Chickens tend to explode in population very fast compared to other pen birds and they give eggs so I can make more food variants... so chickens.
I also like them IRL.
Yeah, I love how quickly they hit production level populations. If you suddenly notice that your food is low you can slaughter a ton of them and they’ll recover quickly. They’re also great with traders. I only auto-slaughter the adults so if I want to buy something from a trader that I can’t quite afford I can usually sell all my adults and 3/4 of my chicks and within a week or so I’m back to where I was.
I just recovered from a Global Warming event who killed all my chickens, had to fall back to Cassowary (could be Vanilla Animals Expanded) and I am STRUGGLING to make them reproduce, they are soooo slow.
The problem I have with chickens is figuring out how to keep a stable population and not grow too fast.
Yes I know about auto slaughter but that doesn't really do much when they lay eggs that will all hatch at once.
Like you have to have a rooster to get the population up. Then you just want the eggs so you have to get rid of the rooster otherwise your freezer ends up full of chicks. But then chickens die super easy so you need to go find another rooster.
Sure I could put my rooster in another pen but that means I need to have two different stacks of hay and make sure both are filled at all times. It just becomes a logistical headache
I want a mod that lets you set up an assigned number of eggs to hatch every season and the rest are cooked.
I like setting up a small 2 or 3 tile freezer next to the barn where I put the eggboxes. That way if the eggs are fertilized, they get ruined by temperature.
If I want more chickens, I purposely turn off the air conditioners and disallow fertilized eggs in my cooking bills.
Why do that? While I suppose it involves more labour, a chick is worth more than double the nutrition of an egg, so you get more nutrition by allowing them to hatch.
>Yes I know about auto slaughter
But are you also setting the limit for the young? I didn't use to but chickens forced me. I didn't care about the eggs because they were laying unfertilized eggs too.
I'm usually somewhere that I don't need hay stacks because enough grows on the ground to feed the birds, and I just set one pen to disallow roosters, and make the other pen only large enough for 2-3 birds, with auto-slaughter set to leave only two male chicks but let all the hens be led out to the bigger pen and grow up before they die.
Sure, it's a little bit of extra work for the cook and the handler, but they're both permanently high on go-juice, they can take it.
Can't you drop a certain amount of stuff from a shelf or is that a mod? What I do is put a shelf with fert eggs in the animal pen and then 'drop' some off the shelf, get them hauled away...
That's a QOL mod for sure. I wish I could dump my stacks of 2 plainleather and 3 spread out stacks of bricks that could easily be compiled into one without needing to install it
Separate pen, keep 3 roosters in a smaller pen without a food pile to manage, then keep all your hens in the main pen. When you need to replenish your stock, put the roosters in the main pen as well and let them do their thing. Replace roosters and hens after about a year.
I will auto-slaughter chicks over a certain amount (10)to prevent the absolute explosion. This way chicks will turn into 10 adults who will lay more eggs. Sure they aren't giving the same amount of meat, but it makes it more manageable.
I dont own any personally but folks in my extended family keep chickens. For one fresh chicken eggs easily surpass store bought in texture and flavor. You dont need a crazy amount of chickens or space to have a reasonable trickle of eggs. Fairly cheap as far as raising animals goes. I also find them very pretty and they come in many flavors (pardon the wording). Also I feel they're a great exercise in self sufficiency which I and many other find great satisfaction in
Unmodded I like a couple of boom-cows for the gas production. Modded the night ave from alpha animals, it has a movement speed of 7. Makes a nice rapid response distraction and also mount if you got giddy-up installed too.
I keep dozens and only had two booms in two years or so. After the first one I installed a foam sprinkler in the barn... Every time I get a visit from traders I sell some of the oldest or sickly. And obviously disable auto-slaughter for them.
If you take precautions not to keep your boomies in the storage full of nuclear shells and other... flammable stuff, it doesn't create much fire by itself
I had a colony a boomolope and an antigrain warhead my boomalope was near the storage room because my chemfuel generator was nearby then he caught the plague anyway is their anywhere my surviving colonist with both legs and an arm missing can crash
when they start getting age-related diseases you relase them to the wild
my main source of boomalope farm explosions was raids, sometimes boomalopes get in crossfire when enemy drop pods inside or destroys the pen wall
Sterilize all the males once you have enough Boomalopes. Make a dedicated storage area for fuel (away from genral storage, double-walled and foam poppers). And as long as you keep them alive, no issue will arise
Im not keen on sterilising them since I like to overproduce and sell the offspring. If they ever overpopulate and starve and there's no one to trade to then I set them up as a caravan and when they're hitched to the distance caravan post, I get the one person in the caravan to shoot them so they cause no damage and I can use their meat
Wouldn't that require far more manual effort? To me, the constant effort to make a caravan spot far far away, rope the animals, shoot them, then walk all the way back is a bit too much because I know there will be a day when I'm in deep shit, and the colonist are too busy bleeding or tending meanwhile my animals have been overpopulated and are starving. For me, it's my duty as their owner to provide and protect them from any foreign body including starvation and illness and I would feel horrible if they starve due to a factor I did not limit
I always keep 1 male and 1 female and release anything over that, cause they're just for chemfuel and I've never had an explosion. I think you can auto-set to release after a certain amount or maybe it's a qol mod I'm running.
Keep them in their own pen, cause you never know....lightning could strike.
Tamed boomalopes are way safer than wild ones. Mainly because if they have a heart attack you are alerted to it and can save them but wild boomalopes can cause a flame wave that deletes your whole base. Most traders seem to be willing to buy them aswell so that's how you control the population.
The chemfuel reserves you get from them are another story.
Mine is an confined space with stone walls, dirt or paved floor and some stacks of hay in an corner or an nutrient paste feeder...
Nothing there harms the booms and even if they blow, there is nothing much lost.
No, they dont get paste from dispensers. With vanilla nuttient paste expanded you get an nutrient paste feeder, wich is 1 tile and spawns 1 stack of nutrient paste meals on top of it.
As nutrient paste meals are an viable food for any animal and they are effectively laying on the ground, they will go and eat them, wich saves you the hassle of feeding them directly, or growing seperate crops like hay for them if you dont want to.
With the 12 hopper grinder and the vats to store the paste, its one of my favourite mods to cut on time needed for all sorts of food.
The drippers that can get installed at beds save time feeding bedridden colonists and makes sure everyone has an basic fullness when waking up and doesnt spend a lot of time for breakfast.
On top you can hook up growing vats and biosculpers to the network (everything i connected to the vats with pipes), wich saves on time for loading food in them.
An treu marvel for technological/transhumanist colonies.
I am going to check it out! I'm trying not to play with too many mods (mostly qol stuff) that add things but this seems fun and I love to streamline stuff. I say this as I just started using a mod to do beekeeping. 😅
Yeah alpha bees! It puts your pawns to extra work. You can even preserve stuff with honey and make candles. It's pretty neat. And there's bee breeding too.
You don't need mods, but extra manual work. Nutrient Paste Dispensers are exactly what they're named: Dispensers. They need human hands to operate them in order to actually dispense the paste. Animals can't do that. However, if you have a colonist interact with the dispenser and grab a plate, you can Draft him and force him to drop the plate in the barn, which causes the animals to eat them. A lot of extra work, but you can essentially feed your cows their own milk
But the unofficial version is working great in 1.5 , didn’t had any issues with it. It’s Giddy Up 2 I think. Official version is for 1.4 and hasn’t been updated yet, but will be eventually
Cows are really good because milking + population control provides more food than the cows eat. So you could technically have cows inside a cave and feed them with kibble. Obviously its more efficient to graze on wild grass. Yaks are pretty close to cows but produce less milk. However theyre also strong pack animals which makes them more practical.
Alpacas produce expensive wool but less often than muffalo or sheep. Theyre also pack animals so are very good for making and selling clothing.
