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[WhiteRabbit]

In the current version of the game, 40d, when setting animal traps with meat or fish, a dwarf will put an entire stack into the animal trap.  The idea of a little cave spider devouring cow meat [9], which is enough for nine meals for a dwarf, is a bit mind-boggling.  I think it would be better if animal traps were only loaded with one unit of meat or fish.  Also, the eating of vermin by dwarfs makes collecting certain types of vermin, say purring maggots or cave spiders very difficult, which is a problem that I'm sure people are already aware of.  I would suggest having the eating of vermin as something that could be allowed from the stocks screen, much like the selling of vermin as pets, or as something that could be activated from the vermin itself.  Animals trapped in cages would have the default value for being eaten as set to "false" automatically, and, for unwanted vermin, the value could be set to true or the vermin dumped into some pit somewhere to free up traps.  I think that would improve things quite a bit, and allow for the farming of cave spiders and purring maggots for silk, milk, pets, and exotic food.

Edit:  Also, the milking of purring maggots needs work.  In current version, a milker takes a live maggot from an animal trap and milks it, but then drops it on the ground instead of re-caging it.  You can then assign the maggot to a built cage, but milkers cannot access it for milking from there.  Maybe small animal cages could be implemented at some point.

[irmo]

Dwarves eat vermin when they're starving. If you don't want that to happen, you have to feed them. It doesn't make a lot of sense to have a "Please starve to death" command.

Edit: I completely agree about baiting traps, though.

[WhiteRabbit]

Some dwarfs don't wait till starvation to eat vermin.  They have a preference for exotic foods or something and seek out live vermin to eat, which results in dwarfs eating my captured live vermin, which incidentally took several stacks of meat to trap, instead of eating the exceptional quality roasts, biscuits, and stews provided by our first rate chef.

[LegoLord]

A "wait until starving to eat vermin" option would be nice, yes.

[WhiteRabbit]

Good idea, Lego Lord, having an option like that in the "set orders and options" menu would be super-easy.

[0x517A5D]

But everybody knows that dwarves like raw rat with ketchup!

Really, it's easy enough to mark caged vermin as {forbidden} so they don't get eaten.

Back to the original topic, I would like animal traps to be baited with chunks if they are available.  That seems like a perfect use for an otherwise useless item.

[LegoLord]

Really, it's easy enough to mark caged vermin as {forbidden} so they don't get eaten.

Of course, that makes it rather difficult to tame or use the vermin.

[WhiteRabbit]

I'm pretty sure vermin can still be tamed once forbidden, so long as the trap itself isn't forbidden.  Still, I don't think forbidden vermin can be milked, and it is rather annoying to have to babysit a trap until someone deconstructs it so that you can designate it as forbidden at the first moment.  Otherwise you risk losing the cave spider you spent nine meat to get.  I have never had a cave spider or purring maggot make it back to a stockpile before being devoured unless I keep going to the trap and waiting for it to be deconstructed so that I can forbid the vermin.  It's super-tedious.

[Warlord255]

Kitchen/stock screen control for eating vermin would be nice; I would love to only have to forbid the cave spiders/maggots and let my dwarves snack away on all the rats, roaches and lizards that keep plaguing the stockpiles. Or fire snakes, because they're just cool like that.

[Pilsu]

As convenient as dwarves being satiated after eating one dragonfly is, hunger really shouldn't be that binary

Dwarves should always prefer cooked food over ingredients and ingredients over vermin. Some vermin, like tiny insects shouldn't even provide nourishment unless there's a ridiculous amount of them. Easiest way of handling would be to simply disallow eating them, even if it means that you can't collect 300 cockroaches and make a stew. Not really the most important feature in comparison to dealing with the 'sploity nature of eating nothing but singular ants and being satisfied with that

Mind you, if a mechanic is put into place to make cooking vermin into food an option, civ ethics, which are then overridden with any specific likes should decide whether your dwarves consider this disgusting. For example, kobolds might overall like it and receive appropriate happy thoughts from quality rat stew, humans might not care but not like it either, removing happy thoughts and dwarves would refuse to eat it until starving and then get a bad thought about it

Starving people should eat their pets and rotting meat. But that's already planned judging by the thoughts

Rotten meat should remain functional in traps. For rats and cockroaches those things are awfully picky about their food. I can deal with the miasma, just make vermin still spring the trap even if it's not primo veal in it


It'd be nice to be able to sort the prepared food based on quality too

[LegoLord]

Um.  300 roaches for one unit of stew is a bit excessive.  10-20 roaches would be sufficient for one meal, I think.

[Foa]

A "wait until starving to eat vermin" option would be nice, yes.

Food reserve?

Nice!

[Pilsu]

Um.  300 roaches for one unit of stew is a bit excessive.  10-20 roaches would be sufficient for one meal, I think.

That is better I guess, while large amounts are realistic they'd make the feature entirely pointless. Discourages vermin diet all the same

[Neonivek]

Well 300 would feed the fort.

Most of the world eats insects so we know there is enough for Dwarves to eat.

The unfortunate side to this is that the game simply doesn't and cannot generate enough bugs.

Perhaps Nests and Farms for insects and bugs would be better. (Put that Aquarium to good use)

[Pilsu]

Well 300 would feed the fort.

Doubt that. Bugs have little nutrition, you need large amounts

Societies that eat large amounts of say, termites rob the nests. We're talking about a handful of roaches from the pantry. It's not the same thing at all