is livestock useless in every situation yes or no?

[bugman]

playing as a hive mind (not a DS) and trying out the new features like turning food into alloys etc. cant make robots or incorporate pops into my empire (unless they are hive minds too) to conquer or colonize non-native planet types so expansion is trickier. If i do take over a planet with the same climate preference as my species and enslave the enemy pops as livestock thining i can at least get some extra food/minerals and building slots, i get single digits stability because of course the livestock have 0% happiness which means they barely pay for their own upkeep and any of my own pops i grow or relocate there are wasted doing clerk jobs just to get the stability near 50% so i dont have random bad events happening and a couple more are sunk into criminal jobs from the resulting deviancy. I could resettle them to my home world with its higher stability (where they do in fact pay for themselves by a factor of 3 or so) but I'm not sure if its worth the reduction in stability and increase in deviancy and now reduction in pop growth

*i'm assuming purge by processing is just as inefficient other than the fact that you do eventually get rid of them right? paying energy to relocate them somewhere else or spread them around your empire still not worth it?

thx

 

[DukeLeto42]

So a couple of things:

• Spreading them out is an excellent way to feed your population at a small stab cost.
• Livestock cost a little housing and some amenities, but have no other upkeep and do not take up job slots.
• As a hive mind, you're naturally taking biological ascension, and nerve-stapled livestock stop impacting happiness. Once you get that, massive livestock populations no longer directly influence stability.

By the end-game, your empire can be fed almost entirely with a set of livestock worlds (personally I like consolidating species onto their homeworlds, but that's solely an RP choice), and since you're using food for alloys you effectively only need generator districts for basic resources.

 

[Fenris_SE]

It works, Lathland did a video where he eventually got rid of all farms and just survived on livestock. At one point he was selling several thousand food per month and was still stuck at the food cap even with catalytic processing. He wasn't really making money on it since he crashed the food economy, but why waste the food. Don't know if you want to watch it, it is a little over an hour long.

 

[bugman]

It works, Lathland did a video where he eventually got rid of all farms and just survived on livestock. At one point he was selling several thousand food per month and was still stuck at the food cap even with catalytic processing. He wasn't really making money on it since he crashed the food economy, but why waste the food. Don't know if you want to watch it, it is a little over an hour long.

i see. he colonizes arctic, tomb world, etc planets with his tropical main species but moves livestock there to grow that have the correct climate preference and manages get to get 70 stability . maybe its my mods (potent rebellions, dynamic difficulty) etc but my livestock have 0 happiness not 20 and i dont have the adaptable trait, but colonizing with 40% hab for your main species and then using them to work in gene clinics (for the amenities? or pop growth? or both?) just to get food and minerals from livestock seems to break every rule for me

 

[DukeLeto42]

colonizing with 40% hab for your main species and then using them to work in gene clinics (for the amenities? or pop growth? or both?) just to get food and minerals from livestock seems to break every rule for me

Remember that your main-species pops on livestock worlds are there to stabilize them, not to produce.

 

[Fenris_SE]

i see. he colonizes arctic, tomb world, etc planets with his tropical main species but moves livestock there to grow that have the correct climate preference and manages get to get 70 stability . maybe its my mods (potent rebellions, dynamic difficulty) etc but my livestock have 0 happiness not 20 and i dont have the adaptable trait, but colonizing with 40% hab for your main species and then using them to work in gene clinics (for the amenities? or pop growth? or both?) just to get food and minerals from livestock seems to break every rule for me

He did end up nerve stapling them and adding the delicious trait to his livestock as well. Can't remember at what point or if he had trouble beforehand, was half asleep while watching lol. Need to rewatch it myself.

 

[TrotBot]

you could always get the hive assimilation tech, and just assimilate them into your collective.

 

[DukeLeto42]

you could always get the hive assimilation tech, and just assimilate them into your collective.

Eh only really useful if a species has special traits and you want to replace your base pop with them (tomb world preference, irradiated trait, or psionic).

 

[TrotBot]

Eh only really useful if a species has special traits and you want to replace your base pop with them (tomb world preference, irradiated trait, or psionic).

pops are pops and more pops is doubleplusgood

*quietly printing out the liberation fleet*

 

[moyang]

Livestock is just worse job than farmer, but as a hive mind you don't have a choice to work non-hive mind pops without genetic ascension.
After getting the perk, it would be more efficient to assimilate those pops and putting in actual jobs.

 

[Bezborg]

RP reasons... For my Space Frog Megacorp citizens, the Gungai, we have to find a weak-looking species, call them Jar Jar and gene-mod them into livestock. Then they can live in the empty housing on my single Ecumenopolis. Since the Megacorp produces nothing but trade value and buys everything off the market, we welcome the little Jar Jar into our many stomachs.