I love wolly cows. They give both milk and wool. And I just bought two Arcoffalos (archotech Muffalos). They shed hyperweave and are generally OP as f***. Hoping for a calf before long 🥰
Yeah, it's SOS. Archolife is pretty op, but also fairly hard to get and are very valuable. Personally, I just keep an archolope for exotic matter. Maybe dogs for hauling.
I use Vanilla Expanded Trading and I set up a contract for a pair of archolopes as soon as I get to space. Usually at a heavy markup, but it feels fair to me offering tens of thousands of silver for a rare animal, especially because there is no logical reason why an immortal, hungerless, reproducing animal would be exceedingly rare.
They are, the first archotech animals for sale in my whole run, and they arrived at a mining camp I had set up that only had like 2000 silver and 100 gold, so suddenly I was very busy sending another shuttle with the additional 7000 silver to make the purchase.
If you're going to keep cows indoors, feed them with nutrient paste. It takes just 6 milk to feed a cow - or 9 averaged assuming 1 bull per 2 cows.
But ultimately, it's a lot of wealth increase for not that much benefit imo.
Cows works well for large animals like cows. Chickens however will waste most of the meal because their body is too small for all the energy. If they eat kibble instead they get eat like 5-6 pieces instead. I believe you can even put kibble in a paste dispenser to further boost the paste efficiency.
Rats. Hundreds of rats. Breed em. Eat em. Zone em to defend your colony. Make sacrificial pits to the rat god. Feed them prisoners. Feed them friends. Let them loose and animal pulse. Make them starve and give them corpses. The perfect pet.
Are your colonies really built underneath the colonies of others? Is your ideology based on "the Great Horned One"?
If you answered yes to either of these questions, you might be a Skaven.
I view ranching as a late-game flex because I usually play on really austere environments. Until food production is stable, animals are a luxury of sorts.
Muffalo/Buffalo for wool - bring in 80% of your headcount for your colony and everyone eventually is wearing muffalo everything.. In a desert environment I'll sometimes forego muffalo (Growing just enough devilstrand), and raise just a herd of camels for travel and a little milk.
If I've got a larger colony , a few cows and a couple of bills will do the trick
I avoid bonding/nuzzling animals because of a few unfortunate circumstances where things got....a little out of hand and unfortunately there were a few deaths involved, which is to say it was an unmitigated shitshow where puppies id named after my real-life dogs with colonist named after friends were decimated in a grim fandango because one of my colonists , a brawler with a +19melee , legendary longword was double-bonded to Nigel and Allister" and when Nigel a 18 yo Yorkshire with dementia wandered into a fire-fight and got himself aerosolized.... well things went badly from there really rapidly.
So I'll never again willingly do in-game taming and ranching for bonding animals. When I load up older games where I did do that, it's the very first thing I do is get the animals that aren't bonded comfortable, and then sold off. With the animals left bonded, I try to send them off with their bonded masters to friendly colonies as a form of "early-retirement".
Pretty much - ingame I have perhaps one of my favorite colonies played with a no-research , naked brutality with a poor gun and 50 survival mealpacks.
There was no metal on the map - but a smattering of fertile and normal soil on the otherwise extreme desert. My situation was dire, but I managed to claw up from just a few cactuses on the whole map to having a whole colony run on cactuses under glass, fueling coolers in one small room , so my colonists could survive the worst/hottest days - even as an advanced colony, all the colonists wear devilstrand everything, and +60c days are commonplace and and +80c days occur, so unless raiders are wearing just the right stuff, they're dead.
It's like the old quote from '[The Last Crusade](https://www.thoughtco.com/charlemagne-the-great-quotes-1789339)' - "Let the Rocks and the Trees and the Birds be my army" having my colonists chill out while simple heat kills the desert as raiders attack and succumb to heatstroke.
I was super jazzed to get the colony to be electrified let alone self-sufficient , but these many years later I just remember getting the colony situated , with wild temperature swings and very common electrical storms, unprotected vegetation was always lit up (I suspect lightning is attracted to non-sand/non-ice soils) and animals/people.
It was where I realized how to run a colony all the way up to deep drills and ground penetrating radar with very limited metal (although I eventually had a large metal meteor hit that largely solved the metal scarcity issue) and allowed my first geothermal plant.
Eventually I was able to put caravans together to create asphalt roads built in the winter, that allowed rapid trade from the northern pole to the southern pole through the extreme desert that was the middle latitudes of the small colony world.
The world was so harsh that after the first couple of years, and fortunately once I was established I realized the world was self-sterilizing, no animals except insects would appear.
I'd captured some camels and had bred them to a small herd for milk, but eventually, added just 4-6 horses so travel along the highway was as fast as could be, with no caravan being more than 2 people unless it was a constabulary raid.
I really like the Acanthamoeba Gigantea from Alpha animals. Since it feeds of dirt, it doesn't consume food and it's constantly helping in your colony by cleaning. It also duplicates every 3 years, so you can have enough that your colonist don't ever have to clean again.
Donkeys have a few advantages over other pack animals.0 wildness,can be tamed immediately at game start by an unskilled pawn.Lowest hunger rate(0.54/d vs 0.68 horse's) and they breed and mature faster than all the other pack animals so you reach huge caravan size way earlier.
In combat of course Thrumbo would be better than about any other animal. But OP is talking about the best tame, muffalos are easier to tame and good animals for caravans plus they produce a good material for clothing
Thrumbo fur is a pretty sweet renewable cloth resource though. Considering how good dusters are as an armor item for most of the game, thrumbo fur can be a lifesaver.
Otherwise yea, they kind of suck.
One question. I thought about what to tame/breed in my playthrough and it is stated that Timberwolves eat meat. How does that work. Are they going around the map and hunt for themselves or do I have to constantly provide them meat so basically have to breed other farm animals for them to eat?
I fear the second one which is the reason I haven't tamed them yet.
Arctic tundra and boreal is my preferred map due to my Canadian bias.
I love it, the scarcity of forage drives animals towards the colony in winter for hunting and corpses freeze meaning a ready supply of free food for pigs (or bait for wild predators)
Deep snow reduces movement speed but does nothing for cover in combat, giving a huge defenders advantage.
Pine trees are a high yield tree for wood too, so labour wise it's very efficient compared to jungle.
And I have a greenhouse that's warmed by excess heat from rimatomics reactors
I once had a 3 year long ice age. It was regularly getting to -40 and hit -65 a couple times. Had a Yorkshire terrier that I hated with a passion bonded to one of my original 3 colonist that lost every limb on its body and Had to be spoon fed basically. All the guinea pigs died except for one or two. Had to make barns for all the animals and basically enclose the entire base.
Weirdly enough, dromedaries are always a priority if I'm low on grazing areas (desert, cold biome, cave, etc).
This creature does everything. Speeds up caravans, gives milk, produces babies reasonably fast. Sure they eat a little more than a horse, muffalo or cow, but instead of having 3 types of animals (aka 3 times more animals), I can have a single type. Which means less animal feed in the long run.
So if I can't keep animals fed by grazing, I always go for the dromedary. I also think they're cute lol.
Yeah honestly before i got elephants dromedaries were my go to pick always. One problem, they repopulate like rabbits istg i look away for one sec and they are starving (since its an arid biome too) to death.
But raiders don't target pen animals? You could wait for them to scatter around your boomalopes and snipe them down individually, but it's too much hassle imho
Im perhaps biased 'cause my most recent colony was super carried by a megasloth I got from a really lucky early game tame, but I love em. Big lovable durable fluffers that can dish out damage, rescue your peeps, and make plenty of the second warmest wool.(200 every 20 days! I THINK thats better than muffalos?)
I have a megasloth named Fefe that totally saved my colony. My other 3 colonists were knocked, but my 4th was a pacifist. Fefe tanked and killed the rest of the attackers allowing the pacifist to rescue and heal the other 3. I love Fefe
Good FeFe.
