Aliens Aren't Tasty!

[CrowScape]

What is this? Three food from livestock? No bonus from tiles? No bonus from farms? No slave output bonus? I do get a bonus from the capital adjacency when there's a farm there, but for some reason I think the devs would consider that a bug.

I get more food out of my livestock if I stop using them as livestock! Just enslave them and have them work the hydroponics farm. You know, exactly what I did before this when I wanted to RP eating aliens.

This isn't what I unified the whole galaxy against me for! This isn't the atrocity I was promised!

No, make aliens tasty!

 

[Sheriff Godwin Law]

Livestock is not designed to be more effective than farms. Livestock is designed to be used on large populations of primitive aliens on undeveloped worlds that you'd rather not spend minerals to build up because they're going to be spending the next 50 years suffering from future shock.

And later, with a bit of gene tailor, you can make them delicious.

 

[CrowScape]

Livestock is not designed to be more effective than farms. Livestock is designed to be used on large populations of primitive aliens on undeveloped worlds that you'd rather not spend minerals to build up because they're going to be spending the next 50 years suffering from future shock.

That's what purging is for. You can completely replace a population in thirty years if that's your problem. Beats having a bunch of population barely contributing anything and tanking your research.

If that is what livestock was designed for, then the goal of the design is wrong.

And later, with a bit of gene tailor, you can make them delicious.

And they will still be less efficient than a normal slave on a farm.

No, aliens taste bad.

 

[Sheriff Godwin Law]

That's what purging is for. You can completely replace a population in thirty years if that's your problem. Beats having a bunch of population barely contributing anything and tanking your research.

If that is what livestock was designed for, then the goal of the design is wrong.

Well, sure, in the long term purging and replacing would give you better returns. But you may be at a point in the game where you want immediate resources now. Ending up with 15 food from 5 bronze age savages for no cost beyond the time it takes to send two assault armies over can be an appealing choice when you don't want to spend minerals.

 

[elitesix]

Food Processing is pretty decent. 5 food per population, for like 10-20 years before they get purged.

 

[kviiri]

Livestock is a rather inefficient food source from a production point-of-view even IRL, and the real-life meat animals are a product of centuries of selective breeding. Livestock is for when you want to enslave them for food production without the initial investment of farms.

 

[Ilanin]

Sentients are of course going to be even less efficient than normal livestock, because they're wasting a ton of energy on advanced neural processing and other useless stuff compared to things you actually eat. So yeah, it makes perfect sense that trying to eat sentients is a rather suboptimal method of food production.

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

The thing is?

You eat them whilst moving in your own people to take up the rest of the planet.

Once you've eaten them, you move "spare" people (or at least ones you can afford to do without temporarily (excess energy pops for example) to take up the space formerly occupied by species-designate : Lunch.

 

[chegitz guevara]

Aliens are friends, not food.

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

Aliens are a surprisingly bio-compatible source of nutrients.

 

[elitesix]

Livestock is a rather inefficient food source from a production point-of-view even IRL, and the real-life meat animals are a product of centuries of selective breeding. Livestock is for when you want to enslave them for food production without the initial investment of farms.

Yep, this is true in RL. Animal meat from animals that take up farmable land - the vast majority of land-based meat production comes from these areas as pastures that cannot be farmed are rare - use way more resources and energy than just using the land to plant farms and eating those plants. The small exception being the rare unfarmable pasture (technology continues to further reduce the land that are unfarmable pastures). The big exception being sustainable fished seafood (though fish farms are also technically energy and resource-inefficient compared to edible seaweed farms, but edible seaweed farming seems a ways away).

So from a realism perspective, livestock slavery being subpar makes sense. It still has a real role, and that role is a huge food boost whenever you take over a new species, at the cost of whatever the resource of their buildings.

So the most optimal time is to use it early game when you take over primitives, and get a huge bump in food production which increases the speed of your normal population's growth. You can switch them out to another slavery/displacement type once you want to develop the planet of livestock. Still a definite bonus for the xenophobe playstyle.

 

[CrowScape]

Well, sure, in the long term purging and replacing would give you better returns. But you may be at a point in the game where you want immediate resources now.

For which enslaving and putting on food production still does better. This is just a "shoot me in the foot" button.

Livestock is a rather inefficient food source from a production point-of-view even IRL

Not interested IRL in my game about psychic space foxes. I'm interested in actual playstyle options.

 

[kviiri]

Not interested IRL in my game about psychic space foxes. I'm interested in actual playstyle options.

Which is why I said livestock is for when you want to enslave pops for food without investing in farms.

 

[CrowScape]

Which is why I said livestock is for when you want to enslave pops for food without investing in farms.

So it's for getting a tiny, temporary benefit over other options for when you have no unused food tiles and no pops that can be better moved off food production and you have no resources to build a farm and you are absolutely positively fending off starvation. And for that one-in-a-million edge case, you also get to tick off the rest of the galaxy and prevent that population from developing.

You know, if you look at that and say "right, makes sense, sounds good" then I think I know how you got into that situation.

That is not worth the time to code.

Make aliens tasty.

Edit: And keep in mind, food processing also exists. It's not a great option, but by the arguments put forward here, there's no time where processing a population is not more advantageous than just setting it to livestock slavery.

 

[AegonVLLI]

Not interested IRL in my game about psychic space foxes. I'm interested in actual playstyle options.

Why should it be? It's not like you are obligated to do it. It's a fun roleplay option, which is important to many players, but there isn't any reason why it should give you additional benefits (the existing ones are already stretching my suspension of disbelief).
It's fun, it's unique and a way to customise your empire. Why does it have to be a very efficient style, too? You can make it work, it's just not efficient.

That is not worth the time to code.

That may be your opinion...

 

[CrowScape]

Why should it be?

Because right now it's a trap option.

It's a fun roleplay option, which is important to many players

And, as I stated, it was one that I RPed before Banks. There was even a way to make pops delicious before Banks (give them the agrarian trait, or the charasmatic).

Therefore, this adds nothing. The RP element existed before, and it offers no mechanical advantage. It is pointless.

 

[jalapen0]

You just need some space-ketchup.

 

[Secret Master]

This may seem like a stupid question (since I have run a hive mind and just processed POPs instead of turning them into livestock), but do the livestock cost any energy or food to upkeep?

If the answer is no, then they are more efficient (at low techs) than farms. Farms require energy to run and a POP which consumes a single unit of food (or a robot that eats energy). If livestock don't require energy and food, then turning primitives into livestock is fine until your POPs need room to expand. Then you would switch to processing to free up tiles, right?