Why bother with ranching?

[Stoned]

Considering water ranching is by far the cheapest method to feed your colony. You just need the water for the pincha pepper and have the best food.

Dreckos are pretty inefficient, but having some will give you the precious reed fiber.

Slicksters in the hundreds are easy to achieve, given how much CO2 you produce and can farm from meteor shower if you want (Meteors leave a trail of CO2). Once you have build up the population you don‘t need any more dupe time or much space since they lay an egg during  their lifetime even if not groomed. Just feed them. Take the petroleum as a bonus.

Squeaky pufts - pretty much the same as slicksters. Build up around a hundred and finally have a use for your chlorine.

Shove voles give you a reason to deal with regolith, you can fully automate their feeding. They give 10 meat each and you just have to keep around 5 of them groomed and fed to deal with all of your regolith. Mega efficient. It takes a while to get them going since the excess population lives for quite a while before they starve.

Pacus. I use algae from space to feed them. Using automation to feed them 10 kg per pacu per cycle I get quite a few pacu eggs. They weigh 4 kg each, giving you an impressive number of omelette calories. I use that to feed sage hatches to ‚upgrade‘ these calories to the best food, but this is totally optional.

Lag is there with some hundreds of critters but in my experience it is not gamebreaking and only there when you have them in sight. I think This is the only chance to have sustainable mega colonies with 50-100 dupes without using exploits like mass doubling etc.

[Neotuck]

1 hour ago, Nightinggale said:

When what's the point in ranching low line critters?

I'm assuming you are asking, "Then what's the point in ranching low lime critters?"

Does that mean you have an alternative method of producing lime other than limited fossil tiles?

[Nightinggale]

1 minute ago, Neotuck said:

I'm assuming you are asking, "Then what's the point in ranching low lime critters?"

That's what I said

2 minutes ago, Neotuck said:

Does that mean you have an alternative method of producing lime other than limited fossil tiles?

Yeah. Critters with lots of eggs, each containing lots of lime. If the primary reason for ranching is lime production (which is the statement what I replied to), then what's the point in critters with such a low lime yield that they aren't worth ranching for lime.

[Neotuck]

6 minutes ago, Nightinggale said:

That's what I said

Yeah. Critters with lots of eggs, each containing lots of lime. If the primary reason for ranching is lime production (which is the statement what I replied to), then what's the point in critters with such a low lime yield that they aren't worth ranching for lime.

Spell check,

And I miss understood you.  I thought you meant all critters were low lime.

[Nightinggale]

2 minutes ago, Neotuck said:

Spell check

Spellcheck is worthless if your typo happens to end up as an existing word. What I should do is to do as I usually do: read what I wrote before posting. Apparently I didn't do that this time

[beowulf2010]

3 hours ago, WanderingKid said:

In general ranching can be done at industrial levels if you use smart design.  Hatches need 96 cells of space, not 96 cells to walk around in.  Build taller, use it for storage.  However, it really depends on how many dupes you're trying to feed/produce for.  If you're talking 100+ dupes, yeah, the game needs a few optimization passes to really ranch that much successfully.

Yep. My current iteration of a hatch ranch gives the critters only 20 squares of space, and that's mostly required for ranch stuff, an autosweeper and a couple conveyor pieces. Everything else in the "room" is storage. I fit another 36 containers in the ranch. This is then mirrored for a total of 16 stone hatches making coal and eggs. Extra eggs are sent to a drowning room where they are dropped in water to hatch and die. 

Then I have a single glossy drecko ranch as well for plastic. All extra eggs are sent to the same drowning pool. 

So between these, the 3 sets of 8 pacus from the printer living in my water tank, and incidental meat from random critters I'm ignoring, I am feeding 15 dupes barbecue, have more plastic than I need and have been steadily gaining ground on coal reserves. 

Seriously, it's build and forget outside of dedicating 2-3 dupes to ranching.

[Kerd]

Personally I find a stable of 8 smooth hatches enough to produce all the refined metals I need short of Steel, with more Steel and more food as additional bonuses.  Which means I don't have to invest in huge industrial bricks to power and cool a series of refineries.  One is usually enough for me.

[tzionut]

For me at least i keep all my critters wilds. In my case it was a challenge to bread wild abyss bugs for get rid of abyssalite but the 800 gr eaten by a bugs turn me off once achieved this goal.

