for it really.