Regarding Animals and Domestication

[Yolan]

There's a million and one ways that R&B can expand on the nature side of things, some more likely/needed than others. I can foresee olive trees/oil presses/olive oil/clay jugs in our near future, for example. But probably the biggest gap in the farming side of things is domestication.

It's as obvious as the nose on your face, so this is not a post saying, 'I want domestication!' I just want to make a few suggestions for this area of future expansion. This is a bit of a wall of text, but I have broken it down into sub-suggestions for easier reading.

1) Domesticate Skill

I guess the basis of domestication would be a 'domesticate' skill. Perhaps with branching skills of 'chicken rearing', 'pig farming', 'horse breeding', 'sheep herding' and the like. This skill/skills would make possible a new action 'domesticate', which you can use on the appropriate 'wild' animal. I would suggest that a domesticated animal can be 'led' by right clicking on it, as you right click to 'pull' a cart. A led animal can then be brought into an enclosure. Domesticated animals would save between server resets/crashes.

2) Enclosures

To an extent, these could be as simple as the basic wooden walls already available to us. However, we need a kind of 'area of affect' that I think should be expandable in the same box-like way as hearth claims. Basically, stake out an area to be an 'enclosure' with your domesticate skill. _then_ surround that area with a fence/gate of your choice to stop animals wandering out of it. Like a hearth claim, an enclosure claim would cost exponentially more LP the larger it gets. Domesticated animals within this area effect would then do several things...

- Eat. Animals in this area would need to be fed. Maybe, it can be relative to the size of the enclosure. If the enclosure covers a large amount of grassy field, for example, it might make the amount of 'feed' to be provided very low. I think grain/water need to be provided in feed troughs, which slowly deplete based on number of animals in the enclosure.

- Rather than making it so that the animals need to eat or die (hence making it so that your animals all starve to death if you can't play for a few days/week or so), make it so that eating is for the sake of _breeding_. If animals get to eat/drink, they will breed more animals. Hence, reproduction is secured. Of course, you should have to have at least a pair of an animal type for breeding to occur. I think, perhaps a week in game per fed animal pair per baby animal produced. One more week in game for the baby animal to become an adult. Animals could be made to periodically die over lengthy periods, so as to force feeding/breeding at a basic scale, so people don't just sit pretty with all their animals for ever.


3) Increased rarity of animals. IRL, animals are valuable. Here in H&H, they basically are like apples. Wonder around, and eventually there they are. Ideally, I see domesticated animals as having a fairly higher value, such that keeping them is even worth while in the first place, and hence trading them for coins/goods. When it becomes possible to domesticate and keep our own animals, I would like to see these animals load points effected by the civ census. So, in order to find a sheep just wondering around, you would need to go out into the wild a fair bit. Of course, IRL, domesticated animals were bread into their current form by people over a long time. You wouldn't be able to find white fluffy sheep just wondering about on their own in the wild. But for the sake of simplicity, it would probably be best to let that be for foreseeable future.

Without going into any more unnecessary specifics, that's basically the bare bones of what I would like to see. Domestication is something that would work really well with increased specialization that will hopefully emerge more in the next world, when people get more established (and hopefully skill mastership is added for the increased value of master produced goods). For example, we now have cheese making (and we already have another staple that comes from milk, butter.) It would be really great if you could set up a field, get a herd of cows going, and milk those guys for your cheese production. (can we have a limit on how much milk you can get out of a cow, like we currently have on shearing sheep?)

[sonerohi]

Perhaps we could throw industry a bone by making brands? Use them on a fire and then on a cow, and voila. You can now interact with the cow and it'll say 'Sonerohi's Cow'. It'd give some protection from thiefs and keep industry characters in the loop.

[Laremere]

I think the best way to handle enclosures would be to give the fence a gate that doesn't need a key but operates like a gate with a key (ie: village/claim protection.) Animals will wander around, and if the gate was left open, or the fence broke, they could wander out.

[Rift]

I remember J&L confirming that there will be chicken domestication, in that you will be able to use them for eggs ect.. as well as actual saving of said animals[atleast the ones that are yours] so they won't dissapear on the first crash.
They also confirmed ridable animals, atleast cows [with a hilarious picture].
In addition they confirmed domestication in general will get in, although what animals[other then chickens and cows] are still unconfirmed.
They also dropped several hints here and there that horses might show up and be able to be ridable, as well as animals pulling carts should happen, however i don't think they were "confirmed" in any absolute sence.

In fact i think there was a big post about these very things a few weeks ago.

[Jackard]

I remember J&L confirming that there will be chicken domestication, in that you will be able to use them for eggs ect.

will you be able to use cows for eggs

[theTrav]

with a hilarious picture

HE HAD NO PANTS ON! BWAAHAAHAAAA