Hatches I used only for turning unused material as excess sand or sandstone or whatever in coal which i use for 2 objective, ceramic, or burn and use it for power and co2. The co2 whit a scrubber i converted to polluted water which is essential for my reed farm. 

Slicksters initially i use them for get rid of the excess co2, now all the co2 is converted to polluted water so i make them extinct. 

Pacus only wilde. I like make aquarium above dupes bedrooms

Puffs useless for me so i make them extinct.

Clossed box shove vole is the only thing keeping me from being invaded by regolith. I love them.

Drekos are usefull for the supliment of reed fiber and plastic. My plastic production is halted so i use the excess produced for laying more tubes, reed fiber for insulation and get rid of abyssalite.

[lunazone]

19 hours ago, Lacost said:

7. Shove Vole:

Pretty useless. They produce a lot of meat but Pacus do the same thing completely for free.

They are a pretty fantastic regolith to meat conversion method. Anything that can get rid of regolith is a good thing, the meat is just a bonus.

[Gurgel]

21 hours ago, Neotuck said:

Lime production which is needed for steel

I have all the wild printed Pacus in my clean water pool for that. Works pretty well.

20 hours ago, Stoned said:

Slicksters in the hundreds are easy to achieve, given how much CO2 you produce and can farm from meteor shower if you want (Meteors leave a trail of CO2).

How do you farm that CO2? Drywalls and pumps activated by pressure?

[6Havok9]

On 1/6/2019 at 1:48 PM, chemie said:

file ranching under "do it because you think it is fun or cool or whatever" vs doing it because it is meta

This is a sandbox game, where from humble beginnings, struggling for survival, you slowly ascend to godlike power. Once you have a decent understanding of how it works and build a sustainable base, you have overcome the challenge and everything you do is because you can do it, want to do it or you just want to challenge yourself.

There is no ladder or any form of competition where you can show how super efficient your designs are. I guess there's some fun in crunching numbers and finding out the best and worst designs or ways to do something, but you don't have to play "in the meta". You have actually beaten the challenge the moment your dupes can breathe, eat, pee and live another day without your intervention, which happens pretty early and can be done with half-baked solutions.

So what is the point in ranching? You do it if you wanna do it, like everything in this game that is not critical for life support. If it's not as efficient as something else, who cares... And you should not care too. One game you ranch, the other you go for something else, the next one you maybe try and mix many different things.

Btw, can't wait for release. Forcing yourself to stay away from this game is really hard

[Gurgel]

2 hours ago, 6Havok9 said:

You have actually beaten the challenge the moment your dupes can breathe, eat, pee and live another day without your intervention, which happens pretty early and can be done with half-baked solutions.

I want them to plausibly stay alive forever. Temperature control, not only for the base, is a large factor in that. Happens usually somewhere between cycle 500 and 1000 with my play-style. I am currently ignoring the Regolith buildup though, because I know that 6 or so voles would be able to keep it under control permanently. 

[mathmanican]

3 hours ago, Gurgel said:

How do you farm that CO2? Drywalls and pumps activated by pressure?

Here is a fairly over powered way to capture tons of CO2 (around 5kg/s), thanks to @Zarquan.  While not as exploitive as direct matter duplication, it's almost as powerful.

 

[Gurgel]

Interesting. Not my style, but interesting.

[JohnFrancis]

On 6/1/2019 at 10:50 AM, Lacost said:

So all in all: Where is the point in ranching?

As someone who uses ranching exclusively for all my food needs (I had all the plants ripped out before cycle 100) tell me why I should farm?

Firstly one dupe with 0 ranching skill (Not possible) can manage 12 critters in real game conditions, each point in ranching add 10% to the number of critters that can be groomed/managed. Only critters we care about for this example are Stone hatches, Slicksters and Voles. All live to 100. Assuming you just go the omelets route 2 critters can provide enough omelets for one dupe. (Please note this would be a huge waste with Voles they drop 16,000kcal of meat)

Now why would you waste one entire dupes time just to feed 6 dupes? actually only 5 if you don't count them feeding themselves. The answer water. Oxygen is the big limiter and water is where it's all going to come from by mid game. If you feed a dupe on bristle berry that costs you 60kg of water per dupe per cycle. For 6 dupes that 360kg of water a day. So instead say you hire 2 dupes to ranch, waste 136kg of water to provide them with oxygen and ranch enough omelets to feed 12 dupes. Of course you have to provide food to the critters, stone hatches eat a lot of rock. But once you hit slicksters you can just pipe in the CO2 so it's labor free. Get the 2 dupes up to level 10 ranching skill and you can feed 24 dupes omelets off waste CO2.

