Hatch Farm

[DimaB77]

It's all very complicated for me 

[psusi]

If you are going to feed hatches stone, then you want to use the stone ones since they eat all types.  Stone may seem like an abundant and unwanted resource, but trust be, you will run out after a while if you ranch more than 10 or so of them.  The more you have, the faster you will run out.  Keeping 10 or 20 for a while is fine, just don't plan on doing it forever.  If you are want to sustain it then you want to feed them dirt since that can be sustainably produced from arbor trees, and for that you want the sage hatches since they can also eat polluted dirt ( saves you the step of composting it ) and they are much more efficient at converting it to coal.  Also if you want the meat rather than the coal, you can feed them small amounts of poor quality food your dupes don't want anymore, like meal lice.

[DimaB77]

When the desired amount of hatches is reached, feeding can be stopped completely. They manage to lay one egg before dying. The farm will maintain the reached population.

[gabberworld]

if you farm for food then i think better is made puft farm as that have only 75 cycles

[degr]

On 5/31/2021 at 5:55 PM, gabberworld said:

more like food farm only, as feed them is kind off hard

Dunno, as usual I have at least 5-8 hatch farms, and then slowly destroy them, when I have shove voleys. At first you have normal hatches, and you have tons of sandstone. After a while they eat all sandstone, but in that time you have stone hatches, who eat igneous rock. Believe me, you have a lot of igneous rock.

[gabberworld]

3 minutes ago, degr said:

Dunno, as usual I have at least 5-8 hatch farms, and then slowly destroy them, when I have shove voleys. At first you have normal hatches, and you have tons of sandstone. After a while they eat all sandstone, but in that time you have stone hatches, who eat igneous rock. Believe me, you have a lot of igneous rock.

stone hatch produces only 50% of eaten material,  i see sage hatch farm is better for that

[degr]

but sage hatch eat bio, it is much more valuable resource then stones

[psusi]

On 6/16/2021 at 1:47 AM, DimaB77 said:

When the desired amount of hatches is reached, feeding can be stopped completely. They manage to lay one egg before dying. The farm will maintain the reached population.

Are you sure?  My recollection is that if you don't groom them or feed them they will die off.  You need to groom and feed them at least a little bit every once in a while.

On 6/16/2021 at 3:52 AM, degr said:

but sage hatch eat bio, it is much more valuable resource then stones

I don't think pdirt is very valuable and you get tons of it from making ethanol.

[degr]

10 minutes ago, psusi said:

I don't think pdirt is very valuable and you get tons of it from making ethanol.

It is true if you have Arbour trees. From my 4 starts I got it only once.

[psusi]

On 6/17/2021 at 11:04 AM, degr said:

It is true if you have Arbour trees. From my 4 starts I got it only once.

You can always get some arbor seeds from the printing pod.

[degr]

28 minutes ago, psusi said:

You can always get some arbor seeds from the printing pod.

If you play without care packages, just no

As I know, if you play with care packages, you never got seeds of plants which is not present in space or in your asteroid (may be it was fixed  changed).

[Craigjw]

The automation on the hatch dropper door on the right chamber from upper to lower doesn't work properly.  When there is a single hatch, it works fine, as the hatch walks into the door, the sensor reads 0 again and closes the door.  When a 2nd hatch is born, the critter sensor always remains above zero and keeps the door open permanently.

The hatch walks into the door, the sensor closes it, however sometimes the hatch jumps on top of the door and the automation closes the door a moment too late.  During the time that the hatch is still in the chamber, if it doesn't catch it in the door before another is hatched, then the system stops working.

[Craigjw]

Happened a few times now.

I managed to squeeze the build into a consistent 6 tiles in height by using the locked mesh door on the left as a transparent tile between the loader and two sweepers.  To get 96 room tile area, I had to break a single tile into a wall on the ceiling though. 

I don't like the conveyor dropper, so replaced it with a feeder as I got irritated by my dupes continually sweeping the area.  I suppose I could restrict access, however, I'm too lazy to to do something that smart.  using a dropper would allow one tile to be removed from the ledge, thus negating the need to have a single tile removed from the ceiling though.

Ignoring the conveyor network, overall, this is a better layout for being slimmer.  The automation is basically the same, while the conveyor network has been changed to allow filtering of eggs and meat, sending meat to my kitchen and anything but stone hatches are sent into the evolution room in an attempt to evolve a water breathing hatch.

I can post other overlays if anyone wants me to.

 

[Craigjw]

I have manage to make it more reliable, so that the hatches do not jump above the door and it will reliably drop the hatch down every time. If a second hatch is born before the 1st is caught, the issue still happens, however as the hatch dropper is now much more reliable, it is much less likely to happen. 

This is the build that I'm using, which has a more comprehensive conveyor system which filters eggs and meat. 

Just for info, the critter sensor @bottom right serves no purpose other than giving me a critter count.

 

[Craigjw]

In keeping with the original design using a minimalist conveyor system, I've made the layout into a pure 6 tile high setup.  This imo is a much better layout than having a stepped 7th tile high room.  This would probably also work for the pokeshell farm too.

@DimaB77 Please update your wiki with this improved design.

[DimaB77]

On 6/20/2021 at 4:34 AM, Craigjw said:

The automation on the hatch dropper door on the right chamber from upper to lower doesn't work properly.  When there is a single hatch, it works fine, as the hatch walks into the door, the sensor reads 0 again and closes the door.  When a 2nd hatch is born, the critter sensor always remains above zero and keeps the door open permanently.

