Suggestion Un-Nerf Breeding.

[Nightroado]

Here's the better question:

Why do you want massive farms of animals?

Is it the exp?
the item profit?

I'm all ears.

I am maxed and never saw animals as a good source of exp. I need to be able to produce large quantities of wool at times for projects like this:

If you had nerfed animals so terribly before I finished this project, it would have never been completed. And it's not like I just want a ton of animals.

I limit myself to what I can fit in one level in a single chunk. In fact, it is smaller than a chunk that I use. And yeah, I make cow farms just as large when I do leather as sheep farms for wool. But it takes so long to breed and wait for them to grow due to lag. What should take 5 minutes to breed once and 20 minutes for the calf to grow, it takes the server about 65 minutes when during "prime time."

But even then, why does that matter in the first place? Farmers use animals. It is what we do. If you force us to 25 animals per chunk, then we can only breed 8 cows from 16 adults, wait for them to grow, and cull them. Do you know how time investing it is to fill an order of 5 stacks of leather without the nerf? I shouldn't have to spend hours of my time breeding at the speed of a snail to fill even the smallest of orders. You are literally killing the class at that point.

I'm not asking for 4-500 animals like some people claim to have, but I am asking that I not be hindered to the point that it isn't worth being my favorite class.

Luckily I had taken a few screenies before the nerf:

As you can see, the mobs are crammed in super tight. I am roughly estimating about 150 mobs in each picture. I lagged no more than usual in either pic nor did anyone in Rapture complain of unusual lag when around our home. I usually had a few of each animal up so people had access to the animals in Rapture, but I would only ever breed to this extreme if I was actively using them for a project or so I could cull them for an active order for leather or some such. And I always culled them down when I was through.

Rather than cripple us so completely and thoroughly, you could merely ask that farmers "clean up" when they were done with animals like I do. The animal butchers and sending mods to our farms to slaughter them have been crippling enough, but the animals-per-chunk limit is ridiculous.

You think me wrong? Then prove it. Come to Rapture and fill an order for 5 stacks of leather as a 60 farmer. You can use our wheat and our fields. I'll pay you 40c a stack, just as much as I charge my customers. Then tell me I am wrong afterwards and I won't press for having my animals back anymore

 

[Nightroado]

I don't really see how this is a nerf..
This only mean you can't make huge ass farms witch works as a storage, and lags the crap out of the server..

You can still get the same amount of stuff, but you'll need to breed then kill then breed more..

As for sheep farms, in Camelot we had around 150 sheeps, then two farmers ran around and sheared without running out of sheeps to cut, so you don't really need "that" many...

The problem is time. It's not like I am compensating for my incredibly small penis here. It's easier to fill orders in a more timely fashion with large numbers than with tiny numbers. You can breed animals once every 5 minutes and then the babies take 20 minutes to grow. And that's on a server that doesn't lag or single player.

Example for Breeding from scratch without Kainzo's nerf:
You need to kill 100 cows for leather.
Summon once (0 min) (Total Cow/Calf: 1/0)
Summon twice and breed first calf (5 min) (Total Cow/Calf: 2/1)
Summon third time and breed two adults (5 min) (Total Cow/Calf: 3/2)
Summon fourth time and breed four adults + 1 calf has matured (5 min)(Total Cow/Calf: 5/3)
Summon fifth time and breed six adult + 1 calf has matured (5 min)(Total Cow/Calf: 7/5)
Summon sixth time and breed eight adults + 2 calves have matured (5 min) (Total Cow/Calf: 10/7)
Summon seventh time and breed 10 adults + 3 calves have matured (5 min) (Total Cow/Calf: 14/9)
Summon eighth time and breed 14 adults + 4 calves have matured (5 min) (Total Cow/Calf: 19/12) <-- Too many for chunk limit nerf.
Summon ninth time and breed 20 adults + 5 calves have matured (5 min) (Total Cow/Calf: 24/17)
Summon tenth time and breed 32 adults + 7 calves have matured (5 min) (Total Cow/Calf: 32/26)
Summon eleventh time and breed 42 cows + 10 calves have matured (5 min) (Total Cow/Calf: 43/37)
Summon twelfth time and breed 60 cows + 16 calves have matured (5 min) (Total Cow/Calf: 60/66)
Wait 20 minutes for the remaining calves to mature. Total Cow Count: 126. Time spent: 1 hr 15 min.

