Wild Bug Ranch 1.0.0b, Patreon Preview

The Wild Bug Ranch enables you to breed wild bugs that you find, such as Butterflies and Ladybugs, so that you can have more of them available for recipes for Magical and Herbalism Potions and Serums.

To 'grow bugs', place the wild bugs you've found inside the inventory of the Wild Bug Ranch, either by dragging and dropping them on top of it or into the open Inventory window, or using the Add Insects interaction.  You can put other things inside the bug ranch, but only insects will replicate. It should be compatible with all of the insects in the Insect Collection.

The bugs need flowers to breed and they are used up in the process. To add flowers, select Add Flowers on the bug ranch when you have flowers in your sim's inventory. Unfortunately, just putting them in the Bug Ranch's inventory doesn't work -- you need to use Add Flowers and add them that way. Each Bug Ranch can be loaded with up to six flowers. Common flowers count as 1 flower, Uncommon flowers count as 2 flowers, and Rare flowers count as 3 flowers.

Every three hours, there is a base 50% chance that one of the pairs of bugs in the Bug Ranch will breed and create another bug of the same type. NOTE: There must be at least TWO bugs of a particular species inside the Bug Ranch in order to breed, because Nature. Breeding a bug uses up one flower. Once the flowers are gone, the Bug Ranch won't breed more bugs until you add more flowers. I'm getting about 2-5 bugs per day between two Bug Ranches right now. 

There are various modifiers to breeding, based on how many bugs are currently in the box. Lower numbers of bugs in a bug ranch will allow plenty of room for them to breed. On the other hand, higher numbers of bugs provide many opportunities to breed. Sims with Super Green Thumbs or Master Herbalists will also tend to breed more bugs.

Each time a Bug Ranch creates a new bug, it will generate a notification. There is no limit to the number of bugs in each box, but at a certain point the bugs become overcrowded and stop breeding (about 50 bugs per box). There is no limit to the number of Bug Ranches per lot, and each one gets its own inventory and chance to breed every three hours.

Sims can also View the bugs in the Bug Ranch. The effects are the same as Viewing the individual bug terrariums you find.

As always, let me know if you have any questions or suggestions!

In-progress development notes

I spent most of a week trying to get the replication vs inventory access correct, so that it would only replicate bugs, but also allow you to easily use the existing Inventory interactions. What you see in it now is the best compromise I could come up with.

It changes some effects based on how full it is (more bugs appear). I might make that more pronounced. 

I'm still trying out the speed and rate it creates new bugs. Input would be very welcome on this!

Change Log

• 1.0.0b, 4/1/2023, Initial Patreon Preview