40d Talk:Meat industry

Removed the verify for livestock breeding without being in contact; I've personally witnessed a female camel and a female horse locked deep inside my fortress get telepathically impregnated by outside animals. – unsigned comment by Drawfirons

Telepathically impregnated by wild outside animals? It's not part of the original question, but it sounds like that's what you're saying. --RomeoFalling 20:18, 8 November 2008 (EST)

I feel it should be mentioned somewhere that both hunting and livestock are non-renewable without some luck as to what animals are brought as pets with immigrants. Tame animals (those that are not pets) seem to be considered 'wild' in that they obey the limits set forth in the raw file for the number that will be 'spawned' (or born, if you will) before hitting a max. Basically, unnamed animals will eventually stop breeding, and only those pets with names will continue to breed. Hence why catsplosion is so bad, and why it doesn't happen with any other animals. Barring the ability to assign other animals to dwarves (and hence, give them names) I don't think meat is a very viable industry in the long term. --Gotthard 18:44, 9 November 2008 (EST)

I've seen one player claim that wild animals can be hunted to extinction. I haven't seen that myself. Barring that, hunting is renewable, albeit limited.--Maximus 21:06, 9 November 2008 (EST)

Are you saying there's a cap on live+deceased animals? If livestock doesn't need to cross paths in order to impregnate, then the meat industry is perfectly viable, although there may be some framerate issues if you choose to do more than one type of livestock -- just list one bull and eight cows as available for adoption. As for the extinction thing, are you sure he wasn't talking about the Cancel Hunt messages that say something like "There are no animals in the swamps" or somesuch? --RomeoFalling 23:09, 9 November 2008 (EST)

When I say renewable, I mean will never run out. Trees are renewable, given space to grow. Hunted animals are not. It isn't a *claim* that animals can be hunted to extinction, the numbers are in the raws for each particular animal. After that many of animals exist (living or dead I presume), no more are generated, whether through off-map activity, or being born as offspring. The same is true for livestock brought with you, or traded. The only animals that do NOT obey this limitation are pets (and perhaps named animals in general). I have had the same base for 15 years, and I haven't had any offspring from horses, dogs, or cows in about 9ish years. However, there are still animals being born, and I've traced the number per year back to the number of female pets I have. I'm not sure if named pets only mate with named pets, but a single female pet doesn't seem to yield any offspring (but this should be verified). I had about 20ish puppies per year at max, and it abruptly stopped. It has recently started up again, as puppies brought as pets have matured. Same thing for horses and cows, but it is slow. Frankly, with immigration stopping, and no way to assign pets (iirc?) my animal "home grown" animal supply will soon dry out. The same is not true of turtles, they seem to respawn, but I think fish fall into this category, my river hasn't had anything but turtles for 10ish years. --Gotthard 23:20, 9 November 2008 (EST)