Creating park/pip farm : Shove vole Vs Aquatuner

[shuuny]

Hello everyone,

While i was trying to setup a pip farm, i went trhough some trouble (not enough "good tiles" to plant seeds,crazy pip logic...) so i tried a little experiment to creater my own place for these little annoying adorable creatures.

The first step was to create a room with dirt tiles only. I choosed two different options to try, the first one was to create a room with shove vole and critter feeders full of dirt.

This first try wasn't really convincing for me since shove vole eat and poop anywhere so you have to dig tiles when it wasn't in the right place, wich make you loose a LOT of dirt and time...

The second option was to store algae in storage bin and then heat it up to the point where it becomes dirt tiles (algae was the first thing that came to my mind, that could be something else i guess)

When algae turns into dirt, you just have to run back the liquid cooled by the aquatuner through the metal tile bellow with radiant pipe.

The final step was to find a way to force pips to plant arbor seeds where they can fully grow, this step can be made using pneumatic doors, the pip will instantly plant the seed since there's only one tile available

Tell me what do you think about this setup, how would you improve it or do differently

 

 

 

[nakomaru]

It's a little cruel of you to expect us to improve upon this great and straightforward design.

[BaloneyOs]

Really nice to learn that voles don't go through pneumatic doors. Those early game vole egg care packages are way more valuable knowing this.

Advantage of voles is that they're considerably lower tech and labor whether you get them from printing pods or space compared to temporary aquatuner setups. Also ladders instead of doors for controlling planting order.

EDIT: Also ladders for controlling where voles will create the tiles.

[nakomaru]

8 minutes ago, BaloneyOs said:

Really nice to learn that voles don't go through pneumatic doors. Those early game vole egg care packages are way more valuable knowing this.

Only steel ones. So not too early. (This is no longer true.)

[BaloneyOs]

2 minutes ago, nakomaru said:

Only steel ones. So not too early.

They don't go through pneumatic doors of any material so the whole setup doesn't require steel or any refined metals at all.

[shuuny]

4 minutes ago, BaloneyOs said:

Advantage of voles is that they're considerably lower tech and labor whether you get them from printing pods or space compared to temporary aquatuner setups. Also ladders instead of doors for controlling planting order.

Good point here, i never go to the surface until i have a good amount of steel so i never really thought about it that way ^^

And portal shove vole and eggs ends up in barbecue and omelette haha, i'll think about it for another try

[nakomaru]

2 minutes ago, BaloneyOs said:

They don't go through pneumatic doors of any material so the whole setup doesn't require steel or any refined metals at all.

Looks like you're right. It must have been an unintended side effect of when they made 8 patches in a row about critters pathing through doors/waterlocks.

[shuuny]

6 minutes ago, nakomaru said:

Only steel ones. So not too early.

 

3 minutes ago, BaloneyOs said:

They don't go through pneumatic doors of any material so the whole setup doesn't require steel or any refined metals at all.

Pneumatic doors are made of copper here but it does require refined metal for metal tiles ^^

[BaloneyOs]

2 minutes ago, nakomaru said:

Looks like you're right. It must have been an unintended side effect of when they made 8 patches in a row about critters pathing through doors/waterlocks.

Really hope they keep this because otherwise

3 minutes ago, shuuny said:

portal shove vole and eggs ends up in barbecue and omelette

 

 

Quote

Pneumatic doors are made of copper here but it does require refined metal for metal tiles ^^

Obsidian does the trick as well.

[nakomaru]

Thanks for the info.

 

[Lurve]

4 hours ago, shuuny said:

Tell me what do you think about this setup, how would you improve it or do differently

You can give your trees the full three tiles to grow, and space them a skosh closer together.  Since each tree can only grow 5 branches, leaving gaps of 2:1:1:2 will give each tree exactly five squares to branch into. 

[nakomaru]

4 hours ago, Lurve said:

leaving gaps of 2:1:1:2 will give each tree exactly five squares to branch into. 

I was wrong in another thread, you're right here. This is the pattern!

Working on a big project now. Tricked heaters with low gas pressure works alright but sure takes a while. No need to use more than 1kg algae. Lay pipes beforehand if you need em

[OxCD]

I feel like your setup to cook is oversized. I use the refinery and I feel it really less hassle. 

 

[abud]

Why you guys making long lines of dirt, if you're going to plant them in a certain pattern? Take @shuuny arbor trees for example. Didn't it enough to make one dirt every 3 tiles? @nakomaru successfully making multi-layer dirtland, congratulation.

 

[nakomaru]

A line of dirt can accept any pattern I might want to use.

