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Pokeshell consumption rates are counterintuitive


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Per cycle, machines running continuously:

  1. 1 pokeshell consumes 140kg of polluted dirt and excretes 70kg of sand.
  2. 1 water sieve consumes 600kg of sand and produces 120kg of polluted dirt.
  3. 4 ethanol distillers (enough to run a petroleum generator continuously) produce 800kg of polluted dirt.

So in our one cycle, if we refuse to compost anything, we can feed less than 6 pokeshells. Those 5 will produce 350kg of sand, which is insufficient to satisfy one water sieve, and yields back 70kg of polluted dirt to feed the 6th (420kg of sand, which is decentish but still to low). Pokeshells aren't even cramped at 6, and as a result will continue to breed, leading to eventual starvation. Consider also that pokeshells are the best critter per lifecycle to gain lime, which is arguably an even bigger reason to have them.

If we work to try to satisfy, it becomes clear quite easily that 8 ethanol distillers will feed 11 pokeshells, which will produce 770kg of sand, satisfying the water sieve. However, 11 pokeshells in a ranch would be overcrowded, so we must instead consider having 9, which gives us 630kg of sand, just barely satisfying the water sieve and maybe leaving us extra to occasionally compost.

While it is good that 8 can work as a stable setup as part of power generation, players like me generally would expect that the initial 4 would more than work, especially since, at least for the critters, it does right up until a while after getting near to overcrowding, at which point polluted dirt rapidly vanishes. Considering how lime is a serious bottleneck in the midgame, I would recommend the solution be to lower their consumption rate of polluted dirt so that 4 distillers can provide sufficient food for 8 pokeshells with a bit to spare (90kg consumption), giving 560kg of sand, enough to almost run a water sieve continuously, which will then spit back out 112kg of polluted dirt, feeding the 9th to bump it to 630kg of sand and thus actually run the water sieve continuously.

Now, I'd also be fine with just a little more pushing to double the ethanol power system (right now it's not very intuitive a thing to realize), but steel production is seriously tedious with waiting on lime, so I think that the best approach is indeed to reduce consumption by 50kg polluted dirt a cycle.

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I don't think this is suppose to be clean.  ONI makes heavy use of systems which produce byproducts and lead into cascading effects.  Only the starting stuff is actually pretty clean, using algae in difusers or oxyferns consuming CO2 to make O2.  If the numbers don't match up nicely it forces the player to adjust, adapt, and add more steps into their increasingly complex production and management lines.

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I don`t think sand production should be high for those. Sand is already basically infinite when considering we can crush all the rocks and regolith can be used for sieves as well.

As for the lime production keeping the guys groomed doesn`t increase it afaik. So as soon as you got enough pokeshells just disable the grooming station so they go gloom and eat less pdirt. This way you can sustain more of them and as long as they don`t cramp the population should remain stable.

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10 hours ago, DarkMaster13 said:

I don't think this is suppose to be clean.  ONI makes heavy use of systems which produce byproducts and lead into cascading effects.  Only the starting stuff is actually pretty clean, using algae in difusers or oxyferns consuming CO2 to make O2.  If the numbers don't match up nicely it forces the player to adjust, adapt, and add more steps into their increasingly complex production and management lines.

It wouldn't be clean changed either, cause you'd need to abandon composting except in short bursts to make things work. Also, these things are pretty unique among critters in the sustainability issues of their diet, as normally, ranching is a very good idea that turns rather locally overabundant resources into more useful, less locally abundant resources (dirt into plastic/fiber with dreckos, stone/dirt into coal with hatches, gases into their ore counterparts with pufts, CO2 into crude oil with slicksters) with lime as a common byproduct. Pokeshells however, turn polluted dirt (not a very abundant resource) into sand (practically everywhere).

7 hours ago, flapee said:

So adjust the stables size appropriately ( 12 tiles per critter )

While that might work, it would have ripple effects with their wild placement, and make ranching even more of a frustration to deal with.

6 hours ago, Sasza22 said:

I don`t think sand production should be high for those. Sand is already basically infinite when considering we can crush all the rocks and regolith can be used for sieves as well.

As for the lime production keeping the guys groomed doesn`t increase it afaik. So as soon as you got enough pokeshells just disable the grooming station so they go gloom and eat less pdirt. This way you can sustain more of them and as long as they don`t cramp the population should remain stable.

While that's a potential solution for getting the lime in a stable manner, the obvious problem is that it's an added bit of micromanagement to ranching them. These things already will swarm attack dupes when there's an egg around, often managing severe injuries on any unlucky rancher delivering their food just in the time it takes an autosweeper to recognize the egg and put it in the egg cracker right next to it, so why should they also require an extra step to properly maintain their population, in a way that drastically reduces the main reason a newer player would think to ranch them to begin with?

Maybe ranching just needs a serious overhaul altogether. As it is right now, I'm not sure it's really worth it to ranch these things instead of just sage hatches in the same situation (compost the polluted dirt from the distillers, then rely on some wild pips for the remainder of the dirt needed, get 140kg a cycle of coal instead of 70kg of sand, but less lime), and that's with not bothering to just feed the hatches the huge abundance of minerals laying around, which could be dedicated towards stone hatch ranching and sand production.

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40 minutes ago, Nebbie said:

These things already will swarm attack dupes when there's an egg around, often managing severe injuries on any unlucky rancher delivering their food

That`s fixable with incubators. Glum critters will drop one egg per lifecycle (like wild ones). Just instantly incubate it and they won`t get agressive. Outside the short moment when you pick up the egg.

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