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Dreckos and mealwood requirements


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So have been reading up on Dreckos and their mealwood requirements.  I've seen a lot of chatter that they require 3 mealwood per (glossy) drecko.  However, in my experience, 12 mealwood tiles for the (maximum) 8 Dreckos is more than sufficient.  They don't die, they're very infrequently "hungry" and I get what at least appears to be a maximal amount of plastic.  (this has lasted at least many dozens of cycles) So wondering if something has changed in this regard with a recent update, or am missing something else?

FYI, here's a pic of my ranch, which seems to be going swimingly.

20191230135842_1.jpg

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Hey, welcome to the forums!

Seems you accidentally posted in the Hot Lava area, when you meant to post in the Oxygen Not Included area. Your thread will be moved there, but this little message is just for future notice :)

On an actually on topic note, I have no idea what math people use for figuring things in ONI, because I had a few less plants than you do in that picture and about 12 glossy dreckos, and never got a ding for "Critter Starvation". I also had a much less nicer looking area... It was just a hydrogen bubble sitting above an oxygen bubble full of plants, really.

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4 minutes ago, Auth said:

Hey, welcome to the forums!

Seems you accidentally posted in the Hot Lava area, when you meant to post in the Oxygen Not Included area. Your thread will be moved there, but this little message is just for future notice :)

On an actually on topic note, I have no idea what math people use for figuring things in ONI, because I had a few less plants than you do in that picture and about 12 glossy dreckos, and never got a ding for "Critter Starvation". I also had a much less nicer looking area... It was just a hydrogen bubble sitting above an oxygen bubble full of plants, really.

Ha, sorry for posting in the wrong section.  But thanks for being very cool about it! :)

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The wierd thing with dreckos is that you can keep them constantly at overcrowded status and they plastic/fiber production will be the same. Only thing affected will b theri metabolism so they will eat less, meaning you can support much more of them from the same amount of plants. You`ll just need a second ranch for reproduction as overcrowded and cramped won`t lay eggs.

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1 hour ago, nam132 said:

dreckos get full from eating any % growth of the plant so technically you only need 1 plant per drecko. 

yes but they won't eat from a plant that's under 25% and it takes more than 1 cycle for a plant to achieve that

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I just keep a room with oxygen to grow a single mealwood plant in and the grooming station.  Once a cycle or so I wrangle one of the drakoes out of the hydrogen room, let them have a bite, groom, and then wrangle them back to the hydrogen.

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9 minutes ago, psusi said:

I just keep a room with oxygen to grow a single mealwood plant in and the grooming station.  Once a cycle or so I wrangle one of the drakoes out of the hydrogen room, let them have a bite, groom, and then wrangle them back to the hydrogen.

sounds tedious 

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8 hours ago, Neotuck said:

@acidboy personally I like to use Bristle Blossoms as I find water easier to produce than dirt

here's a pic of my glossy farm design: I am able to fit 16 plants which is 3 per drecko

6.thumb.png.97fee085e5791fc4596545234fe3315d.png

So my kneejerk impression from your design is that the Dreckos won't spend a whole lot of time in hydrogen.  Isn't that a problem for scale growth?  With my design, every time a rancher calls the Dreckos they have to trek all the way back to the other side of the room, immersing themselves in hydrogen almost the entire time.  I assumed that was useful?

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This ranch design works with a full stock of dreckos. I build it as my starter SPOM and it produces O&H, reed, meat, and plastic. Overflow can be dealt with in a 2nd chamber with no grooming. As you can see, despite being overcrowded, cramped, and glum, the scales still grow in hydrogen. This allows for 4 shears for a dreckos and 11 for a glossy before they die of starvation. 

Spoiler

oni-dreckoranch.thumb.jpg.2876c7ed9e87fddf5217001b73a28782.jpgoni-dreckostarveranch.thumb.jpg.b7ae2d8bd83149ad9163b78d164120a4.jpg

 

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53 minutes ago, acidboy said:

So my kneejerk impression from your design is that the Dreckos won't spend a whole lot of time in hydrogen.  Isn't that a problem for scale growth?  With my design, every time a rancher calls the Dreckos they have to trek all the way back to the other side of the room, immersing themselves in hydrogen almost the entire time.  I assumed that was useful?

and the "kneejerk impression" I get from yours is the dracko travel time they need to reach the grooming/shearing station.  Can your rancher get all 8 groomed in one cycle?  Will your rancher have time to do any other tasks?

In my build if you balance the pressure of the gasses then only the bottom layer has oxygen which is 28 surfaces for the dracko to stand were there is no scale growth.  Compared to the 63 surface in hydrogen the drecko's spend 70% time growing scales

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1 hour ago, acidboy said:

trek all the way back to the other side of the room, immersing themselves in hydrogen almost the entire time.  I assumed that was useful?

The ranching dupe has to stand there slapping their knees and whistling for the drecko for a time to get it to start moving, then the entire journey is just waiting. Dupe time efficiency is highly valued in most designs.

