Fully automated dense puft ranching - ChickenMadness based

[gaucho_tche]

1 minute ago, ChickenMadness said:

Ye the one I made is easily stackable, I designed it so that it was modular and you could stack as many as you want. You only need one Hatchery (left chamber) because it makes ****loads of eggs on it's own, and every other chamber can be the same as the room on the right. 

The only difference in the hatchery vs the normal ranch on the right is that there is always a puft prince being incubated and released into the room. And the Puft Prince ends up dying after a few cycles but there is another puft prince being hatched ready to take it's place. Since it's a dense puft farm and theres no PO2 for it to survive.

1) so only need one of the left and can make multiple of the right? How to take the eggs to the multiple right sides?

2) does the dense puft production increase when there's a price in the room?

On 10/20/2019 at 6:30 PM, Chthonicone said:

There are 2 debuffs people confuse: Overcrowded and Cramped. Sure the words are synonyms, but their effects in game are different.

Overcrowded: -5 happiness (leads to Glum since it will put happiness to negative) And Glum is -80% metabolism

Crampled: -100% reproduction (This is the egg laying timer)

Ok, now that we have definitions for them, here's how each is triggered:

Overcrowded happens when there isn't enough roaming space for each critter in a room. For most it's 12 tiles of air, pufts are 16 tiles of air. Pacu are 8 tiles of swimmable water. Eggs do not matter for this.

In a max sized ranch (96 tiles) you can have 8 hatches, or 6 pufts before they become overcrowded.

Overcrowded does not affect wild critters mind you because they are already -1 happiness, and -1 to -6 happiness makes no difference.

Now, cramped is a bit different. First it counts the number of critters in a room, then it counts all the eggs. If this would reach the overcrowded level then critters are cramped. They stop laying eggs because those eggs hatching would cause overcrowding if they didn't already have it.

That's pretty much it, but here's some examples in a 96 tile room:

7 hatches 1 egg: No debuff

7 hatches 2 eggs: Cramped only.

8 hatches: No debuff

8 hatches 1 egg: Cramped only.

9 hatches: Overcrowded (note that they still lay eggs normally)

9 hatches 1 egg: Cramped and Overcrowded.

If you want to keep your critters laying eggs, make sure not to store the eggs in the same room. It's that simple.

Thanks for the very complete explanation.

[ChickenMadness]

29 minutes ago, gaucho_tche said:

1) so only need one of the left and can make multiple of the right? How to take the eggs to the multiple right sides?

Ye I don't know what the maximum number of chambers the hatchery chamber can support but it can easily support 4 rooms.

And ye just copy the room on the right and build a bunch of them in a row, or stack them on top of each other in a large square.
 

29 minutes ago, gaucho_tche said:

How to take the eggs to the multiple right sides?

 

You'll have to check the conveyor rail system in the save file and look at the priority of all the containers, egg incubators, etc.  And what they're all set to, it's easier to look at it than explain. The containers are set so that they can only have maximum of 2 or 4 eggs inside of them. Any extra eggs will get sent to the next room (the kill room in the screenshots, but you can send them to the next ranch chamber)
 

29 minutes ago, gaucho_tche said:

2) does the dense puft production increase when there's a price in the room?

If there is a puft prince in the room....
dense pufts will create more dense pufts.
normal pufts will create more normal pufts.
chlorine pufts will create more chlorine pufts.

If there is no puft prince in the room...
All pufts will only create puft prince eggs.

And that is why you need a seperate hatchery with a single puft prince in the room 24/7 to be able to replace all the other puft species with new eggs.

That was the main challenge of fully automating different species of puft ranches. I was the only person on the forum that could be bothered coming up with a build for it because it was such an annoying game mechanic lol. Everyone just ranched hatches for meat instead.

[gaucho_tche]

3 hours ago, ChickenMadness said:

Ye I don't know what the maximum number of chambers the hatchery chamber can support but it can easily support 4 rooms.

And ye just copy the room on the right and build a bunch of them in a row, or stack them on top of each other in a large square.
 

You'll have to check the conveyor rail system in the save file and look at the priority of all the containers, egg incubators, etc.  And what they're all set to, it's easier to look at it than explain. The containers are set so that they can only have maximum of 2 or 4 eggs inside of them. Any extra eggs will get sent to the next room (the kill room in the screenshots, but you can send them to the next ranch chamber)
 

If there is a puft prince in the room....
dense pufts will create more dense pufts.
normal pufts will create more normal pufts.
chlorine pufts will create more chlorine pufts.

