4x-stacked Hatch Ranching

[lich46]

As far as we know, hatchs are interesting creatures who enjoy burying themselves into the ground. Different from other creatures, hatchs are happy when locked in an airlock.

So the new idea to raise hatchs rotationally comes up. This is a 4x-stacked stable for 4*8=32 hatchs(room interior 26*6=156 tiles). Each airlock can confine 8 hatchs. We take turns to bring them out and groom them.

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We control the position of hatchs by flooding:

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There are 2 special doors, A and B. When A is closed, the grooming station is flooded, otherwise hatchs can stay.

When B is closed, the open airlock is flooded, otherwise hatchs can stay.

Now we can control where hatchs go automatically.

Next, add an area to automatically supply mature hatchs. And everything is done!

Conveyor overlay:

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Hatch food is delivered by rail, as there is no space for a dispenser.

Meat, coal, egg shell and eggs you don't want are shipped away using one single rail, as there is no space for more loaders. They can be sorted outside the module.

Automation overlay:

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I give hatchs plenty of time to move away from water, and the system seems more stable than I expect, although many limitations still exist.

Limitations & Notifications:

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1. 3 timers must be reset simultanously.

2. Vacumm is required at the grooming station (cannot feed pdirt) and hatch-supply area, other areas can have air.

3. Not much test is done. Accidents might happen in late-game.

4. Water around the airlock area should be neither too much nor too little.

5. A high-level(better lv.24) rancher is required to groom the hatchs. Time for a big turn should be a little longer than the grooming interval.

A demo video: 

Suggestions and improvements are welcome

 

[Ntr1cate]

Put in a natural dirt tile near the grooming stations, and they will bury themselves during the day time, change rancher schedules then set up some extra grooming stations to groom them all during the night cycles.

I can't remember if they still lay a egg if it's at 100% tho, was years ago when I used this technique.

Nice design tho, to be able to forcefully lock critters is something I have been considering a while back to control certain critter colonies

[lich46]

9 hours ago, Zerohayven said:

Put in a natural dirt tile near the grooming stations, and they will bury themselves during the day time, change rancher schedules then set up some extra grooming stations to groom them all during the night cycles.

I can't remember if they still lay a egg if it's at 100% tho, was years ago when I used this technique.

Nice design tho, to be able to forcefully lock critters is something I have been considering a while back to control certain critter colonies

Natural dirt is easy and convenient, but grooming time is limited to the night(~75s/cycle, 12.5%), it is not possible to graze too many per rancher, ranchers will stay idle (or do other work) during the day. And all hatchs (groomed or not) are overcrowded/cramped during grooming time.

My idea is to 1)extend grooming time to most of the day 2) keep groomed ones happy while grooming others.

 

Btw, another idea is not limiting the size of each minibatch, and results in unlimited ranching, halved room size, & hatchs 75% happy.

[nakomaru]

This is really neat. I love the use of precision liquid dynamics here.

It reminds me a lot of this 2019 thread which is simply about storing infinite hatches to gain their lifecycle resources, but with slightly different goals. I hear that grooming now trains husbandry skill, so I'd definitely like to try this in my next game someday.

[Saturnus]

4 hours ago, nakomaru said:

This is really neat. I love the use of precision liquid dynamics here.

It reminds me a lot of this 2019 thread which is simply about storing infinite hatches to gain their lifecycle resources, but with slightly different goals. I hear that grooming now trains husbandry skill, so I'd definitely like to try this in my next game someday.

Yeah. My current design for an "easy" infini-hatch farm with integrated breeders looks like this.

And before you ask, the light has no effect other than filling up the space. You can regard it as an "intentionally left blank" spot.

The 2 breeders are able to maintain a hatch population of around 64 hatches in the doors if you feed them igneous rock.
Why not more? Well, it seems that burying hatches messes with the egg chance so you'll see a fairly weird distrubution of hatch types as illustrated in the last picture. It is almost as if the hatches "forget" what type of hatch they are when burying and thinks they're standard hatches instead. The more time they spend buried in the door the higher the chance of a regular hatch egg from the stone hatches seems to be but since regular hatches don't eat igneous rock they just die off. The last picture is what the distribution and numbers will typically look like after 250-300 cycles of breeding. But the picture itself is after about 700 cycles as it stays more or less the same.

