Animal Husbandry/Butchery system associated with balanced farming perks

Now the animal raising is rather unrealistic and unprofitable.

You need to pet them, milk and shear (and sometime you could hold the tool to milk/shear the air) them every day to ensure you get the maximum profit. While planting crops are much more profitable and could be fully automatic (if you don't bother to put them for preservation for more profit)

So at least two system should be implement -

1. Hiring people to do all the animal work (preferably Shane)
2. Possible to foster them in Marnie's ranch or Joja Corporation's feeder (The product would be their's and you need to pay for a seasonal/weekly fee)

Next, I'm talking about all animals, their reproduction method, their food, and their products.

Chickens (White/Brown/Blue)

• Male chicken (Rooster) is required in coop, to fertilize the eggs. They occasionally drop rooster feathers. Male chicken is limited to one kind, so the offspring can be any of the 3 kinds of color.
• Only fertilized eggs can hutch. Hutched chicken can be male or female.
• Chicken products: Wings x2, Drumsticks x 2, chicken meat x 8 (More for roosters, and for older chickens), multiple chicken feathers. Baby chicken cannot be produced into different parts.

Chickens (Void)

• You can only buy fertilized eggs from Krobus, while the eggs given by witch depend on whether you have rooster by that time
• Eggs can be fertilized by regular chicken, but Void rooster can also fertilized regular egg. If one of the parents is void, the chick would be a void one.
• Products are mostly void meat, can't be used in cooking, but can be sold. Feathers are treated as regular feathers

Ducks

• Reproduction method is same as chickens
• Only male ducks are green and drop green feathers
• Downs can be sheared except for winter
• Similar products like chickens, when butchered, also drop feathers/downs

For Poultry, grains (oat, soybean, wheat, rice, corn) can be made into their feed. In the feed mineral sources, like oyster or other crab pot fish should be added. For example, 1 oyster, 1 crabfish, 5 seaweed and 20 corns can be made into 100 poultry feed.


See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poultry_feed

Ducks can be grazed in ponds, thus decrease need of poultry feed. The poultry don't graze on grasses. Chicken grazing on farmland are happier, and occasionally decrease the need of feed.

Rabbit (in different colors)

• They breed quickly - a rabbit would breed twice per season maximum. average 3 bunnies, can be 1-6.
• Upon butchery, they are granted to produce 2 rabbit feet (because they are forelegs), a rabbit fur, several pieces of rabbit wool, and several pieces of rabbit meat.
• They drop wool rarely, and do not drop their feet.

They can be grazed and eat grasses, but more fruits and vegetables can be added as supplements.

Pigs (in different colors)

• A sow can give birth to 1-20, usually 6-14 piglets. Younger sow give birth to lesser piglets.
• A boar is needed to let a sow to pregnant (but you can also call for fertilization service, the service may fail)
• All pigs can be butchered to pork - a boar can produce a lot, while a sow is lesser, and a piglet produce little meat. They also produce pig leather upon butchery (quantity also depend on the sex and age of pigs)
• Only sows can occasionally find truffles, and they can't do that during pregnancy.

Pigs are fed by organic matters - every edible thing has its value (including coconut, joja cola and algae.) You can put everything in the machine, and organic matters are produced according to the thing's innate value. They can also graze and eat hay.

Bunnies and Piglets does not take positions in barn - upon born they are put in a basket. Player can take some, name them and give them a home, otherwise sell, butcher or send them to Marnie's. Untreated babies are automatically sold after 2 days.

Sheep (white/brown/black)

• A sheep can be sheared, and a ewe can be milked once a week
• Pregnant sheep can't be sheared/milked
• Sheep may give birth to twins
• Ram may be kept but fertilization service (which may fail) can be called
• butchered sheep gives a sheep leather, several meat, and ram gives swirled horn

Sheep graze and eat hay. But feed can also be made.

Goats/Cows: same mechanics as sheep. Ox/Ram drop horn when butchered.
Dinosaurs: Only female can lay eggs. But the sex ratio is balanced - 1:1. Same mechanic like poultry but eat hay/grass/organic matters. Cannot be butchered as they are protected animals and no one eat their meat or use their scale.

Possible introduction of new animals:

Crocodiles - for leather, meat. Kept in pond and need to be fenced.
Pigeons/Quail - for egg, feather and meat. They are kept in cages instead of coops.
Swans - for egg, feather and meat. But you need 1 male and 1 female to mate for fertilized eggs.


Adjusted Shepherd/Coopmaster:

Shepherd:
Old:
Befriend barn animals quicker.
Sheep produce wool faster.
New:
Befriend barn animals quicker.
Sheep produce wool faster.
Sows more likely to find truffles.
Increase preganacy chance of barn animals.
Coopmaster:
Old:
Befriend Coop animals quicker.
Incubation time cut in half.
New:
Befriend Coop animals quicker.
Incubation time cut in half.
Coop animals drop more wool and feathers.
Rabbits give birth to more bunnies per birth.


With those tweaks, I'm sure the animal husbandry can compete with agriculture! (But you need more buildings, of course.) Also the animal price is increased - A chicken is at least 2000G.

Also, animal breeding is not associated with the space left in coop/barn. Upon animal birth, you are forced to determine their destiny in the morning.

A box is pooped out, containing animals, in description of color, sex, and race. You have 4 options -

• House some of them in coop/barn (map is prompted out), need to name them
• Sell some of them
• Foster some of them in Marnie's, also need to name them
• Send some in butchery queue.

 

Butchery is never going to happen, as per CA

 

Oh... I can't understand - you can butcher the cute slimes anytime, and in front of other slimes.

