[DEVBLOG#329] Vanilla Ranching Expanded infographics (Patreon)

Hey everyone and welcome to a development blog that is not related to Vanilla Factions Expanded - Ultratech in any way!

We're moving towards releasing Vanilla Ranching Expanded pretty soon, and we already have the infographics all finished. They show the depth and breadth of the new content pretty well I think. I'm not sure how well you will be able to see them when I start posting them here in the actual post, so I'm also attaching all of them as images in this post's image gallery.

The biggest part of Vanilla Ranching Expanded are all the new animal genes. They are essentially traits of that specific animal and dictate how the animal behaves, what are the yields on the animal products, how often it becomes ill and so on.

Genes have stability value and your goal will be to aim for 0 stability. Negative stability will cause the animal to live a shorter lifespan, and will also affect how the genes are transferred to offspring.

Animal breeding is the main reason we have done this mod. We have designed extensive systems for transferring genes, regression to the average in case of low stability to naturally eliminate badly optimized specimens, and what I think is most important: sexual dimorphism and different animal baby art.

We have extended the system to all base game bovines while also adding some new ones to make ranching entertaining. You will now be able to have herds of Angus, or a nice little dairy cattle ranch. With Waste Animals Expanded, you can also start your own herd of wastefallos!

Pigs also received some new subspecies - as base game only really offers standard pigs and wild boars. This was a perfect opportunity for us to add Iberian pigs, as well as Durocs and Berkshire!

Sheep are one of my favourite ranch animals but at the same time I'm panicly afraid of them - I was chased by a ram once. Granted I jumped the fence on some ranch deep in the scottish wilderness so maybe I shouldn't have done that.

Merino, Dorper, Dairy and Shaggy sheep are able to crossbreed with standard sheep and each other, allowing for some decent optimization.

Horses! Everyone loves horses. We have added Arabian, Draft and Konik horses, but also extended the crossbreeding to donkeys too. Anything that makes a baby with a donkey will result in the baby being a Mule, which cannot reproduce further.

The system is extended to other base game ranchable animals, but no subspecies for them have been added. Still, through random mutations you will be able to find giant megachickens, very filthy boomalopes or cassowaries that lay extra eggs.

Alpha fighting is something I wanted in to make certain animal groups stand out. Currently, it only applies to bovines, but it's something you have to keep in mind when building your ranch. Alpha is the only animal that can reproduce with the females in that pen.

If you want a more... hand-on experience, you will be able to extract the gametes of your male animals for future inseminations. This will let you ensure you breed the offspring you want, not the offspring the animals want.

And for early tech ranching, we're adding a very helpful dog that will ensure animals don't roam out of their pens if the fence breaks.

Additionally, we're also adding an animal trough that's essentially a shelf with a maximum nutrition stored limit that you can set - so colonists will never deposit more hay in them than you require.

That's it for this mod, as I said we're moving towards a release now, and I aim it at the weekend. In the meantime, we're buried deep in work when it comes to Ultratech faction mod, so there will be some exciting devblogs dropping soon!

See you!