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Vertical Automated Hatch Farm MARK 2


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Cross-posting this from the reddit because I want more feedback. 

So there were some issues with the previous design I uploaded for a vertical automated hatch farm, namely that you couldn't pick which eggs the sweeper removed from the stable. Over time, I noticed that my stables were only about 50-75% full on average due to this inefficiency. So I decided to work on a design where only the newest eggs are removed from the stable, and the oldest ones remain to hatch over time, thereby providing 100% efficiency. After a lot of head scratching and cursing, I believe I've got a working proto-type and want to share.

This design is for those who do not want to use incubators and would like for the hatch population to automatically replenish itself by leaving eggs behind in the stable.

Overview: https://i.imgur.com/RtSMF81.png

Close-up of the main stable area: https://i.imgur.com/8G6eI2W.png

Automation view: https://i.imgur.com/7bIMz2T.png

Conveyor view: https://i.imgur.com/1x2di0G.png

In a nutshell, the automation works by activating the sweeper via clock sensor at night and via critter sensor whenever the hatches are feeling cramped (more than 8 critters+eggs).

At this point, any eggs in the main stable area are swept into a conveyor that feeds into a conveyor shutoff with exactly one tile of conveyor leading into it outside of the stable. The conveyor shutoff is connected to a second critter sensor set to 7, which will only allow the conveyor shutoff to accept eggs if there are still 8 critters+eggs in the stable.

If there are 8 critters+eggs, the shutoff picks up the egg and sends it to the food storage area where the egg will crack over time in a receptacle (or to a pool of water where it can hatch and drown for meat). Otherwise, the egg is not picked up by the shutoff and instead is deposited in the top of the stable where the sweeper cannot reach it.

The eggs go to a one-tile high area on top of the main stable area where they eventually hatch. Just to the right across the ladder, there is a small room which acts as a critter trap. Baby hatches cannot jump, but start with plenty of calories to reach adulthood.

Once the hatches reach adulthood, they will jump across the gap into the trap room. A critter sensor set to 0 and feeding into the door through a not-gate ensures that the door remains open at all times until a critter enters, but the door will close as soon as a critter enters.

The critter drop-off in the room is set to 0 creatures with auto-wrangle turned on. There is another door at the top-right which allows the rancher to enter and bring the hatch down to the appropriate main stable area. I'm not sure, but some additional fine-tuning might be necessary to prevent the hatches from going to the wrong stable.

Please let me know if you have any questions or improvements. Thanks.

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First, eggs and hatchlings are being counted as critters in the stable. Reducing the useful capacity.  

Ladder in the middle of the stable isnt really necessary either. And i guess storage is just one useful use of the space.

Having 4 stables with 8 hatches means one would have to be replaced every three days. I would make one small chamber somewhere with limited number of eggs (say weight plate controlled drop off) the rest would go to meat. Need about 7 eggs to hatch one every 3 or so days. There you can have a trap with auto wrangling.

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1 hour ago, Radam said:

First, eggs and hatchlings are being counted as critters in the stable. Reducing the useful capacity.  

Ladder in the middle of the stable isnt really necessary either. And i guess storage is just one useful use of the space.

Having 4 stables with 8 hatches means one would have to be replaced every three days. I would make one small chamber somewhere with limited number of eggs (say weight plate controlled drop off) the rest would go to meat. Need about 7 eggs to hatch one every 3 or so days. There you can have a trap with auto wrangling.

To your first point, that's the point of this philosophy of hatch ranching. The extra 20 cycles of non-productive lifespan are added to the life of the hatch and accounted for in the math of how many are necessary (2.75 per dupe for eggs and 3.75 per dupe for meat). 

The ladder is necessary to access the top parts of the stable for construction of all the conveyors and automation. It's left in place to (hopefully) provide a better path-finding toward the critter dropoff that is directly beneath the hatch trap. Also, you wouldn't have access to the storage up there? Anyone who wants this design can get rid of the storage up there to make a shorter roof, or put something else up there.

As for having a small reproduction chamber, again, that will eliminate some of the automation from the hatch farming as you can never get it synced up perfectly. It isn't as simple as saying that one gets replaced every three days. In reality, they get replaced in large waves because when getting the hatch population up to this level, all of the eggs that are laid go to reproduction. Once you finally reach the appropriate population of hatches, many of them are in the same age cohort. 

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Thanks to feedback on the reddit, I now have the mark 3 module which eliminates the need for a hatch trap room and auto-wrangling.

Hatch dropper view: https://i.imgur.com/m8jhGnF.png

The double doors open for 1% of the day, allowing any adult hatches to jump over. When the doors close, the hatches are yeeted down into the appropriate stable. This eliminates also any risk of the hatches being wrangled into the wrong stable as gravity does the work.

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On 7/19/2019 at 2:06 PM, tecnix said:

Dude, this is simple and nice, i like it, but this odd amount of blocks makes me mad, this is the only fault of your project :p

Talk to Klei then, we're not the ones that decide max stable sizes. If you want 8 hatches that aren't cramped your stable has to be exactly 96 tiles, not a single tile more or less.

On 7/19/2019 at 8:27 AM, Radam said:

Ladder in the middle of the stable isnt really necessary either. 

How else are the dupes going to access the bins, flying?

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On 7/19/2019 at 7:40 PM, Satyrical364 said:

Thanks to feedback on the reddit, I now have the mark 3 module which eliminates the need for a hatch trap room and auto-wrangling.

Hatch dropper view: https://i.imgur.com/m8jhGnF.png

The double doors open for 1% of the day, allowing any adult hatches to jump over. When the doors close, the hatches are yeeted down into the appropriate stable. This eliminates also any risk of the hatches being wrangled into the wrong stable as gravity does the work.

Can you confirm this still works in game? I thoughtr that was patched and critters cannot be dropped by doors anymore

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Just now, suxkar said:

Can you confirm this still works in game? I thoughtr that was patched and critters cannot be dropped by doors anymore

Yes, it's been working in my current game for over 100 cycles. Critters will not fall through a single door they are standing on, and get stuck in vertical doors that close, but they can get pushed downward by a closing door placed horizontally.

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@Satyrical364Just wanted to say excellent work bud - made a version of this and it seems to work like a treat :) 

I'm guessing it'll take a little while to stabilise to avoid mass dieouts and waiting for eggs, but I plan to have 4 of these in my base so it should be golden.

Thanks for sharing. x

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@Lifegrow - I find running it on stone hatches the most effective with autowrangle set for other types which I then drop in a murder pool.  This does mean that occasionally you are down to 7 hatches in a pen if you do happen to end up with a wrong hatch egg held for hatching.

My current base runs 7 of these.  You need 3 hatches per dupe for omeletes, so I base it on 2 dupes per setup.

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image.thumb.png.22964c726cf918bc396381b7cfee58c1.png

This is mine that I've been using, basically the critter sensors detect if there are too many in the ranch, open the doors and drop eggs/coal down.  The side area detects if a critter enters it and traps them inside.  The bottom door closes as well pushing water up and smothering the poor thing.  After it dies, the sweeper sends the meat to the kitchen and the doors open automatically again.

I have some incubators off to the side to reserve some eggs in the weird case all of my hatches die at once.

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