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[NW_Kohaku]

For the purposes of !!SCIENCE!!, I'm wondering if anyone who has been using things like the memory hacks has been able to isolate how fast grass grows.

This will obviously be useful in determining how much space every animal will wind up needing for their pastures.

[Skivverus]

"Slowly." But then, I embarked on a desert, so no surprise there. I suspect the rate will be biome-dependent.

[NW_Kohaku]

I'm going to bump this to see if maybe someone can give me a more useful answer.

[Urist Da Vinci]

Toady vaguely mentioned something about the growth rate in the DF talk #11. IIRC it was something like each tile growing 25% towards the maximum of 100% each growth cycle.

[Girlinhat]

I got halfway through that talk.  He says that every growth cycle, which presumably varies in length according to biome, the grass rolls a dice, and picks a grass type.  If it's an existing grass, it adds 25 to that square, up to 100, or if it's a non-existent type, then it grows up to 25/100.  Somewhere along the way, the grass starts to even out, and prefer one type over another, so that after a few years there's only like 2-3 grass types on the map and it gets a nice, uniform look, like a proper grassy lot should.

[ral]

I don't know the answer to the question, but I have noticed that if I create a max-sized pasture and assign a bunch of animals to it, most of them seem to stay in the upper left corner and eat up all the grass there without moving around much. I think some have even starved even though there's grass elsewhere in the pasture. Bug?

[Lord Darkstar]

At this time, grazers don't actually move to the nearest grass tile to get food. They just eat the grass they find in their brownian movement. So it is easy for animals to starve to death in large pastures because they all start in the same corner (from when they were assigned or returned) and don't end up going over enough NEW tiles of grass to feed themselves.

[Cotes]

At this time, grazers don't actually move to the nearest grass tile to get food. They just eat the grass they find in their brownian movement. So it is easy for animals to starve to death in large pastures because they all start in the same corner (from when they were assigned or returned) and don't end up going over enough NEW tiles of grass to feed themselves.

I usually create a few pastures and cycle the animals through them. Kinda of pain when start to have a ton of them. I wish you could assign them more efficiently. By species, maybe.

[Jurph]

At this time, grazers don't actually move to the nearest grass tile to get food. They just eat the grass they find in their brownian movement. So it is easy for animals to starve to death in large pastures because they all start in the same corner (from when they were assigned or returned) and don't end up going over enough NEW tiles of grass to feed themselves.

Possible solutions:
(1) Each animal gets a unique pasture site
(2) A large field gets divvied up into 3x3 or 4x4 pasture zones and the user manually cycles any animals who appear hungry
(3) Wall off your pasture and add doors at the midpoint of each side.  Once two or three animals have been brought through one door, forbid that door and unforbid the next door down the fence.  Randomize the animals' starting spots better...?