Infinite Hatch Farm - Help Wanted

[Yunru]

Here's an infinite hatch farm I've been working on. It's based on the fact that a buried hatch doesn't get cramped, and that you can bury hatches with doors.

The problem I'm having is; how do I load it with hatchlings?

[abud]

Wait, if they didn't eat = they didn't excrete coal, right? So, is there any reason to bury infinite hatch there?

[Lilalaunekuh]

My first question would be if buried hatches conduct heat^^

[Yunru]

2 minutes ago, abud said:

Wait, if they didn't eat = they didn't excrete coal, right? So, is there any reason to bury infinite hatch there?

Infinite meat and egg shell.

[qda]

Could you stick some conveyor chute somewhere to load it with eggs ?

[Yunru]

Just now, qda said:

Could you stick some conveyor chute somewhere to load it with eggs ?

That's the rub. You have to somehow trap the hatches in the top layer of doors.

So no dropping from above, and if you load from the left or bottom you have to somehow make sure the top hatches can't escape.

[abud]

1 minute ago, Yunru said:

Infinite meat and egg shell.

I do not really understand. But, I'll try to see if I can stack hatch on a door. Can I use any method as long new hatch can stacked in same place as the others?

[Yunru]

Just now, abud said:

I do not really understand. But, I'll try to see if I can stack hatch on a door. Can I use any method as long new hatch can stacked in same place as the others?

While buried they're not cramped, so they still produce eggs. So you can farm any number of hatches in that 1x2 space.

The trick is getting the new hatches trapped (the current build requires manually building a door over the hatches).

[ONIfreak]

Build critter drop iff above - surrounf with tiles and one door. Remove tile next to it - open door. Load 20 hatchilngs there - remove critter drop off and build tile on that place. All hatchlings will jump to door area. Close loop from above. Close the door. 

[Saturnus]

EDIT: Better version below

 

Should be possible with something like this.

Doors are opened once per cycle to refresh. The top door closes before the bottom one.
Sweeper grap all meat and shells. Unhatched eggs pushed through is cycled back to continue hatching.

[Yunru]

26 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

Doors are opened once per cycle to refresh. The top door closes before the bottom one.

The problem is hatches will happily hang out atop the door, and thus not get buried.

[abud]

@Saturnus got it. Because hatch didn't fall on an opened door, sometimes after they hatched they unwilling to come down in the first cycle. But, most of them are coming down without problem.

 

4 minutes ago, Yunru said:

The problem is hatches will happily hang out atop the door

I tried around 10-15 with 1 percent duration. And I didn't see them stay up there in 2nd opening. Probably still need more sample.

[Oozinator]

@Yunru I don't understand the way you do it. I have more then 30 mixed hatches and they get no "cramped", because area is open.
What would be the advantage of your system?
 

[Nightinggale]

Hatches will have to be able to roam free in order to lay eggs. You might be aware of this since you added the clock sensor, but it's not explicitly mentioned. Buried hatches will increase fertility, but they won't act on reaching 100%. You can cover a bunch of hatches and then uncover them later. They will then all lay an egg at the same time because they all "reach" 100% at the same time.

[Yunru]

4 minutes ago, Oozinator said:

@Yunru I don't understand the way you do it. I have more then 30 mixed hatches and they get no "cramped", because area is open.
What would be the advantage of your system?
 

You don't need a massive open space?

[Oozinator]

1 hour ago, Yunru said:

You don't need a massive open space?

Yes sure, but i placed them outside and every open corridor counts. 1660 tiles they have.
I can feed them and get coal, eggs and egg shells that way and need no incubator, to "save" population.

@Yunru you could build a second room, where you "compress" them, lure them with a feeder in the room and when they enter a weight plate open the door below hatch and then you can "compress" them?
 

[DemainaNyx]

I would think loading from the bottom with auto critter mover would be the easiest way, but I've never attempted anything like this before so no clue.  I tested the below design before with hatches and they get pushed up as well, so I would think this would allow them to get stuck up in your airlock door.  Might need to open the airlock door when a new one is added and re-close it to trap them, but I think it would work.

This automation is a simple not gate to the left door while the weight plate controls the right.  If you plan to have multiple critters delivered at a time, the automation below makes sure to randomly close the right door even if the weight plate is being held down.  Top filter is 2 seconds, bottom filter is 5.

 

[Saturnus]

Ok. The previous solution didn't work all the time. Here's one that always works. It's also much simpler and smaller so that's great.

The trick is the pool of water. This is 500kg. Enough to force adult hatches to jump out and never jump in again but not enough to drown adult hatches and hatchlings. Eggs will still also be incubated as normal. The open pneumatic door separates the two rooms.

The mechanized airlock is opened once per cycle for 2% of the cycle. If set to 1% then the adult hatches will not jump out of the pool. When the mechanized airlock closes all eggs, egg shells and meat is pushed to the right into the pool while the adult hatches stay and gets buried.

[situpc]

Here is a very simple design which utilizes the mechanic of doors pushing critters down, essentially making an automated drop off. You could ship eggs to the single tile or if you don't want to lose out on the egg shell that will accumulate on that tile you can use a critter drop off with only a door right next to it. Keep the "room" a single tile so 2/3 of the time the hatches will be on the doors. A clock sensor can shut the doors once a day, a critter sensor won't work as doors don't count as part of a room. 

An example of using a critter drop off:

56 minutes ago, DemainaNyx said:

I tested the below design before with hatches and they get pushed up as well, so I would think this would allow them to get stuck up in your airlock door.

Doors push critters down now

[Ambaire]

Hm. We need a new tile type that allows items to fall through it but entities must stay on top.

[beowulf2010]

2 minutes ago, Ambaire said:

Hm. We need a new tile type that allows items to fall through it but entities must stay on top.

Pneumatic doors do this when open. They also let anything falling keep falling when closed.

The critters falling through that situpc posted pictures of is a result of closing the door that they are "in" forcing them to start falling which then pushes them through the door they are standing on. 

I use this for a Pez dispenser style hatch ranch. 

[Lifegrow]

On 26/07/2019 at 8:39 PM, beowulf2010 said:

Pneumatic doors do this when open. They also let anything falling keep falling when closed.

The critters falling through that situpc posted pictures of is a result of closing the door that they are "in" forcing them to start falling which then pushes them through the door they are standing on. 

I use this for a Pez dispenser style hatch ranch. 

Aye it's been this way for a long time now - maybe 7 months or so.

I just hook up some clock sensors and dump it 5 times a cycle. Buffer gate was for testing if there was any sweet spot for duration spent open. There was not

 

Spoiler

 

 

[Saturnus]

16 minutes ago, Lifegrow said:

Aye it's been this way for a long time now - maybe 7 months or so.

Not the best solution for hatches though. See my 2nd set up above.

[Lifegrow]

13 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

Not the best solution for hatches though. See my 2nd set up above.

Not the best solution for what? 

I was just showing a horizontal pneumatic setup to kill off excess hatches.

 

[SeeHam]

Im so out of the loop,
Isn't any critter need to be out of the "Cramped" status before they lay any eggs at 100% reproduction??
I've done some hatch farm with wild tiles for them to dig into, stay comfy and all.
But they never lay any egg when the room is overcrowded and very cramped after they "wake up" eventhough their reproduction is 100%.