[Junksteel]

 

On 27/07/2019 at 3:37 AM, nakomaru said:

Tricked heaters with low gas pressure works alright but sure takes a while. 

 

I'm terrible at automation. How do you trick them into a blinking Christmas tree?

[calibayzone]

19 minutes ago, Junksteel said:

 

I'm terrible at automation. How do you trick them into a blinking Christmas tree?

My best guess:

1. A local air pocket starts out cooler than the cutoff (mixed gases with limited heat exchange?).

2. Heater flickers on.

3. Heater heats itself.

4. Air rapidly warms, heater shuts off.

5. Most heat into heater b/c air mass is so small (different from tepidizers which heat the liquid around them).

6. Heaters well above cutoff, well above 125C even.

7. More air is let in once heat buildup is enough, stored heat heats algae.

[nakomaru]

54 minutes ago, Junksteel said:

I'm terrible at automation. How do you trick them into a blinking Christmas tree?

[DemainaNyx]

Voles are a pain but work really nicely if you just want one or two tiles.  For instance, I converted my ladder areas into nature reserves but my top area only had 3 plantable tiles, so you put down two tiles, place a feeder and critter drop off and suddenly I have 4 plantable tiles.  As stated, voles work nicely if you know the pattern you want to plant your plants.  I wanted to create an arbor tree area so I knew I only needed dirt in a few places and getting the voles to do this job was easy by just placing critter feeders in the spots I wanted the plantable tiles and filled in the others with regular tiles.  As you said though, they take a lot of dirt to accomplish this so you better be prepared for them to create tiles in the wrong spot over and over. 

 

One trick I used was to get the voles to build the room one direction only by filling only one critter feeder at a time.  They seem to eat dirt, take a step, turn around, and create a tile if they can, so by placing their first feeder against a wall and building out from that, they easily create the dirt where you want and you get a nice "building entombed" notification whenever it happens to alert you to move the food to the new spot.  So if you want to use voles for a full floor, build it one tile at a time in one direction instead of just flooding them with food and hoping for the best.  

But yeah, if you want to get a full line of new tiles, an aquatuner is a much simpler design so long as you have the power to support it.  However, I don't know if there is a way to get pips to plant that close together so you could probably save a bit of algae next time and either do clumps of 3 or every other tile.

 

For pip planting, I used ladders instead of doors.  Ladders cost less and don't slow down dupes.  This was important for me when planting my nature reserve ladder areas but not so important when planting a grow room like in these images.  As others have said, 2:1:1:2 for trees works perfectly.  Just make sure to place ladders or doors around the inner tree so that the two outer trees grow their outer branches first.  There are 6 shared tiles and at least 4 need to be reserved for the inner tree to get it's max branches, so 4 ladders does this perfectly.

[badgamer123]

On 7/27/2019 at 2:37 PM, nakomaru said:

I was wrong in another thread, you're right here. This is the pattern!

Working on a big project now. Tricked heaters with low gas pressure works alright but sure takes a while. No need to use more than 1kg algae. Lay pipes beforehand if you need em

how does the space heater work????

btw can you eloborate a bit more on  trees,those branches hurt...I would like to put a farm station in there.but the spacing killing me(other plants only 3xxx3xxx3 much easier) 

[nakomaru]

4 minutes ago, badgamer123 said:

how does the space heater work????

Connect it to an automation shown above. It will continue to heat beyond 70C. You will need to insulate the room because the power is weak and it will take a long time if you do this.

5 minutes ago, badgamer123 said:

btw can you eloborate a bit more on  trees

This post is more clear.

[minespatch]

20 hours ago, DemainaNyx said:

 

For pip planting, I used ladders instead of doors.  Ladders cost less and don't slow down dupes.  This was important for me when planting my nature reserve ladder areas but not so important when planting a grow room like in these images.  As others have said, 2:1:1:2 for trees works perfectly.  Just make sure to place ladders or doors around the inner tree so that the two outer trees grow their outer branches first.  There are 6 shared tiles and at least 4 need to be reserved for the inner tree to get it's max branches, so 4 ladders does this perfectly.

i didn't know this. That'll help me out in my next base.

Though, I find nature reserve and stable combo very beneficial to both dupes and the pips to make more plants but I didn't think about the thimble reed thing. I think it also applies to fungus?

[Junksteel]

1 hour ago, minespatch said:

I think it also applies to fungus?

Yes, any plants can be used!

[minespatch]

On 8/8/2019 at 3:25 PM, DemainaNyx said:

Feels like unlimited lumber for power.