If there is no puft prince in the room...
All pufts will only create puft prince eggs.

And that is why you need a seperate hatchery with a single puft prince in the room 24/7 to be able to replace all the other puft species with new eggs.

That was the main challenge of fully automating different species of puft ranches. I was the only person on the forum that could be bothered coming up with a build for it because it was such an annoying game mechanic lol. Everyone just ranched hatches for meat instead.

Fantastic design Chicken. Would you care to explain step by step the design? I am having trouble trying to figure it out on my own. For example, how the left incubator always get a prince egg and not a dense? the same to the right incubator with only dense? If i get it right it's because of the storage set for only prince eggs in the left and to dense in the right (left big chamber)?

So since you must always have an egg there, what's the mechanics to take the eggs that surpass it to the right chamber?

I was making some calculations, and it seems that pufts put an egg every 5 cycles (2% + 20% when happy, so that's 22% per cycle * 5 = 110%, so a little under 5 cycles). Since we have 5 dense pufts in the left chamber, it would mean 1 egg per cycle. One egg equals 1600kcal (1 dense puft), so that feeds 3 dupes per egg (500 calories each cycle * 3), if my math is right.

The thing is that 1 egg per cycle is too low to populate more than one of the right rooms, isn't it?

About the creature sensor -> not gates. Using a > 4 (over 4) -> not gate -> door, isn't it the same as using a < 5 (under five) -> door??

Also, i've a few more questions which i've pointed out in the attached picture.

 

[beowulf2010]

3 hours ago, ChickenMadness said:

And the Puft Prince ends up dying after a few cycles but there is another puft prince being hatched ready to take it's place. Since it's a dense puft farm and theres no PO2 for it to survive.

They actually changed Puft Princes to breathe any of the 3 gasses (converting only 10% sadly) that normal pufts do so they won't be starving to death anymore. I haven't played with your ranch in a while so I don't know if this will screw things up or not. 

[gaucho_tche]

Just now, beowulf2010 said:

They actually changed Puft Princes to breathe any of the 3 gasses that normal pufts do so they won't be starving to death anymore. I haven't played with your ranch in a while so I don't know if this will screw things up or not. 

oh, good point, this might be a problem, yes.

[ChickenMadness]

3 hours ago, beowulf2010 said:

They actually changed Puft Princes to breathe any of the 3 gasses (converting only 10% sadly) that normal pufts do so they won't be starving to death anymore. I haven't played with your ranch in a while so I don't know if this will screw things up or not. 

Well if it still poops out slime having PO2 floating around won't really change much. You could put a couple deodorizers in there to turn it back into oxygen or just have a seperate slime conveyor rail to take it out of the ranch. And you'll need exosuits so the duplicants don't get slimelung.
 

4 hours ago, gaucho_tche said:

Fantastic design Chicken. Would you care to explain step by step the design? I am having trouble trying to figure it out on my own. For example, how the left incubator always get a prince egg and not a dense? the same to the right incubator with only dense? If i get it right it's because of the storage set for only prince eggs in the left and to dense in the right (left big chamber)?

You can set the incubators so that they only take one type of egg. The left is set to puft princes and the right is set to dense pufts.
In the normal ranch chamber both incubators are set to dense pufts.
There is also one storage container in each room set to the 2 different egg types. Both are set to 1kg so that they only store 2 eggs maximum.

In the hatchery chamber the puft prince door opens when there are 5 creatures because the puft prince would be dead every few cycles and need to be replaced.
This might actually screw up the ranch, since I've been told the puft princes won't starve to death now.

The way it would have worked if the puft princes were always starving to death was that every time the puft prince dies, the number of critters in the room goes down to 5 and the puft prince in the hatchery goes trhough the door to replace it. Then it goes back up to 6.

But when the puft prince AND a dense puft dies then both doors are open so that the both types of critter are replaced. When the puft princes were starving to death there would always only be one Puft prince alive at all times but now it might change things. You can leave it running and see how the ratio of Puft prince : Dense puft evens out in that room but it should still work as intended. There will just be more than one Puft prince in there.

