Starving hatches are not quite in time for eggs

[WanderingKid]

So I've been doing the math and examining kCal throughput on Hatches.  As far as I can tell, tame and glum hatches will die about a half a cycle before they drop an egg.  This means you can't do a starving ranch like you can with self-replicating pacu.  What I'm trying to figure out is why, pacu should be at the same speed.  I'm also looking for inspired ideas that won't require a ton of setup.  The whole 'can't fall through the doors' thing is a pita.

A hatchling starts at 7,000 kCal internally.

A glum hatchling has a 98% reduction in consumption, 14 kCal / cycle.  This 5 cycle pass (70 kCal) actually gets them not sustaining.

The next 50 glum cycles (time to egg: 55 cycles) are spent to get the egg out.  Starting now at 6,930 kCal, they consume 140 kCal/cycle while glum.  This is just enough for 49.5 cycles. They're .5 cycles short of the egg.   All my great plans of a self sustaining starvation ranch went out the window. 

Other than some automation tricks that you can't do since doors won't drop to feed them as hatchlings and then transferring them to a starvation pit somehow (max 20, no joy), what have you folks done for large scale hatch ranching at pacu volumes?

[Sasza22]

I think when a critter runs low on calories it dies in 10 cycles. I`m not sure if it happens at 0 kcal or earlier but it`s always 10 cycles. Pacus live 25 cycles so even when starving the extra 10 cycles make them leave an egg. For hatches that live 100 cycles the 10 cycles before dying is just barely not enough to sustain the population (actually it kinda seems intended to work that way).

[bzgzd]

17 minutes ago, WanderingKid said:

All my great plans of a self sustaining starvation ranch went out the window.

There are 2 things ... one bad and one good

 

Good: they are starving 10 cycles at zero kCal and still reproduce before they die...

Bad: 2% is rounded... it is 1.6666% so not 55 but 65 is the goal

Edit:

Actually another bad thing... baby hatch is born with 6300 kCal energy (90% capacity).

 

[WanderingKid]

@Sasza22 @bzgzd

Ah thank you both, I'd forgotten both the rounding AND the 10 additional cycles.  So, still NOPE, but it actually takes longer than I'd thought!  Rats.

[beowulf2010]

37 minutes ago, WanderingKid said:

The whole 'can't fall through the doors' thing is a pita.

Sorry in advance if you're talking about something else, but you can force them to fall through doors. Let them walk into an open door which then closes on them will force them to start falling which pushes them down through a door below them. 

37 minutes ago, WanderingKid said:

Other than some automation tricks that you can't do since doors won't drop to feed them as hatchlings and then transferring them to a starvation pit somehow

This is fairly easy. Hatchling can't jump so put the door dropper I mentioned above 1-2 steps above the hatchling feeding ground and the adult hatches will eventually jump up into the dropper. 

Spoiler

Spoiler

 

[WanderingKid]

4 minutes ago, beowulf2010 said:

Sorry in advance if you're talking about something else, but you can force them to fall through doors. Let them walk into an open door which then closes on them will force them to start falling which pushes them down through a door below them.

Nope, that's exactly what I was looking for.  How do you get it to do that?  I've obviously missed something not being on the forums much lately.

[bzgzd]

20 minutes ago, WanderingKid said:

@Sasza22 @bzgzd

Ah thank you both, I'd forgotten both the rounding AND the 10 additional cycles.  So, still NOPE, but it actually takes longer than I'd thought!  Rats.

But you are right that babies could be kept glum as well automatically.

So not 57.5 is max. age when they die without food (as I posted in that linked post) but 59.5, which is still not enough.

I was thinking about automatically giving them food at age 5 before dropping them down but even if they would be full at age 5 it is still probably not enough.
7000 / 140 + 10 = 60 ...

they would die seconds before making egg because sweeper is not removing egg instantly and so for few seconds they are cramped and therefore need to live a bit longer then till 65

 

[bzgzd]

I just realized door dropper I build might have some issues with big amount of critters (when more babies are born at the same time) but I use it on serious drecko farm without problems.

Here I have it just for bunch of smooth hatches mostly for achievement.

 

 

[WanderingKid]

12 minutes ago, bzgzd said:

I just realized door dropper I build might have some issues with big amount of critters (when more babies are born at the same time) but I use it on serious drecko farm without problems.

Here I have it just for bunch of smooth hatches mostly for achievement.

This is magnificent.  Thank you.

[beowulf2010]

1 hour ago, WanderingKid said:

Nope, that's exactly what I was looking for.  How do you get it to do that?  I've obviously missed something not being on the forums much lately.

It looks like @bzgzdalready got you the answer but I can strip down mine and grab a couple close in screenshots of the automation I use for mine if you'd like. At work right now so it'll be around 3 hours best case. 

