Beaver life spans and births

48 votes

I suggest randomizing the life span of beavers within some range, so that they don't always die in batches when they die of old age. Usually, if one or more lodges are constructed at the same time, a bunch of beavers are born at the same time. Then, those beavers will die at the same time a few cycles later. Randomizing both their age limit and the time between [lodge is constructed] to [baby beaver is born] could be a way to not have them die in batches.

Under consideration Gameplay Suggestion Suggested by: Alcaztrul (03 Oct, '21) • Upvoted: 23 Mar • Comments: 10

Comments: 10

22 Oct, '21
LordRedStone Merged
When playing Folktails, I often notice that my birth and death patterns are very similar after a certain stage. When you start maxing out on Fertility, there are newborn kits every night as soon as buildings become free. That means they are born in groups of up to 8 - and they all die at the same time too.

My suggestion is to introduce more variance to the "random" death: Keep overall life expectancy the same, but allow some beavers to live longer (/ shorter) so not all siblings die at once.

- This doesn't make sense
I am no beaver expert, but I know that it doesn't work like that in humans.
- Reduces pain points
It can be annoying if ten beavers randomly die on the same day. You need to pull them from other jobs to fill in the gaps in the supply chain.
- It would lead to more varied gameplay
In my opinion, spreading the deaths out is better. Even if that means having some beavers die earlier, it is easier to offset fewer deaths per day and it makes for more interesting g
23 Oct, '21
FuryoftheStars Merged
https://timberborn.featureupvote.com/suggestions/221385/beaver-life-spans-and-births
29 Oct, '21
Jeff
Just came here to suggest the same thing. I have even tried to force variation like removing housing (playing folktails) when I know they are about to die to try to trickle in the new beavers by adding in housing back slowly, but after a couple cycles, it's back to big death waves (up to about 20% of all beavers in a district) in a night or two. Maybe a "statue of remembrance" for fallen beavers that helps to randomize lifespan a little more. WIth some tag-line about living each day to the fullest. :)
30 Oct, '21
DRY411S Merged
I'm into Cycle 15, day 10 of my first playthrough (forktails) and having great fun.

Twice now, my colony has suffered when many, many beavers, all well fed and watered, with high well being, have all died at the same time of old age, with the result that many buildings have no workers. Death at a certain fixed age seems absolute.

Sure, I know I could have a large unemployed workforce waiting in the wings, but that's expensive in terms of food and water.

I'd like to suggest that it should be 'life expectancy' that rises with well being, with a probability of death that increases as the beavers get older.
30 Oct, '21
Gin Fuyou Admin
"[Observation] Many beavers dying at the same time, of old age?" (suggested by DRY411S on 2021-10-30), including upvotes (1) and comments (0), was merged into this suggestion.
03 Nov, '21
DRY411S
Better than randomizing perhaps would be to use some models, where the probability of you dying in the next year is dependent on your current age, and average life expectancy of the the current population. The Gompertz–Makeham law of mortality is an example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gompertz%E2%80%93Makeham_law_of_mortality
13 Jul, '22
Gin Fuyou Admin
"[Tuning] Death of natural causes should be more varied" (suggested by LordRedStone on 2021-10-22), including upvotes (10) and comments (1), was merged into this suggestion.
02 Jun, '23
Scarletspydr
The first observation after my first 20 hours of play was the mass death by old age of the beavers. Having a 2-4% variance on the days they live can keep the population rolling so there is always staggered births and maturation's to keep the community going. Had a large group almost die of thirst as my population dropped by over 30% and many jobs were unfilled for 3 days while the young grew up.
02 Jun, '23
Jcheung Admin
or you can learn to stagger the birth rates by limiting housing when there's a large opening. i personally go for 4 kits per 100 rounded up, but 10 per hundred is also perfectly managable

having a 2-4% variance doesn't solve the problem of random waves of deaths, as 2-4% is only 1-2 days base, 2-4 max lifespan. it'll take several death wave cycles to even begin to break out of the waves, and then it'll converge in the future at some point to still cause surges.
24 Nov, '23
Peter
I should by suggest as well Add some model for foods? More deferent food they're get more born beavers. So if you feed just with carrots, and you have 10 beavers, it born max 1 per cycle, with 2 food it could by 2-3.