The other reason the critter sensors are set to 5 and 4 was so that 2 critters don't leave the hatching rooms at the same time if both doors open when there are 5 critters. because if they both fly out of the rooms at the same time it would take the number of critters in the ranch to 7 and they would stop breeding (overcrowded).

So you could put both critter sensors down to 4, so that they will both only open when 2 critters in the ranch die. That will make sure there are never more than 6 critters. The ranch should also even out at 3 puft princes 3 dense pufts if you do that. It should still be producing enough dense puft eggs for 3 other ranch chambers, they produce eggs very quickly.
 

4 hours ago, gaucho_tche said:

So since you must always have an egg there, what's the mechanics to take the eggs that surpass it to the right chamber?

Hopefully this diagram explains some questions.
The main ranch chamber (right side) sends all of the Prince eggs it makes into the hatchery chamber using that priority 3 red conveyor loader.
From there, the eggs distributed in this order because of the priority... Incubator > storage container > priority 2 conveyor loader.  When the incubator and storage container are full up, all the extra eggs go into the priority 2 conveyor loader which goes to the kill room.

Now for the dense puft eggs that are created in the hatchery chamber..
All of the puft eggs created there get sent into the priority 3 conveyor loader and get sent into the next room (if you have multiple ranch chambers you will have to split it up with multiple conveyor rails. You wanted 3 different ranch chambers so you will have to split it into a 3 pronged fork so they go to the 3 different chambers evenly).
And it works in the same way as the previous explanation the eggs go to the 2 incubators >  storage container > Priority 2 conveyor loader.

And with the dense puft incubator in the hatchery room... there is nothing fancy going on there, That is the chamber where dense puft eggs are produced, and the dense puft incubator is set to high priority so it is the first thing to be loaded with eggs before anything else.



 

4 hours ago, gaucho_tche said:

I was making some calculations, and it seems that pufts put an egg every 5 cycles (2% + 20% when happy, so that's 22% per cycle * 5 = 110%, so a little under 5 cycles). Since we have 5 dense pufts in the left chamber, it would mean 1 egg per cycle. One egg equals 1600kcal (1 dense puft), so that feeds 3 dupes per egg (500 calories each cycle * 3), if my math is right.

The thing is that 1 egg per cycle is too low to populate more than one of the right rooms, isn't it?

I can't remember all the maths but Pufts have a lifespan of 75 cycles so one hatchery chamber can support alot of ranch chambers for critter replacement because they take a long time to die of old age.
3 dupes fed per chamber seems right because thats about how much were being fed when I left it running for a long time to test it. Overall it was feeding 6-7 dupes after cooking to BBQ.

 

4 hours ago, gaucho_tche said:

About the creature sensor -> not gates. Using a > 4 (over 4) -> not gate -> door, isn't it the same as using a < 5 (under five) -> door??

I can't really remember why I've done that but I think there is a reason for it, because it took me a while to get that whole door system working the way I wanted it to so I wouldn't end up going over the maximum critters in the ranch. You can try testing it the other way and see what happens.

Edit: actually I just checked and remember now. When I made this there was no option for greater than or lower than with the critter sensor. The settings were really basic and you could only do it one way.
 

4 hours ago, gaucho_tche said:

Also, i've a few more questions which i've pointed out in the attached picture.

Think I answered most of this in the first bunch of paragraphs and in my diagram.

But with the pneumatic doors on the right side. The eggs should fall straight through the pneumatic doors even if they're closed. Unless thats changed now???


 

[gaucho_tche]

38 minutes ago, ChickenMadness said:

Well if it still poops out slime having PO2 floating around won't really change much. You could put a couple deodorizers in there to turn it back into oxygen or just have a seperate slime conveyor rail to take it out of the ranch. And you'll need exosuits so the duplicants don't get slimelung.
 

You can set the incubators so that they only take one type of egg. The left is set to puft princes and the right is set to dense pufts.
In the normal ranch chamber both incubators are set to dense pufts.
There is also one storage container in each room set to the 2 different egg types. Both are set to 1kg so that they only store 2 eggs maximum.

In the hatchery chamber the puft prince door opens when there are 5 creatures because the puft prince would be dead every few cycles and need to be replaced.
This might actually screw up the ranch, since I've been told the puft princes won't starve to death now.

The way it would have worked if the puft princes were always starving to death was that every time the puft prince dies, the number of critters in the room goes down to 5 and the puft prince in the hatchery goes trhough the door to replace it. Then it goes back up to 6.

