Forage Animals

[Drodnela]

Hi,

If at all possible, making the Forage Animals job 4 separate jobs would be pretty great.

When assigning the Forage Animals job the following jobs would be added.

Forage Animals (Meat) - This will gather Raw Meat.
Forage Animals (Foul Meat) - This will gather Foul Raw Meat.
Forage Animals (Skins) - This would gather Skins.
Forage Animals (Parts) - This would gather "Parts": Teeth, Claws, and etc
Forage Animals (All) - This would gather Skins, Raw Meat, Foul Meat, and all other "Parts". Like the current implementation but parts are gathered as well.

Parts and Foul Meat Storage would be a nice addition here as well.

Players could then remove the forage jobs that are not applicable. For instance, where foraging would primarily occur on raptors players could limit foraging to skins; The foul meat would be left on the corpse to be disposed of during the Furnace job. Adversely, where the foul meat is favored and skins are not, foraging may be limited to the foul meat and the skins disposed of during furnacing.

Currently, I'm having to micromanage the foragers and their associated storage by either constantly emptying their inventory into the item furnace (no suitable storage for foul meat) and or building excessive storage for the foragers to haul to. Even with "parts" and foul meat storage, their inventories and or storage would eventually fill up (pretty rapidly given some of my outpost locations) and prevent further foraging. Bodies pile up and neglected foragers would dispose of usable resources that they were not able to forage.

This may not be applicable to many but in my case, I typically only want the Raw Meat. After only a few moments my foragers are full of skins and foul meat and they cannot continue to gather the desired resource.

Your consideration is appreciated,
JG

[Hatsune_Neko]

Would be easier i think to just get it to work right first.

[Drodnela]

Would be easier i think to just get it to work right first.

What do you mean? Which part doesn't work?

[Kwikwilyaqa]

What do you mean? Which part doesn't work?

Everything work and don't. It's finicky, varies to much and for no reason at all - for me it never worked. Sometimes it gathers once and the npc stop working; others only the meat; others only the leather; the AI don't pick closest dead animals and walk miles to get a corpse just to get stuck out of range; AI does not ditch raw meat. Reverse all this to get more problems.

With time you gonna consider not using this job at all, it's a waste of time and put your NPC's in danger because of bad AI - like in gutters areas, you character can go "foraging" in a nest of beak things just to get killed.

[Drodnela]

What do you mean? Which part doesn't work?

Everything work and don't. It's finicky, varies to much and for no reason at all - for me it never worked. Sometimes it gathers once and the npc stop working; others only the meat; others only the leather; the AI don't pick closest dead animals and walk miles to get a corpse just to get stuck out of range; AI does not ditch raw meat. Reverse all this to get more problems.

With time you gonna consider not using this job at all, it's a waste of time and put your NPC's in danger because of bad AI - like in gutters areas, you character can go "foraging" in a nest of beak things just to get killed.

Apologies... I've had a vastly different experience (experimental .98.26). As I said, Forage Animals leads me to excessive amounts of items in the foraging characters' inventory and nearby storage (skins/foul meat). If I don't micro the foragers (manually dump foul meat in the item furnace and fetch the/dump/destroy the skins) they'll stop due to lack of inventory space. I use it at all of my outposts where the enemies attacking the gate produce Raw Meat in order to keep the characters standing outside of the closed gate satiated.

Agreed, auto-hauling ala every other job would be nice and the "running into more enemies to forage" behavior is a challenge, but using appropriate characters for the job remedies that. Admittedly it was finicky for me at first but, I sat and tinkered with it for an hour or so to see what exactly the AI was doing.

Some Observations:

The foraging job gathers the skins, meat, and foul meat in turn. Three trips need to be made to the carcass to get everything (where all three exist).

Mind the priority of the jobs assigned to your foragers. If Foraging is lower than Corpse Furnace, for instance, the foraging will stop after the first trip as looting unconscious animals kills them and disposal is triggered.

If multiple characters are working the corpses they all need to Forage before Corpse Furnace. With all of their priorities as such, character B, C, D, etc. won't snatch up the Corpse as soon as character A does his first trip.

It's helpful to "operate" a chair/sitting box as the final job to keep them positioned as desired.

Naturally, heavily armored/sturdy characters are ideal in order to withstand friendly turret fire and tank whatever's at the gate..... They do run off and get into fights here and there. But, they very rarely get stuck (operate sitting box brings them back). I'm positive it's the attack enemies job that gets them stretching their legs. I have noticed that, If they end "attack enemies" while they're near a far away forageable corpse they'll begin to forage there and need to make the necessary trips to complete the foraging (same for corpse furnacing). But, like I said, this isn't a problem as your gate guards get stronger.

Corpses and limbs fall through the gate under the walls and into crevices that the characters can't reach; when this happens most of the jobs break as the characters never give up on the limb/corpse that's out of reach. Make sure your walls aren't levitating (this got me for a bit) and open the gate every now and again to allow them to get the stragglers that clipped through.

Jobs Order:

Medic
Splint
Attack Enemies
Forage Animals
Haul to skins
Haul to campfire
Haul to meat
Haul to food store
Haul to Item Furnace (limbs everywhere at one of my outposts)
Haul to Corpse Furnace
Find corpse
operate sitting box

Alt Jobs Order:

Attack Enemies
Forage Animals
Haul to skins
Haul to meat
Haul to Item Furnace (limbs everywhere at one of my outposts)
Haul to Corpse Furnace
Find corpse
operate sitting box

It was suggested in a Steam thread, I believe, to place "haul meat/skins" before foraging. It should perform the same, but the above did my gate justice.

There are issues but it functions, well. So much so that I often build five or six skin storages near them just to keep them churning out the meat only to dismantle the storages with all the skins inside to save me microing them for an hour. I've developed a suitable workaround. This suggestion is merely that... I just think it'd be nice to have, where time permits.

[Hatsune_Neko]

Would be easier i think to just get it to work right first.

What do you mean? Which part doesn't work?

It only likes to collect one item. Ussual skins snd leaves the meat behind. Thats the issue i had with it before my computer died. And i see it still in bug reports from time to time.

[Ocram]

It works if you set to haul to both skins and meat containers, they'll still pick one kind of item at a time and come back for the rest. This doesn't work if animals also have teeth/horns or foul meat, as they have no containers to store them.

[Drodnela]

It works if you set to haul to both skins and meat containers, they'll still pick one kind of item at a time and come back for the rest. This doesn't work if animals also have teeth/horns or foul meat, as they have no containers to store them.

Correct; they grab all the skins, meat, then foul meat (in turn), and dispose of the body (if they have appropriate inventory/storage). Teeth, claws, etc always get destroyed. At least this is what i'm seeing with their jobs set as described above. The foul meat breaks it eventually, though (no storage causes full inventories).

[Drodnela]

Would be easier i think to just get it to work right first.

What do you mean? Which part doesn't work?

It only likes to collect one item. Ussual skins snd leaves the meat behind. Thats the issue i had with it before my computer died. And i see it still in bug reports from time to time.

I can't explain the bug reports you're seeing. I don't have this problem with proper storage and job priorities on the appropriate characters.

[Sol Lignum]

The issue with foul meat could've been resolved if animal feeder would double as its storage, however, if you'd assign anybody to haul to it, they will ravage the actuall food storage in favour of feeder.

I like the idea, btw, maybe you don't need everything and would rather stick to one or two particular types of hunting fruits.