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Ranching vertically.


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So I just wanted to ask for some opinions on ranch layout. Almost all of the ranches I see are horizontal 24x4, while my natural inclination was to go vertical. I find it more aesthetically pleasing and efficient, giving me plenty of headroom for things like sweepers and better airflow profile. And naturally created the limited space people use a 3 high to keep critters close to the grooming station.
In this 4x24 design each sweeper can do their room and all but one square of the next so not quite perfect. Travel time seems not to be an issue apart from they have to climb up to the door, the 4x24 placement allows them to reach the ladder over the top of the grooming station. Excess slicksters overflow into the pit and they either drown themselves in the mixed fluid, not sure why but they sit on the oil and drown in the petroleum layer often, which self solved the fact that the petroleum layer ruined my critter drowning machine, or I come along and mass attack them every so often. Due to poor planning and the late idea to ranch slicksters where I was dumping my refinery heat my main power station is lower than the ranch but next time I would be planning better to drop the co2 right onto them.
The 7x14 design gives plenty of floor space and seems to be turning into my conveyor sorting and redirecting area.
The biggest problem I have encountered is dupes dropping their wrangled critter where ever they are to go have smoko, so they get a bit mixed up at times.

So is it purely floor space efficiency that makes the 24x4 popular? I dont see floor space as particularly valuable other than travel distance, as the map is enormous.

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Anyone that is ranching horizontally is simply doing it wrong when it comes to critters that can't climb walls.

Unless you have a kink for dupes slapping their knees all day that is... Straight routes for critters is key, the shorter the path, the quicker they get groomed/sheared/wrangled etc.

Personally I opt for hands-off ranches whenever I can get away with it, with just a spot of grooming being the only dupe interaction necessary.

Spoiler

 

This is from the current stream playthrough :

image.thumb.png.4d2c3c28f34792fcd30c02014fbc3265.png

And my new favourite, the abyssalite deleting boys (diamond hatches) : 

image.thumb.png.0bec8aee5072f0d113a41062d8bc0050.png

 

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I do prefer the vertical ranch method, but a horizontal 24x4 ranch has one major benefit that I don't see often: natural plant ranching.

tafrewa.thumb.png.cc95a8fdcaffa9329862b84723680289.png

This method works with hatches, dreckos, or any critter that can work within the temperature of whatever wild plant you want to plant in that unused space. The key is to make a liquid lock or a door+tile+liquid to keep the critters from pathing to the right side, which leaves all that unused space free for wild farming.

It's a bit of a niche purpose, and requires some planning ahead to not dig up the natural tiles, but it works pretty well, and with 4 ranches of pip-planted trees filling that unused space, I can power a petroleum generator with ethanol.

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5 hours ago, Lifegrow said:

Anyone that is ranching horizontally is simply doing it wrong when it comes to critters that can't climb walls.

People use a 3 high to prevent critters utilising the extra space by trapping them right next to the groomer.

5 hours ago, Lifegrow said:

diamond hatches


You may have noticed the wooden hatches and the floral hatch egg in the incubator, eventually I will get around to diamond hatches also. There are just so many things to experiment with. Like I have a rather decent refinery set up that filled up one res and then hasnt turned on again since I have 5 ranches of molten slicksters squirting petrol and an 8 tree greenhouse feeding ethanol production.

 

15 minutes ago, metallichydra said:

9x9 room. i use it a lot for ranches.

What is the pop cap for 81 tiles? Is it not worth lifting the roof for the extra space or are you OCD about symmetry?
I did consider 9 wide but 7x14=98 and then just build 2 blocks anywhere and its max size. Also I dont need that much floor space for anything so it seemed a waste.
I just found the butchering station mod, so this might change.

 

 

This is my starter SPOM and plastic. Runs like a dream.

oni-dreckoranch.jpg

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Horizontal ranches are just fine if you limit the hatches to just a few tiles. I use the rest of the ranch for storage and trap the hatches in a 5 wide part of the overall room. 

See the door/tile in @crypticorbpicture for separation of the ranching area from the storage area.

Plus, when you have horizontal ranches, you can use automated Pez dispensers to fill all the ranches and put extra critters in a drowning pool with no interaction from your dupes. 

Spoiler

5db64802b6306_PezMultiLevel-Overview.thumb.jpg.ba5f2f68b36117a1201c19f78ebded3e.jpg

 

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Another amazing use for horizontal ranch that I set up is a plastic ranch for plastic dreckos. With my setup I produce a lot of plastic per cycle, as well as a bunch of easy reed fiber. I could produce more plastic, but I want reed fiber too, so the breeder stable starts with normal dreckos rather than glossy.

fewwaefafwe.thumb.png.3f1262b959c8ca70b135ab97afa58787.png

The dreckos hatch with a high chance for normal drecko eggs, and since they eat the mealwood, over time they produce more glossy than drecko eggs. About 12 wild mealwood, which costs nothing, can support 8 dreckos indefinitely, always producing eggs for free. These dreckos produce no reed fiber or plastic, only eggs.

asedf.thumb.png.abe709574c375240276be1dcc08753d0.png

The Harvesting room. This is not a stable, it is simply a room where there is a massive amount of dreckos to harvest fiber and plastic from, and eventually starve. Fortunately, there is enough time before they starve for them to be harvested about 4 times, completely free other than dupe time.