What's the difference between them and livestock? Just because livestock are not imaginary???

 

I'm sorry, did you actually suggest that one pig could fill up 2 deluxe barns from one pregnancy? Pigs that cost 16k a pop to get?

There is already a kind of butchery system where you can breed and sell animals for less than the cost of hay to grow them. Taking a month to sell just one pig is a nice 16k drop in the bank, and if you're cycling through 4 or more pigs a month the money is definitely there.

 

The pig would need 100,000G to buy, though.

 

That makes even less sense than before! How can a farmer pay 100k for a pig yet not sell them for anywhere near that price?

Two factors affect the value of breeding, how fast you can grow them and how much you can sell them. The current system is borked because you can only breed one, maybe 2 animals per month in an 11/12 barn. Increasing that to 5 or 6 is all the animal selling system needs to make bacon a viable income.

 

I understand now - if you bought two pigs of different sex for 200,000g, you make them breed 12 piglets a year, wait the piglets grow up after 10 days, that's 1,200,000 raw profit now, which is insane. But as late game that's common to earn over 3,000,000 a year, why not make farming more tedious and feeding more expensive (Need grain, veggies and minerals)? Also piglets costs 30 days to grow up??

In reality pigs work that way, so they are, the cheapest meat.

 

It's not fair to compare ordinary animals to extraordinary crops. Starfruit pastures are not a normal thing. Starfruit megapastures are post-game madness and do not represent ordinary game play at all.

Ordinary animals need to be balanced against the player using ordinary crops like corn and melons and such. Otherwise you are trying to push an ordinary animal into a legendary role, and will be stuck buffing animals until the end of time. Legendary fruit needs legendary animals to match them.

Well. Uh. Tilling and watering the entire vanilla farm IS tedious. It's so tedious that it takes several dedicated days just to get the crops down and requires nearly every full day with the iridium watering can to manually water it. Sure the player can get sprinklers or raintotem spam the time away, but that level of dedication goes well beyond a typical endgame. Postgame material is not the normal game state and it's not something that player talents should be concerning themselves about. What matters is making sure the natural game progression feels good, with talents giving players a play style they can enjoy.

Realism always needs to take a backseat to making sure there's a satisfying game to play.

For example paying 100K for a pig is totally nuts. There's no way a year 1-2 player can be expected to save up that kind of money for one animal. It's also insane to have one pig pumping out a million gold worth of piglets, and there's no fun in the player only enjoying one animal birth event a year.

I'm not a fan of separating coop play from barn play. The animal game lacks enough diversity as is. Both animal archetypes feature two major play styles:
- Grooming max prize animals to get prized goods. Current artisan mechanics don't work well with high quality goods, so you'll be depending on the animals having high value output on their own. Many animals also lack deluxe goods, limiting this play style right now.

- Breeding and selling free range animals for big bucks. The average quality of goods is lower because you're constantly selling the max animals, but low quality goods gain the biggest bonus in artisan machines to counter balance it. Currently breeding is extremely weak and only duck spam can provide a reasonable source of animals to sell.

In that respect it's just a personal preference between choosing small or large animals to make it happen. I don't think talents should be locking players into growing only pigs or only sheep or only chickens. I think the ranching talents should leave those doors open, so the player can choose what they like whenever they like.

 

Thanks for your through analysis. I just realized that Stardew valley has 112 days a year, and the whole game is NOT realistic. So the "dozens of offspring" doesn't work in this game.

But I still doubt truffles being so common. I've seen someone in reddit, raising 100 pigs and have botanist perk, gaining 100,000+ per day.

I choose rancher-coopmaster in my main save, for I believe I won't have the patience to fill the map with crops and sprinkers. Now I'm in winter 4th year 4 in that save, I'm so crazy with 3 barns and 3 coops of animals - Chickens and rabbits are fine, but if the sheep/goat/cow is not harvested one day, I'm lose profit for that day - and it's not gaining a lot.

 

I dunno, ask the creator of the game who stated that there will never be butchering. It's his game.

 

I think it would be a BIGGER problem to force some kind of diminishing returns on animal products. Should a hundred hens or a hundred sheep or a hundred ducks produce less stuff just because you have a lot of them? Of course not. A hundred pigs shouldn't be any different.

This is the actual problem. Truffles are clearly an animal product because you can only get them from pigs, but they get boosted by foraging talents. Pigs can't be balanced around pig products when some other talent lets you double them with iridium quality to turn 100% into 240%. After all what's the point of animal perks when the richest animal doesn't use them?

I understand the decision to not have gore or implied animal cruelty. There's nothing wrong with that. However you can still sell animals, and as long as it can be a profitable business there should be a way to make a reasonable gold supply from it. Growing animals for sale is a play style that is worth keeping around.

 

Don't know it you still play the game or likes mod, but if so, you might like this: https://www.nexusmods.com/stardewvalley/mods/1538/

 

Not sure how to put this, but the point of games like Stardew Valley is to showcase the happier carefree side of things (when things are going well). Butchery doesn't fall under that, because when butchery is going well there's death and blood and FDA forms and animals' rights protests and missing protesters and then more paperwork...

You'd need more space for the trees and paper mill than you'd need for the barn, hay, and butchery building... thing.

 

To each their own.
In the mod you can also impregnate you animals and soon will be able to feed them with treats.
You can also completely disable the meat feature, or use magic to exchange your animals to meat that grows on trees in another dimension. So no need to use death and blood.

The game also already let you butcher slimes, bugs, diggers, dust sprites, bats, fishs, and even shadow brutes, a sentient specie that can even talk.