 

[DeanTheDull]

So a couple of things:

• Spreading them out is an excellent way to feed your population at a small stab cost.
• Livestock cost a little housing and some amenities, but have no other upkeep and do not take up job slots.
• As a hive mind, you're naturally taking biological ascension, and nerve-stapled livestock stop impacting happiness. Once you get that, massive livestock populations no longer directly influence stability.

By the end-game, your empire can be fed almost entirely with a set of livestock worlds (personally I like consolidating species onto their homeworlds, but that's solely an RP choice), and since you're using food for alloys you effectively only need generator districts for basic resources.

This is the way.

Economically, live-stock's main benefit is that they generally remove the need for farming districts to get food, which can save thousands of minerals and dozens to hundreds of admin cap depending on how you acquire them. Unless you expand so wide you slow all growth to a crawl, after a certain point in the game your total number of districts is a limiting factor. By transitioning to a livestock food-economy, those limited districts can be repurposed, letting them serve Mineral, energy or even Alloy production functions.

Livestock also become a early-game conquest loop with Catalytic Converters, as food fuels alloys for more conquest for more food.

 

[hart30]

I just sell excess livestock on the slave market until the newly conquered planet stability can bear the amount of livestock on it. Then i let them grow. That way i gain both - lots of food and energy without a big hassle/micro.

 

[Scyobi_Empire]

They're worth it, on a Hive World one pop can make 14.3 food.
I can get an image if needed.

 

[currylambchop]

They're worth it, on a Hive World one pop can make 14.3 food.
I can get an image if needed.

I thought livestock can’t live in hive worlds?

 

[DeanTheDull]

I thought livestock can’t live in hive worlds?

They can for Necrophage-hives. They can also grow for Necrophage hives.

Necrophage-hiveminds with Catalytic Converters are in a weird but very potent place.

 

[hart30]

For now catalytic coverters are banned for all empire types on most multiplayer servers..it is really sad, because they are very fun to play. All because of that stupid exploit.

 

[Incompetent]

Livestock is just worse job than farmer, but as a hive mind you don't have a choice to work non-hive mind pops without genetic ascension.
After getting the perk, it would be more efficient to assimilate those pops and putting in actual jobs.

This. Livestock is one of the better non-job roles, and as such they were situationally quite useful in earlier versions, but ever since 3.0 came out, jobs have been far more readily available than pops in almost every circumstance.

In 3.X, for it to be worth deliberately putting pops in non-jobs (when those pops are capable of doing jobs), you'd have to be in an extremely high-density scenario to the point where jobs are actually scarce again, probably involving a ton of pop raiding while barely taking any more territory, but in that case you're probably RPing anyway.

 

[Tech Noir Synth]

They're worth it, on a Hive World one pop can make 14.3 food.
I can get an image if needed.

Which is terrible job output compared to a normal famer. Livestock food output is 4 instead of 6 like a normal farmer. But the biggest issue is, livestock food output is not a farmer job and thus tech which increases farmer output by 20% does not apply to it. Farmer jobs become better as the game goes on while Livestock does not.

You know the best edicts are the 3 edicts which boost food, energy and mineral output by 50%. These edicts do not apply to Livestock pops aswell.

They can for Necrophage-hives. They can also grow for Necrophage hives.

Necrophage-hiveminds with Catalytic Converters are in a weird but very potent place.

They are weird and not potent at all. They are extremely weak. Please see our detailed discussion here.
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ected-a-buff-to-hives-but-got-a-nerf.1491071/

They have slow growth, inflexible economy and nothing going for them aside from starting with more pops. They are a terrible version of a non-Gestalt Necrophage. Take some to analyse the ingame images and you will realize how awful Hivemind Necrophages really are.

 

[Scyobi_Empire]

Which is terrible job output compared to a normal famer. Livestock food output is 4 instead of 6 like a normal farmer. But the biggest issue is, livestock food output is not a farmer job and thus tech which increases farmer output by 20% does not apply to it. Farmer jobs become better as the game goes on while Livestock does not.

You know the best edicts are the 3 edicts which boost food, energy and mineral output by 50%. These edicts do not apply to Livestock pops aswell.

You seem to forget that they take up 0.25 housing. I can fill a planet with 60 pops and only use 15 housing and produce 858 food, how much food can 15 farmers produce?

You also have forgotten the jobs freed up by having 60 pops as livestock, I could improve my Tech Output or get some more Rare Resources or even make everyone hate me by employing clerics!... Never.
I may be a Xenophage, but even I draw a line at that!