I've had this running consistently for about 900 cycles, and including all the plastic buildings I've constructed I've produced about 321,000kg of plastic without ever building a plastic refinery. I could produce purely plastic by breeding glossy dreckos instead of normal ones, but past a certain point I just want the reed fiber, and the plastic is an unintended side effect of the free mealwood. I could also switch this over to a purely reed fiber drecko farm by switching the mealwood for balm lilies or peppernuts, but that requires chlorine or higher temperatures than I like inside my base.

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17 hours ago, KILLABUDZ said:

So I just wanted to ask for some opinions on ranch layout. Almost all of the ranches I see are horizontal 24x4, while my natural inclination was to go vertical. I find it more aesthetically pleasing and efficient, giving me plenty of headroom for things like sweepers and better airflow profile. And naturally created the limited space people use a 3 high to keep critters close to the grooming station.
In this 4x24 design each sweeper can do their room and all but one square of the next so not quite perfect. Travel time seems not to be an issue apart from they have to climb up to the door, the 4x24 placement allows them to reach the ladder over the top of the grooming station. Excess slicksters overflow into the pit and they either drown themselves in the mixed fluid, not sure why but they sit on the oil and drown in the petroleum layer often, which self solved the fact that the petroleum layer ruined my critter drowning machine, or I come along and mass attack them every so often. Due to poor planning and the late idea to ranch slicksters where I was dumping my refinery heat my main power station is lower than the ranch but next time I would be planning better to drop the co2 right onto them.
The 7x14 design gives plenty of floor space and seems to be turning into my conveyor sorting and redirecting area.
The biggest problem I have encountered is dupes dropping their wrangled critter where ever they are to go have smoko, so they get a bit mixed up at times.

So is it purely floor space efficiency that makes the 24x4 popular? I dont see floor space as particularly valuable other than travel distance, as the map is enormous.

20191130101858_1.jpg

20191130111655_1.jpg

Horizontal ranches are likely because they spam the same sized boxes all over their base.

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9 hours ago, crypticorb said:

About 12 wild mealwood, which costs nothing, can support 8 dreckos indefinitely, always producing eggs for free. These dreckos produce no reed fiber or plastic, only eggs.

Well this is awesome, but isn't it because dreckos replenish all of their calories upon eating? I remember those old research papers by "he who does not want do be named".. 2 domestic plants per drecko should be the minimum, 3 for glossy dreckos. Don't pips suffer from a similar problem?

This has been around for quite some time, enough that I almost feel like this is a feature. Also, wild pepperplants for style and reed fiber! Maybe after suffering the hassle of planting "wild" plants you deserve it?

Please, anyone, or Klei, prove me wrong. Or prove me right.

Because if it's a feature, using wild plants to feed dreckos or glossy dreckos  as a source of everything by going plastic>naphta>sour gas chain seems fun.

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There's a place for both designs. No reason to argue really... I currently don't need the space and don't farm anything, so here's my vertical design.

Spoiler

unknown.png

The doors should be on automatic, obviously (old screenshot, dunno what I did there/if doors are just closing rn)
The ladders are from construction/can be removed.
If you don't like the holes below the doors, move the conveyor loader above the sweeper or in one of the stables. For me it's quick access to the breeding stuff below.

 

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Vertical layout is more efficient in terms of space, power and materials.  When multiple ranches are used, the extra automation draws twice, if not three times the power and this also requires more power backbone infrastructure.  When you have 7 petrol generators running nearly full time all with engie's tune up, the lesser power requirements of a vertical layout should be considered.

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1 hour ago, Craigjw said:

Vertical layout is more efficient in terms of space, power and materials.  When multiple ranches are used, the extra automation draws twice, if not three times the power and this also requires more power backbone infrastructure.  When you have 7 petrol generators running nearly full time all with engie's tune up, the lesser power requirements of a vertical layout should be considered.

I don't understand the part about automation. Do you mean sweepers and loaders? If so, they usually require the same amount of power regardless of layout, since they only draw when they are performing a task. You can have one sweeper and one loader doing all the work on a small surface full of goodies, or many sweepers and loaders on a long surface with sparse items. The workload will be (most of the time) the same, the only downside is that if too many of them turn on at the same time due to an unlucky alignment of stars they may overload the wire. A single sweeper+loader combo on a small surface will draw the same amount of power, but on a longer time span, because they will be slower at performing the same number of tasks.

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You are not entirely correct on that assertion,  80kg in one single pile requires less automation use than 8x10kg piles of debris spread over many tiles.  When there are lots of critters, you are more likely to get bigger piles when they are more confined.  You can of course use clocks to limit this on both layouts.

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I think some people are missing the point that just because the entire ranch is 24 wide, that doesn't mean the critters can actually get to all 24 of the columns in the horizontal ranch... 

