Need help understanding what im doing wrong with my ranches!

[PowerGrid]

I am trying to make a sustainable BBQ food source for 12 dupes. After researching on the wiki to figure the numbers, I made:

• 3 Hatch Ranches (96 tiles each, max 8 with auto wrangle turned on.)
• 6 Incubators (unpowered) to keep the ranches at 8 each.
• Autosweepers collecting eggs and sending them to a water pit where they turn into meat if left to incubate.

For what ever reason that I cannot figure out is my rancher will keep putting hatches inside the kennels above the allowed limit making them all crowded and not wanting to lay eggs. I have tried making a seperate over-flow kennel with no grooming station or food source outside of the base but it doesnt help the problem at all. I have been racking brain triying to see what im doing wrong or find a solution. Anyone have ideas? Is the auto-wrangle system broken? How do you stop the ranchers from overflowing the kennels?

[LadenSwallow]

Can you post screenshots of the ranches and the settings involved?

[PowerGrid]

4 minutes ago, LadenSwallow said:

Can you post screenshots of the ranches and the settings involved?

 

[LadenSwallow]

I'm thinking you might want a critter drop off in the incubator room set to only allow hatchlings and to auto-wrangle the surplus there. I can't see why you would have extra hatches in the ranches unless for some reason hatchlings are hatching in there and not being removed (due to not having somewhere else to go) and also not being counted? This would probably interfere with the drowning chamber though, due to incubators being emptied.

[PowerGrid]

ok ill try adding a dropoff in the incuabtor room for hatchlings.

[Pagox]

Poor hatches. Like chicken in caged production. ^^

[Soulwind]

Here's my hatch ranch setup.  There are currently 20 critters in there (started with 2).

When hatches are self-buried, their egg laying counters still advance.  So at night when they are out, they are overcrowded and reproduction drops to 0, but during the day when they are buried it goes back to normal and once at 100% they'll lay the egg regardless of critter or egg count.

Results in a slower growth rate, but lets you have basically unlimited hatches in a single room.  (I'm not currently killing any of them, just letting them grow until I need them for food and I don't incubate the eggs either at the moment).

[Prince Mandor]

4 minutes ago, Soulwind said:

Here's my hatch ranch setup.  There are currently 20 critters in there (started with 2).

Nice idea!

But you already use two stations to groom them. Is it enough time in night to groom all of them? Or most of them unhappy most of their life?

[Soulwind]

I have two dedicated night owl ranchers who concentrate on them.  No, they don't keep everyone happy all the time; but it's enough to keep things growing.  I like playing on small maps so space is more important to me than resources.

[icuurd12b42]

I remember this setup. I prefer making critters think they are "free roaming"

So I have an open door to the outside of the base with a ledge they cant jump off of so they dont stray too far from the grooming and the food supply

 

 

All the critters mostly stay outside the Ranch Room safe to eat and get groomed... You can do the same with fish. drekos and shovevoles are trickier to setup. But mainly this is a no critter/egg maintenance setup. you wont care how long it take an egg to hatch or if an egg counts as a critter in the room or if there are too many in there... most critters will leave the area because it's too crowded anyway

[Prince Mandor]

On 7/25/2021 at 1:30 AM, icuurd12b42 said:

So I have an open door to the outside of the base with a ledge they cant jump off of so they dont stray too far from the grooming and the food supply

Nice idea!

But it is too risky for end-game.

Worst case scenario: you build a door at some far-away place, and this "outside" became an enormous room with 3'000 cells. But there are already 100 hatches, 150 pacus and 200 slicksters, so this "room" is too small and they all became "Cramped" and die out in next 50 cycles...