[nessumo]

@network_flows I especially like the justified use of multiplexing automation piece  

[lich46]

On 6/20/2022 at 8:20 PM, Saturnus said:

Yeah. My current design for an "easy" infini-hatch farm with integrated breeders looks like this.

Since hatchs buried in doors don't get groomed, you can simply expose them to open space to get rid of overcrowding.

On 6/20/2022 at 10:10 PM, nessumo said:

@network_flows I especially like the justified use of multiplexing automation piece  

Thanks. Actually my first design is based on counters, they are easy but leave little buffer time for hatchs to move. (like this, counters at the bottom)

Signal distributors are much more complex but can support a series of complex actions to protect hatchs from accidents. They make a 4x-build easy but a 5x-build super difficult. 

However, counters may appear in drecko stables, because dreckos need longer time to eat and shear, a 3x-build instead of 4 may work better. Distributors can't count 3.

[Saturnus]

2 hours ago, network_flows said:

Since hatchs buried in doors don't get groomed, you can simply expose them to open space to get rid of overcrowding.

It's a common misconception. Critters still count the tiles in "open space". So for 64 hatches you'd still need 768 tiles of "open space". And on some maps that would simply not be possible.

Also note that the only reason that only about 64 hatch population is maintained is due to regular hatches not eating igneous rock. If you fed the hatches something that regular hatches could eat. for example dirt from a pip ranch, the population will balloon to somewhere between 380 and 400 hatches. And then we're talking a fairly subtantial amount of "open space" required.

There's also the fact that the hatches when trapped in the doors are a fairly powerful cooler reaching equilibrium around 24.5C in this build so you can use it to cool something else down. For example a drecko ranch.

[lich46]

47 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

So for 64 hatches you'd still need 768 tiles of "open space".

It depends on personal preference. For me, I often connect the "open area" to the space and keep the gasses by liquid blocks. That results to ~80k tiles of open space (in DLC, not so sure for vanilla), which is far more than needed. If you prefer an enclosed "open space", airlocks are possible solutions, though.

Cooling also takes effect as long as there is air. Generally I don't take cooling into consideration, but sometimes I use vacumm+stone hatchs to deal with 125℃+ igneous rock from volcanos.

 

[Saturnus]

20 minutes ago, network_flows said:

It depends on personal preference. For me, I often connect the "open area" to the space and keep the gasses by liquid blocks. That results to ~80k tiles of open space (in DLC, not so sure for vanilla), which is far more than needed. If you prefer an enclosed "open space", airlocks are possible solutions, though.

Yeah, you do not "just" open up to space in vanilla. That's just suicide. Vanilla has meteors.

But I'm also thinking about reduced map size mods such as, but not limited to, mini-base and other challenge maps.

It is not a good principle for a build to require access to "open space" because if somebody builds it and several "open space" style hatch, pacu, pip, and puft ranches you could easily find yourself having to provide 10000+ tiles of "open space" which means about a 1/6th of the entire map completely dug up, discounting the magma biome, with no buildings inside at all.

[lich46]

14 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

Yeah, you do not "just" open up to space in vanilla. That's just suicide. Vanilla has meteors.

You're right, it definitely depends on your design.

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But it is not impossible to have space biome connected to your base in vanilla game. (if you don't fully cover the sky)

For me, I keep over 300 pacus in my base. I require a big "open space", so I simply connect my base to the sky. The sky is so large that I think my CPU will explode before I can fill that many tiles with any type of critters : )

 

[Saturnus]

6 hours ago, network_flows said:

 

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But it is not impossible to have space biome connected to your base in vanilla game. (if you don't fully cover the sky)

For me, I keep over 300 pacus in my base. I require a big "open space", so I simply connect my base to the sky. The sky is so large that I think my CPU will explode before I can fill that many tiles with any type of critters : )

 

You might be intersted in either my 

or my later, smaller but slower breeding version. Note that you can disable the breed stop critter sensor.

Here's there 56 pacu in that 1x1 tile and they don't get overcrowded but you could easily have hundreds, about 700 is the most I've had in one tile in an aquamaton. The only trick is that the 1x1 water must be in a room of 8 tiles (including the water tile). That's it. That's all they require to not be overcrowded. Well, that and no eggs in the same room either, and that is sorta of what gives a hard limit to how many pacus you can really have. Too many and the sweepers can't keep up to remove them fast enough so some pacu miss the chance to lay an egg.