FreeHolder Alpha 8 Hotfix 3

FreeHolder Alpha 8 Hotfix 3

3.22.2020

See dev notes below, if you're interested.

PLEASE NOTE

**!!Please note with the changes to pasture data from adding barns, pastures from old saves may be subject to corruption when loaded. Your animals will probably be fine, but you may for example have the barn icon showing even though you don't have one, and will be unable to take the build action. New saves should not have any problems. Thank you!!**

New Features

Animal Features -Animals not kept in a barn are subject to possible spooking by storms and blizzards (except for Mules)

Husbandry Features -"Move Animal" a free action which allows you to move animals from one pasture to another -"Build Barn" an action which costs 2 points and 10 timber, upgrades all pastures in a hex -Barn prevents weather roll and fatigue penalties for animal actions, as if you were in your villa -Barn provides some protection against wolf effects and attacks -Barn prevents animals from spooking due to storms and blizzards

Bugfixes

Animal Fixes -Incorrect animals such as mules can no longer become pregnant -Mules now correctly exhibit the "stubborn" trait that makes them immune to spooking and its associated friendship loss

Tile Fixes -Cliffwall Moor and Shaded Gully tile bonuses now work properly, i.e. they provide a free barn and free pasture spaces

Changes

Action Changes -Lowered cost of Fence Pasture from 5 to 4 Timber

Animal Changes -Animals are spooked for just the current month unless they escape from a wolf attack, which inflicts 2-3 months. -Animal friendship penalty from being spooked has been reduced -Slightly reduced difficulty of milking goats in general -Lowered cost of lamb to 1d and sheep to 2d -Lowered cost of foal to 1d50s and mule to 3d

Farming Changes -Fields now require twice as much fertilizer (20) for the apply fertilizer action

Skill Changes -Genius' composting skill is now twice as effective as before

Developer Notes

Animal Changes

I spent quite a bit of time testing animals this week and I came to the conclusion that they are a bit too hard to use out of the gate. I was particularly concerned with the fact that a goat being spooked by wolves could prevent collection of cheese for as many as 3 months, which is pretty excessive. Now this will only happen in the rare circumstance where an animal survives being hunted by a wolf. This makes much more sense. Animals being harder to use and less reliable than other methods of food collection is going to discourage people from using them, which I do not want.

I made the milking a LITTLE easier, not much, but it was necessary given the new weather penalties and such. This raises the question of how your animals are protected from the elements. To avoid complications I didn't bother with barns or fodder storage and such originally since it would add even more work to animals and I do want animal keeping to be somewhat less labor intensive than farming. You can handfeed them for extra health, but it doesn't take extra time.

On the other hand, barns are probably a necessary upgrade for realism. Basically, you can build a barn on any hex with at least one pasture, and thereafter all pastures in that hex are upgraded to use the barn. What does this mean? One, all animal interactions ignore weather as if you were performing villa actions. Milking goats or shearing sheep in a storm