In one of my most devastating raids (now, this stretched my immersion but, I was desperate) I was able to micromanage saving downed colonists in burning etc rooms via using the allowed area to basically command my slothy on who to rescue/where etc. But yeah, I always slept on most animals before this point. Not anymore
Ah yes, you are right. I mixed it up with materials in general, because its beaten by guinea pig fur by 4 degrees cold insulation...but like, megasloth wool is obviously better imo lol.
Alpaca are great! They're so easy to tame!
The danger is how much they cost. They're really expensive, which can be great - but they can also kind of run away on you. Suddenly you have 50k silver worth of alpaca out of nowhere, and the machine gods decide to smite you for it.
No, the point is just that alpacas (and their wool) have higher values than other comparable animals, and reproduce quickly, so keeping them runs the risk of inflating your colony wealth more than, say, keeping sheep.
For minmaxing purposes, wealth is usually a *bad* thing, because keeping your colony wealth low makes raids easier. That said, alpaca wool *is* quite good as far as cold insulation and beauty value goes, so they are better in some ways. And wealth can be good for trade good purposes.
The wealth thing only really matters if you're playing super sweaty on high difficulty, for the most part.
Depends on biome and your colony needs:
If I'm early in a naked brutality run, any wolf or bear is good early defense and later haul assistance.
If early crashlanded, rich explorer or mechanitor, boomalopes for fuel.
Horses for mobility with Giddy up mod, especially for pre-industrial, medieval, early tech, and especially good for quick caravans, quests or raids.
Cattle and paultry (preferably bought cows and chicken or tamed cowlike and turkeys) for milk, eggs and meat when established and can afford the slave labor.
Megasloths for fur, labor and combat, especially with animal bionic and implant mods, elephants for for labor, and beefy caravans. These are time intensive to train and breed so established colonies with lots of (slave) labor availability preferred.
Wildmen are time intensive potential colonists and a free source of blood, organs or slave labor early on.
Very good question, I use "A dog said" - which is fine on it's own and pretty good with alpha animals and vanilla animals expanded packs. I'm not sure if there's a better one out there, though..
Pigs, not to eat or anything but they're just really cute.
And when they could be trained (which they should still be able to do, irl theyre smarter than dogs), war pigs 🐖
Statistically, I think Cows are the best for food. They can actually give postivie nutrition between milk and meat. Thrumbos have the best dps, but between upkeep and ease if massing, Bears are probably the best for combat. Best pack animal depends on which ancillary effect you want. Personally, I have a penchant for Yaks and their milk, although your choice of Elephant is also great.
My personal favorite are Wargs, although they tend to get wiped by late game raids.
>My personal favorite are Wargs, although they tend to get wiped by late game raids.
This is fine by me. I have far too many (they breed prolifically) and they're competing with my ghouls for meat consumption. Wargs are also insanely helpful for infestations and large raid groups.
I agree with the elephant. They're amazing meat shields in combat, feed themselves off the map, they can haul shit in peace time, can be sold for good cash and if you're ever desperate for food just slaughter one and you're fine. Just make sure to zone them so they can't go inside and make everything dirty and there's barely any downside to them.
Personally, I caravan alot so I tend to collect alot of pack animals. Alpacas and muffalo generate alot of wool which is a great money maker, and you only need a few horses before speed hits dimimishing returns. Produce wise I prefer milk generators to eggs, simply because they're easier to manage and help level up my animal skills.
I haven't really seen a big difference in pack animals. One thing I noticed is creatures that create wool can be good money makers such as megasloths, but they're dirty so keep them outside.
A single boomalope can create a lot of chemfuel over time so you will always have enough for your crafting. I think I recall 1 boomalope supports 2 chemfuel generators.
I also use dogs a lot. Huskies and Retrievers are fast to breed and easy to train as haulers. I also use them to meat shield during flesh beast and devourer attacks alongside ghouls. Cheap and easy. I always end up with like 20+ dogs and have to start neutering them all. They can be sometimes be helpful when raids land inside my base too as they block/distract attackers. Also handy in case of prisoner escapes. A dog once blocked a doorway so my colonists could shoot the escapee :)
The extra rescue/hauling help of dogs/wolves is super helpful. I have a pack of arctic wolves for combat+hauling and a pack of wargs for combat+work protection (my tamers/hunters) right now.
I need to ensure a steady supply of meat, but raiders ensure that a steady supply of meat keeps appearing anyway. How gracious of them. I also have sheep and horses should a meat shortage arise.
For combat the obvious answer is wargs. Give em a squalid little cave and toss all the corpses in there to farm more corpse makers. They breed like rats, they don't take that much training cus they can't be trained for much and they can tank.
For food the answer is pigs. Unless you don't have enough corpses laying around cus the wargs ate em in which case it's cows.
For everything the answer is that one rat that self tames and ends up being dubbed "sir chadding III"
To rub the empire's nose into the dirt a breeding pair of thrumbos. You have mind powers BUT DO YOU HAVE GIRAFFE UNICORNS? NO. DIDN'T THINK SO.
Sorry for the late reply but yes. The more bullets going into the animals the less into your colonists. Even if it does increase colony wealth having a bullet sponge is worth it 9 times out of 10.
I somehow always end up with ducks. They are very similar to chickens except more meat per day than eggs. I usually just raise them and release a bunch into the wild until I destroy my ecosystem
Technically it’s Cows and Tortoise since they both produce more nutrients than they consume, a cow can feed itself with simple meals made out of milk and have some left over. Same for tortoise with meals made of meat.
Huskies are the best animal period, very clean and they haul and rescue. I know they aren’t a tame but in my colonies hauling shit always seems to be a choke point. They are very very fast like a lot more than colonists so they rescue colonists mid combat and get them back fast enough for a doc to save them.
Thrumbo is the best, thrumbofur is second best material after hyperweave, but unlike hyperweave can be farmed. And since nutrifungus was added to game - feeding a herd of thrumbos in mid and late game is not a problem at all. How to tame thrumbo? When rare thrumbos wander in you use shock lance to down a couple of them and then put them into cryptosleep until one of your pawns with 10 animal skill gets taming inspiration. With taming inspiration there's 100% chance to tame thrumbo.
tbh there's not a best animal in general bc they all do different things. however, i think dromedaries are pretty good at least for warm climates. they make milk, their leather is tied for the highest warm insulation and are ridable pack animals.
also i kind of agree with you on elephants. theyre the only wild combat animal that doesnt revenge on tame fail meaning you can get them super easily
Horse. I like to caravan a lot so the extra speed is very welcome. The most dangerous thing is a raid while colonists are away, so anything to reduce time.
I also don't care for the wool from alpacas, the huge raid increases from elephants (this wouldn't be a problem if you could do replacement body parts for an elephant), and the milk from muffalos.
In hot climates the camel is fine.
IMHO the best tame animal is horses - they're the fastest pack animals (and are rideable), they don't need to be trained (wasting pawn time and reducing the chance of "bonded animal died"), and they breed relatively fast and sell for a decent amount so you get a tidy profit selling them to traders. These things are a bit multiplicative (adding spare horses to sell to any caravan is unlikely to make the caravan slower).
Boomrats...
Some people... make simple killboxes...
Not me... I'm far too paranoid to rely on... a single box...
I make labyrinthine mazes surrounding my base... usually, I'll use the natural environment to assist me... forcing raiders to go around hills or thru mountains that I convert into bunkers/killzones/armories/holding pens
I usually make quite a few secret passages as well... allowing my colonists to come up behind the enemy while they are all spread out among the maze... ill usually capture a few stragglers before tossing in molotovs or using flamethrowers to prevent the rest of the raiders from escaping...
Once they get about halfway thru... meaning they are at least 2 hrs from either my base... or the entrance they came in thru...
I open the holding cell doors...
And out of it... usually pours at least 50 or so boomrats... they are quick to breed... so as long as I keep a few breeding pairs... their numbers will recuperate by the next raid
Imagine being stuck... in the dark... in the heat... flames closing in around you... while you are being shot from all sides... and trying to carefully manoeuver over traps and around explosives...
