Fully automated ranching and egg delivery

[6Havok9]

Hey dupes and dupettes, here is how I automate my stables, hoping you can find this useful. This is by no means necessary, but ONI is about doing all the unneeded and over engineered things, right?

 

To fully automate a stable you need one or more clocks and a critter dispenser. Preferably you'll want an already full stable to start with. I use a water clock as it is reliable as long as you don't have brownouts or blackouts.

This post explains how to build one. Mini water pumps are a thing now, so you can build one that consumes less power and uses less water.

 

Once you've built your clock, you'll have to set it so that it gives a green signal everytime a critter dies. To find the desired value just divide (critter lifespan) by (number of critters), then multiply by the grams/second value you've set on your valve. For hatches, shove voles, pips and pokeshells, all of which live 100 cycles, you'll want a value of 12,5 cycles (100/8), or 7500 seconds. At e.g. 10 g/s, this would be 75 kg. This is valid assuming that your stables only house one critter morph at a time. If you want multiple morphs, you'll have to build more clocks and set them accordingly.

If your stable houses only one type of critter you can also just use a critter sensor instead of a clock, but that is boring and totally not fun.

You'll then have to build a dispenser (they can be made quite small by using pneumatic doors) and a system that ensures that only one egg will be delivered every 12,5 cycles. To achieve this you can use a conveyor shutoff.

 

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The shutoff entry port must be near the wall, and the room should be sealed. When our clock (represented by the hydro sensor) reaches the desired value it will send a green pulse to the memory toggle, enabling the conveyor shutoff. The next egg that passes by will enter the shutoff and the critter sensor will detect it, sending a green pulse to the reset port of the memory toggle. Additional eggs will bypass the shutoff, until our clock gives a green signal again. What you do with those eggs, well, their destiny is in your hands.

To make the dispenser you can take advantage of the mechanic that causes critters to fall through closed pneumatic doors if they get trapped inside a door. Here's an example:

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This is a hatch dispenser. The critter will reach adulthood on the tile under the conveyor chute. It will then jump on the nearby tile, where the critter sensor will detect it, closing the door behind it and opening the next door (the horizontal one). As soon as the hatch enters the door frame, the door is slam shut and the critter falls inside the stable. For pokeshells you'll need a taller version, since they are 2 tiles high when adult, or you can make the dispenser slightly wider and without a jump to drop the baby down instead. 

 

When dealing with pips, dreckos and shove voles you can either use a dispenser or drop the eggs in a water pool, separated from the stable by an open door. Since pipsqueaks, drecklets and vole pups can climb walls, they will instantly try to reach for a safe zone when they are born, thus entering the stable. Since they hate water, they won't path back out of the stable. You can use this for slicksters too, if they hatch at the bottom of an oil pool they will float upwards. Just remember to not include gaps in the dispenser, and to use refined metal, obsidian or diamond window tiles for shove voles.

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When dealing with flying critters you can also use liquids to your advantage. This method works with pufts and shine bugs.

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Here pufts hatch in the water lock and enter the stable. They can't path back, even if the top liquid layer is only a few grams. You can trap the puft prince somewhere using water and feed him oxygen. He won't be groomed, will consume much less and will still be counted as present in the stable, boosting egg chances for the other pufts.

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To conclude, here is a little project I'm currently working on in order to build it in survival mode. It's a stacked ranch for pips, hatches and pokeshells, using some unusual shapes. Some overlays, work in progress.

 

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In case you were wondering, the stacked liquids are 200 kg (one bottle) each, except for the top water layer in the pip ranch (1000 kg per tile)

Also bear in mind that, when dealing with critter morphs, an extremely unfortunate event can happen: if every critter drops the wrong type of egg as the clock goes green, you'll soon experience a time window of 1/(time to reproduce) cycles where the stable is not full. This can also happen if all critters lay an egg just before the clock goes green. You can prevent this by having a buffer room with sweepers on a clock where eggs sit for some cycles, or even hatch and it also acts as a killroom. This will also ensure that an egg will be delivered exactly every 12,5 cycles and you won't have to wait for a critter to lay one.. but... Oh well....Still have to find a way to make it look not ugly. In fact, gonna try it again now.