Did I mention hatches don't die of heat until above 70C? Heat in your base who cares. If you ranch critters for meat instead then it gets even more overpowered. Vole ranching is the most over powered food sources in the game, one voles drops enough meat for 5 BBQ, I use wild pepper nuts. All the farm crops are temp sensitive, require water and/or dirt. Ever try and get lots of renewable dirt? You can tell the people who have by their magnificent spread sheets  Stone hatches, slicksters and voles all live on waste products and stone hatches are just a stepping stone you phase out. Ranching became super powered the moment they made the ranching attribute give +10% per point to groomed duration. Oh you also get some coal and crude oil out of some of them but that's not important.

So my question is why should I farm?

Edit: One exception, mushrooms are great. Only takes slime so they are a great food source. But barring that the rest of the crops are just resource hogs.

[beowulf2010]

4 minutes ago, JohnFrancis said:

As someone who uses ranching exclusively for all my food needs (I had all the plants ripped out before cycle 100) tell me why I should farm?

(Snip) 

Well said. 

[Felaeris]

 

 

 

 

 

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On 6/1/2019 at 3:24 AM, Coolthulhu said:

1. Decor cap is fake. You can go over the cap, it just doesn't show on display. It still makes dupe "average decor per cycle" go up faster. Still, no reason to have shine bugs since they lag more than just having a row of statues on glass floor above barracks.

2. Hatches are available early and can live in any sane temperature, unlike plants. Also, early lime.

3. Pacu farming is great: no effort at all, can overcrowd them just fine in an open "ranch", tons of lime.

4. Pufts are genuinely useless.

5. Reeds are incredibly expensive on low water seeds. Dreckos are labor-only. And if you only shear and don't groom them, that's low labor.

6. Lag is a problem, but if it wasn't, you could have hordes of un-groomed slicksters eat up all that useless CO2 you have massive excess of and produce cheap petroleum and small amounts of meat+lime.

7. Pacus produce 1/4 of the meat/cycle that voles do, so voles could cause less lag at same meat production.

Really all of this comes down to the goal of your colony.

If your plan is a dozen or so dupes, you really don't need to go crazy. You can focus on automation designs to make up the lack of manpower and make your entire base very aesthetic. Your colony becomes a picturesque utopia or abundance built upon the Neutronium of water geysers.

If your plan is to constantly push the limits of habitation, then you're going to milk every system for every gram of water, oxygen, and food you can get your grubby hands on. Most of my colonies push the high 30's and low 40's. By then I'm melting ice biomes to stall for time for rockets and ranching.

Super late, you don't even use water for farming anymore. It is used to make LH2 and LOX. Caustic and Snow biomes are naturally farmed for Pincha Peppers and Sleet Wheat (with maybe the odd Bristle Berry farmed if you like fruitcake.) All those free pincha peppers a spice upon your meat mountain of ranching!

You really never need to kill the excess off. They will either starve to death or die of old age. And if you have enough of a critter population your colony can subsist entirely off their natural lifecycle.

Drecko-- The default variant survives off Balm Lily as others have mentioned. Super-late, you still sheer the things rather than waste water on Reeds for industrialized Insulation manufacture. Plastic is nice, but... you really don't need to focus on it. And I hate wasting the dirt to try and upscale the process.

Pufts--use 'Open' ranch method behind a liquid airlock and atmo suits.

1.  Default? Generally less useful unless you're planning to really abuse polluted water for algae production. (Some do this)
2. Dense? Cheap oxylite--then kill on sight all once you unlock Petroleum boosters. (Or just skip and use the Oxylite machine)
3. Squeaky? Amazing! If you have a chlorine geyser, you have a poor man's gassy moo. They shall live, breed, and die on their own
4. King? Who cares? A few will be born to make sure the squeaky population sustains itself, but they'll starve to death at their own speed.

Pacu--Use whatever model suits you best.  (open tanks or "4 to a sweeper" tanks or long tanks... search the forums)

1. All variants serve mostly the same function: food/lime
2. This assumes that you spend the initial 'algae' cost to get them up and running.
3. The Pacu lifecycle fully sustains itself without ever declining (even after being tamed) without a gram of algae to feed on.

