Rancher

Rancher turns captured biters and spitters into livestock.
Build rectangular pens, capture aliens with the shortcut lasso, breed tier-matched offspring, and move domesticated creatures between pens with fish bait.

Core features

• Capture hostile or already domesticated biters and spitters with the Rancher lasso shortcut.
• Build rectangular ranch pens with ranch-wall, ranch-gate, and ranch-pen-anchor.
• Breed biters and spitters when a pen contains both a normal and female unit of the same tier.
• Native enemy spawners alternate between normal and female biters/spitters.
• Use raw fish in a pen anchor to attract nearby domesticated units from other pens.
• Open a gate between pens to let attracted creatures cross into the new pen.

How the lasso works

1. Research Ranching.
2. Click the Rancher lasso shortcut in the lower-right shortcut bar.
3. Click a hostile or domesticated alien unit to capture it.
4. Walk to a valid ranch pen.
5. Alt-select while standing inside the pen to assign the captured unit.
6. Click the same captured unit again to detach it from the lasso.

How to build a valid pen

• Every pen must contain exactly one ranch-pen-anchor inside the enclosure you want to register.
• The enclosure must be an axis-aligned rectangle.
• The perimeter must be made only from ranch-wall and ranch-gate.
• The perimeter must include at least one ranch-gate.

Simple pen schematic

Legend:
W = ranch-wall
G = ranch-gate
A = ranch-pen-anchor
. = empty interior tile

W W G G G W W
W . . . . . . . . . . W
W . . A . . . . . W
W . . . .. . . . . . W
W W W W W W

Breeding rules

• Small biter + female biter -> small biter / female biter on alternating births
• Medium biter + female medium biter -> medium biter / female medium biter
• Big biter + female big biter -> big biter / female big biter
• Behemoth biter + female behemoth biter -> behemoth biter / female behemoth biter
• Small spitter + female small spitter -> small spitter / female small spitter
• Medium spitter + female medium spitter -> medium spitter / female medium spitter
• Big spitter + female big spitter -> big spitter / female big spitter
• Behemoth spitter + female behemoth spitter -> behemoth spitter / female behemoth spitter

Fish attraction between pens

• Put raw fish into a ranch-pen-anchor.
• That pen will attract nearby domesticated units within 50 tiles.
• Each unit that successfully enters the target pen consumes 1 raw fish.
• Attraction uses a deterministic target near a pen gate to help movement between adjacent pens.

Important notes

• Female variants reuse vanilla graphics, but are larger and lighter.
• Ranch walls, gates, and anchors reuse vanilla art with brown tinting.
• Pens are validated around anchors and do not use flood fill.
• The lasso is not craftable. It is provided through the shortcut bar.

Recommended first setup

1. Research Ranching.
2. Build one rectangular pen with a gate and anchor.
3. Use the shortcut lasso to capture a hostile biter or spitter.
4. Release it into the pen.
5. Add a female of the same tier.
6. Wait for breeding, or build a second pen and use fish to move livestock between them.