by KitsuneRyo » Tue Jul 16, 2019 1:30 am
Well, no matter what you do, you're going to have the water problem. Drones use a full tank of water over the course of 24 in-game hours. If you're away from the ranch and aren't refilling them during that time, it's unavoidable. Especially since you're in a no-win situation..... free-ranging means that the second food that the slimes are willing to eat is available, they'll eat it, particularly if it's their favorite. That means, plorts in lots of locations, which means your drones have to wake up, use water, fly all over the zone, put the plots away, and then land again... likely only to have this cycle restarted immediately or soon after once they "cycle" and realize they have targets.
And of course, slimes don't just eat once when they're quite hungry. They can eat two, or even three, portions when they're making the sad/drooly face.
And let me guess, you're free-ranging largos? They eat more often, tend to knock food and plorts around as they move, and of course produce twice the amount of plorts. This automatically means that you have to keep less slimes if you're just going to let them graze from garden plots.... Even fully upgraded gardens with Ogden's special perks won't produce enough for a bunch of slimes. I mean, remember, they knock food around... so the perk of food decaying slower on the special soil doesn't apply anymore. So, part of every harvest (which is only accessible to slimes AFTER it is fallen from the tree or popped up from the ground) get tossed away to rot.
Now, if you were keeping a Pink slime mix, your problems would be eased up a bit, but only in the Overgrowth, since it produces all the basic level food types continually.
Personally, I find free ranging too risky, tedious, and not anywhere near profitable enough. For one, it drastically cuts down on your possible slime diversity, giving a lot less access to necessary plorts for refining and for market price fluctuation. I also don't ranch any largos at all; I have zero desire to return to an empty ranch because of a freak accident leading to an outbreak of TARR. I only keep pure slime types, one of each ranchable variety. I have two drones in each zone, automating the feeding and plort collection in their areas. The advanced drones make this much easier, since they can both be on plort collection and then have different feeding assignments. I use the special areas given by the other ranchers for growing. I now have all the favorite foods for all the slimes ready, keeping things running. I also try to avoid being away for more than a day, because the drones need water daily and the meat eating slimes are harder to keep fed.
This is just my preferred method though. This is the only advice I can give.