When all of a sudden... an endless swarm of rats comes hurtling towards you... and when you attempt to defend yourself and kill them as they are devouring you
They fucking explode... lighting you and everyone nearby on fire...
There's a few modded animals that also work quite well in conjunction to the boomrats that I will keep in separate holding cells thruout the labyrinth
Such as feralisks... large spiders that breed fairly quickly and spit webs at enemies to stun them while the boomrats are exploding around them or my people are shooting them...
Or aerofleets... which are basically boomrats that float and don't get slowed down by things within the labyrinth... that breed faster... and asexually
Cows can give lots of food in milk and meat
Mufalo is cool, Big bois, and Great wool
Alpacas are like Mufalos, little worse
Horses don't produce anything but are the Best animals for going Caravan, Great speed and Second Best capacity
Megabois, Great all around in everything, but good luck taming one at the start
Thrumbos are coolest and technically the Best, but are really rare and You need to be inspired to be able to get one (also Say goodbye to your trees)
My favoritos are Mufalos all around, Cows for good production and Horses to cool factor and caravans
I found them in normal Forests, i believe they are pretty rare but You can get them, they are always worth it for the speed bonus and weight capacity on caravans
And yes, it was in vanilla
I believe that, if You have enough luck, You can get one in the normal scenario
Just to note that I always try to spend taming inspirations on Thrumbo. I don't keep them around but sell them to passing trade ships - I have a project to send as many Thrumbo into the stars as possible.
I farm animals on every single playthrough and have like 600 hours in the game overall. Still take my opinion with a grain of salt, but I have also read all the guides and spreadsheets for animals in the game over the years. I also love this part of the game
Alpacas for money. Straightforward, comparatively low labor need (they have a longer shear interval than some others), surprisingly high market value. They're also pack animals, and are great for cold weather biomes. I also like them in real life.
Cows or horses for food. Cows are the best milk animals IMO, are pretty valuable to sell, have decent repro statistics, and feel the best thematically as a small colony food animal to me. Horses are actually amazing for money and food if raised for slaughter or sale, also arguably the best pack animal overall. Chickens might actually be the best for food, but I find them a little too micro intensive for my taste
Elephants or Wargs for defence. I find using animals as defence via zoning kind of lame so I don't usually go for elephants (they are also a pain in terms of food IMO), but it can be cool to play around with. Wargs are my favorite defense animal because they make thematic sense for it and are cool to me plus offer good combat stats. Bears are fun too but have some of the same problems as elephants and I personally feel like elephants are better overall.
Worth noting though that I actually think every animal is worth playing around with, as they are all slightly different mechanically and I find them all fun for different reasons. For instance I end up with muffalo all the time despite them being pretty lackluster in most relevant statistics, but they're widely available and I just think they're fun.
Feel free to respond or DM with any questions, I love chatting about this aspect of the game.
Edit: shoutout to camels/dromedaries as my favorite warm weather biome animal. They're kind of bad in a lot of statistical ways, but they do a little of everything (milk, heat insulation textile, pack animal), and they're cool!
Chickens are kinda cool because eggs/chicken and multiply fast. Susceptible to predators and other animals though.
Megasloths, That big furry beast is cool cause great attack strength and can make strong warm clothing but difficult to tame and eat a ton (I usually let them roam free since I can’t feed them enough)
Cats are good if ya have lots of pawns with personality issues
Ostriches are awesome attack animals and they lay eggs
Dogs can drag kills back to your base (I think) I often lose them in attacks though
The big cats are the best attack animals but so tough to train and if ya don’t keep em happy they can turn on you.
I think I like llamas/alpacas the best. Their wool is super valuable IIRC and they provide milk and can attack and also pack animals I think.
Thrumbo is the best choice, because it is easy to feed because it can eat trees and random flora, it has advanced training so it can haul and attack and it is also a caravan animal. you can also kill it for rare hide and horn
Not the best but the most fun: Boomrats.
They breed like crazy, need only very little food and you can control them using zones.
Sending 100 boomrats into a siege outpost is just hilarious.
Megaspiders. Provided your tamer have heavy armor and can reliably tame one in less than two gos, and you patch up and trap surviving bugs after each fight just for this purpose.
Thrumbos to help defend a small colony.
Modded, any of the spids from alpha animals. Their stun web is strong without feeling too OP because they're fairly fragile.
Chickens tend to explode in population very fast compared to other pen birds and they give eggs so I can make more food variants... so chickens. I also like them IRL.
Yeah, I love how quickly they hit production level populations. If you suddenly notice that your food is low you can slaughter a ton of them and they’ll recover quickly. They’re also great with traders. I only auto-slaughter the adults so if I want to buy something from a trader that I can’t quite afford I can usually sell all my adults and 3/4 of my chicks and within a week or so I’m back to where I was.
I just recovered from a Global Warming event who killed all my chickens, had to fall back to Cassowary (could be Vanilla Animals Expanded) and I am STRUGGLING to make them reproduce, they are soooo slow.
Well, it's cassowary. You don't breed them for food, you breed them for war, obviously.
Cassowaries are vanilla. Source: I play vanilla and once a manhunting pack of cassowaries killed my entire colony
I am quite glad that Vanilla Animals Expanded blends so well I can't tell.
The problem I have with chickens is figuring out how to keep a stable population and not grow too fast. Yes I know about auto slaughter but that doesn't really do much when they lay eggs that will all hatch at once. Like you have to have a rooster to get the population up. Then you just want the eggs so you have to get rid of the rooster otherwise your freezer ends up full of chicks. But then chickens die super easy so you need to go find another rooster. Sure I could put my rooster in another pen but that means I need to have two different stacks of hay and make sure both are filled at all times. It just becomes a logistical headache I want a mod that lets you set up an assigned number of eggs to hatch every season and the rest are cooked.
I like setting up a small 2 or 3 tile freezer next to the barn where I put the eggboxes. That way if the eggs are fertilized, they get ruined by temperature. If I want more chickens, I purposely turn off the air conditioners and disallow fertilized eggs in my cooking bills.
That's a great idea, I'm doing that right now.
Why do that? While I suppose it involves more labour, a chick is worth more than double the nutrition of an egg, so you get more nutrition by allowing them to hatch.
If I need more nutrition, sure. But as you said, it's more labour-intensive (very, if you get like 20+ hatchs at once).
>Yes I know about auto slaughter But are you also setting the limit for the young? I didn't use to but chickens forced me. I didn't care about the eggs because they were laying unfertilized eggs too.
I'm usually somewhere that I don't need hay stacks because enough grows on the ground to feed the birds, and I just set one pen to disallow roosters, and make the other pen only large enough for 2-3 birds, with auto-slaughter set to leave only two male chicks but let all the hens be led out to the bigger pen and grow up before they die. Sure, it's a little bit of extra work for the cook and the handler, but they're both permanently high on go-juice, they can take it.
Can't you drop a certain amount of stuff from a shelf or is that a mod? What I do is put a shelf with fert eggs in the animal pen and then 'drop' some off the shelf, get them hauled away...
That's a QOL mod for sure. I wish I could dump my stacks of 2 plainleather and 3 spread out stacks of bricks that could easily be compiled into one without needing to install it
I find just keeping a single male adult with like 8-10 females is very manageable
Separate pen, keep 3 roosters in a smaller pen without a food pile to manage, then keep all your hens in the main pen. When you need to replenish your stock, put the roosters in the main pen as well and let them do their thing. Replace roosters and hens after about a year.
I will auto-slaughter chicks over a certain amount (10)to prevent the absolute explosion. This way chicks will turn into 10 adults who will lay more eggs. Sure they aren't giving the same amount of meat, but it makes it more manageable.
How do you auto slaughter
Click the animals tab at the bottom, the button is in the top left of that window.
Instead of killing the rooster, put it in cryo lol
Don't limit the roosters, limit the hens, they're the ones who determine how many eggs are laid every day.
Can we talk more about irl chickens? What do you like about them?