But when the puft prince AND a dense puft dies then both doors are open so that the both types of critter are replaced. When the puft princes were starving to death there would always only be one Puft prince alive at all times but now it might change things. You can leave it running and see how the ratio of Puft prince : Dense puft evens out in that room but it should still work as intended. There will just be more than one Puft prince in there.

The other reason the critter sensors are set to 5 and 4 was so that 2 critters don't leave the hatching rooms at the same time if both doors open when there are 5 critters. because if they both fly out of the rooms at the same time it would take the number of critters in the ranch to 7 and they would stop breeding (overcrowded).

So you could put both critter sensors down to 4, so that they will both only open when 2 critters in the ranch die. That will make sure there are never more than 6 critters. The ranch should also even out at 3 puft princes 3 dense pufts if you do that. It should still be producing enough dense puft eggs for 3 other ranch chambers, they produce eggs very quickly.
 

Hopefully this diagram explains some questions.
The main ranch chamber (right side) sends all of the Prince eggs it makes into the hatchery chamber using that priority 3 red conveyor loader.
From there, the eggs distributed in this order because of the priority... Incubator > storage container > priority 2 conveyor loader.  When the incubator and storage container are full up, all the extra eggs go into the priority 2 conveyor loader which goes to the kill room.

Now for the dense puft eggs that are created in the hatchery chamber..
All of the puft eggs created there get sent into the priority 3 conveyor loader and get sent into the next room (if you have multiple ranch chambers you will have to split it up with multiple conveyor rails. You wanted 3 different ranch chambers so you will have to split it into a 3 pronged fork so they go to the 3 different chambers evenly).
And it works in the same way as the previous explanation the eggs go to the 2 incubators >  storage container > Priority 2 conveyor loader.

And with the dense puft incubator in the hatchery room... there is nothing fancy going on there, That is the chamber where dense puft eggs are produced, and the dense puft incubator is set to high priority so it is the first thing to be loaded with eggs before anything else.



 

I can't remember all the maths but Pufts have a lifespan of 75 cycles so one hatchery can support alot of ranches for critter replacement because they take a long time to die of old age.
3 dupes fed per chamber seems right because thats about how much were being fed when I left it running for a long time to test it. Overall it was feeding 6-7 dupes after cooking to BBQ.

 

I can't really remember why I've done that but I think there is a reason for it, because it took me a while to get that whole door system working the way I wanted it to so I wouldn't end up going over the maximum critters in the ranch. You can try testing it the other way and see what happens.
 

Think I answered most of this in the first bunch of paragraphs and in my diagram.

But with the pneumatic doors on the right side. The eggs should fall straight through the pneumatic doors even if they're closed. Unless thats changed now???


 

Thanks for the reply. So you think that even with prince pufts eating regular oxygen the design will keep working?

Also, about the incubators. Dupes have no access to them, so don't they loose their point, since without dupes hugging it the eggs take the same time as out of incubator to mature?

[ChickenMadness]

43 minutes ago, gaucho_tche said:

Thanks for the reply. So you think that even with prince pufts eating regular oxygen the design will keep working?

 

Ye just set both doors to only open when theres 4 pufts in the room. Pretty sure that will fix it.

As long as there are a few dense pufts in there creating eggs to supply the other rooms then it will be serving it's purpose.

43 minutes ago, gaucho_tche said:

 

Also, about the incubators. Dupes have no access to them, so don't they loose their point, since without dupes hugging it the eggs take the same time as out of incubator to mature?

Ye that's to make sure there is always an adult puft in the room ready to go. The incubators don't even turn on when theres an adult puft already flying around in the room. The baby critter stays inside the incubator for 5 cycles until it's an adult and then it's ejected automatically.
And eggs and critters that are inside the incubator don't count towards the critter sensor, but eggs inside the containers do count. So it is needed for everything to work without dupe interaction. And it allows you to have 2 critters alive inside the room, but only one of them counts towards the total critter count. It speeds things up overall. Theres a bunch of reasons why it's set up like that.


And you can have dupe access to the bottom rooms by building a ladder in the middle but I take that out once the room is built and everything is working because I don't want duplicants having access to that area and messing up all the containers etc.

[gaucho_tche]

10 hours ago, ChickenMadness said:

Ye just set both doors to only open when theres 4 pufts in the room. Pretty sure that will fix it.

