A list of Rancher ideas

[Kotlol]

After wall posting on general about my thoughts of Rancher I came up with an idea to improve it.. then more.. so let me give you a small list of ideas to make Rancher more appealing to players new and old. And also make late joining Rancher slightly more attractive.

Suggestion 1: Growth Hormones

Botanists have ways to control the life time of a plant, growth speed , yield and such. Wouldn't it be nice if Rancher had even ONE OF THESE OPTIONS? To manipulate the gene pool of chickens? Well that would be an entire system that will drive coders crazy so let's make it easier.
GROWTH HORMONES!
You know that thing that is questionable to give to Cows, Pigs and such? Well NT is about production so legalize em! You can now give chicks (and bee larva) some growth hormones so they grow up faster and bigger. But don't overdose the poor things or they might get missgrowths (elephant chicken), explode or their meat and eggs aren't exactly consumer friendly... to even infertility (No egg for you)

Risk reward eh?

Suggestion 2: Injecting feed.

You can force feed chickens but it's a hassle, you can try to make them eat it and it will work, but RNG doesn't ensure the right eggs or things hatch. Why not inject feed into the chickens and roosters to get a 100% effect for the next egg to be what you need? This way keeping lower numbers is easier, but... doing so will make the chicken hate you and roosters attack you.

Suggestion 3: Egg Gene incubator

You know when I said about the whole system I don't think Coders want to do? Well here it is anyway... Introducing a special incubator that allows you to read the current genes of an egg and change them, though... do it wrong and well.. horrible chickens come out you can't really use... But this might need a whole overhaul of how eggs work... so prehapse not the number 1 idea. Wich is why it's number 3.

Suggestion 4: Assured fishing.

As far as I know, there is the fishing portal, but I never seem to can find it. Infact only Oshan gives us assured fishing... why not just give us a fishing pond or something to fish in right away? I know you can order fish or ask the Chef, but wouldn't it be cool if we can just you know? Fish while we wait for our chickens to grow up. Give cargo something to sell in the meantime?

Suggestion 5: A better guide.

A book tells us what feed to get and what to "do" how to get our chickens... there is just 1 eensie weenie tiny problem with it.
It doesn't tell stuff like: "You need a rooster to hatch an egg that ate the feed and it's only a 50% chance"
While I am up for discovering things in SS13 for newbies, this stuff is never mentioned anywhere... it just says: "GIVE IT THIS FOOD AND IT WILL COME" In the meantime you are removing roosters cause you want to control the population of your chickens.... so they never appear and thus you report it as a bug.

It's time to change this lil book of arrows to include things with information like:
"While the diagram shows what feed is needed, there might be other steps needed to get desired results, like "Having a rooster hatch an egg while under feed effects"
This text alone will make new ranchers know from the get go that they might need to do something else to get their desired chickens then just obtaining the feed, thus less players feel frustrated.

Final Suggestion: Show us the RNG.

I know RNG is mostly hidden from most departments that have them. Aka Mining, Artsci, botany. You do all have a visual or mechanic to know what the RNG can contain or even manipulate it. Artsci has examining the artifact to activating the artifact to know what it do... Botany can keep track of plant stats, Mining can use the quantum telescope to find an asteriod with the right materials insted of just flat RNG.
While I had some suggestion lowering the time or lowering the RNG. Having Ranchers show what their chances are in some "In universe way" helps alot, so they can tell they are on the right path. Insted of... sitting there and praying the next chicken that hatches or next egg that gets laid is the right one. Having some sort of device or hint or anything to know they activated the RNG chance will help alot more and make rancher abit more fun. (EX: "This chicken seems to have some brown feathers and is really happy", this would hint they will lay brown eggs soon when examined)

Closing statement:

I know this has been discussed to death and people think Rancher is fine, but the fact remains you have to wait for chickens to grow up to see the fruits of your labor, everything takes time and RNG... it just becomes tiring to be a rancher and their decrease in numbers and the fact most veteran ranchers do not return to it... says enough to me something needs to be changed to either make it slightly newbie friendlier or a way to get results visibly faster... or atleast some sort of information.

That is all. Am I wrong? Am I right? Leave a reply to tell me

[DioChasek]

Point 1 talk to your local sci nerd for ageinium.
Point 2 sure
Point 3 eh
Point 4 yeah agreed, that and give Dolly an actual purpose.
Point 5 the wiki covers the majority of the nitty gritty on this.
Final point I can agree with that.

My gripe is rad storms. They can completely destroy your round as rancher. No other department has this problem. At most it’s an annoyance to medbay or a delay in what you were doing but rancher can pretty much stick a fork in their round. Chickens and Dolly and need rad immunity full stop.

[Kotlol]

Point 1 talk to your local sci nerd for ageinium.
Point 2 sure
Point 3 eh
Point 4 yeah agreed, that and give Dolly an actual purpose.
Point 5 the wiki covers the majority of the nitty gritty on this.
Final point I can agree with that.

My gripe is rad storms. They can completely destroy your round as rancher. No other department has this problem. At most it’s an annoyance to medbay or a delay in what you were doing but rancher can pretty much stick a fork in their round. Chickens and Dolly and need rad immunity full stop.

