Plug Slugs

[Soulwind]

So has anyone found a good way to make use of Plug Slugs (other than a one-shot source of meat)?

Eating metal ore is just a non-starter in my view.  A non-renewable resource?  That I need for other work?  No thanks.

If they ate refined metals, maybe, but as is....I can't come up with any reason to try and use them.

Maybe if you wrangled up a bunch of wild ones, but I try not to exploit the wild, never starve, mechanics.

 

[pether]

After DLC release I started new game to fully experience DLC content, not just check new EA things in sandbox. And ofc I started on swamp, because what's the point of playing DLC on vanilla map?

Anyway, the plug slug problem remain unchanged since day1 of early access - during early game you don't have enough experience to make rancher and ranch them, later you have power pretty-much sorted out and you don't need plug slugs - and for sure NOT FOR THE METAL ORE COST!! Metal ore is non-renewable (unless you make diamod rockets to gather if from space, but it doesn't sound cost-effective) and throwing it at plug slugs feels like a huge waste. The best what you can do is lock them in a room and wild-ranch them this way, but it doesn't sounds nice...

And I feel really bad that during my DLC-focused game I had to avoid DLC content

There were plenty ideas on the forum how to improve them. Like:
- allow them to eat refined metals
- allow them to eat ice
- allow them to enter shearing station for more resources
- make more fun morphs of them

I really hope Klei will adress Plug Slug issue in upcommining updates, because I'd love to use them without feeling guilty of overspending my ores...

[sheaker]

I do not have any issues with them. Some of my asteroids does not have any fossil fuels so Solar Panels are the only source of power. Then, during the night, Plug Slugs can support some of the power to slow down battery discharge. I just keep them wild somewhere where they are not making any troubles.

[pether]

10 minutes ago, sheaker said:

I just keep them wild somewhere where they are not making any troubles.

You keep them or you ranch them?

I don't have issues with them just being there, I'm just sad they feel so bad to feed...

[sheaker]

I am not feeding them, nor taming them. I am keeping them in room with wires. They gave small amount of power, I think it is 400W or 300W at the beginning when they are young but it quickly drops down to like 40W. It is still 40W per Plug Slug that is not consuming anything. On small asteroid with  low power requirements it will let survive the night when solar panels are off.

So yeah, I am not feeding them at all... Well, I think I fed them once on one asteroid to get few kgs of hydrogen for wheezewort cooling efficiency.

[Sasza22]

They seem to be intended as a hydrogen source in late game, to balance the 1:8 ratio at which you create it by electrolizers so that you don`t have a huge oxygen overproduction. At that point you can maybe afford to mine space debris for ores. Until that i think it`s best to keep them wild.

I think i might start a challenge colony that tames them and uses for power just to see how long it will last.

[pether]

58 minutes ago, sheaker said:

I am not feeding them, nor taming them. I am keeping them in room with wires.

Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. They are fine to keep wild, but terrible feeding cost discourages to tame and ranch them... And it feels really bad that DLC content discourages you to play with it

 

38 minutes ago, Sasza22 said:

I think i might start a challenge colony that tames them and uses for power just to see how long it will last.

Please share the results, I'm very curious

[blueberry pi]

4 hours ago, Sasza22 said:

They seem to be intended as a hydrogen source in late game, to balance the 1:8 ratio at which you create it by electrolizers so that you don`t have a huge oxygen overproduction.

*gets out of bush* *whispers* Saturn critter traps *gets back into bush*

[Spoonwood]

Play for super sustainable sometime.  The emitted hydrogen can help get that achievement and will help get other things done, as will the power that plug slugs can make with a few batteries.

They consume your precious metal ore?  Kill them all once you have super sustainable done.

Now, plug slugs like dreckos and pips can run on walls.  So, ranching them can take up a whole bunch of time.  With dreckos and pips the way to make ranching more efficient lies in making moats on the sides of a floor so that dreckos and pips won't path up the side of a wall and onto a ceiling (this also cuts down on movement calculations and thus can reduce lag).  With plug slugs ranched for power that need to sleep on a ceiling that needs a bit of rethinking.

A plug slug ranch needs a floor with moats on two sides of a floor.  The floor has a one tile opening that leads down into two tile high pit, with a wire on the bottom tile.  It's one more tile wide than the number of plug slugs in a ranch, so that they each have a distinct spot to sleep.  If you have 4 plug slugs in a ranch, there's something like a 5x2 pit with wire at the bottom.  That should make it so that the plug slugs have a small area to go to sleep on a ceiling, while also cutting down on their movement possibility inside of a stable.  The top of the ranch has a gas pump with a hood where a pump sits, and some way to only pump hydrogen using an atmo sensor below the pump.

[Sasza22]

20 hours ago, blueberry pi said:

Saturn critter traps

Did they fix them not dropping seeds? Cause otherwise you get only a limited amount of them. Slugs are more scalable althrough i didn`t do the map on how many would you need to keep a hydrogen rocket running constantly.

 

[blueberry pi]

17 hours ago, Sasza22 said:

Did they fix them not dropping seeds? Cause otherwise you get only a limited amount of them. Slugs are more scalable although i didn't do the map on how many would you need to keep a hydrogen rocket running constantly.

 

No, it still doesn't generate seeds (I don't know if the wiki is right about the 10% seed chance) but if you are in for some spicy stuff I would recommend this https://youtu.be/svZpeFDjBUc

Moving on, plug slugs only generate 5% of what they consume as hydrogen, they eat 60 kg per cycle so they generate 3 kg of hydrogen per cycle. I'll test later how much hydrogen saturn critter traps produce. But I also want to defend the plug slugs, talking about rocket mining, if you mine an oxidized asteroid field (or a rocky asteroid field) and you deoxidize it it can generate enough iron ore to feed 4 plug slugs (using only one rust deoxidizer, the asteroid field produces more rust than that). Then it's only about the diamond production, a duplicant living inside the rocket and a oxidized asteroid field close enough (it only has solid resources so only a solid cargo bay is needed, meaning even a sugar rocket could be used).

I'll be back, later.