Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[wlmartin]

If I am right, one animal = one leather.. doesn't matter if it is a horse or a rabbit.
(if not please correct me)
[NOTE : This part isn't important to my current plan below, since i dont intend to tan them but I wouldn't mind knowing should i scale this proof of concept into an actual part of future embarks]

So I am thinking that if I can determine which animal breeds the most, have them breed like crazy in their own room and occasionally cull them for leather.

We know that cats breed a lot but I think this is over-dramatized due to their ability to adopt dwarves and be slaughter-proof.
So are cats really the biggest breeders? If not who (or is this not something that is factored ie all animals breed the same?)

I am cackling at the idea of just embarking with 0 skills, some basic materials to enable food/drink needs being satisfied making and a farm of 999 (or whatever the max i could buy) female rabbits and 1 male rabbit, have them breed in their own room that is locked, keep them breeding. At this point my dorfs are only satisfying the "slaughter" part of the equation, as long as they dont ALL die, their behaviour is going to be ignored.

The goal = breed as many as I can for as long as I can.

[pisskop]

In vanilla, you can only embark with certain animals.  Rabbits are quick, but not butcherable for much.  If you want the best bang for your buck, get an egglayer.  Turkeys or Peafowls.  They lay alot of eggs, and you can both harvest them and butcher them.  I think baby turkeys do leave meat, but don't quote me on that.

So yea.  Egg layers are the best way to go for food.  Lays Eggs, gives meat, and do not need pastures so you can keep them in any environment.

If you want a farm animal I personally favor sheep.  They are small(er) and require less pasture, you can shear them and the males give horns.


---

I think cave crocodiles are supposed to be the best in terms of rapid reproduction, though.

[Chevaleresse]

Alligators reproduce at a similar speed and are a bit larger, but yeah, cave croc breeding is such that you can have hundreds in a year from one female.

[wlmartin]

Alligators reproduce at a similar speed and are a bit larger, but yeah, cave croc breeding is such that you can have hundreds in a year from one female.

WOW and YIKES

If i wanted to reference a list of animals that breed high/low amounts, is that collated anywhere?

[greycat]

If I am right, one animal = one leather.. doesn't matter if it is a horse or a rabbit.
(if not please correct me)

Technically, each body part can give you a piece of leather, but this presents a different problem: if the animal is tame, you can't chop it into bits and then butcher those bits.  You can only do that to wild/hostile creatures.

So, maximum leather production would be achieved by finding a wild creature that breeds like an egg layer but without needing a nest box (I don't think any such creature exists), and exploding them into a pile of limbs (either by dropping them a great distance, or by sending them through serrated disc traps), and then butchering each of the resulting body parts.

Maximum leather production you can get with tame creatures would definitely be the egg layers, as others have pointed out.

[locustgate]

DINGOS!!! In 2 years you'll have 30 total. Starting with 2F and 1M

[SeelenJägerTee]

If I am right, one animal = one leather.. doesn't matter if it is a horse or a rabbit.
(if not please correct me)

Technically, each body part can give you a piece of leather, but this presents a different problem: if the animal is tame, you can't chop it into bits and then butcher those bits.  You can only do that to wild/hostile creatures.

So, maximum leather production would be achieved by finding a wild creature that breeds like an egg layer but without needing a nest box (I don't think any such creature exists), and exploding them into a pile of limbs (either by dropping them a great distance, or by sending them through serrated disc traps), and then butchering each of the resulting body parts.

Maximum leather production you can get with tame creatures would definitely be the egg layers, as others have pointed out.

Couldn't you just drop your own tame animals down a - let's say 50 z - high drop so that they splatter and THEN butcher the parts? Or are body-parts of your own tame creatures non-butcherable?

[locustgate]

If I am right, one animal = one leather.. doesn't matter if it is a horse or a rabbit.
(if not please correct me)

Technically, each body part can give you a piece of leather, but this presents a different problem: if the animal is tame, you can't chop it into bits and then butcher those bits.  You can only do that to wild/hostile creatures.

So, maximum leather production would be achieved by finding a wild creature that breeds like an egg layer but without needing a nest box (I don't think any such creature exists), and exploding them into a pile of limbs (either by dropping them a great distance, or by sending them through serrated disc traps), and then butchering each of the resulting body parts.

Maximum leather production you can get with tame creatures would definitely be the egg layers, as others have pointed out.

Couldn't you just drop your own tame animals down a - let's say 50 z - high drop so that they splatter and THEN butcher the parts? Or are body-parts of your own tame creatures non-butcherable?

Wiht the mutilation feature don't they just turn to mutilated corpse.

[Quietust]

Couldn't you just drop your own tame animals down a - let's say 50 z - high drop so that they splatter and THEN butcher the parts? Or are body-parts of your own tame creatures non-butcherable?

Unless things have changed, body parts of tame creatures are just as butcherable as their whole corpses are, which is to say "not at all" - only wild animals can be butchered, and only tame animals can be slaughtered.

[quarague]

a warning on embarking with 1M+999F of whatever animals. AFAIK some percentage of animals is sterile (or homosexual, which comes to the same in the game) similar to dwarfs. This means you might get zero offspring if the one male rabbit happens to be a gay one.

[wlmartin]

a warning on embarking with 1M+999F of whatever animals. AFAIK some percentage of animals is sterile (or homosexual, which comes to the same in the game) similar to dwarfs. This means you might get zero offspring if the one male rabbit happens to be a gay one.

LOL - that chicken is a gay homosexual!

Firstly, how would I even notice? Unless it has a tag that tells me?

[Absentia]

Of the egg-layers you can embark with in vanilla, I believe turkeys lay the most. I never leave (mountain)home without a handful of them, and that handful can turn into an army in short order.

a warning on embarking with 1M+999F of whatever animals. AFAIK some percentage of animals is sterile (or homosexual, which comes to the same in the game) similar to dwarfs. This means you might get zero offspring if the one male rabbit happens to be a gay one.

LOL - that chicken is a gay homosexual!

Firstly, how would I even notice? Unless it has a tag that tells me?

There's no obvious indication except that it never breeds. Best to bring along a second or even third male.

[Chevaleresse]

Oh yeah, saltwater crocodiles are slightly larger than cave crocs iirc and they breed slightly faster.

[clownwolf]

If you care about FPS I would suggest against mass-breeding the egg-layers. At most, use only 4 nest boxes in order to better control the baby poultry count.

I didn't know this and I had all 6 domestic egg-layers (including the useless ducks and guineafowls) hatch their eggs at the same time, putting their numbers from 120, up to ~500 in one go. I had around 400 (cats, dogs, coyotes, pigs, wild boars, grazers) at that point so ~900 total animals + 200 dwarves will put you down to 4 fps.

Also, cats breed on a normal pace, same as dogs and pigs. There is also a cap on animal populations. I often end up with 60 of each of the non-egg-layers because I don't really need to butcher anything in my ranch.

But yeah, I now avoid egg-layers and stick to ranching dogs, cats and local wildlife. Its pretty fun, kinda like a zoo.

[Kaos]

Couldn't you just drop your own tame animals down a - let's say 50 z - high drop so that they splatter and THEN butcher the parts? Or are body-parts of your own tame creatures non-butcherable?

Unless things have changed, body parts of tame creatures are just as butcherable as their whole corpses are, which is to say "not at all" - only wild animals can be butchered, and only tame animals can be slaughtered.

In the 40.06 fort I'm playing at the moment this holds true...


You could circumvent this by capturing a necromancer... kill your own tame animals, let the necro rise them as zombies then drop them and butcher...?