Edit: And as far as I know, it's always worked. Though there was a couple months in the middle where we had to push critters up before it changed back to dropping down. 

Another edit: Here's an older topic on the basic technique. I think there's an older one but couldn't find it. 

 

 

[0xFADE]

You need to keep the hatches you are not feeding groomed for them to lay an egg before they die.  Best to do it with stone hatches since they don't eat the meat.

[KittenIsAGeek]

4 hours ago, WanderingKid said:

So I've been doing the math and examining kCal throughput on Hatches.  As far as I can tell, tame and glum hatches will die about a half a cycle before they drop an egg.  This means you can't do a starving ranch like you can with self-replicating pacu.  What I'm trying to figure out is why, pacu should be at the same speed.  I'm also looking for inspired ideas that won't require a ton of setup.  The whole 'can't fall through the doors' thing is a pita.

A hatchling starts at 7,000 kCal internally.

A glum hatchling has a 98% reduction in consumption, 14 kCal / cycle.  This 5 cycle pass (70 kCal) actually gets them not sustaining.

The next 50 glum cycles (time to egg: 55 cycles) are spent to get the egg out.  Starting now at 6,930 kCal, they consume 140 kCal/cycle while glum.  This is just enough for 49.5 cycles. They're .5 cycles short of the egg.   All my great plans of a self sustaining starvation ranch went out the window. 

Other than some automation tricks that you can't do since doors won't drop to feed them as hatchlings and then transferring them to a starvation pit somehow (max 20, no joy), what have you folks done for large scale hatch ranching at pacu volumes?

I'm curious: Are your hatches unable to burrow for the day?  I haven't recently set up a hatch farm to tame them, but I remember that when I did have a farm up, the ones that burrowed did better.

 

[WanderingKid]

6 hours ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

I'm curious: Are your hatches unable to burrow for the day?  I haven't recently set up a hatch farm to tame them, but I remember that when I did have a farm up, the ones that burrowed did better.

With a few NON-rigorous testing choices, I haven't seen a difference between burrowing and non making a difference.  I admit that my testing was mostly due to laziness with other things I was doing at the time.

7 hours ago, 0xFADE said:

You need to keep the hatches you are not feeding groomed for them to lay an egg before they die.  Best to do it with stone hatches since they don't eat the meat.

What I would like to do is groom them *once*.  With the now helpful options of kicking out hatches that have been doored out of the conversation, that will help, if only because I can try to feed the little ones on their way out.  The big deal is that I want a hatch to kick off an egg about .000001 cycles before it dies off, and that's not an option.  I hadn't remembered the static 10 cycle 'death wait' that all critters have, so I'd forgotten that pufts and pacu have a different death timer for re-lays.  I'd remembered that dreckos were a no-go, but couldn't remember why you had to feed them a bit.

[bzgzd]

3 hours ago, WanderingKid said:

With a few NON-rigorous testing choices, I haven't seen a difference between burrowing and non making a difference.

What I would like to do is groom them *once*.

Grooming them exactly once is interesting idea.

To make groomed hatch happy natural tile where they can burrow can be helpful.

It can lure them to go there for burrowing and also when they are groomed and burrowed they became happy even if they are in smaller room where they would be otherwise overcrowded and so grooming would not be enough. (burrowed are like no more in the room so no overcrowded or cramped)

---

Also I can't test it now, but having some "one way" path for hatches could be useful.

This is for dupes and maybe it or something similar would work for hatches too:

Long time ago this was reported as bug because someone got dupe stuck in POI and they changed it but few weeks ago I noticed this dupe one way is now back...
https://forums.kleientertainment.com/klei-bug-tracker/oni/how-got-he-in-there-r7965/?do=findComment&comment=13644

 

 

[0xFADE]

If the hatches burrow you can't groom them so they get sad and probably won't lay an egg if you are starving them.

I don't know how many times they get groomed but i've had a around 20? going for quite awhile.  Only need to feed one to get an extra egg if one lays a normal hatch egg.

[bzgzd]

1 hour ago, 0xFADE said:

If the hatches burrow you can't groom them so they get sad and probably won't lay an egg if you are starving them.

I don't know how many times they get groomed but i've had a around 20? going for quite awhile.  Only need to feed one to get an extra egg if one lays a normal hatch egg.

Groom once in the morning, when rancher leaves open some door so they will be drop back down to overcrowded starving room where they can burrow so that grooming has some effect.

If you have 20 hatches in stable that means they are overcrowded and grooming them does nothing (if they can't burrow) they will be less unhappy but still unhappy from overcrowded.

---

But yes there will still be issue with normal hatches eating meat very quickly when starving...