What do you use to feed your hatch ?

[SinnerSS]

I 'm having problem with power because i didn't have enough coal for the coal generator. I found 2 hatchs but i don't know what to use to feed them. I tried to plant Blossom but they grow very slow so they didn't provide enough fruits to feed them. Is there any kind of infinity resource i could use beside slime (i need them for the bio distiller)?

[vonVile]

Clay. Its the only material that's bountiful, but pretty much useless. All its used for is pots for plants. Put a Storage container where your Hatches are, fill it only with Clay, and then dump it for Hatches to eat.

[Falcahtas]

Err just use Sandstone and Dirt.

 

You will probably get bored before you run out of those...

If you do run out just feed them Ice, which is infinite due to infinite water.

[Vilda]

Order of Hatch food by (not) usefulness:

Clay - nothing to do with it now, but heat resistant farm
(Polluted) Ice - As soon as the chunk is big enough, melting it takes way too much effort.
Indigenous / sedimentary rock - its everywhere and has no decor bonus like granite or sandstone

[heckubis]

all minerals but sandstone, granite, and abbysalt and sand  . I will feed them any other non metal. I even make extra fertilizer so I don't mind them eating as much of that as they feel like either

[Ciderblock]

7 hours ago, vonVile said:

Clay. Its the only material that's bountiful, but pretty much useless. All its used for is pots for plants. Put a Storage container where your Hatches are, fill it only with Clay, and then dump it for Hatches to eat.

Technically you can turn clay back into sand with enough heat, though I still don't know whether that's practical.

More on topic: just surplus rock. In the long run it would be cool to use frozen CO2.

[Vilda]

47 minutes ago, Ciderblock said:

Technically you can turn clay back into sand with enough heat, though I still don't know whether that's practical.

No, clay turns into a Brick. Dirt turns to a Sand at cca 300 °C The only time I managed that was when it was surrounded from 3 sides by ingneous rock that was from cooled magma.

[Lifegrow]

5 hours ago, Ciderblock said:

In the long run it would be cool to use frozen CO2.

You can - just be careful with excess liquid CO2 as it'll murder them instantly

Working on an efficient way of doing this currently - had a system in place on stream, but sadly my wheezeworts went crazy and started cooling my hydrogen (which I was using in a radiator pipe setup to cool the CO2) to -270ish... 

Essentially what followed was a waterfall of raining liquid o2/liquid CO2/Solid CO2

 

[Jumpp]

Clay. 

The tricky thing about clay is that deodorizers produce it in frequent tiny bits. If you just set up a clay compactor, your dupes will spend a lot of time hauling 50g bits of clay.

So the correct technique is:

1. Create an enclosure and herd all your hatches into it. Keep them in there by creating double-wide ladders or pneumatic doors.

2. Put a compactor in the hatch enclosure, with priority 6+, containing only clay, and set for sweep-only.

3. Important. Ensure that no other compactor is able to hold clay.

4. Manually tag large clumps of clay for sweeping.

5. From time to time, uncheck and then re-check the clay box on your compactor, to make them dump their clay.

That way there's always a ready supply of clay for your hatches to eat. They can't leave the enclosure. Meanwhile, your dupes can easily get in to recover the coal, and since you never tag the clay in the enclosure for sweeping, your dupes won't try to move it.

[n37runn3r]

I made mine an "island" of natural tiles near the bottom of my base and put my compost piles next to it, they eat the fertilizer. I keep the area "temperate" and they seem quite happy to wander the base at night cleaning up whatever minerals are on the floor and return home in the morning.

Edit: forgot to mention I turned off "Combat" for all my Dupes and my base is now totally full of coal compactors, so that may not be the best for everyone.

[n37runn3r]

Using up your dirt means no mush bars and no outhouses

[heckubis]

8 hours ago, n37runn3r said:

Using up your dirt means no mush bars and no outhouses

Heat up algae and watch what happens now for the learning to make slime(hmmm don't think we can yet)

[n37runn3r]

I haven't been able to do that. I think it takes either magma or more heat than I can currently generate. I have problems getting the electricity going most of the time.

[DaniBlue]

clay and getting a puft stuck in their room helps too, put a storage conatiner in the room out of their reach and fill with slime and puft will keep make more slime for them to eat