Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Quarque]

Poultry (particularly chickens, peacocks and turkeys) feel overpowered. They breed at an enormous rate and give you a very cheap and large supply of basically everything you want from domestic animals: fat, leather, meat, bones and eggs. On top of that, they are extremely cheap when embarking.

The fact they produce leather feels unrealistic: no objects in real life are made of chicken leather, and for good reason. So I think it would improve the game if they didn't produce leather in the game, either. The egg production alone already makes them a very good deal.

Geese should possibly be excepted. 

P.S.: more generally, it is unfair to the larger, slow-breeding animals that their hides are in no way better or even larger than the hide of a little chicken. An additional measure could be to have large animals like cows yield a bunch of hides, rather than just one.

[StagnantSoul]

There's a mod that does so, but last I checked it made all stones the same so screw that mod...! 

[Batgirl1]

Apparently, chicken leather is a real thing: http://www.exoticleather.biz/chicken_leather.htm

However, I do agree that there should be a noticeable difference in quantity between chicken leather and cow leather. Instead of depowering chickens, though, I'd prefer to see an upgrade for the bigger animals.  For the record, chickens really are "overpowered" in real life in terms of one small bird producing so much; what balances them out on our Earth is that they keep getting eaten by things, including your own dog, unless you invest heavily in a safe coop.  Make dogs attack the chickens despite being members of your fort, and the balance issue will probably solve itself.  (In case it's not obvious from this post, I have some first hand experience with chickens )

ETA: It might also make sense if, in addition to increasing the yield from larger animals, the workshops also required more units of leather for certain projects, much like how some things cost 3-4 bars at the forge. Not sure what a good ratio would be, though, if we assume that cows and dwarfs are relatively to scale.

[Quarque]

I grew up with chickens too. Our dog was trained to go after our rooster on command.  Sheīs never killed a chicken though, in fact our chickens were murderers themselves. We were just in time to save a duck that was foolish enough to enter their keep - they were picking it to death!

In real life I'd say the limitation to chickens is their food. If you would have to feed them grain to keep them alive, that would simulate the reason why chicksplosions donīt occur in nature.

Not really convinced about chicken leather. Yeah, you can buy super expensive wallets made out of it in an "exotic leather" shop, but I think that just shows what a difficult kind of skin it is to work with. Cow leather is not only larger, it is also much more sturdy. I doubt it would be possible to make a good leather armor out of chicken leather.

[anewaname]

There are many material quantity values that could be exploited. You can start with a few metal bars and begin a "forge/melt item" cycle that will train your smiths and produce hundreds of bars. Those values could be more exact but are probably not high on the development list.

Rather than modding your chickens, you could go with a self-enforced policy of not abusing the birds for leather production. Unless you need lots of leather for some project, then exploit it.

[FantasticDorf]

Until we're at a point where the leather skin and resulting leather objects (depending on whether it needs to be a uniform size etc) are more defined, all skins are treated equally.

Obviously post a change like that, you may indeed have many chicken skins for leather, but would need many of them to complete 1 full leather sewn together, a chicken leather tunic for instance.

[StagnantSoul]

Until we're at a point where the leather skin and resulting leather objects (depending on whether it needs to be a uniform size etc) are more defined, all skins are treated equally.

Obviously post a change like that, you may indeed have many chicken skins for leather, but would need many of them to complete 1 full leather sewn together, a chicken leather tunic for instance.

Two hundred and nineteen hamsters died to give us this leather, and you're telling me the armor is just fine?

[FantasticDorf]

If its physically sown together using expensive stitches it could well exceed the value of leather materials and quality that came out of the other end, but it'd still be a pity.

It could be as easy as having a half completed leather object, doing math of how many skins/mass are required and then assigning (0/600) and let a trained seamstress keep applying availible leather & string material for the job until it is done. This numerical approach would also make other production jobs where materials vary in size (ivory from giant elephants for instance compared to a humble yak) correctly distribute the amount of materials relevant to size of the product.

"This is a leather tunic, it is partially made out of cat, hamster and poultry leather (expect long lists if more than one animal went into it or majority skin mentions) it is sewn together with dyed blue string"

[Batgirl1]

Two hundred and nineteen hamsters died to give us this leather, and you're telling me the armor is just fine?

I want this now.

If its physically sown together using expensive stitches it could well exceed the value of leather materials and quality that came out of the other end, but it'd still be a pity.

