So Are Coops Effective At All?

[Azreide]

It seems like in comparison to growing plant based food, that they're completely worthless. Whether I have 1 hen, 1 roostro, plenty of roostros, plenty of hens, plenty of both. They still don't seem at all useful.

[xenxander]

They do populate. The info on them says you shoudln't have more than about 12 else they get 'anxious'. I've had about 20 max.

Seems there's an RNG about when they stop.
Anyway they don't make a lot of food that's true, so I found its bets to make largos with the meat only slimes.

What we cannot tell is the age of the hens/roostros and that is an issue. If you have three roostros and want to take two away, which one do you leave? You won't know which one is about to age out so that gets risky.

[Gobledigmus]

I also have the feeling that coops have to be buffed a lot in the future versions of the game. Right now they really seem to be useless compared to gardens.

Besides the fact that the population speed needs to be increased I would also wish a more special use for the chickens that makes the difference between them and the plant based food.
I mean: Why would you ever use chicken coops if you can also build gardens for the same effect if you just mix up the meat eating Slimes with a fruit or vegetables eating one?

A way to make the chickens more special and useful besides fruits and vegetables could be by making most of the valuable Slimes you will find in the later game being carnivores and reducing the worth of the plant eating Slimes' Plorts there, for example of the Honey Plorts.
That way you don't get around having some chicken coops if you want to have the most valuable Largo combinations you can possibly get in your ranch.

They do populate. The info on them says you shoudln't have more than about 12 else they get 'anxious'. I've had about 20 max.

Seems there's an RNG about when they stop.
Anyway they don't make a lot of food that's true, so I found its bets to make largos with the meat only slimes.

What we cannot tell is the age of the hens/roostros and that is an issue. If you have three roostros and want to take two away, which one do you leave? You won't know which one is about to age out so that gets risky.

Yes, they do, but not fast enough. Try out the fully upgraded gardens and compare them to fully upgraded chicken coops. You will see that they are way more effective.
Also the thing with the aging of the chickens is another fact that makes them less useful compared to gardens. Yes, gardens have to be replanted sometimes, but that's no problem as long as you don't completely forget it.

Anyway they don't make a lot of food that's true, so I found its bets to make largos with the meat only slimes.

That's what we are talking about. And in the end you always just take gardens instead of coops because they are just way more efficient.
That's the issue about it in the current playtest version, but of course the developers will make some changes about that now that the problem is reported to them.

Still I find that a good opportunity to talk about what changes could be made in the game and which new things could be implemented to make coops more useful and special.

Even if the population speed gets increased there's still the question of what makes you deciding to build coops and gardens in your ranch at the same time.
As long as it's so efficient to mix the meat eating Slimes with plant eating ones you will never need both of them. You either decide for one of it and don't build anything else.
And because there are more plant eating Slimes than carnivorous ones at the moment you will always take gardens instead of coops, as long as chickens don't get an additional use to them, even if the chicken populations speed gets buffed to equal the growing speed of the gardens. Only if they populate faster compared to gardens growing their plants you will decide to build coops.
In this scenario it would make sense to create both gardens and coops, because most of the Slimes are herbivores, even one of the most valuable ones: The Honey Slime.

So if my conclusion is correct the chicken population speed needs to be increased to be a little bit higher than the speed in that the gardens grow their plants. If the Honey Slime doesn't get reduced in it's Plort's worth too much (and I bet it will be reduced at least a little bit) then this way there would be a balance between the usefullness of chicken coops and gardens.
The fact that chickens can age would push the balance a little more into the direction of the gardens, but as if most of the later game's Slimes appear to be carnivores a coop would be even more useful in that whole scenario.
Either way the Honey Plort's worth has to stay quite high so that the player doesn't decide to build no gardens anymore, but coops instead of it.

[xenxander]

Well animals take time to grow up and even in this fictional world where crops grow each day, I don't mind that chickies grow slowly.

What we all are wishing, is a way to make faster meat. But in the end, only two slimes need meat so you will have too much if you aren't careful (just like any crop, I suppose).

[OMGZombehs]

Yes to all of this. xD

I feel like the natural solution right now is to just mix with veggie/fruit slimes. I did give chicken breeding another go when I opened up the Free Range area. I thought maybe if I corralled the slimes and threw a bunch of Roostros and Hen Hens in the open area they might populate it...looking back I should have realized they would just despawn. :/
Otherwise the area would have been bursting with the Hen Hens that already spawn there. -.-

[Gobledigmus]

Well animals take time to grow up and even in this fictional world where crops grow each day, I don't mind that chickies grow slowly.

What we all are wishing, is a way to make faster meat. But in the end, only two slimes need meat so you will have too much if you aren't careful (just like any crop, I suppose).

Especially that in this fictional world everything is speeded up: The growth of plants, the time it takes for the lifeforms there to become hungry and even the population and growth of chickens - All that makes it important that chickens populate in a speed that can match with speed of the plants' growth.

That's what I'm talking about: There need to be more valuable Slimes that eat meat so that Largo combinations with two carnivores suddenly make sense in terms of efficiency.
As long as that isn't the case the player will never decide to build coops because he will rather build a garden instead and mix his meat eating Slimes with plant eating ones.

[xenxander]

Well a more valuable slime that eats meat means that meat production should be slow, to balance it out, yes?

[Elskah]

I did a bit of playing around with this. When I opened the Overgrowth expansion, I decided to put Boom/Tabby Largos in it, due to the amount of Hen Hens that naturally spawned, and have two coops on my main ranch producing Stony Hens. (I have free-roaming Honey Tabbies on my main ranch, and four gardens is more than enough to keep them all fed, and they stay away from the coops for the most part, so I figured it would work out well enough.)

I was making enough food for my Boom Tabbies this way, but I ended up having to incinerate the lot of them, because I couldn't go into the Overgrowth without nearly dying instantly. Note to self: Do not mix "I-want-to-boop-your-nose" Tabby Slimes with "Whoops-I-sneezed-and-you're-dead" Boom Slimes.

If I was keeping the Boom Tabbies in corrals this method probably would've worked fine, provided I had auto-feeders and plort collectors, since going into a Boom Tabby corral to collect plorts is definitely not a smart idea. But, since I was trying to see if I could get a self-sustaining population of free-roaming slimes, Boom Tabbies really weren't the best option. Maybe after more meat-eating slimes are released this will work better?

[Gobledigmus]

Well a more valuable slime that eats meat means that meat production should be slow, to balance it out, yes?

Yes, but not as slow as it is in the current playtest version. In the moment it seems to give you near to nothing. At least that's my experience and I had two fully upgraded coops with a good amount of chickens to start with.
I got nearly nothing out of it. Wouldn't even have been enough for a coral with only three meat eating Slimes.
While testing that I had no free-roaming Slimes in my ranch so nothing could have uncontrollably eaten away my chickens without me wanting it to do so.

[MaddamValky]

my coops have no issue keeping up with food needs of my slimes, having 1 roostro, and 3-4 hens at all times will reproduce them quiet a bit also I have them in 2 coops.. how ever I have an issue trying to breed my stony hens.. only thing I get from them are roostros and hen hens.. :/