Pen marker

Pen marker

A post with a sign designating an animal pen. It must be placed in an area enclosed by fences, barricades, walls, and doors. You can assign each pen marker a set of animals to accept, and handlers will bring animals to an appropriate pen.

Base Stats

Type

Building – Misc

Mass

8 kg

Beauty

0

HP

100

Flammability

100%

Path Cost

0 (100%)

Building

Size

1 × 1

Minifiable

True

Placeable

True

Passability

pass through only

Cover Effectiveness

15%

Terrain Affordance

Light

Creation

Work To Make

600 ticks (10 secs)

Stuff Tags

Metallic, Woody, Stony

Resources to make

30

Deconstruct yield

15

Destroy yield

7 - 8

Technical

thingCategories

BuildingsMisc

Pen markers designate a zone for pen animals to be held, and one is required if you wish to "rope" a tamed animal and lead them to that pen. Pen markers determine which types of animals will be kept in each pen, and provide other utility as well. Each different pen that you wish to use needs a pen marker.

Acquisition

Pen markers can be constructed, each requiring  30 Stuff (Metallic/Woody/Stony, 300 for SMVs) and 600 ticks (10 secs) of work modified by the construction speed of the builder and the work to build factor and offset of the material.

Summary

For a more complete discussion, see Pen.

While all animals are tamable, some animals cannot be trained or set to an allowed area and instead must be led to a designated pen; if they are not led to a designated pen or have an accessible path to exit the map, pen animals will slowly wander away. Pens can only be defined by a pen marker.

Analysis

Pen markers are cheap (30 material), and are required if you wish to actively use your pens, to lead recently tamed animals to that pen so they don't wander away. A pen is defined when a pen marker is placed within fences, walls, doors and natural terrain (hills) preventing any exit toward the sides of the map. However, unlike rooms, pens will expand if a gate, door or animal flaps is "held open", allowing you to easily expand, restrict or open pen areas when needed. (This also means that if you "hold open" a door leading to a pen, those halls and rooms will soon be visited by any pen animals, and their filth.)

In addition to defining a pen, Pen markers provide three tabs (see images at bottom) to help manage domestic/tamed animals. These are:

• An "Animals" menu in order to select what animals are allowed in that pen (male / female option included).
• A "Food" information popup that shows the available "grazing" nutrition value of the pen, the number of different animals currently in the pen, and the total consumption calculation. By default, cows/goats/chickens are shown, plus any animals actually present, and you can "force" other animals onto the list if you wish to see their consumption rates. This can help you plan whether the field size holds enough nutrition for them to graze unassisted, or if you'll need to manually feed them to supplement their grazing.
• An "Auto-cut" menu to designate what plants are allowed to grow within the pen and what are not. (Some are good grazing food, some are not (and these are selected by default), but cutting them does require labor from your colony.)

When managing pens make sure to check the nutrition grown compared to the nutrition consumed, if there nutrition grown is less than the nutrition consumed then animal starvation is inevitable.

Pen Marker Menus

• 

  Animal Menu

• 

  Food Menu

• 

  Auto-cut Menu

Stats table

Pen marker	Beauty	Work to Build	HP	Flamma­bility	Market Value
Material
Bioferrite	0	001,500 ticks (25 secs)	200	75%	28
Gold	20	000,540 ticks (9 secs)	60	40%	3,000
Granite blocks	0	003,740 ticks (1.04 mins)	170	0%	41
Limestone blocks	0	003,740 ticks (1.04 mins)	155	0%	41
Marble blocks	1	003,440 ticks (57.33 secs)	120	0%	39
Plasteel	0	001,320 ticks (22 secs)	280	0%	275
Sandstone blocks	0	003,140 ticks (52.33 secs)	140	0%	38
Silver	6	000,600 ticks (10 secs)	70	40%	300
Slate blocks	0	003,740 ticks (1.04 mins)	130	0%	41
Steel	0	000,600 ticks (10 secs)	100	40%	59
Jade	10	003,000 ticks (50 secs)	50	0%	161
Uranium	0	001,140 ticks (19 secs)	250	0%	184
Wood	0	000,420 ticks (7 secs)	65	100%	38

Version history

• 1.3.3066 - Added
• 1.3.3101 - Fix: Animal pen marker animal consumption assumes animals are always hungry, halving reported consumption.

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Architect

Misc

Caravan hitching spot • Egg box • Grave • Marriage spot • Party spot • Pen marker • Sarcophagus • Tool cabinet • Meditation spot • Nature shrine (Large, Small)

(research)

Comms console • Cryptosleep casket • Firefoam popper • Ground-penetrating scanner • Long-range mineral scanner • Moisture pump • Multi-analyzer • Orbital trade beacon • Pod launcher • Stele (Large, Grand) • Transport pod • Vitals monitor • Ship landing beacon