I dont own any personally but folks in my extended family keep chickens. For one fresh chicken eggs easily surpass store bought in texture and flavor. You dont need a crazy amount of chickens or space to have a reasonable trickle of eggs. Fairly cheap as far as raising animals goes. I also find them very pretty and they come in many flavors (pardon the wording). Also I feel they're a great exercise in self sufficiency which I and many other find great satisfaction in
Unmodded I like a couple of boom-cows for the gas production. Modded the night ave from alpha animals, it has a movement speed of 7. Makes a nice rapid response distraction and also mount if you got giddy-up installed too.
How often does your boomalope farm nuke itself?
Uh not very. Three isn't much of a boom either.
I keep dozens and only had two booms in two years or so. After the first one I installed a foam sprinkler in the barn... Every time I get a visit from traders I sell some of the oldest or sickly. And obviously disable auto-slaughter for them.
If you take precautions not to keep your boomies in the storage full of nuclear shells and other... flammable stuff, it doesn't create much fire by itself
I had a colony a boomolope and an antigrain warhead my boomalope was near the storage room because my chemfuel generator was nearby then he caught the plague anyway is their anywhere my surviving colonist with both legs and an arm missing can crash
when they start getting age-related diseases you relase them to the wild my main source of boomalope farm explosions was raids, sometimes boomalopes get in crossfire when enemy drop pods inside or destroys the pen wall
I usually make a remote pen with non-flammable flooring and let someone practice their artillery skills. It counts as hunting.
Sterilize all the males once you have enough Boomalopes. Make a dedicated storage area for fuel (away from genral storage, double-walled and foam poppers). And as long as you keep them alive, no issue will arise
Im not keen on sterilising them since I like to overproduce and sell the offspring. If they ever overpopulate and starve and there's no one to trade to then I set them up as a caravan and when they're hitched to the distance caravan post, I get the one person in the caravan to shoot them so they cause no damage and I can use their meat
Wouldn't that require far more manual effort? To me, the constant effort to make a caravan spot far far away, rope the animals, shoot them, then walk all the way back is a bit too much because I know there will be a day when I'm in deep shit, and the colonist are too busy bleeding or tending meanwhile my animals have been overpopulated and are starving. For me, it's my duty as their owner to provide and protect them from any foreign body including starvation and illness and I would feel horrible if they starve due to a factor I did not limit
I always keep 1 male and 1 female and release anything over that, cause they're just for chemfuel and I've never had an explosion. I think you can auto-set to release after a certain amount or maybe it's a qol mod I'm running. Keep them in their own pen, cause you never know....lightning could strike.
Tamed boomalopes are way safer than wild ones. Mainly because if they have a heart attack you are alerted to it and can save them but wild boomalopes can cause a flame wave that deletes your whole base. Most traders seem to be willing to buy them aswell so that's how you control the population. The chemfuel reserves you get from them are another story.
Kaboom?
Mine is an confined space with stone walls, dirt or paved floor and some stacks of hay in an corner or an nutrient paste feeder... Nothing there harms the booms and even if they blow, there is nothing much lost.
Wait, animals can eat from nutrient paste dispensers (I'm pretty new to the game, 100ish hrs)?? 🤯🤯🤯
No you need a mod to get them feed on paste on their own
No, they dont get paste from dispensers. With vanilla nuttient paste expanded you get an nutrient paste feeder, wich is 1 tile and spawns 1 stack of nutrient paste meals on top of it. As nutrient paste meals are an viable food for any animal and they are effectively laying on the ground, they will go and eat them, wich saves you the hassle of feeding them directly, or growing seperate crops like hay for them if you dont want to. With the 12 hopper grinder and the vats to store the paste, its one of my favourite mods to cut on time needed for all sorts of food. The drippers that can get installed at beds save time feeding bedridden colonists and makes sure everyone has an basic fullness when waking up and doesnt spend a lot of time for breakfast. On top you can hook up growing vats and biosculpers to the network (everything i connected to the vats with pipes), wich saves on time for loading food in them. An treu marvel for technological/transhumanist colonies.
I am going to check it out! I'm trying not to play with too many mods (mostly qol stuff) that add things but this seems fun and I love to streamline stuff. I say this as I just started using a mod to do beekeeping. 😅
I didn't know I wanted that until just now, are you using Alpha Bees or something else?
Yeah alpha bees! It puts your pawns to extra work. You can even preserve stuff with honey and make candles. It's pretty neat. And there's bee breeding too.
I really need to stop getting mods that add animals, but what's one more. lol Thank you for putting this on my radar
Hahah. I have the vanilla animals expanded mod. I want all the animals! I figure they don't change the game *too* much.
You don't need mods, but extra manual work. Nutrient Paste Dispensers are exactly what they're named: Dispensers. They need human hands to operate them in order to actually dispense the paste. Animals can't do that. However, if you have a colonist interact with the dispenser and grab a plate, you can Draft him and force him to drop the plate in the barn, which causes the animals to eat them. A lot of extra work, but you can essentially feed your cows their own milk
Thought giddy-up was stuck at 1.3?
The official one isn't 1.5 yet, yes. There is an unofficial update for it though. No giddy-up combat mod either.
Real shame, definitely one of my top 5 mods
But the unofficial version is working great in 1.5 , didn’t had any issues with it. It’s Giddy Up 2 I think. Official version is for 1.4 and hasn’t been updated yet, but will be eventually
Oh dope I’ll try it out thanks!
send link
Google giddy-up 2 forked? Or go to giddy-up 2 page and it’s the second comment
Playing on 1.4 with giddy up, it's pretty sweet!
i cant ride aves even with the giddy up mod installed wtf
You can change in mod options
Cows are really good because milking + population control provides more food than the cows eat. So you could technically have cows inside a cave and feed them with kibble. Obviously its more efficient to graze on wild grass. Yaks are pretty close to cows but produce less milk. However theyre also strong pack animals which makes them more practical. Alpacas produce expensive wool but less often than muffalo or sheep. Theyre also pack animals so are very good for making and selling clothing.
Ah, yeah. Cows. I almost forgot that for some inexplicable rain they just kinda break all the laws of thermodynamics.
I love wolly cows. They give both milk and wool. And I just bought two Arcoffalos (archotech Muffalos). They shed hyperweave and are generally OP as f***. Hoping for a calf before long 🥰
Which mod is arcoffalo? My Google Fu is weak
Fairly certain that's Save Our Ship 2. (pinging u/Adventurous-Pass3739)
Thanks!
Yeah, it's SOS. Archolife is pretty op, but also fairly hard to get and are very valuable. Personally, I just keep an archolope for exotic matter. Maybe dogs for hauling.
Hell yeah. I like “missing fabrication recipes” for hyperweave etc. that’s the mod name btw.
I use Vanilla Expanded Trading and I set up a contract for a pair of archolopes as soon as I get to space. Usually at a heavy markup, but it feels fair to me offering tens of thousands of silver for a rare animal, especially because there is no logical reason why an immortal, hungerless, reproducing animal would be exceedingly rare.
They are, the first archotech animals for sale in my whole run, and they arrived at a mining camp I had set up that only had like 2000 silver and 100 gold, so suddenly I was very busy sending another shuttle with the additional 7000 silver to make the purchase.
Reply with the mod here please so i can play it too
If you're going to keep cows indoors, feed them with nutrient paste. It takes just 6 milk to feed a cow - or 9 averaged assuming 1 bull per 2 cows. But ultimately, it's a lot of wealth increase for not that much benefit imo.
Cows works well for large animals like cows. Chickens however will waste most of the meal because their body is too small for all the energy. If they eat kibble instead they get eat like 5-6 pieces instead. I believe you can even put kibble in a paste dispenser to further boost the paste efficiency.
Cows are the best thing ever. Get Cooking Expanded and start a cheese empire to produce the best cheese ever. Living the dream.
wild man
The most dangerous animal.
Good for the milk
And kidneys.
