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[KilgoreTrout]

I've never experienced a catsplosion after my first game. I've always put all newborns in a single cage in one of the dining rooms, but it'd be nice to let a few run around. Right now the animals that are just smoozing about the fort are mainly tamed Rhesus's.

[Neonivek]

In truth the Population check auto slaughter was originally thought up so that the player wouldn't need to manually select animals out of a list of hundreds every few hours.

It just has a TON of other nice fringe benefits.

[Taal]

I don't like this idea.

 I've always seen catplosion and the resulting disinigration of your hardrive to be an end game scenario, removing this would be like removing (atleast one) of the final boss fights out of another game.
Just because an end game scenario is hard doesnt mean it should be removed.

[Aquillion]

I've always seen catplosion and the resulting disinigration of your hardrive to be an end game scenario, removing this would be like removing (atleast one) of the final boss fights out of another game.
Just because an end game scenario is hard doesnt mean it should be removed.

The game is going to get actual endgame scenarios eventually.  And I really don't think "run out of processing power so it becomes too slow, sluggishly-responsive, and boring to continue and you eventually quit in disgust" is really a desirable endgame scenario anyway...

It's not that cats make the game hard.  They add absolutely no difficulty to the game at all.  In fact, they make it easier, because they constantly produce more cats that you can butcher for resources.

But they make the game unfun, because things slow down to a crawl and the interface becomes too slugish to enjoy.  Those are things that, optimally, should never happen.

I mean, look, if you like it, I believe you can force your game to lag and behave sluggishly using FPS caps.   You can get as much 'challenge' as you like that way -- heck, you could push it all the way down to 1 fps in the late game if you really want!  There's also various external tools you can use to limit the CPU available to Dwarf Fortress, simulating the lag of a catslopsion as much as you desire.

But I think it's fair to say that for everyone else, the game should be designed with, in general, keeping a high FPS as a goal.

[Neonivek]

It isn't even JUST cats... it is just that Cats reach the population limit FAST and that they become pets causing bad thoughts for killing them.

All the animals can reach this cap and bog down not only the CPU but also the halways causing Pathfinding nightmares.

[Aquillion]

It isn't even JUST cats... it is just that Cats reach the population limit FAST and that they become pets causing bad thoughts for killing them.

Also, other pets can be easily butchered unless you've deliberately assigned them to a dwarf.  Since cats assign themselves, they're much more of a bother.

But yes.  An alternative solution, which I make only partially in jest:  Add an option to turn off all cat pathing in the init file.  This would cause every cat to simply stand there like a lemon.  (Maybe just disable most of their actions, and let them react to a few things, like imminent danger, while sitting still as statues and not trying to path anywhere the rest of the time.)

It is slightly silly, but it avoids killing your CPU, at least.

[Pilsu]

Just separate the damn auto adoption from VERMINHUNTER and let the players so inclined to deal with it themselves

[Aquillion]

The thing about that (and just about all the other suggestions) is that it requires that the player realize that cats are what's killing their framerate.  There's no reason why someone who doesn't know much about computers and is relatively new to Dwarf Fortress would know that -- to them, the game is just slowing to a crawl and becoming unresponsive for inexplicable reasons.  They get annoyed and quit, or whatever, and that's that.

The ultimate solution isn't really a way to control cats.  The ultimate solution should be a way to prevent them from causing pathing lag in the first place.

Hmm...  as a refinement to my previous 'cats stand there like lemons' idea, how about this?  Pets, perhaps excluding work dogs, should only get a certain maximum percentage of the processor for pathing (that is, cap the number of cat 'jobs' or whatever it is that makes them path which can be generated within a certain timeframe.)  As you get more cats, your cats will slow down, because the game will only let so many cats path at once -- but the rest of the game won't slow down.  Honestly, most players aren't going to notice their cats becoming a bit more slow.

This way, cats still keep 'working', without ballooning into this huge processing sink that interferes with the rest of the game.

[Silverionmox]

As an alternative, increase their sleeping hours. Or just make them like sleeping in big nests all day long, that wouldn't even be out of character.

[Fossaman]

A cap on the maximum number of cats a sane, healthy dwarf with a reasonable number of friends or family members will adopt.

Crazy cat dwarfs really should be crazy. So you might get two or three cats per cat-loving dwarf, and that's all. So by the time you have enough dwarves for the number of cats to be a problem, you're experiencing slowdowns for other reasons.

[AncientEnemy]

guys, remember that while LOL CATSPLOSION is funny and all, the goal is to create a fun and as-realistic-as-possible game, not to perpetuate old in-jokes. next update for example carp will no longer be a threat. just like the dreaded murderfish, catsplosions are an (amusing) oversight that will be fixed, not a deliberate gameplay 'challenge'.

I think auto-butchering is a very good idea.

Automation isn't always a good thing

while this may be true, there's no reason your dwarves wouldn't be able to have a standing policy of 'okay, we've got enough cows in the stable, send the new calves to the slaughterhouse".

it takes away a needless chore, and I'd say makes the game -more- immersive and not less, because as it stands, if you want a meat industry, you'll never be done establishing it. imagine if you had to manually harvest plants; it would be a huge pain in the ass