Chickenware window boxes

[Cogliostro]

In the age of sail and to a lesser extent even now, it was common practice for sailors to have livestock aboard for food and entertainment value. Bears, monkeys, and parrots all had a part to play in this, but this suggestion starts small:

Let's have buildable coops/boxes for chickens.

It would work just like the current earthenware window box for plants. It would be a machine that produces a small amount of eggs or meat each day it's operated.

Suggested requirements to build:
- 800g of wood
- a wire screen (there is one already in the game, currently used for Beehives - requires metal and 7 days of work)
- 200g of grass
- 100g of eggs (all thanks to Piscator)
Built: anywhere (like earthenware boxes)

And to operate (projects it has):

Producing eggs
- 30g of wheat, rye, or barley
- Automatic Unattended
Result: 50g of eggs a day.

Producing chicken meat
- 30g of wheat, rye, or barley
- Automatic Unattended
Result: 250g of meat a day.

Ok, so the name of the machine was a bit of a joke. In actual practice we should call it "Chicken incubation box"

[Dudel]

Well it wouldn't be "chicken meat" and it should be less about "chicken" and more about "birds".

...but I like it!

We'll just pretend the slaughtering of baby chicks goes "behind the scenes" and no one actually kills them... or something.

[Cogliostro]

"Poultry inbcubator box"?

[Dudel]

Couldn't you drop the "incubator" and just call it a "Poultry Box"? O.o

Its a bird box! XD ...and it gives you "free eggs".

[Cogliostro]

Poultry window box. Oh yeah, baby!

[Piscator]

I'm afraid that we will have to wait until some kind of domestication is implemented, since the most critical part, the chicken, is missing from the requirements.

I would be more than happy to see something like this, but there has to be agreement on how to handle domestication issues first.

[Cogliostro]

I really disagree, Pisc. We don't need any domestication stuff for it to work, just look at the requirements. As for the chickens, probably Dudel is right and it shouldn't necessarily be a chicken at all. Just a generic bird will work, and they are everywhere in abundance.

Or put it this way, if we can make soups without water... then chickenboxes without chickens are nothing to lose sleep over.

Complicated domestication code if it ever gets done can later work side-by-side with these simple poultry window boxes.

[Piscator]

As you said, you would need a generic bird. At some places there are no birds. I'm very much against creating animals from thin air. Water is whole another issue since it is everywhere and just needs to be collected.

[Cogliostro]

Come on, you know that's really being too anal. Pages of examples from the game could be given showing that a ton of much worse stuff is currently being "created from thin air" as you say.

But with birds, we don't even need those examples - because when hunting, we can get eggs. What came first, the chicken or the... Well we don't care, we'll cozy up the eggs in their nest of grass, under our nice wire mesh, and they will hatch, and we'll have birds.

I am updating the build requirements to include 100g of eggs. Optionally, they can be the eggs of the proud and very detail-oriented Piscator bird.

[Dudel]

Actually my first thought WAS, "Don't we need to domesticate first" but then my brain said... "Not for only eggs you idiot."

Really... its just eggs.. not so much the "bird"...

You are taking the eggs from a bird and using them to make something.... not so much the bird.

I've seen eggs EVERYWHERE but not always birds.

I'd actually have to, oddly enough, agree with Cogliostro, its a bit anal.

There are a lot of projects that need items that one has never seen ALL OVER THE PLACE... I really don't see why this one should be different.

[Genevieve]

I like the idea of the eggs "hatching" to create birds you never see but must feed in order to get more eggs or meat from them

[Cogliostro]

Yup! Exactly. The programming should be trivial too since it's just a copy-paste of the earthenware stuff with a couple changes.

[Caesar]

But someone needs to keep the eggs warm before they hatch. Who will be sitting on the eggs, then?

[Piscator]

The idea with the eggs is actually quite good. That would pretty much be like the beehive, which is a domestication precedent.

This system would not distinguish between birds and reptiles though. As long as it is only supposed to generate meat and more eggs, that should be absolutely no problem.

If we wanted to have e.g. feathers, too, a more complicated system would be required. I'm currently trying to find out how hard it would be to create a "catch poultry" project and I wouldn't like to see a machine introduced now, that could perhaps be implemented better in the near future.

[*Wiro]

Producing chicken
- 30 grams of egg
- Automatic Unattended
Result: 500 grams of chicken