It could be as easy as having a half completed leather object, doing math of how many skins/mass are required and then assigning (0/600) and let a trained seamstress keep applying availible leather & string material for the job until it is done. This numerical approach would also make other production jobs where materials vary in size (ivory from giant elephants for instance compared to a humble yak) correctly distribute the amount of materials relevant to size of the product.

Eh, having half-completed anything lying around sounds too messy to me.  I vote for copying what the forge already does: cost # of materials, get # of materials, build when you have enough.  Implementing thread/sinew(?) for stitches could add an interesting component (This is a well-crafted leather cloak, stitched with finely made leather etc. etc.), but only if the clothier shops are also changed to match it. Gotta have the symmetry, yo. 

[FantasticDorf]

Messy maybe, it would just take a nessecary change as to how dwarves manage their resources.

Its the only really feasable solution other than upsizing the product, whether its a micro sculpture that needs to be seen though a occular glass carved out of a mouse tooth or a giant statue made out of whale backbone, i covered the whole smeltery approach in my other thread where mathematically you could make 1 leather object out of 2500 acorn flies.

- Omit half completed objects from being moved onto the stockpile and have them as a choosable job (in details, specify to continue the old order)

In such a way you could have 4 stockpiles around the workshop instead of the usual optimal three.

• One for incoming immediate materials, with additional accents in another pile to the side
• A finished product pile
• A quantum stockpile for handling accenting furniture/objects with additional details, pretty standard for making expensive or pretty objects in current DF
• Another quantum stockpile for moving partially completed jobs out of the workshop area and storing them to be selected/continued later

I might splinter this off into a seperate idea, ill see.

• Personally i can't see why leathershops can't just request stitches or metal staples (not for medicinal use) as part of their new process, given they already stitch on leather emblems/badges onto things, just changing all the requirements to require a small amount of sewing to the job. Animal yarn from hair would closely make butchering sustainable.

[Libash_Thunderhead]

I'd say just leave those material related details out since they are just number tweaking things.

If you can sew different kinds of leather together to make a leather armor, then you can also make a hammer using different parts. When the game supports such kind of feature, it is just a matter of changing numbers.

[Batgirl1]

\
In real life I'd say the limitation to chickens is their food. If you would have to feed them grain to keep them alive, that would simulate the reason why chicksplosions donīt occur in nature.

I dunno, chickens are pretty omnivorous in my experience; maybe have it where they can survive off of vermin/etc., but require grain to produce eggs? 

I also maintain that they should be the first target of any creature with four paws.  (-_-)

[Quarque]

Yeah, vermin are definitely a realistic food source. The problem is that modelling hunger for animals like chickens, pigs, cats, etc, is going to be pretty complicated..

Having poultry drop no skins and get multiple skins from larger animals is realistic, simple to implement and good for game balance. I think it is a shame that turkeys are so dominant as the domesticated farm animal of choice. They are still a great source of food.

P.S. I edited out the blunter part of my post, sorry about that. Why do I always have to sound like an arrogant dork on the internet? 

[Batgirl1]

Well, I still oppose getting rid of chicken skins altogether, although I don't know enough about leather-working to really speak authoritatively on the subject. It does at least seem to be possible, though (http://www.bushcraftuk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=9971).  Besides, how would Toady even draw the line between leather-giving animals and non-leather-giving animals?  Size?  A running list based on real-world resources?  My expectation would be that anything with a skin can be tanned.  Heck, even fish were used to make shoes in WWII era Denmark. (Again, though, I'm only a lay-person on the subject, so have a grain of salt).

If skins were treated the same as metal bars, needing multiples of the same kind (e.g., 3x chicken leather) to make one thing, that should clear up the balance issue pretty well; although I don't know if leather really can't be mixed in real life.  Still, just raising the production cost of items at all should be a help, as would requiring stitching (another unit of cloth/leather eaten, with possible item value increase as a trade-off), or making egg-production dependent on diet, or allowing "friendly fire" between animals on the fort.

If chickens require protection from any non-grazing animal, whether tame or wild, the time and resources spent building a walled nesting area and herding them into it (only to lose them to hawks anyway) should more than make up for the eggs and skin.  Heck, we might all be back here demanding more eggs per chicken in order to compensate.

P.S. I edited out the blunter part of my post, sorry about that. Why do I always have to sound like an arrogant dork on the internet?

It is the internet's main function.  I've been a victim of it myself many times, I'm sure.

[Quarque]

Hmm.. there is another option. You could also vary the number of skin drops, based on size, and have small animals drop 0 to 1 skin, based on a random chance. It already works like that for meat.

That would have the same effect as requiring multiple skins, but it would require much less  of a redesign of the game mechanics.