10 hours ago, Neotuck said:

I like to use Bristle Blossoms

 
Pincha Pepperplant: 25% growth/cycle
Balm Lily: 17% growth/cycle
Mealwood: 67% growth/cycle for normal
and for glossy
Mealwood: 100% growth/cycle
Bristle Blossom: 50% growth/cycle
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3 hours ago, Neotuck said:

My endgame food farming goals usually involve sleet wheat with fertilizer

and I do pip ranching depending on what map I use

 

I've been growing 4 wild arbor trees to make free ethanol and have hundreds of tons of dirt still left from early game.  All of the polluted dirt I get from ethanol I feed to sage hatches.  Never tried sleet wheat yet.  Fried mushrooms have always been good enough for me and quite cheap, and the new mushroom wraps are even better.

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Someone mentioned it but I'll give the full explanation of the OP's question.

The 3 per glossy calculation is based on the way Dreckos are supposed to work. However currently the game is bugged in that critters that eat directly from a growing plant always get full hunger restored per bite.

So, yes, the smaller amounts work just fine. However feeding Dreckos is far from an onerous task. So why risk a potential future patch making your base non-functional? Bugs tend to get fixed after all.

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22 hours ago, Neotuck said:

and the "kneejerk impression" I get from yours is the dracko travel time they need to reach the grooming/shearing station.  Can your rancher get all 8 groomed in one cycle?  Will your rancher have time to do any other tasks?

In my build if you balance the pressure of the gasses then only the bottom layer has oxygen which is 28 surfaces for the dracko to stand were there is no scale growth.  Compared to the 63 surface in hydrogen the drecko's spend 70% time growing scales

I see your point, and given the number of mealwood you have, it does seem optimal.  But back to my original question, I don't think you need 24 mealwood tiles for a full room?   Am I missing something?  12 seems completely sufficient with my testing?

22 hours ago, KILLABUDZ said:

The ranching dupe has to stand there slapping their knees and whistling for the drecko for a time to get it to start moving, then the entire journey is just waiting. Dupe time efficiency is highly valued in most designs.

 
Pincha Pepperplant: 25% growth/cycle
Balm Lily: 17% growth/cycle
Mealwood: 67% growth/cycle for normal
and for glossy
Mealwood: 100% growth/cycle
Bristle Blossom: 50% growth/cycle

For sure, I value dupe time efficiency.  But I also value room/critter efficiency.  So back to my other question, does it matter how much time a Drecko is bathed in hydrogen?  If it does matter, then the tradeoff becomes one of critter vs. rancher.  Certainly my rancher spends a lot of time whistling, but it does mean the Dreckos seem to spend a maximal amount of time bathed in hydrogen.  So if that actually matters, I guess it's a tradeoff call?

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@acidboy I guess it will depend on your plastic needs.  I see no reason to make it industrialized and renewable as there aren't there any builds that require that much plastic outside of building your infrastructure. So optimizing glossy dracko farms can simply be at the discretion of the player's preference.

So as long as you're having fun than that's all that matters

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14 minutes ago, acidboy said:

does it matter how much time a Drecko is bathed in hydrogen?

Yes. They get a scale growth buff from being in hydrogen that falls off when not in hydrogen. The ideal room for scale growth is a starvation chamber that is just big enough for 2 shearing stations, a critter dropoff and room for shipping. Scale growth is not inhibited by cramped, overcrowded or glum. So have one design that is balanced, mine combines early game oxygen production and the hydrogen generator easily powers the system and has power left over to be shunted into incubators, then one starvation ranch which maximises shearing.
I still get a huge amount of plastic from just my spom ranch.

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I fill the entire ranch area with Hydrogen, then just leave a small lip at the edge (to prevent outflow) and put in a single layer of co2 for the plants.  That way the drecs are always in an h2 environment as they eat down from above.  They can't actually even climb down to the plant floor.

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42 minutes ago, Soulwind said:

I fill the entire ranch area with Hydrogen, then just leave a small lip at the edge (to prevent outflow) and put in a single layer of co2 for the plants.  That way the drecs are always in an h2 environment as they eat down from above.  They can't actually even climb down to the plant floor.

can you show us a screenshot? 

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On 1/1/2020 at 1:16 PM, KILLABUDZ said:

Yes. They get a scale growth buff from being in hydrogen that falls off when not in hydrogen. The ideal room for scale growth is a starvation chamber that is just big enough for 2 shearing stations, a critter dropoff and room for shipping. Scale growth is not inhibited by cramped, overcrowded or glum. So have one design that is balanced, mine combines early game oxygen production and the hydrogen generator easily powers the system and has power left over to be shunted into incubators, then one starvation ranch which maximises shearing.
I still get a huge amount of plastic from just my spom ranch.

Thanks @KILLABUDZ I found this information helpful!

On 1/1/2020 at 1:12 PM, Neotuck said:

@acidboy I guess it will depend on your plastic needs.  I see no reason to make it industrialized and renewable as there aren't there any builds that require that much plastic outside of building your infrastructure. So optimizing glossy dracko farms can simply be at the discretion of the player's preference.

So as long as you're having fun than that's all that matters

That's true, and I agree, and I appreciate your emphasis on having fun!  But if Drecko farming is only an early/mid-game concern, then it seems to me maybe it's worth sacrificing your rancher's time in favor of higher plastic output?  In other words, if you can make a plastic ranch that costs your rancher's time because they have to whistle to their Dreckos in order to maximize plastic output (when you need it) -- maybe that's a reasonable tradeoff in the early to mid-game?

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