The hatch walks into the door, the sensor closes it, however sometimes the hatch jumps on top of the door and the automation closes the door a moment too late.  During the time that the hatch is still in the chamber, if it doesn't catch it in the door before another is hatched, then the system stops working.

When I was testing the circuit, I encountered the situation that there were 2 animals in the chamber. And then it seemed to me, as well as you, that the scheme will not work and it needs to be redesigned.

But you just have to wait a little bit (you don't need to do anything additionally) and 2 animals will be in the door at the same time. And fall down.

Even more. I've seen 3 animals running around at once and it took very little time for them to get together at the same time in the same place (in the door).

I can send you a video. You can check for yourself.

4 hours ago, Craigjw said:

Please update your wiki with this improved design.

I'll run this farm again today and add a video with some hatchlings in the right room. Believe me, I try to be extremely meticulous about testing any of the circuits. Of course there can be bugs in them, but in this case the scheme worked perfectly.

On 6/17/2021 at 7:51 PM, psusi said:

Are you sure?  My recollection is that if you don't groom them or feed them they will die off.  You need to groom and feed them at least a little bit every once in a while.

If you don't take care of them, not only their reproduction rate drops, but also their metabolism (calorie reduction rate). The initial supply of calories is enough for the hatch to lay an egg. I don't remember how many cycles the caloric reserve lasts, and the wiki doesn't say. I'll look it up today and add it to the article.

[Craigjw]

I'm aware that two hatches can enter the door at the same time, however with many hatches, it often occurs that more eggs hatch before the situation occurs.  I had 6 hatches earlier, the odds that all hatches will occupy the door at the same time become increasingly less with more hatches being born.

I'm trying to work out a circuit that will use 2 critter sensors, however i'm not having much luck with it.

[Craigjw]

I managed to make a 2 critter system, which seems to work. The left sensor is set to above 0 and the right to above 1.  if the left sensor is active (>0), it opens and closes the door, as per usual.  if the right sensor activates (>1), it sets a latch, closes the door and ignores all input from the left sensor for 30s, which should be enough time for the hatch to drop.  The filter is set to 30s, which represents how long to ignore input from the >0 sensor.  Once the filter runs out, input will be received from the >0 sensor and the door will open.

And here is the same circuit fitted to the room layout.  Top sensor is >0 and lower sensor is >1.  The conveyor shoot must be placed on the ground to allow the wires to fit.

[DimaB77]

1. I got tired of waiting for the 3 hatchlings to show up, so I added them in the sandbox (it doesn't change the point). As you can see, it didn't take long at all for the hutches to pile up.

2. Additional doors are not needed, as hatchlings can not jump on other cells, and access and release incubators by doubles, there is always.

3. On the issue of eggs and starvation. 7000 kcal caloric reserve at birth, -140 kcal/cycle = 50 cycles + 10 to death = 60 cycles.
Reproduction 2% cycle = 50 cycles + 5 for growing up = 55 cycles. Should be enough. But it is not enough!:

Apparently the reproduction rate is not 2% as written, but 1.6(6)%

So the minimum feeding (at least) 10 kg / cycle for all (in 50 cycles, everyone probably has time to devour) is needed.

I didn't promise in the article that they would have time to lay an egg since the farm is for coal processing. But I was firmly convinced of that.

[Craigjw]

I'm using this in actual gameplay, the single door setup does not account for off-screen mechanics it seems.  I very much doubt that you are testing for that and you absolutely will not be able to video that situation.

I'm finding fully grown hatches in the room, which is why I used the extra doors.  I strongly think that there is an offscreen mechanic involved causing this, when the hatchery becomes on-screen, they will not have had any pathing done during their time as infants while off-screen and are all maturing to adult without having the opportunity to be dropped by the doors into the mosh pit below.  In this instance, the hatches do jump above the door.

It might be worth having a failsafe circuit, the >0 sensor control the door as per usual and a 2nd sensor that detects >1 or something, if that is true, then open/close the doors using an on/off delay timer.  It won't be very effective, but will catch some and is definitely better than having to micro manage adult hatches into the dropper manually.

Regardless of the door dropper setup, the layout on the left using the horizontal door as a transparent tile for the loaders is, as this allows the room height to be a consistent 6 tiles high.  Having the step to a 7 tile room is not ideal as it borders on being too large and becomes an inconvenience.

[DimaB77]

When I say that I try to test the circuit thoroughly, believe me, I spend a lot of time on it (look at the cycle counter):

1 hour ago, Craigjw said:

I'm finding fully grown hatches in the room

I don't see how this can happen. The cub takes 5 cycles to mature. It takes half a cycle at most for it to go down.

 

According to your automation scheme. You have 2 sensors for 1 and 2 animals. There are a lot of eggs in the room and the situation when 3 animals will appear in the room is likely (at least I've seen it), your scheme will not work. 
A situation where 5 animals show up in the scheme, and they (probably) can't get together at the door at the same time is possible, but much less likely.

But if you want to hedge against all possibilities, here's a simple scheme that works flawlessly with any number of animals:

As long as there is at least 1 animal in the room, the doors will open for 6s and close for 6s. It takes 1/3 of a cycle for all animals (even 1, even 100) to fall down.

upd. At the expense of not working your scheme with 3 animals, I'm a little overreacting (they also bunch up and fall down), but at 5 already works unstable (exactly the same as my original version). In any case, wishing to hedge fit only the last scheme with a timer.