Most vertical ranches are 5 wide, most horizontal ranches limit critters to a 4 or 5 wide area. Same overall effect, power cost, automation, etc.

And stacked horizontal ranches have the added bonus of dropping critters instead of wrangling them. 

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13 minutes ago, Craigjw said:

I guess it depends on the design and the situation as to which type will be most suitable.

Exactly. :D I've used both and while I definitely have preferences for certain builds for certain critters, I don't feel that there are any wrong answers other than putting non-breeder pacus in actual ranch style rooms. 

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5 hours ago, Craigjw said:

Because Pips feed on arbor trees, there just aren't any Pip's in the room yet.

What's that got to do with a farm station? ;)

Also can sweeper arms shoot through mesh tiles or only screen doors?  I guess it will work with screen doors.  I'm thinking of using two vertical slickster ranches of 20 x 5 and using that vertical space to hold 4 ethanol distilleries.  If they are supported by horizontal screen doors then one sweeper should be able to load all 4 of them with wood and unload the polluted dirt.  Need that 5th column of width to avoid splitting the room in two with the screen door floor for the ethanol distiller.  Then leave a power plant room at the top for the petrol gen and power control station.

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I'll accept that one, although I would have thought it should still be evident, the farm station allows micro-nutrients to be used, increasing the growth rate, so perhaps the room is being used to cultivate wood.  This is what I would do if I wanted to make lots of wood.

sweepers don't work through mesh tiles.

If you start placing distillers and power stations around your ranches, you are likely to have an overheated mess and end up killing your critters for being too hot.

The way to setup your power station is to have a series of horizontal rooms with their own control stations, each floor has mesh tiles below, then have a bunch of rooms below the generators where slicksters can be kept.  At the bottom will be your liquid PW, Oil & Petrol pumps & maybe a few carbon filters set to above 20k pressure.  Might be an idea to place the ethanol distillers in the power gen complex also.

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On 12/1/2019 at 6:51 PM, theone1543 said:

You can put practically anything in the extra space a horizontal ranch provides.

Often this leads to extra cooling required to maintain the ranch, and you still have space in verticals that can be used for many things.

 

On 12/2/2019 at 1:58 PM, beowulf2010 said:

some people are missing the point that just because the entire ranch is 24 wide, that doesn't mean the critters can actually get to all 24 of the columns in the horizontal ranch...

 

On 11/30/2019 at 11:30 AM, KILLABUDZ said:

naturally created the limited space people use a 3 high to keep critters close to the grooming station.


The wild plant usage seems to be the best use for the extra horizontal space in most ranches, as critter and plant temps are matched for biomes.

I am using some flat ranches atm with the extra space filled with my crusher and 3 automated kilns, along with a bunch of transformers.

8 hours ago, psusi said:

@KILLABUDZ Why do you have a farm station in the arbor tree room? ;)

 

Farming station trades labor time for doubling the growth rate of plants. Just experimenting with automating it as much as possible and the stills produce polluted dirt to feed to my pokeshells im working on for more lime, even though there is plenty of fossil left on the map. The stills also seems to be very efficient co2 producers along with the petrol generators output, which im feeding to my small horde of slicksters.

 

3 hours ago, psusi said:

one sweeper should be able to load all 4 of them with wood and unload the polluted dirt.

This sounds like it should work. I have 3 refineries being supplied by one sweeper, which seems to be fine to fuel 2 generators at low duty cycle. My 2 copper volcanos with a simple steam turbine cooling system is chugging through the built up copper and putting it out a little under 200c so I have a lot of free steam power coming in now and my generators are cycling less.

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1 hour ago, Craigjw said:

I'll accept that one, although I would have thought it should still be evident, the farm station allows micro-nutrients to be used, increasing the growth rate, so perhaps the room is being used to cultivate wood.  This is what I would do if I wanted to make lots of wood.

It doesn't work on arbor trees.

1 hour ago, Craigjw said:

If you start placing distillers and power stations around your ranches, you are likely to have an overheated mess and end up killing your critters for being too hot.

Except for slicksters and especially molten slicksters, which want 100+ degrees.

1 hour ago, Craigjw said:

The way to setup your power station is to have a series of horizontal rooms with their own control stations, each floor has mesh tiles below, then have a bunch of rooms below the generators where slicksters can be kept.  At the bottom will be your liquid PW, Oil & Petrol pumps & maybe a few carbon filters set to above 20k pressure.  Might be an idea to place the ethanol distillers in the power gen complex also.

Except as this thread shows, it's a better idea to use slicksters to recycle the co2 instead of scrubbers, and having them in vertical ranches minimizes the grooming time.

 

48 minutes ago, KILLABUDZ said:

Farming station trades labor time for doubling the growth rate of plants.

Of course, but it doesn't work on arbor trees.

 

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1 minute ago, psusi said:

it doesn't work on arbor trees.

Hmm well I am fairly certain I have seen them using it, its low prio atm compared to my food production and I havent been paying much attention once it got up and running. Are you certain it has no effect? Is this a known bug or intentional? Are arbor trees the only plant it doesnt work on?

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