One tile drecko pen

[Zarquan]

Ever want to get the most out of that drecko egg, but you don't want to feed it or groom for it?  And do it while avoiding all the pathing and wandering reducing your frame rates?  Fear not!  The 1 tile drecko pen is here!

(NOTE:   I built this in debug mode, but I know how to build it in survival.  Also, they conveyor dropper and pneumatic door should be on the other side of the platform so the sweeper doesn't pick up the dropped eggs.)

This is a slow killing pen for your dreckos that gets the most out of them before they starve to death!  The way this works is via liquid stacking.  The liquids used here per tile are (from bottom to top) 300 g crude oil, 300 g petroleum, 30 g brine, 30 g salt water, 30 g water.  This is not a population self-sustaining system like my slickster pen, as these dreckos are not fed because that would take space.  Due to the low mass of liquid covering the sheering machine, it is not considered to be "flooded."  The column of non liquid is hydrogen, so the dreckos scales continue to grow.

This results in exchanging dupe time (for shaving) for plastic and reed fiber.  I personally would only put glossy dreckos in here because I can make many wild reed fiber plants with pips.  Keep in mind that the plastic can be turned in to natural gas through sour gas, so it is a potential power and water source.  (math in spoiler)

Drecko eggs are dropped from the conveyor chute in to an open pneumatic door in the crude oil layer.  I haven't let this long long enough to let an egg hatch yet, but dreckos dropped under the conveyor chute jump in to the platform.  If they decide to go the long way, then a pneumatic door can be used to drop them in potentially, but I haven't made that system yet.  It might be profitable to keep as many dreckos wild as possible and putting them in this system, as wild dreckos do not starve and can lay an egg before dying.

Spoiler

A quick bit of math (because I can't resist): 

Resource production per drekko:

1 glossy drecko can produce up to 50 kg plastic every 3 cycles, or 16.67 kg/cycle or 27.78 g/s plastic.  That 27.78 g/s plastic can be boiled and condensed in to 18.61 g/s natural gas.  That natural gas produces 13.96 g/s water per drecko and 4.65 g/s CO2.  If you feed the CO2 to slicksters, then we end up with one of two loops:  We can burn the crude oil in to petroleum (or use molten slicksters) or we can boil it in to sour gas. 

Following the CO2 loop on petroleum, we get to burn an additional 2.66 g/s petroleum, which translates in to 1.00 g/s water.  This results in 14.96 g/s water per glossy drecko.

Following the CO2 loop on natural gas, we get 1.70 g/s natural gas, which we can burn in to 1.28 g/s water.  This results in a total amount of water 15.24 g/s polluted water per glossy drecko.

Note that though the sour gas method produces more water that it takes a lot more space than petroleum when you end up with larger numbers like 10 kg/s petroleum, so it might not be worth it water-wise.

Is it worth the dupe time?

If this process is worth dupe time, it should produce at least 100 g/s oxygen and 1000 kcal food per dupe involved if the dupe is spending all their time either shearing dreckos or on downtime.  If you feed the dupes bristle blossom unboosted and give the dupes oxygen through electolyzers and take in to account the lavatory, we need 90.87 kg/cycle water.  To produce this much water with glossy dreckos, a single dupe has to be able to shear 4 glossy dreckos in a single cycle.  A dupe can easily shear more than 4 glossy dreckos in a cycle, so it is definitely worth it from a material sense. 

Ideas for further improvements:  If we had a way to age separate the dreckos and feed them enough of what they need to lay an egg before starving, then this system could be population self sustaining to the amount of food we produce.  However, I would argue that such a build would not be one tile, as there would be dreckos that sit in positions that are not the one tile you see in the picture.  I will probably work to design one at some point though because it sounds fun.

[Steve Raptor]

Poor dreckos....

[Zarquan]

6 minutes ago, Steve Raptor said:

Poor dreckos....

I don't want to do this to the critters.  If the animals were more computationally efficient, then I wouldn't have to.  But I need the frames!

Ideally, I would find a way to feed them, but since they eat live plants and live plants take space, I can't do that effectively in one tile.

[mathmanican]

8 hours ago, Zarquan said:

However, I would argue that such a build would not be one tile, as there would be dreckos that sit in positions that are not the one tile you see in the picture. 

Awesome work. I love it. 

Could we batch process the dreckos, say every 50 cycles? Have two of these, with a single tile of food between.  Swap where we drop the eggs every 50 cycles, and swap which side gets food access too. One plant might be enough to feed them all with the critter calorie reset bug (haven't played with it enough). The stacked liquids can be removed and reconstructed, with automation (not too hard, just set valves to 10 or 100, and then a 2 second pulse will get you 20-30 or 200-300g - though multi-liquid interactions may bust this....), so we can build the liquid retaining walls at will, and herd the critters too. Auto wrangling could do this, but it comes with critter dropping possibilities. 

Fun times.  I await the future installment.  The slickster pen was just genius.  

[bzgzd]

14 hours ago, Zarquan said:

But I need the frames!

I was trying 100 dreckos to see what is the FPS difference on my PC between one tile or 3 tiles I use for them.

There was not much (if any) but when I hold mouse over those 100 dreckos... minus 30 FPS despite 97% of those tooltips where off-screen.
 

Spoiler