As long as there are a few dense pufts in there creating eggs to supply the other rooms then it will be serving it's purpose.

Ye that's to make sure there is always an adult puft in the room ready to go. The incubators don't even turn on when theres an adult puft already flying around in the room. The baby critter stays inside the incubator for 5 cycles until it's an adult and then it's ejected automatically.
And eggs and critters that are inside the incubator don't count towards the critter sensor, but eggs inside the containers do count. So it is needed for everything to work without dupe interaction. And it allows you to have 2 critters alive inside the room, but only one of them counts towards the total critter count. It speeds things up overall. Theres a bunch of reasons why it's set up like that.


And you can have dupe access to the bottom rooms by building a ladder in the middle but I take that out once the room is built and everything is working because I don't want duplicants having access to that area and messing up all the containers etc.

I didn't know that dropped itens could cross doors!

Also, about the slaughterhouse, it's set to auto-function from time to time... won't that kill eggs?

[beowulf2010]

2 hours ago, gaucho_tche said:

I didn't know that dropped itens could cross doors!

Also, about the slaughterhouse, it's set to auto-function from time to time... won't that kill eggs?

Yep. Anything already falling will pass through closed pneumatic doors. 

And nothing will "kill" an egg other than it loosing all viability when stored, the egg cracker, and high temperatures (which will cook it directly to an omelette). 

[ChickenMadness]

3 hours ago, gaucho_tche said:

I didn't know that dropped itens could cross doors!

Also, about the slaughterhouse, it's set to auto-function from time to time... won't that kill eggs?

I wasn't sure if eggs lost viability under water when I built it. So the doors in the slaughterhouse are set to close once per cycle for around 15 seconds. That's enough time to drown the critters and then it opens again. 

[gaucho_tche]

So here we go, one dense puft ranch plus 6 puft prince ranches. Now waiting for it to populate, and hoping that my slime stock is enough to support it, until I can start relying on meat.

[gaucho_tche]

22 hours ago, ChickenMadness said:

I wasn't sure if eggs lost viability under water when I built it. So the doors in the slaughterhouse are set to close once per cycle for around 15 seconds. That's enough time to drown the critters and then it opens again. 

So I've set the automation just like you did and it's not working. Does it need a kick start or something?

[beowulf2010]

1 hour ago, gaucho_tche said:

So I've set the automation just like you did and it's not working. Does it need a kick start or something?

You can just use a clock sensor set for like 3-5% of the day. No need for the linked gates when you are doing something at the same time every cycle. 

[gaucho_tche]

actually since you can submerge the eggs and they will hatch anyways there's no need for all of this.

I was just curious on why the automation was not working.

[beowulf2010]

19 minutes ago, gaucho_tche said:

actually since you can submerge the eggs and they will hatch anyways there's no need for all of this.

I was just curious on why the automation was not working.

I haven't used that for so long that I can't answer that other than making the general observation that timing circuits usually use buffer gates instead of the filter gates you are using. 

[gaucho_tche]

21 minutes ago, beowulf2010 said:

I haven't used that for so long that I can't answer that other than making the general observation that timing circuits usually use buffer gates instead of the filter gates you are using. 

I see, this is chickenmadness design, i know nothing about circuits, so i don't have a clue how it operates

[beowulf2010]

23 minutes ago, gaucho_tche said:

I see, this is chickenmadness design, i know nothing about circuits, so i don't have a clue how it operates

No worries. Taking a closer look at it, you are basically skipping the bottom left Filter gate due to an incorrect connection.  Playing around with it, it works for me.

Here's what I just built and it works. I expanded it a bit to show the wiring a tiny bit easier.

Spoiler

 

[gaucho_tche]

1 hour ago, beowulf2010 said:

No worries. Taking a closer look at it, you are basically skipping the bottom left Filter gate due to an incorrect connection.  Playing around with it, it works for me.

Here's what I just built and it works. I expanded it a bit to show the wiring a tiny bit easier.

  Hide contents

 

Thank you beowulf!

[ChickenMadness]

5 hours ago, gaucho_tche said:

So I've set the automation just like you did and it's not working. Does it need a kick start or something?

delete the part with the red X

It's meant to look like this.

Looks like beowulf already answered though lol.

[gaucho_tche]

4 hours ago, ChickenMadness said:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

delete the part with the red X

It's meant to look like this.


