Henhouse/Coop to produce eggs

[Peter]

Your concept is quite complex and realistic. I think it's too complex for a game. I'd prefer to advance the mining-system with new ores etc. If you really like this concept, maybe you should raise hens in reallife

Hold on, give me a minute- this is the first time someone has had a polite, reasonable counter-arguement to one of my suggestions. I'm kind of amazed.

Good point, this sort of thing should come up after we see some better mining and other core elements. Better Hens could still be implenented, though. I would argue that once implemented, this would be transparent to the player. You'd see a brownish chicken that lays eggs often, and so you hatch more from that chicken. Something for nature-sided players to do while the industry players mine the new metals.

And yes, I do have a few chickens. Or did, until the raccoons got them.

[jorb]

Is there really nothing more important to work on than complete genome representations, and the artificially synthesized proteins, gene splicers and cloning vats that would, obviously, have to come with that?

Our present animation system can't really handle one shot animated effects on objects, which is a prerequisite for an effect like the one above. We've reworked the system three times or so (loftar blames this on my fickle nature), so it might be awhile before we get around to this particular piece. Failing a rework, I guess we could implement the hen house without the animation, but that would feel a bit boring.

Foxes will attack the object in one way or another. Hen houses will be a sink for superfluous seeds from farming. The system will probably be reminiscent of silk production -- shifting objects around for maximum output, optimal ratio of hens to eggs to seeds to roosters -- and there will be omelets. And maybe some HFS where cow eggs can be put into the hen house, whereupon the chickens would brood on it...

.... NO! SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP!

[Jackard]

Now here's a fun idea for you: breeds.
You could make it so each bird has a really simple set of 0-10 point traits- egg laying rate, movement speed, health, meatiness, and coloration, even maybe egg coloration, for instance. Then start the game world with a bunch of random batches and let each new generation of birds inherit from the parents with some minor mutation. You could say that the attributes could never have a total of more than 30 points or something so that superhens can't exist. Then players could develop, say, the Brogdor Brown Hen, or the B12ian Chunk of Meat With Feathers. Thus, skilled farmers can have a unique breed of birds which are worth trading to others.

"meatiness"

i'd ask why DF fans love overcomplication but then again all you have to do is look at DF and the detail it goes into for each dwarf's appearance/mannerisms

[sabinati]

i think it fits well with an item quality system. i'd like to see a genetics system for all livestock and plants as well. livestock would have variables like color, meat quality, meat quantity (chance to get a bonus piece of meat), other item (milk, eggs, wool, etc) quality, other item quantity (respawn rate, higher number means that it would lay eggs, have milk available, be available for shearing slightly sooner). plants would have variables like color (for some plants), grow rate, harvest quality, harvest quantity (small bonus to chance to get extra seed item). possibly some other variables, i'm sure j&l could come up with something good.

[Jackard]

i cant tell if thats a parody or not

[KoE]

Fox attack?

I should hope so. The other option is that it's a 'If the henhouse is rockin', don't come a knockin'. type thing. Knowing jorb that might be the more likely scenario, though.

[PhaedrothSP]

Maybe an advancement of the cooking skill to allow someone to use those eggs?

[Peter]

I imagine someone breeding an animal to produce as much intestine as possible.

Anyway, that's a good point. It would fit in with item variety. After all, if you can make five or ten kinds of pickaxe, why not be able to grow an equal variety of apples?

Complex inheritance is not really what's needed, just something simple with a few variables will give you a matrix of possibilities. If you had five possible intensities each for five attributes, that's 3125 possible chickens. That's a nice bullet point. (Now with 3125 varieties of sheep!)

As much fun as gene-splicing chickens would be, simply selecting the useful animals and culling the bad would be all that a player has to do.
Similar work with plants- the color of poppies, the productivity versus the resilience of grain- would further make for valuable, tradable breeds.

[sabinati]

i cant tell if thats a parody or not

my post? no i'm serious...

[sabinati]

Fox attack?

I should hope so. The other option is that it's a 'If the henhouse is rockin', don't come a knockin'. type thing. Knowing jorb that might be the more likely scenario, though.

are you saying that jorb is a chickenf*cker?