Example of breeding from scratch with Kainzo's nerf:
You need to kill 100 cows for leather.
Summon once (0 min) (Total Cow/Calf: 1/0)
Summon twice and breed first calf (5 min) (Total Cow/Calf: 2/1)
Summon third time and breed two adults (5 min) (Total Cow/Calf: 3/2)
Summon fourth time and breed four adults + 1 calf has matured (5 min)(Total Cow/Calf: 5/3)
Summon fifth time and breed six adult + 1 calf has matured (5 min)(Total Cow/Calf: 7/5)
Summon sixth time and breed eight adults + 2 calves have matured (5 min) (Total Cow/Calf: 10/7)
Summon seventh time and breed 10 adults + 3 calves have matured (5 min) (Total Cow/Calf: 14/9)
Summon eighth time and breed 2 adults + 4 calves have matured + 3 killed (5 min) (Total Cow/Calf/Culled: 16/5/3 calves) <---Things change here to compensate for nerf. To make things less confusing, let's assume all the calves are grown instead of at the end of the breeding. (20 min)
Breed 16 adults + killed 8 (Total Cow/Calf/Culled: 16/8/11)
Wait 20 min.
Breed 16 adults + killed 0 (Total Cow/Calf/Culled: 16/8/11)
Wait 20 min.
Breed 16 adults + killed 8 (Total Cow/Calf/Culled: 16/8/19)
Wait 20 min.
Breed 16 adults + killed 8 (Total Cow/Calf/Culled: 16/8/27)
Wait 20 min.
Breed 16 adults + killed 8 (Total Cow/Calf/Culled: 16/8/35)
Wait 20 min.
Breed 16 adults + killed 8 (Total Cow/Calf/Culled: 16/8/43)
Wait 20 min.
Breed 16 adults + killed 8 (Total Cow/Calf/Culled: 16/8/51)
Wait 20 min.
Breed 16 adults + killed 8 (Total Cow/Calf/Culled: 16/8/59)
Wait 20 min.
Breed 16 adults + killed 8 (Total Cow/Calf/Culled: 16/8/67)
Wait 20 min.
Breed 16 adults + killed 8 (Total Cow/Calf/Culled: 16/8/75) <-- 99 cows, will summon 100th after slaughtering
Wait 20 min for last calves to grow. (Not including this since I added it earlier to make things easier)
Total Cows: 100 Time Spent: 235 minutes.

So we are basically ask to do just one hour of work but slowed up so we take just under FOUR hours worth of work. And why? For a reduction of lag that some feel or don't feel. But it goes farther than that. Let's say you had 200 cows already bred and safely stored for future use:

Breed 200 cows.
Wait 20 minutes.
Kill 100 cows.
Time Spent: 20 minutes plus time to run around breeding and culling. Let's say 10 minutes. For a grand total of 30 minutes.

So how much time do I want to spend every 100 cows?
235 minutes?
75 minutes?
or 30 minutes?

The choice is obvious. And this is why large farms must be allowed. It is absolutely ridiculous to ask us to spend 4 hours doing what should be 30 minutes of work.

Kainzo -- please read this.

 

[Roadkill909]

Nightroado, you asked me why I disagreed.

I wanted to suggest a localized breeding limit, but Kainzo beat me to it. As already stated, it degrades performance. Mobs are AI, and AI eat performance. Each server tick, each mob perform dozens of calculations to do basic functions.

Also If I'm not mistaken, they are also a cause behind the fact that hardly any passive mobs spawn naturally. When you breed an animal it probably counts towards the world limit of mobs. If that is the case massive animal farms are just as bad as dark rooms.

Near my home are massive farms consisting of hundred mobs that are used maybe once a week. You may be responsible but the issue is your fellow farmers are not. Your complaint is that it will take four hours instead of one to breed 100 mobs. I can wander for hours across the server and if I'm lucky run into a handful of passive mobs.

