Simple Dupe-less critter Delivery for Ranches

[ghkbrew]

I've started using a new method of critter delivery for my ranches and I want to share it.

The idea is to let eggs hatch in a single tile of liquid then use pneumatic doors to allow them to escape (or not) depending on whether the stable is full.

Here are two variations on the idea.

Hatch Ranch

Stone hatch eggs are swept to the dropper which places them in a single tile crude oil inside a pneumatic door.  Because there is a tile of water above the oil, critters inside the crude oil will drown.  When the stable is below capacity the pneumatic door is opened and the next critter to hatch will immediately escape to avoid drowning.  When the ranch is full the hatchings will be trapped inside the door until they "evolve" into tasty meat.

Everything that isn't a stone hatch egg gets shipped to my central stock pile.  Which doubles a drowning chamber for any non-stone hatch eggs:

 

Drecko Ranch

The drecko ranch is similar but instead of drowning excess critters they are delivered to a second shearing room. Critters will always take the shortest path to avoid drowning.  So because eggs are dropped in the right-hand liquid tile, newly hatched critters will preferentially move into the stable if allowed otherwise they will take the slightly longer route into the shearing room.  And because critters will never voluntarily moving into a tile where they can drown, the adults never attempt to leave the shearing room.

 

Conclusion

Pros:

 - Completely dupe free maintenance of critter population in ranches.

 - Compact design.

 - Fits into 4-tile high rooms

Cons:

 - Critters are delivered as baby, you spend 5 cycles feeding and grooming an un-productive critter.  But for longer lived critters that is a small fraction of their lifetime (1/20th for hatches, 1/30th for dreckos), which I think is an acceptable trade-off.

Mixed:

 - The system is decentralized.  Each stable has it's own breeding stock, instead of having a single central location for incubation.  This means that when you have multiple ranches of the same type the ranch may stay below capacity for slightly longer.  But it also makes it harder for the whole system to fail at once. 

[slayer346]

So I myself have been running a shear farm for drecos with a bonus drop off for the eggs to do shear and extra meat in hydrogen. 

 

Until I saw your post where you treat it like a regular hatch farm and pump out as many eggs as you can without caring. I never thought of it that way Thanks for the awesome ideas from this thread I will definitely use it in my current seed and for the future.

[Sasza22]

4 hours ago, ghkbrew said:

you spend 5 cycles feeding and grooming

Baby critters aren`t getting groomed. Only adult ones. And i believe feeding them doesn`t really change anything as they wouldn`t die from hunger in those 5 cycles anyway (they got like 5% metabolism) and if not fed they`d just eat a bit more to compenste when you start feeding them. I believe none of this is an actual downside.

[wachunga]

I particularly like the drecko sorting. An immediate thought that comes to mind is figuring a way to include moats to keep them off the ceilings and potentially reduce rancher wait time.

6 hours ago, ghkbrew said:

Critters are delivered as baby

You may have already seen this, but if not:

My original thought is further up the thread and the OP has a dropper design that is interesting if not applicable. I eventually ran a base for 300+ cycles using a design very close to the post I linked. It worked great, but I lost patience with the grooming bug and dupes stealing sweeper jobs. I abandoned the game after testing the ranch sufficiently.

The 5 cycles as a baby isn't that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things, but you could insert such a system (maintaining a glum adult critter ready to go) in your 4 high rooms if you wanted to chase efficiency. If I were to do it again, I would maintain the same overall design but endeavor to use only 1 chute location and allow babies to go to either side depending on which stable needed it.

[ghkbrew]

4 hours ago, Sasza22 said:

9 hours ago, ghkbrew said:

you spend 5 cycles feeding and grooming

Baby critters aren`t getting groomed. Only adult ones. And i believe feeding them doesn`t really change anything as they wouldn`t die from hunger in those 5 cycles anyway (they got like 5% metabolism) and if not fed they`d just eat a bit more to compenste when you start feeding them. I believe none of this is an actual downside.

So I thought you had to groom hatchlings or they would be glum, but I just tested it and they're sitting happy without grooming (at 10% metabolism not 5%).  Can baby land critters not be glum? I know pacu fry are glum if not fed and their metabolism goes down to 2% ( 10% baby * 20% glum).

This just makes the build even better  !

3 hours ago, wachunga said:

I particularly like the drecko sorting. An immediate thought that comes to mind is figuring a way to include moats to keep them off the ceilings and potentially reduce rancher wait time.

That could easily be included e.g.

 

3 hours ago, wachunga said:

You may have already seen this, but if not:

Ah yeah, I didn't remember your "on deck" design from it though.  I like that.  I don't fully understand why the critters in the stable won't path down into the water when the door is open.  I have also used the "pez dispenser" design in the past, which is lot's of fun.

 

3 hours ago, wachunga said:

The 5 cycles as a baby isn't that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things, but you could insert such a system (maintaining a glum adult critter ready to go) in your 4 high rooms if you wanted to chase efficiency.

Agreed, I'm not too worried about the slight inefficiency of having a baby in the stable instead of an adult for 5 cycles.  But I'm curious how you'd incorporate the on-deck system into this build.  How compact could that be made?

[wachunga]

7 hours ago, ghkbrew said:

I don't fully understand why the critters in the stable won't path down into the water when the door is open.

At a certain liquid level they won't path back in but also don't drown. I forget what the break points are exactly, but 350kg works for water. 

 

This was my initial thinking. I never experimented with stacked liquids and there may be an elegant solution using them.

Judging by your ranch layout, I'm guessing you have them off on the wings of your base. Or maybe I'm projecting. Typically I have a central column of rooms with ladder shafts on either side and then more rooms, including ranches, on the other side of the ladders. Another idea is to stick 2 ranches in such a central column feeding off eggs delivered from both sides. Uses 2 floors but maintains the 4 height overall floor plan, can stick whatever in the extra space. 150kg seems to be a good number for crude. Note I didn't test either of these exhaustively, might be things I overlooked.

 

 

Edit: Yeah, forgot about endless egg cycling, sweepers/loaders would need to be moved/blocked to prevent a loop. Also loader/rails should be placed to get eggs out of the room ASAP. In the first example, the inner door could probably be rotated vertically with a stacked liquid and eggs dropped into it for more compactness and less liquid usage. The same style as you have.

Spoiler

 

 

Edit Edit: Last one I promise. Eggs from 4 ranches being split between top 2 and bottom 2. And then left or right as needed. Should be good for spreading eggs out evenly and giving minimal downtime.

Spoiler

 

 

 

[ghkbrew]

11 hours ago, wachunga said:

 

I really like this one, you get an on-deck hatch for only 6 more tiles.  Now it's time to run these ranches for a few hundred cycles and see how much of a difference in meat production there is.



 

[Sasza22]

On 2/17/2021 at 4:02 AM, ghkbrew said:

Can baby land critters not be glum?

I`m not sure actually. Being glum reduces metabolism and they are already at 10% and as babies they don`t get a reproduction counter. Basically being glum doesn`t do much for them. Maybe being overcrowded or confined can cause them to be glum.