As of right now, animal farming is easier than tending crops. You simply buy an egg, wait for it to hatch, wait for the animal to grow, then wait for it to produce whatever it's supposed to produce. I really hope this isn't the end of animal farming. Here are things I'd like to see. Feeding Animals - A crop requires to be watered so a animal should be fed. If the animal isn't fed, it then shouldn't produce it's product. How they should be fed can be done in various of ways, that can be up to you with how you wanna go about it. Some ideas is that we could maybe plant tall grass to have them graze on, maybe feed them certain crops, or even feed them plant fiber. We could also have troughs where we could place the food in for them to eat when they're hungry. So basically the idea is, you feed them food and then they produce your product. After you harvest their product, you repeat. Harvesting Animals Improvement - The way you harvest from animals is unusual. Sure it can work for certain alien farm animals, but for chickens to turn white to brown, is just odd and it takes away from potentially having different variations of an animal. This can easily be fixed by having a text cloud be above the animal with the product that's ready to be harvest, similar to Stardew Valley. Add Farm Animal Variations - Would be nice if all our animals didn't look so similar to each other. Give them some variations to make your farms come alive. Hell I'd like to even be able to collect all the different type of variations. Capture Pods - Instead of buying all animals in an egg, it'd be nice to have them come in capture pods. I don't see why we can't put livestock in a capture pods. Reproducing Animals - I'd like the ability to not be relying on Terramart to buy more animals. Just like NPCs interact with each other and show love icons, so should animals and then reproduce. There should also be genders for animals, so if you don't want them to reproduce, separate them in certain pens. Production and pregnancy should take time, but should be an option. Maybe we could even sell them to the terramart if put in a capture pod. Butchering - If animals could reproduce, I want to be able to butcher them for food. Why do I have to go out and hunt for my meat when I can just kill my livestock? I can add much more but these are at least some basics that I believe should be added to improve animal farming. It's already in the game, no reason to leave it without any ounce of depth.
Feeding animals sounds like a step in the wrong direction to me. I don't want to have to babysit my animals like I do my crops, Starbound is already grindy as hell. The main benefit to having animals is to have an easy supply of rare crafting ingredients. If raising animals is more tedious than hunting those rare drops then why bother? Butchering and breeding would be cool though, and I'd be down with more variety of livestock.
I agree with Masiak. Additionally, I believe capture pods are the wrong direction with livestock. The translocator is much more reasonable then putting them in capture pods. The translocator can hold 3 at a time, too, and be re-used infinitely. Far more handy. I'm always a fan of breeding
Feeding an animal in exchange for a rare crafting ingredient is more tedious then finding the ingredient itself? I don't understand. That's like saying lets not farm crops because we can find them in the wild without having to tediously water them. I just don't want another Minecraft which lacks depth in every single feature they have. I intentionally added a very little to the current mechanic so people can still go off to adventures without worrying about their farm animals. However I do feel they need at least some care in order to rightfully get that free ingredient. But that means you can't ever sell your animals to Terramart or give them to your friends via inventory, unless you get rid of your relocator with it.
It isn't rare at all, just use a crossbow Though livestock can definitely be more efficient when you want to gather massive amounts of those resources. Only really needed for terraformers in that case
Only copying what Masiakasaurus said. Anyway, every resource should require some effort in order to obtain it, or at least that's what I believe. The fact that we can put an animal egg down and watch them produce an endless amount of resources, just doesn't feel right. Maybe my suggestion could only be for survival mode.
