Animal needs and sustenance?

[mar3usmc]

Soooo, if I am understanding this correctly, only animals that specifically state they need to graze require any sort of food. Dogs need nothing? Seems a little OP. Makes me think of how everything in Rimworld or other similar games required food for everything. Just seems to be a more balanced system.

Also, is there something underground I can plant for the animals that need to graze? I was thinking I would like to practice making a fortress completely underground in very wild areas of the map.

[Haethei]

Yes, dogs and pigs are my favorite animals to bring because they don't require food or sunlight or anything. I just keep them together in a big pack by putting them in a pasture literally anywhere, and butcher them when i want some resources. Prioritize butchering more males than females to keep them reproducing more overall.

Nothing in DF is OP. Just enjoy doing cool stuff and have fun sending 50 trained war dogs at a goblin siege or something. They'll just come back for another round later, the game literally does not have a win condition. If you want to pay attention to your animals because you think it's fun, I suggest taking grazing animals and setting the GRAZE_COEFFICIENT setting to something lower than 100 so they have to consume more grass. You'll be challenged to keep up with them.

Yes, grazing animals can eat cave moss. It's the blue colored grass in the second cavern layer, it can spread out of the cavern once you discover it

[Haethei]

I'd just like to point out how Rimworld and DF have very different design philosophies. Rimworld actively tries to kill the player, providing a constant scaling challenge with regular threats, and it provides multiple win conditions for the player that actually end the game. It also goes out of its way to be annoying by doing stuff like Infestations, Solar Flare and Short Circuit events specifically to challenge the player more.

DF is a lot more laid back, although it can be overwhelming to a new player because they have to learn a lot, it's ultimately paced very differently. You can make a similar experience in Rimworld with mods and changing the storyteller or scenario settings, but I think it's clear how Rimworld focuses on the action more, and the details less.

[RadCon One]

Originally posted by Haethei:

Yes, dogs and pigs are my favorite animals to bring because they don't require food or sunlight or anything. I just keep them together in a big pack by putting them in a pasture literally anywhere, and butcher them when i want some resources. Prioritize butchering more males than females to keep them reproducing more overall

Nothing in DF is OP. Just enjoy doing cool stuff and have fun sending 50 trained war dogs at a goblin siege or something. They'll just come back for another round later, the game literally does not have a win condition

Yes, grazing animals can eat cave moss. It's the blue colored grass in the second cavern layer, it can spread out of the cavern once you discover it

There is plenty that is OP is dwarf fortress. Food items worth more than a mansion, undead soldiers that never become tired, and lets not forget effectively destruction-proof walls and draw-bridges that no monster or siege can EVER break or circumvent, nor can they wait out due to you being able to easily have a food and water source inside with them having no way to sabotage it to starve you out either.

The game is awesome, but is certainly isn't balanced. Even games without decisive win conditions can still have OP/UP items / mechanics / or abilities.

[Haethei]

Originally posted by RadCon One:

Originally posted by Haethei:

Yes, dogs and pigs are my favorite animals to bring because they don't require food or sunlight or anything. I just keep them together in a big pack by putting them in a pasture literally anywhere, and butcher them when i want some resources. Prioritize butchering more males than females to keep them reproducing more overall

Nothing in DF is OP. Just enjoy doing cool stuff and have fun sending 50 trained war dogs at a goblin siege or something. They'll just come back for another round later, the game literally does not have a win condition

Yes, grazing animals can eat cave moss. It's the blue colored grass in the second cavern layer, it can spread out of the cavern once you discover it

There is plenty that is OP is dwarf fortress. Food items worth more than a mansion, undead soldiers that never become tired, and lets not forget effectively destruction-proof walls and draw-bridges that no monster or siege can EVER break or circumvent, nor can they wait out due to you being able to easily have a food and water source inside with them having no way to sabotage it to starve you out either.

The game is awesome, but is certainly isn't balanced.

The game is harder than you think. But a lot of it is "knowledge difficulty", where a very experienced player can make the game look easy by doing specific steps. Protecting yourself from monsters and sieges is one such problem... you have to do a bunch of different things and pay attention to your fort in order to stop those from being a disaster

I guess you're right when you say there are strong strategies. I don't feel like I ever get that feeling of "OP" when playing. It just feels like "This is a good idea, I'm gonna do this in my fort because its fun, and/or practically required for survival in the first place"

"Food items worth more than a mansion" is funny because it actively attracts stronger threats to attack you, easily defeating your fortress if you focus too hard on making money without scaling up your defensive capability at the same time. Money itself is also optional, as you can have a successful fort without trading, it's just not the most effective strategy out there lol

[db48x]

The natural floor fungus found in deep caverns is entirely suitable for grazers. Well, suitable for everything except pandas, which will only eat bamboo.

If you are worried that some animals are OP because they don’t need to graze, well, don’t forget that the game is only half finished and that grazing is itself a relatively new feature. Up until about 2010, none of the animals needed to eat at all. I’m sure that food for other types of animals will be modeled well enough in the end.

[Googley Eye'd Bastard]

Originally posted by db48x:

The natural floor fungus found in deep caverns is entirely suitable for grazers. Well, suitable for everything except pandas, which will only eat bamboo.

If you are worried that some animals are OP because they don’t need to graze, well, don’t forget that the game is only half finished and that grazing is itself a relatively new feature. Up until about 2010, none of the animals needed to eat at all. I’m sure that food for other types of animals will be modeled well enough in the end.

You can also create a skylight for grass though this is not an efficient project for grazing animals, the real power of this is the ability to create a food/kitchen/dining area that won't create miasma when food rots there, then you only have to worry about certain dwarfs leaving food in their private dining rooms *Cough nobles *Cough

Oh and you can also grow above ground foods if you'd like if your into that humie stuff.

[AlP]

Originally posted by mar3usmc:

Makes me think of how everything in Rimworld or other similar games required food for everything. Just seems to be a more balanced system.

Rimworld intentionally limits the number of pawns and animals you can have in order to make its difficulty scaling work. It's a very arbitrary and artificial limitation made for game balance reasons.

Dwarf Fortress lets you expand your fort as much as you like, as long as your computer can handle the load. Well, there's a pop-cap for animals, to prevent catsplosions and the like, but overall there's no limit.

[Lemunde]

Balance, lol! You picked the wrong game for balance.

[malthenielsen]

If dogs needed to eat I'd probably feed them with dog meat lol

[RadCon One]

Originally posted by malthenielsen:

If dogs needed to eat I'd probably feed them with dog meat lol

Let them chow on vermin...the cats definitely would.

[malthenielsen]

Originally posted by RadCon One:

Originally posted by malthenielsen:

If dogs needed to eat I'd probably feed them with dog meat lol

Let them chow on vermin...the cats definitely would.

Would acually be nice if the dogs ate corpses.