I hope you found this information useful, see ya! Much love

[Lifegrow]

Links/pics seem a little borked bud.

[6Havok9]

Weird. Reuploaded =|

[beowulf2010]

3 minutes ago, 6Havok9 said:

Weird. Reuploaded =|

All are working now. Will read in detail a bit later. Thanks in advance! 

[gaucho_tche]

Hi 6Havok9. Do you have an automated design for puft ranching for slime? or would you care to guide me on making one? I am completely new to those creature automations.

[BLACKBERREST3]

@gaucho_tche I've seen your posts asking for more info on exactly this. I do not have a build for this yet, but I do know the mechanics behind making one. I'd suggest looking at all sorts of builds, examples, traps, etc. until you are comfortable knowing how puft pathing, reproduction, and habit works.

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Example of a critter trap that works on pufts

You could try improving your "google fu" by increasing your search range. Also check oni-db for the basics on pufts.

[gaucho_tche]

Still waiting for 6Havok9 explanation

[gaucho_tche]

10 hours ago, BLACKBERREST3 said:

@gaucho_tche I've seen your posts asking for more info on exactly this. I do not have a build for this yet, but I do know the mechanics behind making one. I'd suggest looking at all sorts of builds, examples, traps, etc. until you are comfortable knowing how puft pathing, reproduction, and habit works.

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Example of a critter trap that works on pufts

You could try improving your "google fu" by increasing your search range. Also check oni-db for the basics on pufts.

Hey pal, let's develope this thread:

As to make a design for regular pufts ranching. I seriously believe you can help with your knowledge.

[6Havok9]

@gaucho_tche Don't have much time on my hands now, can barely play the game a couple hours every now and then. I can give you my 2 cents, my method does not involve incubators. Check the "Dense puft ranching for meat" thread for alternative methods, because that thread was awesome.

If you want to ranch pufts for slime, build two stables. One will have the puft prince trapped in a corner, or wherever you like, it doesn't matter as long as it is inside the 96 tile room designated as a stable. If it's far away, and trapped by liquid, you can feed him oxygen and have it not consume your precious PO2. Also he won't get groomed. The pufts in this room will deploy (mostly) standard puftlet eggs. If you want to prevent slime from offgasing, have a layer of liquid on the floor.

The other room will be a princeless room. Here the pufts will deploy (mostly) puftlet prince eggs. You can use any type of puft to generate prince eggs. I prefer dense pufts.

You then pick up the eggs via autosweeper and send them on separate lines using different loaders... Or you send everything to a sorting room. I prefer the sorting room. Using a water clock, you drop a prince egg every 75 cycles in that remote, secluded corner elite place up high where the snob noble puft will live its despicable easy life overlooking those actually useful plebeian pufts.

If you want to stagger your critters lifecycles you have to deploy a puft egg in the princeless room every 12,5 cycles to replace the critter that leaves the valley of tears. 12,5 is the magic number. (75 cycle lifespan/6 =12,5) HOWEVER, since there is the damn emo prince puft occupying a space in the other stable, you'll have to drop an egg there every 15 cycles. (75/5 = 15). This way you'll always have 11 productive pufts and well... that one.

All the other eggs can be sent to a single enclosed tile filled with liquid. Puft eggs are only 250g of raw egg, while they produce 1 kg of meat upon forceful evolution. One could make an argument that if they are born underwater (or worse) and die evolve soon after, it's just life to them, since they never had the chance to experience anything else. Do what you want, I don't want to be held responsible for any unethical or abusive action against critters.

Much love 

 

[gaucho_tche]

Thanks for the reply Havok. The one thing I see is that when groomed pufts will deploy eggs much quicker. Wouldn't that mess up with the water clocks?

[6Havok9]

Doesn't matter how fast they deploy eggs, as long as they deploy enough to not die off. Clocks are based on critter lifespan, not egg laying rate. So you send an egg only when needed, then do what you want with the rest.

[gaucho_tche]

So we have progressed in the discussion under this topic:

For those who want to follow!

[Craigjw]

I love the pez dispenser for hatching the eggs!