How about instead of arguing to return to a system that works only for a single profession, we solve the problem for both sides?

Solution:

You need hundreds of cows to get a stack of leather? How about tweaking the ratio in favor of smaller amounts of mobs? A passive skill to increase drops? A skill to regrow wool on nearby sheep? A skill to turn baby animals into adults? I'm sure these would help.

However this doesn't solve the problem that some farmers will still keep massive farms and hardly use them. Limiting how long an animal lives will fix that. Late at night and far from peak times, a script could run that would kill any passive mob that has been alive for say longer than 3 days. Also this should exclude pets of course.

 

[WitchOnaRampage]

Late at night and far from peak times, a script could run that would kill any passive mob that has been alive for say longer than 3 days.

I strongly object to this. Not only would you kill the animals, you would also start killing off your international player base. Just because it's not peak US time, doesn't mean its an unimportant time. If you want to do regular kills, schedule them regularly throughout the 24 hour period - but for goodness sake leave enough time in between for a farmer to actually make some progress.

For the record, when I'm farming it takes 30 mins for babies to grow to adults, not 20 minutes. Have checked this several times. And yes, I mostly did this at your 'non-peak' times, and where possible killed off the numbers before I logged off for the (my) night.

Breeding up cows for leather - and lots and lots is needed for town upgrades etc - was an exhausting and dispiriting process. Please don't make it harder.

 

[WitchOnaRampage]

Double post.

 

[Roadkill909]

I strongly object to this. Not only would you kill the animals, you would also start killing off your international player base. Just because it's not peak US time, doesn't mean its an unimportant time. If you want to do regular kills, schedule them regularly throughout the 24 hour period - but for goodness sake leave enough time in between for a farmer to actually make some progress.

For the record, when I'm farming it takes 30 mins for babies to grow to adults, not 20 minutes. Have checked this several times. And yes, I mostly did this at your 'non-peak' times, and where possible killed off the numbers before I logged off for the (my) night.

Breeding up cows for leather - and lots and lots is needed for town upgrades etc - was an exhausting and dispiriting process. Please don't make it harder.

The reason for choosing to run this special butcher in off-peak times was so that the server doesn't have to maintain plugins and connections for 100+ players and perform this larger than normal butcher at the same time. If it's running at say 4am EST and there's 30 people online, if coded properly no one will notice it.

The three day life limit is also just a suggested number to demonstrate the point, I'm fine with it being bumped to five or seven if necessary. The point of my post was to make it harder to keep a massive amount of mobs, but not make it harder to get the same amount of resources.

 

[damageinc57]

While increasing lag across the board on the server.

That's the issue here.

You could make it at least workable Kainzo, if we can barely get a stack of leather why try?

 

[Nightroado]

Solution:

You need hundreds of cows to get a stack of leather? How about tweaking the ratio in favor of smaller amounts of mobs? A passive skill to increase drops? A skill to regrow wool on nearby sheep? A skill to turn baby animals into adults? I'm sure these would help.

However this doesn't solve the problem that some farmers will still keep massive farms and hardly use them. Limiting how long an animal lives will fix that. Late at night and far from peak times, a script could run that would kill any passive mob that has been alive for say longer than 3 days. Also this should exclude pets of course.

I like a lot of these solutions. And thanks for presenting them. And yeah, about the delay in animals from lag, I get it too. Sometimes it take 13 minutes for 5 min to pass in the server as I said before but it is usually more around 8 - 9 minutes most times.

 

[Jonsoon]

You could make it at least workable Kainzo, if we can barely get a stack of leather why try?

Maybe you should quote his whole post and not try to make him look like a bad guy. This server is his baby and he wants everyone to have an enjoyable experience.
He said he is all ears to suggestions on how to make the farmer professional work while not decreasing performance.

 

[Nightroado]

Maybe you should quote his whole post and not try to make him look like a bad guy. This server is his baby and he wants everyone to have an enjoyable experience.
He said he is all ears to suggestions on how to make the farmer professional work while not decreasing performance.

Actually he asked -why- I wanted massive farms and his first two guesses heavily suggested a selfish desire for money and exp.

