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)

I have no idea what the "extinct animals" poster had experienced. I have my doubts about the claim, but can't rule out that it happened, at least to him.

There is a population cap on animals (per-species). It used to be 80, I believe, but it seems more like 50 these days. I haven't formally tested it, but my suspicion is that once you hit that population cap, breeding for that species ceases permanently, even if their count falls below the cap again. If that's true, then animal breeding is a finite resource, unless you cull their numbers carefully to keep them under the limit at all times.

I'm presently setting up a mega-corral, so I'll be testing it soon.--Maximus 23:57, 9 November 2008 (EST)