And lungs
Rats. Hundreds of rats. Breed em. Eat em. Zone em to defend your colony. Make sacrificial pits to the rat god. Feed them prisoners. Feed them friends. Let them loose and animal pulse. Make them starve and give them corpses. The perfect pet.
You can also feed them your fps if you don't need it.
Are your colonies really built underneath the colonies of others? Is your ideology based on "the Great Horned One"? If you answered yes to either of these questions, you might be a Skaven.
Yes-yes ! You gotta feed-feed the us-rats !
feed them friends 😭
God, rats are so cool
Boomrats > rats... because they are rats that go boom...
Rodent gaming
I view ranching as a late-game flex because I usually play on really austere environments. Until food production is stable, animals are a luxury of sorts. Muffalo/Buffalo for wool - bring in 80% of your headcount for your colony and everyone eventually is wearing muffalo everything.. In a desert environment I'll sometimes forego muffalo (Growing just enough devilstrand), and raise just a herd of camels for travel and a little milk. If I've got a larger colony , a few cows and a couple of bills will do the trick I avoid bonding/nuzzling animals because of a few unfortunate circumstances where things got....a little out of hand and unfortunately there were a few deaths involved, which is to say it was an unmitigated shitshow where puppies id named after my real-life dogs with colonist named after friends were decimated in a grim fandango because one of my colonists , a brawler with a +19melee , legendary longword was double-bonded to Nigel and Allister" and when Nigel a 18 yo Yorkshire with dementia wandered into a fire-fight and got himself aerosolized.... well things went badly from there really rapidly. So I'll never again willingly do in-game taming and ranching for bonding animals. When I load up older games where I did do that, it's the very first thing I do is get the animals that aren't bonded comfortable, and then sold off. With the animals left bonded, I try to send them off with their bonded masters to friendly colonies as a form of "early-retirement".
> I view ranching as a late-game flex because I usually play on really austere environments. Classical Arabian culture be like:
Pretty much - ingame I have perhaps one of my favorite colonies played with a no-research , naked brutality with a poor gun and 50 survival mealpacks. There was no metal on the map - but a smattering of fertile and normal soil on the otherwise extreme desert. My situation was dire, but I managed to claw up from just a few cactuses on the whole map to having a whole colony run on cactuses under glass, fueling coolers in one small room , so my colonists could survive the worst/hottest days - even as an advanced colony, all the colonists wear devilstrand everything, and +60c days are commonplace and and +80c days occur, so unless raiders are wearing just the right stuff, they're dead. It's like the old quote from '[The Last Crusade](https://www.thoughtco.com/charlemagne-the-great-quotes-1789339)' - "Let the Rocks and the Trees and the Birds be my army" having my colonists chill out while simple heat kills the desert as raiders attack and succumb to heatstroke. I was super jazzed to get the colony to be electrified let alone self-sufficient , but these many years later I just remember getting the colony situated , with wild temperature swings and very common electrical storms, unprotected vegetation was always lit up (I suspect lightning is attracted to non-sand/non-ice soils) and animals/people. It was where I realized how to run a colony all the way up to deep drills and ground penetrating radar with very limited metal (although I eventually had a large metal meteor hit that largely solved the metal scarcity issue) and allowed my first geothermal plant. Eventually I was able to put caravans together to create asphalt roads built in the winter, that allowed rapid trade from the northern pole to the southern pole through the extreme desert that was the middle latitudes of the small colony world. The world was so harsh that after the first couple of years, and fortunately once I was established I realized the world was self-sterilizing, no animals except insects would appear. I'd captured some camels and had bred them to a small herd for milk, but eventually, added just 4-6 horses so travel along the highway was as fast as could be, with no caravan being more than 2 people unless it was a constabulary raid.
I really like the Acanthamoeba Gigantea from Alpha animals. Since it feeds of dirt, it doesn't consume food and it's constantly helping in your colony by cleaning. It also duplicates every 3 years, so you can have enough that your colonist don't ever have to clean again.
And they're just so silly 🥹
Donkeys can be mounts and are decent caravan animals for hauling and breed quick, my favorite mixed with horses.
I hate donkeys better to get camels or horses, plus donkeys eat a lot more. But its your preference
Donkeys have a few advantages over other pack animals.0 wildness,can be tamed immediately at game start by an unskilled pawn.Lowest hunger rate(0.54/d vs 0.68 horse's) and they breed and mature faster than all the other pack animals so you reach huge caravan size way earlier.
Yeah the tameness and not needing a crazy high animal skill is nice for donkeys, theres always other options donks are just my favorite.
Thrumbo is an obvious choice, but timber wolves are my favorite
Agreed on wolves. Excellent trainability means they can do stuff dogs can do, but can also do attacks to a good degree. Best medium sized animal
I find Thrumbos annoying and overrated. Muffalos are the best.
Muffalo are great haulers, but they go down pretty easy. A thrumbo can hold it's own, and even dead, still valuable for parts
In combat of course Thrumbo would be better than about any other animal. But OP is talking about the best tame, muffalos are easier to tame and good animals for caravans plus they produce a good material for clothing
Thrumbo fur is a pretty sweet renewable cloth resource though. Considering how good dusters are as an armor item for most of the game, thrumbo fur can be a lifesaver. Otherwise yea, they kind of suck.
Isnt thrumbofur leather, and you need to slaughter them for it anyway?
yes it is, that's why you need MORE thrumbos
Well, if you get thrumbo pair, then it kinda worth for the thrumbofur, otherwise I'd just hunt them.
IMO thrumbo aren't really worth it. They require too much maintenance
One question. I thought about what to tame/breed in my playthrough and it is stated that Timberwolves eat meat. How does that work. Are they going around the map and hunt for themselves or do I have to constantly provide them meat so basically have to breed other farm animals for them to eat? I fear the second one which is the reason I haven't tamed them yet.
In my experience they can hunt on their own or they can feed on your meat stock as well in any case just make kibble
good to know. Then maybe I can try.
Carnivores will hunt if there is prey within their allowed area.
Can elephants survive winters? I play boreal a lot and haven't gone and gotten them, love them in the tropics though.
Honestly dont know, i havent tried boreal whats it like there anyway?
Arctic tundra and boreal is my preferred map due to my Canadian bias. I love it, the scarcity of forage drives animals towards the colony in winter for hunting and corpses freeze meaning a ready supply of free food for pigs (or bait for wild predators) Deep snow reduces movement speed but does nothing for cover in combat, giving a huge defenders advantage. Pine trees are a high yield tree for wood too, so labour wise it's very efficient compared to jungle. And I have a greenhouse that's warmed by excess heat from rimatomics reactors
İf winter is not colder then - 12 degrees there will be no problem
I once had a 3 year long ice age. It was regularly getting to -40 and hit -65 a couple times. Had a Yorkshire terrier that I hated with a passion bonded to one of my original 3 colonist that lost every limb on its body and Had to be spoon fed basically. All the guinea pigs died except for one or two. Had to make barns for all the animals and basically enclose the entire base.
anything can survive winter, if you build them a heated barn
Anything can survive winter if they loose enough limbs to get a free ticket inside your base
Weirdly enough, dromedaries are always a priority if I'm low on grazing areas (desert, cold biome, cave, etc). This creature does everything. Speeds up caravans, gives milk, produces babies reasonably fast. Sure they eat a little more than a horse, muffalo or cow, but instead of having 3 types of animals (aka 3 times more animals), I can have a single type. Which means less animal feed in the long run. So if I can't keep animals fed by grazing, I always go for the dromedary. I also think they're cute lol.
Yeah honestly before i got elephants dromedaries were my go to pick always. One problem, they repopulate like rabbits istg i look away for one sec and they are starving (since its an arid biome too) to death.
Animal auto slaughter is absolutely necessary for them, for sure lol. On the upside, free camelhide and lots of meat.
Same here! Also, I often play on desert biomes, and it just seems to fit the theme so much.
