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[outgrowmadness]

I understand that Toady and Three Two have just implemented the grazing/pasture feature a few releases ago and probably have not included everything they wanted into this new area; I could not, however, find more detailed information about new add-ons for this features and thus would like to suggest an improvement.

As of the current release (0.31.25), purchasing grazing animals for use in pastures is almost always not recommended because the net utility gained does not equal the substantial disadvantages that coming with grazing. While using grazing animals provide you with a new source of relatively high-quality food (i.e. milk and cheeses), the disadvantages are significant: (1) your animals must graze outdoor (for most of the early- and mid- game) where Fun is readily available, (2) food produced from grazing animals are, on average, less efficient per value, than other available means, and (3) your dwarves have to exposed themselves to Fun every time they venture outside.

As such, one way to better balance the advantages and disadvantages of using grazing animals is to introduce the concept of animal droppings, specifically allowing the player to collect animal droppings from grazing animals in order to use in the production of fuel. There is a strong historical basis for this type of industry; Native Americans and the pioneers coming after them often collected animal droppings (buffalo chips!), sun-dried into a brick-like form, and used it as a source of fuel. In-game, you might allow dwarves to collect animal droppings and drop them off in a compost (built on a tile requiring OUTSIDE and LIGHT properties). After a certain period of time (varying by the temperature of the biome), the collected droppings would develop into dried, solid material that could be used in place of charcoal or coke. Of course, certain factors would not to be adjusted to account for realism and gameplay balance: animals produce different quantities of compost-ready material relative to their size (elephants could be useful again!), "animal bars" produced from the compost might be less efficient than charcoal or coke to account for their relatively ease-of-production, etc.

Thoughts appreciated as always.

[NW_Kohaku]

Well, first off, animals besides grazers are going to be needing to eat eventually, too.  The fact that grazers have a disadvantage now doesn't mean that every other creature's matching disadvantage of needing food isn't coming down the pipe relatively soon - chickens will probably be wanting some of that rock nut fodder.  Tigers will probably be wanting some chicken.

Second off, the thing about animal waste is that it brings up the whole waste argument all over again.  Yes, you can say it's just the animals, but that was argued against by Toady.

4.  Manure, as a fertilizer.

4. They just drop it everywhere?  Everyone will might be doing it after a while... night soil, and so on.  But it's a dangerous door to open, especially if the room on the other side is full.  If a god turns you into a horse in adventure mode, would you suddenly start dropping the bomb?

There have been several general "add sewage already" threads, but they don't accomplish much.

Thirdly and finally, using sewage and waste as a fertilizer is fairly well-trodden ground.  Toady has even made remarks agreeing with it, and just has been skirting the issue of waste in one form or another.

From a Reddit article:

I like fertilizer, animal tracking and sewers. I dislike potty breaks. This is an example of realism that I think has a lot of potential for trouble. Potty breaks in adventure mode might be realistic, but there are immersion issues there. He he he, I mean in the sense of the player being kicked out of their groove. The other kind of immersion wouldn't be so bad, because sewers are common adventure environments. In dwarf mode, dwarves already take a lot of time out for self-maintenance, and this would be a more senseless kind, compared to something like eating.

You can even see it in the Improved Farming thread in a couple of sections.

[Bohandas]

I agree with the OP but I think that the real problem with grazers is the fact that if not assigned to a pasture they tend to congregate in meeting areas instead of just staying outside or at the very least wandering aimlessly so that they might at least have a chance of coming across something that they can eat. Additionally, their corpses should be auto-butchered if they drop dead in said meeting area instead of being left there to rot...even if a dead animal acquired in such a manner might, admittedly, be reasonably assumed to have little usable meat that doesn't mean that you shouldn't be able to use its hide and bones, or, for that matter, that it should be ignored.

[outgrowmadness]

Well, first off, animals besides grazers are going to be needing to eat eventually, too.  The fact that grazers have a disadvantage now doesn't mean that every other creature's matching disadvantage of needing food isn't coming down the pipe relatively soon - chickens will probably be wanting some of that rock nut fodder.  Tigers will probably be wanting some chicken.

Second off, the thing about animal waste is that it brings up the whole waste argument all over again.  Yes, you can say it's just the animals, but that was argued against by Toady.

4.  Manure, as a fertilizer.

4. They just drop it everywhere?  Everyone will might be doing it after a while... night soil, and so on.  But it's a dangerous door to open, especially if the room on the other side is full.  If a god turns you into a horse in adventure mode, would you suddenly start dropping the bomb?

There have been several general "add sewage already" threads, but they don't accomplish much.

Thirdly and finally, using sewage and waste as a fertilizer is fairly well-trodden ground.  Toady has even made remarks agreeing with it, and just has been skirting the issue of waste in one form or another.

From a Reddit article:

I like fertilizer, animal tracking and sewers. I dislike potty breaks. This is an example of realism that I think has a lot of potential for trouble. Potty breaks in adventure mode might be realistic, but there are immersion issues there. He he he, I mean in the sense of the player being kicked out of their groove. The other kind of immersion wouldn't be so bad, because sewers are common adventure environments. In dwarf mode, dwarves already take a lot of time out for self-maintenance, and this would be a more senseless kind, compared to something like eating.

You can even see it in the Improved Farming thread in a couple of sections.

I did not think to look at communities outside of the forum for responses; I also haven't dug that far into the Improved Farming thread. Thanks for the detailed response!

[IT 000]

(1) your animals must graze outdoor (for most of the early- and mid- game) where Fun is readily available, (2) food produced from grazing animals are, on average, less efficient per value, than other available means, and (3) your dwarves have to exposed themselves to Fun every time they venture outside.

You say Fun like it's a bad thing 

Other then that, I'm not a fan of feces being added at all, even animal droppings. I really don't want to spend my game time picking up poo. I'm fine with my spore producing dwarves.

[sockless]

We could make it so that the manure that the animals make doesn't actually show up on the map and instead is saved as a value in the zone itself. There would be a limit to the amount of manure on a field, but there'd be no disadvantages to going over that limit, it just wouldn't accumulate more feces. Every once in a while, a dwarf would come and collect the manure by walking to a few random spots on the zone. This would then go through industry to become fuel, or it might be usable straight as fuel.

[Jeoshua]

I like this idea.

Plus, weaponized, we can reenact that scene from Back to the Future on the elven caravans:



... I... hate... MANURE!!!...