 

Looks like beowulf already answered though lol.

So Chicken, I was thinking, what protects it from having 2 pufts in one of the lower chambers? I mean, one will hatch, and then be released from the incubator into the small room. Then another egg will be put in the incubator. if that one hatches also and is freed into the room there will be 2 pufts, and they both might be released into the main chamber, taking the creature count to 7.

Also, I'm thinking in disconnecting the incubators from power because since dupes will not hug it, then it's the same as if the eggs were in the ground, so no point in spending power.

 

Also as seen in the picture, 18 eggs waiting to hatch and be auto-butchered underwater for food. BUT i had to set the grumming stations all to priority 10, otherwise they will stay gloom for long periods of time, killing the egg production.

Also attached a picture of the simplest slaughterhouse =D Could be made with just one tile, but I feel better with 2.

[ChickenMadness]

4 hours ago, gaucho_tche said:

So Chicken, I was thinking, what protects it from having 2 pufts in one of the lower chambers? I mean, one will hatch, and then be released from the incubator into the small room. Then another egg will be put in the incubator. if that one hatches also and is freed into the room there will be 2 pufts, and they both might be released into the main chamber, taking the creature count to 7.

One of the things you need to do when you first set the ranches up is to make sure the pufts in the ranches are all different ages, if you hatch all 6 eggs at the same time when you first set the ranches up then what you're describing will happen. But if you just leave it, eventually it will fix itself on it's own because all the hatcheries will be staggering the ages, so that eventually there will be a puft dying every 5-10 cycles.

The build is unbreakable, it fixes itself on it's own and primes itself by staggering the ages of the pufts being born and dying if you leave it for a long time. But by micromanaging it every few cycles you can speed that up, eventually you can leave it without supervision forever.

The power to the incubators shuts off anyway if there is already an adult puft in the room, but you can see what happens if you permenantly shut off the power. They might hatch the pufts too slowly to replace the dead ones.

Also good job with the 2 tile slaughter house.

[gaucho_tche]

11 hours ago, ChickenMadness said:

One of the things you need to do when you first set the ranches up is to make sure the pufts in the ranches are all different ages, if you hatch all 6 eggs at the same time when you first set the ranches up then what you're describing will happen. But if you just leave it, eventually it will fix itself on it's own because all the hatcheries will be staggering the ages, so that eventually there will be a puft dying every 5-10 cycles.

The build is unbreakable, it fixes itself on it's own and primes itself by staggering the ages of the pufts being born and dying if you leave it for a long time. But by micromanaging it every few cycles you can speed that up, eventually you can leave it without supervision forever.

The power to the incubators shuts off anyway if there is already an adult puft in the room, but you can see what happens if you permenantly shut off the power. They might hatch the pufts too slowly to replace the dead ones.

Also good job with the 2 tile slaughter house.

But am I wrong to think that an incubator without dupe access will hatch it in the same time as the egg outside of an incubator?

Also I've set some automation for the dense puft egg replacement (bottom part) with the use of smart storage bins and conveyors shutoffs.

And some automation for it to make sure both prince price and dense are able to be released in the left chamber (dense egg producer chamber). The buffer is set to 200 seconds, so only when both pufts have left the small chambers it closes both doors.

 

[Craigjw]

2 hours ago, gaucho_tche said:

But am I wrong to think that an incubator without dupe access will hatch it in the same time as the egg outside of an incubator?

The hatch times are the same, they do not apply any buff.  If you aren't going to have a dupe lullaby the incubated creature, there's no real benefit to having an incubator and there is no buff applied.

However, I use them just to hold an egg, when an egg is delivered, it gets sent to the incubator and not the loader, if there is a second egg delivered, because timing sucks and a 1s delay doesn't always result in a single packet being delivered from a rail, the loader picks up any spare eggs that might drop because it's priority is lower.

[gaucho_tche]

3 minutes ago, Craigjw said:

The hatch times are the same, they do not apply any buff.  If you aren't going to have a dupe lullaby the incubated creature, there's no real benefit to having an incubator and there is no buff applied.

However, I use them just to hold an egg, when an egg is delivered, it gets sent to the incubator and not the loader, if there is a second egg delivered, because timing sucks and a 1s delay doesn't always result in a single packet being delivered from a rail, the loader picks up any spare eggs that might drop because it's priority is lower.

Yes, that's exactly why it's useful.