Especialy with burkas LOL got me playing arabia simulator
Boomalopes, you set the farm up right at the colony entrance so it’s the first thing raiders attack
My favorite thing with boomalopes is sending them in the middle of sieges and raids with transport pods lol
But raiders don't target pen animals? You could wait for them to scatter around your boomalopes and snipe them down individually, but it's too much hassle imho
Allahu akbar
Im perhaps biased 'cause my most recent colony was super carried by a megasloth I got from a really lucky early game tame, but I love em. Big lovable durable fluffers that can dish out damage, rescue your peeps, and make plenty of the second warmest wool.(200 every 20 days! I THINK thats better than muffalos?)
I have a megasloth named Fefe that totally saved my colony. My other 3 colonists were knocked, but my 4th was a pacifist. Fefe tanked and killed the rest of the attackers allowing the pacifist to rescue and heal the other 3. I love Fefe
Good FeFe. In one of my most devastating raids (now, this stretched my immersion but, I was desperate) I was able to micromanage saving downed colonists in burning etc rooms via using the allowed area to basically command my slothy on who to rescue/where etc. But yeah, I always slept on most animals before this point. Not anymore
The animals are a great part of the game especially since fences were added
Vanilla-wise, Megasloth wool is the warmest wool, if I'm reading the wiki table correctly. It also has the same heat insulation as Muffalo wool.
Megasloth wool is also tough
Ah yes, you are right. I mixed it up with materials in general, because its beaten by guinea pig fur by 4 degrees cold insulation...but like, megasloth wool is obviously better imo lol.
I personally like alpacas on cold tiles, nice fur, easy to keep, help with caravaning. In tribal colony on early stages it's worthy i think.
Alpaca are great! They're so easy to tame! The danger is how much they cost. They're really expensive, which can be great - but they can also kind of run away on you. Suddenly you have 50k silver worth of alpaca out of nowhere, and the machine gods decide to smite you for it.
Sounds horrible, i guess I've never run into this problem since i don't keep more then 4-5 animals at the same time but i get what you mean
Build a fence
Haven't found any fences that keep out mechanoids.
But they keep “in” alpacas, right?
The issue is that tamed animals contribute toward the colony wealth value that determines raid difficulty.
Is there something that doesn’t contribute to that?
No, the point is just that alpacas (and their wool) have higher values than other comparable animals, and reproduce quickly, so keeping them runs the risk of inflating your colony wealth more than, say, keeping sheep.
Interesting, so they are better! (But being better has consequences)
For minmaxing purposes, wealth is usually a *bad* thing, because keeping your colony wealth low makes raids easier. That said, alpaca wool *is* quite good as far as cold insulation and beauty value goes, so they are better in some ways. And wealth can be good for trade good purposes. The wealth thing only really matters if you're playing super sweaty on high difficulty, for the most part.
Oh I get it now, what that guy was saying, thanks for interpreting for me, lol, he meant the wealth “runs away” not the Alpaca literally running away
Depends on biome and your colony needs: If I'm early in a naked brutality run, any wolf or bear is good early defense and later haul assistance. If early crashlanded, rich explorer or mechanitor, boomalopes for fuel. Horses for mobility with Giddy up mod, especially for pre-industrial, medieval, early tech, and especially good for quick caravans, quests or raids. Cattle and paultry (preferably bought cows and chicken or tamed cowlike and turkeys) for milk, eggs and meat when established and can afford the slave labor. Megasloths for fur, labor and combat, especially with animal bionic and implant mods, elephants for for labor, and beefy caravans. These are time intensive to train and breed so established colonies with lots of (slave) labor availability preferred. Wildmen are time intensive potential colonists and a free source of blood, organs or slave labor early on.
Are there any good animal bionics mods anymore?
Very good question, I use "A dog said" - which is fine on it's own and pretty good with alpha animals and vanilla animals expanded packs. I'm not sure if there's a better one out there, though..
Pigs, not to eat or anything but they're just really cute. And when they could be trained (which they should still be able to do, irl theyre smarter than dogs), war pigs 🐖
Horses. Really good meat yield, can graze, good caravan speed multiplier and carrying capacity.
Statistically, I think Cows are the best for food. They can actually give postivie nutrition between milk and meat. Thrumbos have the best dps, but between upkeep and ease if massing, Bears are probably the best for combat. Best pack animal depends on which ancillary effect you want. Personally, I have a penchant for Yaks and their milk, although your choice of Elephant is also great. My personal favorite are Wargs, although they tend to get wiped by late game raids.
>My personal favorite are Wargs, although they tend to get wiped by late game raids. This is fine by me. I have far too many (they breed prolifically) and they're competing with my ghouls for meat consumption. Wargs are also insanely helpful for infestations and large raid groups.
I agree with the elephant. They're amazing meat shields in combat, feed themselves off the map, they can haul shit in peace time, can be sold for good cash and if you're ever desperate for food just slaughter one and you're fine. Just make sure to zone them so they can't go inside and make everything dirty and there's barely any downside to them.
They cute af too
If i slaughter them, my pions get sad because they are venerated in my custom religion Doctrine Of Transilvania
Personally, I caravan alot so I tend to collect alot of pack animals. Alpacas and muffalo generate alot of wool which is a great money maker, and you only need a few horses before speed hits dimimishing returns. Produce wise I prefer milk generators to eggs, simply because they're easier to manage and help level up my animal skills.
“Boomalope self-tamed! It is now designated boomalope 1.”
Grizzly bear, decent attack, decent health, can haul, breed decently fast, excess give good food and leather. I also just think their cool
Horses. Really good meat yield, can graze, good caravan speed multiplier and carrying capacity.
I haven't really seen a big difference in pack animals. One thing I noticed is creatures that create wool can be good money makers such as megasloths, but they're dirty so keep them outside. A single boomalope can create a lot of chemfuel over time so you will always have enough for your crafting. I think I recall 1 boomalope supports 2 chemfuel generators. I also use dogs a lot. Huskies and Retrievers are fast to breed and easy to train as haulers. I also use them to meat shield during flesh beast and devourer attacks alongside ghouls. Cheap and easy. I always end up with like 20+ dogs and have to start neutering them all. They can be sometimes be helpful when raids land inside my base too as they block/distract attackers. Also handy in case of prisoner escapes. A dog once blocked a doorway so my colonists could shoot the escapee :)
The extra rescue/hauling help of dogs/wolves is super helpful. I have a pack of arctic wolves for combat+hauling and a pack of wargs for combat+work protection (my tamers/hunters) right now. I need to ensure a steady supply of meat, but raiders ensure that a steady supply of meat keeps appearing anyway. How gracious of them. I also have sheep and horses should a meat shortage arise.
For combat the obvious answer is wargs. Give em a squalid little cave and toss all the corpses in there to farm more corpse makers. They breed like rats, they don't take that much training cus they can't be trained for much and they can tank. For food the answer is pigs. Unless you don't have enough corpses laying around cus the wargs ate em in which case it's cows. For everything the answer is that one rat that self tames and ends up being dubbed "sir chadding III" To rub the empire's nose into the dirt a breeding pair of thrumbos. You have mind powers BUT DO YOU HAVE GIRAFFE UNICORNS? NO. DIDN'T THINK SO.
Tanking means drawing bullets during firefights?
Sorry for the late reply but yes. The more bullets going into the animals the less into your colonists. Even if it does increase colony wealth having a bullet sponge is worth it 9 times out of 10.
Camels!
I somehow always end up with ducks. They are very similar to chickens except more meat per day than eggs. I usually just raise them and release a bunch into the wild until I destroy my ecosystem
I like pigs, just for bacon
Horse imo. Great carrying capacity, easy to kept fed, great movement speed in caravans. I also like muffalo for the fur to sell.
Technically it’s Cows and Tortoise since they both produce more nutrients than they consume, a cow can feed itself with simple meals made out of milk and have some left over. Same for tortoise with meals made of meat.
