Putting things in perspective - pacus vs. a dedicated rocket

[Tobruk]

This post is based on one important assumption - we're sticking with the developers intentions about pacus, so no throttling the amount of algae or other shenanigans.

So. The idea here is to show you just how much pacus eat by calculating the amount of pacus you can feed with one rocket on a constant mission in and out of a slime asteroid.

I think most of the time numbers like 140 kg/cycle don't mean much unless we put them in perspective.

How many pacus do you think you can support this way? HM? Let's find out!

Based on my current starmap the closest slime asteroid is 50000 km away. That means the return trip takes 15 cycles.

The composition of all slime asteroids is similar, so my 39% of algae and 22% slime isn't something unusual. This gets us 80 kg/cycle of pure algea and 15 kg/cycle of refined algea (from slime). [Two cargo bays]

Can you already guess how many pacus can you feed?

In words - BARELY one. You'll still be starving the poor fish.

And to do that you'll only need one rocket that costs couple tonnes of steel, around 100 kg/cycle of petroleum and some liquid oxygen.

That's a good trade-off, isn't it?

[Chthonicone]

3 hours ago, Tobruk said:

This post is based on one important assumption - we're sticking with the developers intentions about pacus, so no throttling the amount of algae or other shenanigans.

So. The idea here is to show you just how much pacus eat by calculating the amount of pacus you can feed with one rocket on a constant mission in and out of a slime asteroid.

I think most of the time numbers like 140 kg/cycle don't mean much unless we put them in perspective.

How many pacus do you think you can support this way? HM? Let's find out!

Based on my current starmap the closest slime asteroid is 50000 km away. That means the return trip takes 15 cycles.

The composition of all slime asteroids is similar, so my 39% of algae and 22% slime isn't something unusual. This gets us 80 kg/cycle of pure algea and 15 kg/cycle of refined algea (from slime). [Two cargo bays]

Can you already guess how many pacus can you feed?

In words - BARELY one. You'll still be starving the poor fish.

And to do that you'll only need one rocket that costs couple tonnes of steel, around 100 kg/cycle of petroleum and some liquid oxygen.

That's a good trade-off, isn't it?

I've always thought that Pacus ate far too much of a rarish resource to realistically survive. IMO, there should be a better method of producing algae, or pacus should eat less per cycle.

[Gus Smedstad]

I think the reasoning is this:

The preferred method of ranching many critters is to herd wild ones. Pacus mostly exist for meat and eggshells. Wild Pacus produce both at no penalty without any feeding at all. They each produce an egg to replace themselves when they die.

Feeding a Pacu produces dirt, but that's not really the purpose. Mostly what you're buying by feeding them algae is more Pacus, which you can then put in a wild pool to perpetually produce meat and lime.

You're not supposed to haul most "common" resources back from space. Hauling water back, for example, is obviously a poor return on your effort. The only things that are worth it are things that you can't get anywhere else (i.e. niobium) or are very limited (i.e. wheezewort seeds, tungsten). Algae is a common resource, and it's more viable to produce it through polluted oxygen -> puffs -> slime -> distillation.

Puffs -> algae still kind of sucks, IMHO, but I think that's the intended route for renewable algae. Which only makes sense if you view algae is a one-time cost to buy extra Pacu eggs, not as an ongoing expense.

Compare Pacus to Pokeshells. Pokeshells produce sand if you feed them and more Pokeshells. You don't really want the sand, since there's nearly infinite sand available just by crushing rock. It's definitely easier to feed Pokeshells than Pacus, but my point is mainly that feeding them is nearly pointless unless you want to increase your Pokeshell herd.

This reasoning doesn't apply to hatches, puffs, or slicksters. I think you're supposed to ranch those for their outputs.

I'm not a fan of the algae cost for Pacus either, but that's the justification. I think.

[Yoma_Nosme]

140kg/cycle is bananas! 

Imagine you have an aquarium at home with some fish...now take half a cow and throw it in , and they'd still be hungry... 

[Lancar]

Algae costs for Pacus has always been bat**** insane. Nobody in their right mind would ever farm them "properly". I just have an airlock door in the floor of my printer room that dumps all the 8fish prints into my giant water tank. With some sweepers and loaders at the bottom, I never even think about the pacus ever again.

[Rainbowdesign]

If you want to make pacu feeding a challenge i have a slime grower which grows slime from water in my super building extension https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1828749978. Otherwise if you just want to maintain a colony maybe use plants to feed your dupes?

[Nitroturtle]

16 hours ago, Tobruk said:

This post is based on one important assumption - we're sticking with the developers intentions

I think the main issue is this assumption.  I'm fairly convinced from my time playing this game in early access, that often times there are no intentions and stuff is just added to see how players react.  Things that are wildly broken, get adjusted.  While this instance is an example of something that's pretty broken, players have found ways to adapt so it's not very high on the list of things to fix.

[avc15]

It only costs a few tons of algae to breed pacu. Hardly something that requires a sustainable algae supply. Your assumptions about design intent caused you to miss it.

No need to use throttling tricks. Breed a healthy population of pacu then don't feed them anymore.

[Gurgel]

Obviously, Pacus turn into red herrings secretly when fed! 

I have made excellent experiences with just letting them go hungry. Works best in 15C water or so, where the variants survive as well. And overcrowding is not an issue, just put all you have into a small pool.

[hacksaw12]

2 hours ago, avc15 said:

It only costs a few tons of algae to breed pacu. Hardly something that requires a sustainable algae supply. Your assumptions about design intent caused you to miss it.

No need to use throttling tricks. Breed a healthy population of pacu then don't feed them anymore.

This seems to work pretty well as a general rule. I do the same thing with slicksters, and they seem to get along fine.

[Lancar]

11 hours ago, hacksaw12 said:

This seems to work pretty well as a general rule. I do the same thing with slicksters, and they seem to get along fine.

Slicksters are arguably one of the easiest creatures to feed, though. Every colony will always eventually end up with massive amounts of CO2.

[Stoned]

I always think of Pacu appetite like my dog‘s hunger, never ending, would eat till death. So a little throttling is needed. In my last base I had a successful algae rocket and puft farm as algae sources, them pacu egg - raw egg (gives 2kg/egg) - omelette - sage hatch - barbeque food chain. But there are way more efficient meat sources out there.

[hacksaw12]

9 hours ago, Lancar said:

Slicksters are arguably one of the easiest creatures to feed, though. Every colony will always eventually end up with massive amounts of CO2.

Exactly, I usually just start a ranch, dump the extra eggs in other parts of the oil biome, when I get enough, open the ranch doors, delete the grooming station and tell the slicksters to have a nice day, plenty of CO2 here.

[Xaekai]

The only thing more useless than actually trying to feed pacus is the existence of the gulp pacu.

A coldwater fish that turns polluted water, which is usually hot, into fresh water. What a useless creature.

[Gus Smedstad]

Gulp Pacu are actually a drawback. The contaminants in polluted water are a valuable resource, which you can turn into dirt or feed to trees, pepper plants, or even reeds (which I don't recommend, personally). If you're purifying your water with Gulp Pacu, you're throwing that away.

Back when water sieves were a problem heat source due to a fixed 40 C output, you could sort of justify using Gulps in the early game. But you're not going to obtain Gulps in the early game because of the temperature requirements and time to breed them.