Critter overview: breeding, ranching, outputs, and room planning

Critters are biological nodes in the base economy. They occupy space, consume food or environmental resources, and return eggs, meat, converted materials, or other outputs. Treating them as moving machines is useful: they need temperature, room, supply, and handling just as much as any production chain.

Core attributes

The most important critter attributes are reproduction, age, lifespan, calories, happiness, comfortable temperature, survival temperature, and crowding. Reproduction determines the next generation, happiness affects speed, temperature determines long-term viability, and crowding decides how many critters a room can support.

Wild care and controlled ranching

Wild care is useful early on because it asks for little infrastructure. Controlled ranching is better once the base can provide stable feed, space, and logistics. Ranching gives more predictable output, but it also increases pressure on storage, hauling, and food chains.

Temperature use

Newborn critters often enter the world at a fixed temperature, so they can slightly absorb or release heat. This is a small helper, not a replacement for real thermal design. Use insulation, heat plates, liquid loops, and gas control for the primary temperature plan.

Planning advice

Define the room purpose first: meat, eggs, conversion materials, or ecosystem support. Temporary wild care can be loose, but a long-term ranch should have clear doors, hauling paths, storage, and output collection.

Common mistakes

Do not judge a critter by single-unit output alone. The full chain matters: feed supply, output removal, heat side effects, and pathing interruptions. If one of those links fails, the ranch becomes maintenance debt instead of production.