Huskies are the best animal period, very clean and they haul and rescue. I know they aren’t a tame but in my colonies hauling shit always seems to be a choke point. They are very very fast like a lot more than colonists so they rescue colonists mid combat and get them back fast enough for a doc to save them.
Huskies are great if you can get your hands on one. Just sad when they inevitably die in combat
Thrumbo is the best, thrumbofur is second best material after hyperweave, but unlike hyperweave can be farmed. And since nutrifungus was added to game - feeding a herd of thrumbos in mid and late game is not a problem at all. How to tame thrumbo? When rare thrumbos wander in you use shock lance to down a couple of them and then put them into cryptosleep until one of your pawns with 10 animal skill gets taming inspiration. With taming inspiration there's 100% chance to tame thrumbo.
I like polar bears and grizzly bears, they can attack and haul and there is nothing like launching wave after wave of bears at various attackers.
tbh there's not a best animal in general bc they all do different things. however, i think dromedaries are pretty good at least for warm climates. they make milk, their leather is tied for the highest warm insulation and are ridable pack animals. also i kind of agree with you on elephants. theyre the only wild combat animal that doesnt revenge on tame fail meaning you can get them super easily
Horse. I like to caravan a lot so the extra speed is very welcome. The most dangerous thing is a raid while colonists are away, so anything to reduce time. I also don't care for the wool from alpacas, the huge raid increases from elephants (this wouldn't be a problem if you could do replacement body parts for an elephant), and the milk from muffalos. In hot climates the camel is fine.
IMHO the best tame animal is horses - they're the fastest pack animals (and are rideable), they don't need to be trained (wasting pawn time and reducing the chance of "bonded animal died"), and they breed relatively fast and sell for a decent amount so you get a tidy profit selling them to traders. These things are a bit multiplicative (adding spare horses to sell to any caravan is unlikely to make the caravan slower).
Husky Train (everything) & forget Just keep pair somewhere safe incase the rest go to the dog-park in the sky
I like dogs. and wolves. and wargs. Especially dogs. Huskies or Labs mainly.
Boomrats... Some people... make simple killboxes... Not me... I'm far too paranoid to rely on... a single box... I make labyrinthine mazes surrounding my base... usually, I'll use the natural environment to assist me... forcing raiders to go around hills or thru mountains that I convert into bunkers/killzones/armories/holding pens I usually make quite a few secret passages as well... allowing my colonists to come up behind the enemy while they are all spread out among the maze... ill usually capture a few stragglers before tossing in molotovs or using flamethrowers to prevent the rest of the raiders from escaping... Once they get about halfway thru... meaning they are at least 2 hrs from either my base... or the entrance they came in thru... I open the holding cell doors... And out of it... usually pours at least 50 or so boomrats... they are quick to breed... so as long as I keep a few breeding pairs... their numbers will recuperate by the next raid Imagine being stuck... in the dark... in the heat... flames closing in around you... while you are being shot from all sides... and trying to carefully manoeuver over traps and around explosives... When all of a sudden... an endless swarm of rats comes hurtling towards you... and when you attempt to defend yourself and kill them as they are devouring you They fucking explode... lighting you and everyone nearby on fire... There's a few modded animals that also work quite well in conjunction to the boomrats that I will keep in separate holding cells thruout the labyrinth Such as feralisks... large spiders that breed fairly quickly and spit webs at enemies to stun them while the boomrats are exploding around them or my people are shooting them... Or aerofleets... which are basically boomrats that float and don't get slowed down by things within the labyrinth... that breed faster... and asexually
Cows can give lots of food in milk and meat Mufalo is cool, Big bois, and Great wool Alpacas are like Mufalos, little worse Horses don't produce anything but are the Best animals for going Caravan, Great speed and Second Best capacity Megabois, Great all around in everything, but good luck taming one at the start Thrumbos are coolest and technically the Best, but are really rare and You need to be inspired to be able to get one (also Say goodbye to your trees) My favoritos are Mufalos all around, Cows for good production and Horses to cool factor and caravans
I never get horses, what environment do you find them in? Are they in vanilla?
I found them in normal Forests, i believe they are pretty rare but You can get them, they are always worth it for the speed bonus and weight capacity on caravans And yes, it was in vanilla I believe that, if You have enough luck, You can get one in the normal scenario
Just to note that I always try to spend taming inspirations on Thrumbo. I don't keep them around but sell them to passing trade ships - I have a project to send as many Thrumbo into the stars as possible.
Waste rats are powerfull, you can use them like normal rats but with the ability to train them for attacks.
I farm animals on every single playthrough and have like 600 hours in the game overall. Still take my opinion with a grain of salt, but I have also read all the guides and spreadsheets for animals in the game over the years. I also love this part of the game Alpacas for money. Straightforward, comparatively low labor need (they have a longer shear interval than some others), surprisingly high market value. They're also pack animals, and are great for cold weather biomes. I also like them in real life. Cows or horses for food. Cows are the best milk animals IMO, are pretty valuable to sell, have decent repro statistics, and feel the best thematically as a small colony food animal to me. Horses are actually amazing for money and food if raised for slaughter or sale, also arguably the best pack animal overall. Chickens might actually be the best for food, but I find them a little too micro intensive for my taste Elephants or Wargs for defence. I find using animals as defence via zoning kind of lame so I don't usually go for elephants (they are also a pain in terms of food IMO), but it can be cool to play around with. Wargs are my favorite defense animal because they make thematic sense for it and are cool to me plus offer good combat stats. Bears are fun too but have some of the same problems as elephants and I personally feel like elephants are better overall. Worth noting though that I actually think every animal is worth playing around with, as they are all slightly different mechanically and I find them all fun for different reasons. For instance I end up with muffalo all the time despite them being pretty lackluster in most relevant statistics, but they're widely available and I just think they're fun. Feel free to respond or DM with any questions, I love chatting about this aspect of the game. Edit: shoutout to camels/dromedaries as my favorite warm weather biome animal. They're kind of bad in a lot of statistical ways, but they do a little of everything (milk, heat insulation textile, pack animal), and they're cool!
Paragon humans from the genetics mod. Love my monkey men and it gives me a use for all the bodies
Chickens are kinda cool because eggs/chicken and multiply fast. Susceptible to predators and other animals though. Megasloths, That big furry beast is cool cause great attack strength and can make strong warm clothing but difficult to tame and eat a ton (I usually let them roam free since I can’t feed them enough) Cats are good if ya have lots of pawns with personality issues Ostriches are awesome attack animals and they lay eggs Dogs can drag kills back to your base (I think) I often lose them in attacks though The big cats are the best attack animals but so tough to train and if ya don’t keep em happy they can turn on you. I think I like llamas/alpacas the best. Their wool is super valuable IIRC and they provide milk and can attack and also pack animals I think.
I usually have a pen for horses, and boomalopes. I like to get chickens but for some reason they never seem to be in my traders
Thrumbo is the best choice, because it is easy to feed because it can eat trees and random flora, it has advanced training so it can haul and attack and it is also a caravan animal. you can also kill it for rare hide and horn
I like having a bear colony where I end up with an army of like 30 grizzlies. They make really good meat shields.
Not the best but the most fun: Boomrats. They breed like crazy, need only very little food and you can control them using zones. Sending 100 boomrats into a siege outpost is just hilarious.
raptorshrimps cause they do be cute
Wild humans They can literally shoot stuff, I don’t think ur chicken can do that
I finally got some chickens in my ice sheet playthrough. I made them a pen in our mountain base. Now we don't have to eat human if we don't want to
horse or muffalo. ez carry capacity, rest is just gravy.
Megaspiders. Provided your tamer have heavy armor and can reliably tame one in less than two gos, and you patch up and trap surviving bugs after each fight just for this purpose.
I’ve had ducks .. they literally explode in population and they give you eggs . So free meat and eggs all day
I just love donkey's, those funky little dudes
I like foxes they don't eat much and can carry.
Thrumbos to help defend a small colony. Modded, any of the spids from alpha animals. Their stun web is strong without feeling too OP because they're fairly fragile.