1 Ageinium works on chickens???
5 I do know of the wiki covering most of this stuff, but the thing is... "THE WIKI" is something I use if I do not want to read books in game to get my instructions.
The books need to cover the basics for information, the wiki shows the answer. Besides the goon wiki is easy to find yes, but not everyone tries to look for a wiki.
Good game design shouldn't be "Just look up the wiki" Just adding a note saying that you need "Feed + other"

I did mention in the general one how a Rad storm can mess it all up, you can save at best two to three chickens before a rad storm hits, but Dolly and the other chickens might as well be doomed. Either the ranch needs Rad storm protection or the chickens and Dolly's need protection. It's especially annoying with rounds with 2 to 3 rad storms (YES I HAD A SHIFT WITH 3 RAD STORMS!) I forgot to add that point, thanks for adding!

[DioChasek]

Yep ageinium indeed increases chicken maturation by double. That being said it is “secret” recipe so some chemists might not know how to make it. I also tend to only ever use it in on 1st or 2nd gen chickens to try and speed things up a little bit because if you use it on too many chickens too quickly you can’t possibly keep up with the micromanaging of your flock.

[SenExus]

Honestly, a couple of your points are pretty valid, but the rest are kinda ehhh. Chicken RNG is limited to hatching, and even that has a pity system, so your point about a better guide for RNG is literally just adding the "You need a rooster to hatch an egg that ate the feed and it's only a 50% chance" to the Wiki (Or to the book in game, which I feel like you, and only you uses), which you could very well do yourself. The first is covered by Ageinium, PLUS, you seem to not be aware that Ranchers CAN control the chickens lifespan with Ixworth chickens. The Gene Incubator is a so so idea, it could be interesting, but on its own it would require a rework which is more effort than most Devs want to put in for changing chickens a bit. Injecting feed feels like it'd make getting OP chickens pretty trivial to get, the miniscule amount of RNG in Rancher exists for a reason. Also, for that last point, I can't think of a single in-universe way to check the RNG of chickens, so I dunno about that. Sorry if I came off snippy in my reply, but I feel like the majority of these ideas aren't the best in terms of making Rancher more enjoyable (At least to me)  

[Kotlol]

Honestly, a couple of your points are pretty valid, but the rest are kinda ehhh. Chicken RNG is limited to hatching, and even that has a pity system, so your point about a better guide for RNG is literally just adding the "You need a rooster to hatch an egg that ate the feed and it's only a 50% chance" to the Wiki (Or to the book in game, which I feel like you, and only you uses), which you could very well do yourself. The first is covered by Ageinium, PLUS, you seem to not be aware that Ranchers CAN control the chickens lifespan with Ixworth chickens. The Gene Incubator is a so so idea, it could be interesting, but on its own it would require a rework which is more effort than most Devs want to put in for changing chickens a bit. Injecting feed feels like it'd make getting OP chickens pretty trivial to get, the miniscule amount of RNG in Rancher exists for a reason. Also, for that last point, I can't think of a single in-universe way to check the RNG of chickens, so I dunno about that. Sorry if I came off snippy in my reply, but I feel like the majority of these ideas aren't the best in terms of making Rancher more enjoyable (At least to me)  

Showing chances on the wiki would be nice too, but from a newbie perspective, you will use the guide and get frustrated. I don't like "USE THE WIKI" as a defense... if some basic knowledge about: "You may need a rooster to hatch an egg" or such... to inspire experimentation would help alot more then just "FEED X " or "GET A" 
I'm 100% fine with experimentation... but there is no hint to use Roosters for this, that alone in the book would fix newbie frustrations without saying: "USE THE WIKI"
Even the cook book, surgery book and such tell you what to do and so does the botany guide, but the field guide is practically leaving out important information.

That said.. Ageinium is a secret chem, not everyone knows it or uses it. So "using this" as a defense is like saying to an antagonist: "An egg that makes you shrink covers that" ...Especailly on RP where "Secret stuff" shouldn't be common knowledge on the station by someone as random as a Rancher. But that's just me. I still think having growth horomones will be a fun new mechanic ontop of the Agenium that doesn't involve chemistry. Growth hormones can have bad effects after all, thus causing the Rancher to decide to use it or not, wich in term makes Ageinium a safer option.

Also you need to breed ONE TYPE OF CHICKEN, to control ALL TYPES OF CHICKENS. That's not a good defense. it means to be an effective rancher you need to keep making the same type of chickens 1st, before starting on your special chicken project to make it smoother, if this was a long term game sure, but this is a "period game" where you start from scratch every time. If there is a way to speed it up... sure...

As for injecting, yea this is probaly a weaker point of mine. It's more or less based on how there has to be a trade off to control RNG. Like with botany can manipulate seeds but it could cause damage to it or even break the seed. I was thinking of that kinda thing, but maybe injecting feed is "too easy" so maybe another methode that's more risky? Like "mutated" food but it could kill your chicken? Just thinking.

RNG check in universe I already gave a suggestion. Something simple as flavor text when examining them will help alot. For Henks example.. "Rooster, it seems to have a red beak" Showing that it's ready to hatch for Henks.
Then we have from white to brown: "Chicken, Seems to have some brown feathers" Showing it's ready to lay brown eggs, and such. Something as small as that will make it much more easier to see. Heck for raptors I can see. "Does it have a tooth in it's beak?"
Again not perfect.

But atleast you added some good commentary to make me re-think the ideas. And yes.. the egg gene manipulator is defintally the "impossible" idea of the book and I only suggested it to see how it's recieved, I can't code for shit but I even know that THIS IDEA IS PAINFULL FOR THE DEVS! But we all agree rancher needs some side tasks like fishing and Dolly to be more usefull/consitent

[Confuseddp]

Personally we need more help with unhappy/vomit chicken breeds. People spend the entire round for nothing.

Also can we get a chicken breed for feeding it blob chunks.

[SenExus]

Also can we get a chicken breed for feeding it blob chunks.

When you

When you code it