Please Ask Simple Questions Here

[qoonpooka]

So the wiki sayeth: "If the animals are inside the radius of the trough, they will eat from the trough before feeding on the grassland. The quality of the fodder from the trough is the average seed quality placed inside the trough. For example, if you placed a quality 5, 12, and 16, the quality of the fodder will be 11. The trough will hold a maximum of 200 unit of fodder."

Except that my animals are within range of the trough (the pen is smaller than its radius) but they still seem to prefer the heath they're parked on. The trough quality is 40ish right now, never went below 30, but these animals have somehow eaten quality 12, quality 26, and quality 18 food. I'm guessing it's averaging the quality of the trough and the grass their grazing but I thought they wouldn't graze unless the trough went empty? (It's never been below 3/4 full).

[Magisticus]

The 'food eaten' is the average of the food those animals have eaten- including before you tamed them. It will go up slowly when in range of a trough and eventually reach the level of the food in the trough. Baby animals will have a food eaten level equal to the level of the milk they are consuming, this can either be from an adult female or from a barrel.

If animals are not in range of a trough then they will start to consume grassland around them, creating dirt patches, their levels will reduce (this is invisible but apparent when you kill the animal as you get lower level stuff from it) and they will starve (the bar on the right shows whether an animal is eating or starving- low means starving) and eventually die. Male animals take longer to die than females. Babies will die if they have no access to milk, so if you seperate them from their mother put a barrel of milk in their pen with them.

Your animals will be eating just food from the trough - don't worry. Do try to keep them reasonably close to the trough though, it might not have quite the full radius shown if it is partly over what x-com calls the server grids, you can read his thread to find out more about those but basically if the trough is within 9 squares of the animals they will definitely be able to feed from it.

[qoonpooka]

The 'food eaten' is the average of the food those animals have eaten- including before you tamed them. It will go up slowly when in range of a trough and eventually reach the level of the food in the trough.

It's interesting that one is going up faster than the other. I haven't looked but I guess this is the pregnant female who is sampling far more frequently... thank you for the info!

[Magisticus]

No problem and yes a pregnant female will eat lots more food so its average would go up faster

[Kenshinoro]

pepper milled by a quern halves the quality, does the quality go down with a peppermill [depending on its quality] too?

[Kenshinoro]

also, do wine bottles do anything? at first when I joined I thought "oh cool, you must be able to age wine and make it better" or is it just for traveling with? figure you could hold 10L with a bucket instead of just 2.4 you could hold with 4 bottles

[Arcanist]

pepper milled by a quern halves the quality, does the quality go down with a peppermill [depending on its quality] too?

No, the pepper inside is the average of all dupes, regardless of peppermill quality.

also, do wine bottles do anything? at first when I joined I thought "oh cool, you must be able to age wine and make it better" or is it just for traveling with? figure you could hold 10L with a bucket instead of just 2.4 you could hold with 4 bottles

Wine bottle are useless.

[Ninijutsu]

Wine bottle are useless.

Not true. When you're carrying 6 buckets of water, it's the only way to have wine for porting around various crossroads.

[Arcanist]

Wine bottle are useless.

Not true. When you're carrying 6 buckets of water, it's the only way to have wine for porting around various crossroads.

I stand corrected.

Usually I just steal wine from whoever I'm raiding.

[Tonkyhonk]

Wine bottle are useless.

Not true. When you're carrying 6 buckets of water, it's the only way to have wine for porting around various crossroads.

I stand corrected.

i call them "beer bottles" for cooking bierwurst; makes it a bit less tedious than using tankards.