While I want lots of money and have no need for exp, I'd like to think I use my farmer powers for more than that.

I built a bad ass dragon and my farms help many newcomers to Rapture in both food and helping them grind out crafter levels. And for a modest price, I can provide goods that you can't really ask your local town farmer to drop everything and do.

He never asked for a solution and essentially all I said his decision to nerf was a poor one and I listed off why. I made a suggestion before all this that involved plugin development, but I like Roadkill909 's ideas too. But in the end of the day something has to be developed to fix things. They sure as heck can't stay the same. The class is dead as is.

People are saying so in /ch o that there won't be anymore leather and they are darn right. I refuse to spend that much time on leather for the current prices. If I need to spend four times the time breeding the cows then I will start charging four times the money and anyone who disagrees with it is more than welcome to pitch more ideas at admin until a solution sticks.

 

[damageinc57]

Maybe you should quote his whole post and not try to make him look like a bad guy. This server is his baby and he wants everyone to have an enjoyable experience.
He said he is all ears to suggestions on how to make the farmer professional work while not decreasing performance.

I did :c

 

[dils1]

Work around the system. Use multiple chunks

 

[WitchOnaRampage]

I'm so puzzled by this. I saw Kainzo mention the restriction on animal numbers in chat a day or two ago, but my lag has been so much worse since then. Worst it's been for a long time.

 

[awsumguy75321]

Work around the system. Use multiple chunks

I was just about to suggest that.

 

[Nightroado]

Work around the system. Use multiple chunks

I was just about to suggest that.

*You have to dedicate an entire floor of the town to breeding.
*Each chunk has to be fenced off from the rest, which means more time wasted running around to each chunk.
*If you are raising one animal in every chunk in town, that means no one else in the entire town can have any animals, punishing those who have multiple active farmers.

 

[Nightroado]

I'm so puzzled by this. I saw Kainzo mention the restriction on animal numbers in chat a day or two ago, but my lag has been so much worse since then. Worst it's been for a long time.

I think the reason some feel a difference and some don't is because towns with ridiculous numbers for animals probably causes some level of lag to their members and people visiting their town or passing by close enough to load those chunks. It's just a guess really.

I have no clue how anyone feels any improvement with lag on the rise lately. It has been worse for me too lately and that is even before the animal nerf was put in place. Even in the 'dead of night' sometimes I experinece lag that throws me back several blocks when mining.

Maybe they should limit the number of animals by town or simply raise the number of animals per chunk to something a lot higher than 25.

 

[damageinc57]

I for one have a small amount of time during the week, 3-4 hours. I don't want to spoil my own experience in HC staring at cows or sheep trying to fill a 12 stack of leather order

 

[Kainzo]

I'm so puzzled by this. I saw Kainzo mention the restriction on animal numbers in chat a day or two ago, but my lag has been so much worse since then. Worst it's been for a long time.

Lag has been the best it's ever been the past few days....

 

[Kainzo]

We do not want 500+ entities in a single area. This is just far too much. This hits the server-cpu a lot harder than the client. I can back up my claims with profiling the CPU and measuring the amount of tickEntities are occurring and how much of the tick rate is spent on Entities. I do this, every single day. Trust me.

Here's a fix that will work for everyone. We can increase the amount of drops from animals. So Cows will drop more leather ... and so forth.

We have the ability to adjust drops and I have no problem increasing the yield. This way the amount of items aren't really touched and the server lag is also helped by keeping entities lower.

 

[Teerian]

A very large increase in drop amounts from animals is a good solution in my opinion. It can't be something useless along the lines of an extra 1-2, though. As you've seen with some of the math posted, breeding a small heard takes a ridiculous amount of time. The fact that cows do not always drop leather when killed just adds to the required effort when it comes to that particular resource.

The only other solutions I can think of would involve potentially altering animal AI so that they take less actions, but this seems overly complicated if even at all possible. It also likely would not reduce server lag as much as the animal limit + drop increase combo.

The question now is how much is a reasonable amount per kill/shear? 10? More? Less? Need more opinions on this, especially from those of you who produce for large quantity orders.