Stable Cap: Headcount, Not Useless Floorspace

Revolutionize Your Critter Ranching with Stable Cap: Headcount, Not Useless Floorspace

Tired of endlessly expanding your stables in Oxygen Not Included, only to find your critter happiness plummeting? The Stable Cap mod completely redefines how overcrowding works, shifting the focus from vast, empty rooms to a more strategic headcount system. Say goodbye to the old overcrowding mechanics and embrace a system that truly values your critter families.

A Smarter Approach to Critter Limits

This innovative mod introduces a fixed per-family creature cap for each room, regardless of its size. Whether your stable is a cozy 24 tiles or a sprawling 96 tiles, the limit remains the same. This means you can no longer “cheese” the system with massive enclosures; the success of your ranching operations hinges on managing the number of critters, not the amount of unused floorspace.

Understanding the Happiness Penalty

When you exceed the designated critter cap for a family, the consequences are immediate and impactful. Every critter of that specific family within the room experiences a reduction in their Happiness. This penalty scales aggressively:

• Going just one critter over the cap results in a -3 Happiness penalty, significantly slowing reproduction.
• Exceeding the cap by two critters leads to a -8 Happiness penalty, rendering them “Miserable” and halting reproduction entirely.
• Pushing the limit by three or more critters inflicts a severe -15 Happiness penalty, making even supplemental happiness buffs like Brackene ineffective.

Even a single extra critter can push your entire herd towards misery, making precise management key.

Visible Status Effects for Clarity

The mod provides clear visual feedback to help you monitor your critter populations. Overcrowded critters will display distinct status effects in their information panels. These range from “Overcrowded” (Tier 1-3) for milder penalties to “Severely Overcrowded” (Tier 4+) for significant penalties, complete with floating warning icons to alert you when your ranch is out of control. These effects are persistent as long as the cap is breached and disappear instantly once the room is under control.

Key Features of Stable Cap:

• Family-Based Caps: All variants and offspring of a critter type contribute to a single family cap.
• Intuitive Overlays: Monitor critter counts versus caps directly in the room overlay.
• Codex Integration: Each creature’s codex entry now displays its family’s room capacity.
• Excluded Critters: Non-ranchable critters like Gnit and Morb are automatically ignored.
• Full DLC Support: Compatible with the base game and all major DLCs.

Stable Cap offers a refreshing and more challenging approach to critter ranching, rewarding careful planning and management over brute force expansion.