Chicken breeding.

[Khyron]

Just a thought, I'm very bored at work and trying to kill time. I did try to keep the general theme of how this would work by using the same or similar in-game mechanics to how other processes work currently.

BUILDING : The coop itself is built just like a cabin, but with different materials. 50 boards, 20 blocks, 10 stone (for grit), and 20 straw.

The coop has only one level, 8x4 interior. On either side are two special, non-movable furniture items : The feeding trough, and the hatchery.

Players must catch wild chickens and release them into the coop to 'domesticate' them. Chickens within the coop will feed from the trough every 8 hours (1 in-game day). Every feeding cycle, the chicken has a 10% chance to lay an egg. The QL of the egg depends on the average QL of the water/feed eaten, and the original QL of the chicken. The eggs will disappear after one in-game day.

Eggs can be cooked by themselves (base of 1 dex FEP), hardboiled in a cauldron (base of 2 dex FEP), or cooked with any kind of cheese into an omelette (base of 10 dex FEP).

Eggs placed within a hatchery will hatch into chicks after 3 in-game days (They must be removed and dropped in the coop itself to feed), and will grow into a new chicken after an in-game week. Chicks can be butchered but only provide a single bone material. The bone material is half the QL of the full-grown chicken.

The coop's feeding trough has two fullness gauges, water and feed. It can be filled with seeds or earthworms or whatever it is that chickens eat. The more chickens in the coop, the faster the feed trough is used up. Chickens will die if unfed for 2 feeding cycles, chicks will die if they miss a single feeding cycle.

The maximum amount of chickens available in a single coop is 10. If more than 10 chickens are present, any chicks will die instantly on the next feeding cycle. If there are still more than 10 after all the chicks are dead, random chickens will die until only 10 remain. A 100% full trough will sustain 10 chickens through three feeding cycles without needing to be refilled.

All wild chickens start out at QL10, and to increase quality they must be fed with high-quality seeds/worms/whatever and allowed to lay eggs to produce higher quality chickens.

In the end, it's quite a bit of work but the rewards are higher quality feathers, more variety for dex-producing food, etc. Also a good use for all the high-quality seeds that don't get thrown out and can't be milled (Other than grass, of course). There's probably quite a few new foods that could be added with eggs, and maybe new uses for feathers (Ranger's arrows, anyone?). Anyways, please feel free to critique the shit out of this suggestion.

[sabinati]

i think (hope) that they are planning to do most of the animal domestication stuff after the inventory restructuring is done. i'm eager, to say the least.

[Peter]

RL Chickens lay an egg every 23-26 hours or so, for whatever that's worth.

I understand that chickens are to act as seed sinks. They eat anything organic, including one another, and eggs.

How about this for chicken Q: It's inherited, but if the chicken eats a meal with lower Q than it's Q, the chicken's Q drops by one.

If they want, they can add Roosters. You need at least one for chicken eggs to hatch, but otherwise they're really only good for meat.

For the time period, I'd really expect eggs to be hatched to just be left for the chickens to hatch. Even to this day, it's the most guaranteed way to hatch eggs. So I'd say that eggs left in nests eventually hatch.

What happens if "tame" chickens are put outside of a coop? I expect that they'd wander around and scrounge. Maybe they hunt for worms. If left alone for long enough to de-spawn, that does kinda make sense.

[Khyron]

RL Chickens lay an egg every 23-26 hours or so, for whatever that's worth.

...

What happens if "tame" chickens are put outside of a coop? I expect that they'd wander around and scrounge. Maybe they hunt for worms. If left alone for long enough to de-spawn, that does kinda make sense.

8 hours is an in-game day, so 24 hours. The probability of laying an egg should probably be a bit higher than 10%, that was just the first number that popped into my head (50% would probably be more accurate).

Truthfully the chickens aren't really 'domesticated'. The coop just prevents them from despawning so long as they're fed. A tame chicken released outside would behave the same as a wild chicken currently does; it'd wander around and eventually despawn after nobody looks at it long enough.

[MasterCatfish]

In my experience (I grew up in the country with a chicken coop on my property), chickens will go to roost in the chicken house if they're domesticated. I don't know how to get them to learn to roost in a chicken house, but I know that it can be done. Basically, we let our chickens wander freely during the day so they could look for their own food some of the time. We fed them dried grain otherwise. One evening I forgot to close the door to the chicken coop, and a fox got in an slaughtered all (9) of them.

Considering the setting of H&H, I think a different approach might be more fitting. I think it would be sensible to make the chicken coop a building which could not be entered. Instead could be supplied with seeds to feed the chickens while they wandered around nearby, not leaving a certain radius of the chicken coop.

[Peter]

Considering the setting of H&H, I think a different approach might be more fitting. I think it would be sensible to make the chicken coop a building which could not be entered. Instead could be supplied with seeds to feed the chickens while they wandered around nearby, not leaving a certain radius of the chicken coop.

I kind of like this in so much as it means that you have to make fences and other protective measures to keep your chickens safe.

[Khyron]

While I agree, I felt that a solution like that would require significantly more new code. The major advantage this approach has is almost all the code is already in place, in one form or another. The code for troughs is similar to cauldrons (With the water/feed gauges), the hatchery is just an egg-specific herb table, walk-in chicken coops would be a modification of cabins/mansions, etc.

[sabinati]

well it could be argued that the code for a non-walk-in chicken coop is already there in one form or another as well. container, gauges, etc. and it's already drawn.