Self Sustaining Hatch Ranch -- Limited feeding and Restricted Pathfinding

[Zarquan]

I have come up with a wondrous hatch ranch, but don't call DETA.  The goal is to have them eat as few times as possible while still laying an egg and limiting the pathing as much as possible. 

Fortunately, I found that a hatch only needs to eat once at the age of 5 cycles to lay an egg before they starve to death.  I use this, the drowning mechanic, and the pathing rules of hatches and hatchlings to build the following building in my latest base (no debug/sandbox):

Spoiler

Please disregard the horrors occurring in the base.  My "take every dupe" challenge on Aridio isn't going too well.  I am going to have to eat some of the hatches here prematurely.

The hatch eggs are first deposited in to the automatic dispenser on the right.  They then fall through the pneumatic door in to the 2 tile deep open door below (next to the clock).  The eggs sit there for 20 cycles, then hatch.  They then move 1 tile to the left to be in 1 tile deep liquid. 

Once a cycle, the mechanical airlock above closes and the path up opens, causing them to start the "drowning" process.  Hatchlings cannot jump up the two tiles required to get to the next spot, so they stay.  After 5 cycles, they grow up in to hatches.  When the doors, the full grown hatches jump up to the pressure plate.  They are given a full cycle on the pressure plate (where the food is).  They are given about 75% of a cycle here to eat.  After that, the door above the airlock closes and forces the hatches to the left.  They then wait here until they lay an egg then starve.  When they lay an egg, it falls down to where the other eggs are. 

I built this around cycle 50,  but I could have built it earlier.  I only had one hatch to start with, so it took time to build up population.  The automatic dispensers can easily be replaced later with shipping when you have mechatronics engineers.

Assuming this is well saturated with hatches, then each chamber will be overcrowded.  This means the hatchlings will burn 14 kcal per cycle and hatches will burn 140.  If this is the case, the hatches eat at most 182 kg of material and returns 4000 kcal of food.

Alternatively, you could not lose this material and feed the hatches barbecue (ideally from some other animal because cannibalism is gross).  They will eat 0.2275‬ kg of barbecue and produce 1 kg of barbecue, thereby turning 910 kcal of food in to 4000 kcal of food over the course of 85 cycles per hatch.

This system can theoretically run forever, but it will break down due to the technical limitations of the game.  As the number of hatches and other critters on the map increase, they may not think to move before the door reopens.

This ranch should maintain the number of hatches held within without any ranching work (other than depositing new eggs and providing food before shipping can be installed).  I have a feeder ranch where. I take the excess hatch eggs and deliver them to this system. 

It is important for each "room" within this system to be at least 12 tiles large to avoid the confined debuff.

[Prince Mandor]

Can you please provide amount of liquid under doors and timing? How long door must be closed to force hatches moving but not make them drown?

[Zarquan]

They can be as little as 30 grams per tile.  The important thing is the depth, not the mass.  I generally have the doors close for about 6% of a cycle.  The trick is in stacking the liquids properly.

[Prince Mandor]

Just now, Zarquan said:

They can be as little as 30 grams per tile.  The important thing is the depth, not the mass.  I generally have the doors close for about 6% of a cycle.  The trick is in stacking the liquids properly.

But why hatchlings don't die under door in so long time?

Another question, what's the meaning of column to the left of pressure plate? Can we just make this construction one cell thinner by removing it?

(I perfectly understand, this was survival build, and it can be imperfect)

 

[Zarquan]

The hatchings are only drowning for about 30-60 seconds, not enough time for them to drown.

I originally tried to make it one thinner, but it messed up some of the liquid stacking.