Hatches-Open Ranch

1. Sage--Burn them. I'd rather have dirt from compost heaps.
2. Default-decent, but the goal is Stone
3. Stone: "Any" Rock -> Coal -> CO2 -> Oil/Petroleum (slickster) -> Natural Gas (Refinery or boil) -> Water + CO2 (NatGas Gen)
4. Yes, using Stone hatches you can crush water from Igneous/Sedimetnary rocks. You're welcome.

Slicksters-Open Ranch

1. CO2 recycling. Carbon Dioxide is a natural byproduct of having a colony.
2. Also enables the above Hatch cycle
3. Just burn longhairs. (There is no room for nicer things in my industrial complex!)
4. Stick to Molten Slicksters unless you're willing to go the extra mile to boil crude oil. (Many do.)

Gassy Moo

1. Can't speak on this one. I really haven't quite gotten it down.

Shove Vole---Enclosed (but big enough the game still registers it as an 'open' ranch)

1. Awesome for the reason you dismissed. MEAT! Lots of it. The only trick is keeping all the automation (miners, conveyers, etc) from overheating.
2. Also not letting them loose in your base. It's best if they stay outside the asteroid.
3. Maybe set a few traps just in case they get loose.

Shine Bugs

1. Meh.

[Stoned]

On 2.6.2019 at 7:06 PM, Gurgel said:

How do you farm that CO2? Drywalls and pumps activated by pressure?

Yes, Drywalls. Keep your bunker doors open during showers and close them otherwise. The CO2 is pretty cold, <100 C, and it is quite a lot, usually >1500 g/tile. That way you can also use steel collectors for your regolith, just have to protect them from the meteors.

[ToiDiaeRaRIsuOy]

So I always have used a mix of farming and ranching. Concerning food, farming generally yields more food, but at the same time also requires a lot more resources, while ranching can be very resource efficient. On a bad roll with little starting water, ranching hatches can really save your colony!

Also concerning resources ranching can be a big benefit. For power, yes there are much better alternatives than coal, however coal generators can be utilised very quickly and having a steady income of coal right where you want can really be a time saver.

Also, smooth hatches are an excellent intermediary refined metal source. Being at 75% metal efficiency and requiring no power at all, they are an obvious midgame replacement for the brute force refinement, and depending on what you prefer, a decent alternative for the metal refinery  (except steel of course).

However, the big resource benefit comes from drecko's. Reed fiber can basically be generated through them for free (except the dupe time), which otherwise has to be either grown wild (which is very slow), or grown domestically, which is very resource intensive. And they are very handy alternative for getting plastic. Instead having to go down to the oil biomes, get all the setup going, including the cooling of the polymer press, you can do a glossy drecko farm which generates, when full, a rather splendid amount of plastic. Said glossy drecko farm is a bit complex to set up, but can be done much earlier than your normal polymer press setup.

And yeah; like many said: No farming means you are not going to get enough lime if you want to go to space.

You can skip ranching of course if you like, but I would not recommend it. You are loosing out on a lot of benefits when done right. And again, on a water poor starting map they can allow your colony to survive!

[fredhp]

For me, ranching is essencial:

Dreckos is my primary source of plastic and Reeds.
Pacu == Lime and Meat. Just set up 2 tanks, a little algae, automation collect the meat and lime.
Slicksters == After i get enough CO2 to keep farms pressurized, all CO2 goes to Slicksters, in a "semi open ranch" strategy - basically, a normal ranch to raise eggs, and a separated non-ranch area with wild slicksters. When there is too much slickster in the non-ranch area, i just unlock the door and order dupes to attack and kill all slicksters, getting lots of meat in the process.  Automation send egg shells, meat and longhairs eggs directly to the kitchen.
Gassy Moo == I Never used them. The first thing i try to do when exploring space is acquire enough termium and fluorene to produce a oil -> nat gas converter: With the "almost infinite energy" and slicksters recycling CO2, there is no need to Gassy Moos.... 

Shove Voles, only to deal with excess regolith, as Felaeris said, enclosed but big enough area, I keept them in a pressurised area to keep temperature down. 

Shine Bugs? I Never ranched them - never find them useful.
Puft? Their slime production is so low that doesn't worth the trouble ranching.