Hungry Hatches

[Soronume]

I have just restartet a new game with the DLC and new update. Regular Build. 
 

I have a small stable full of normal hatches, that are glum and hungry for multiply cycles now. I thought it might be the feeder broken, but now I have food on the floor, they don't touch: 

Tried reloading, did not do anything. 

Any tips? 

 

[darknotezero]

what's the food?

[psusi]

What are you trying to feed them?

[6Havok9]

1 hour ago, Soronume said:

I have just restartet a new game with the DLC and new update. Regular Build. 
 

I have a small stable full of normal hatches, that are glum and hungry for multiply cycles now. I thought it might be the feeder broken, but now I have food on the floor, they don't touch: 

Tried reloading, did not do anything. 

Any tips? 

 

 

They might be glum because the rancher cannot complete the task due to lack of oxygen.

[Neotuck]

On 10/5/2022 at 12:22 PM, Soronume said:

Any tips?

Based on the picture, that looks like granite on the ground.  Hatches can't eat granite unless they evolve into the stone variant 

However if that is sedimentary rock then the problem must be something else and we could use more pictures to show us the whole stable and see what's wrong

[JRup]

I agree with the above. When it comes to regular hatches & rocks they will only eat softer varieties: sandstone or sedimentary. The latter helps them morph into stone hatches.

On the other hand, they'll also go for sand. That means you'll have to break out the rock crusher if you have no other option available.

Finally, they'll also settle for either type of dirt and any of the foodstuffs. Which is an early game annoyance because they have no qualms in reaching out for that precious muckroot. Just a reminder: dirt will raise chances of a sage hatch appearing, their coal production is the most efficient at 100% but you'll really need to have a serious production of fertilizer or dirt to go with that line of farming.

[Neotuck]

2 hours ago, JRup said:

On the other hand, they'll also go for sand. That means you'll have to break out the rock crusher if you have no other option available.

Given that sand is valuable as a filtration medium, I disagree with this statement.  If you run out of minerals that you need a rock crusher to keep your hatches fed, Then your colony is in trouble and it might be better to turn them into barbeque and save your sand for your water sieves and deodorizers

[JRup]

11 minutes ago, Neotuck said:

Given that sand is valuable as a filtration medium, I disagree with this statement.  If you run out of minerals that you need a rock crusher to keep your hatches fed, Then your colony is in trouble and it might be better to turn them into barbeque and save your sand for your water sieves and deodorizers

I couldn't agree more, I'm only addressing feeding hatches, however. It is somewhat of an annoyance when I see them chewing on sand, I'll admit.

If one is lucky and has a chlorine geyser + dasha saltvines then sand will eventually abound. Also, since we're talking vanilla, filtration medium literally rains.

[Neotuck]

1 hour ago, JRup said:

filtration medium literally rains

I wonder if hatches can eat that, I'm too lazy to check 

[JRup]

@Neotuck No, that one they can't. But the byproducts bring us back to square one. With either polluted dirt or clay as first steps in the feeder chain. And later on if you melt it for igneous.

I'm only sad that we can't feed clay to sage hatches.

[Neotuck]

7 minutes ago, JRup said:

I'm only sad that we can't feed clay to sage hatches.

I'm sad too, I've tried to farm sages for sustainable dirt production but I couldn't make them more effective than dirt cookers

In the end I only ranch stone hatches for getting rid of extra minerals, sometimes I'll ranch smooth hatches to save power on metal refineries 

[JRup]

5 minutes ago, Neotuck said:

I've tried to farm sages for sustainable dirt production

I would believe you meant pips for dirt production. Then again, the only way to make "cheap" food for sage hatches is by using fertilizer, and we need dreckos for that.

7 minutes ago, Neotuck said:

I'll ranch smooth hatches to save power on metal refineries

That's even more of a vanity project. I keep any smooth hatches wild.

[Neotuck]

6 minutes ago, JRup said:

the only way to make "cheap" food for sage hatches is by using fertilizer, and we need dreckos for that.

and ironically I need dirt production FOR fertilizer production lol

7 minutes ago, JRup said:

I keep any smooth hatches wild.

I never considered that, I'll have to try keeping them wild

[blakemw]

Hatches should basically be fed what is over-abundant on the asteroid, with the aim of eventually slaughtering most the hatches and transitioning to other food sources if you don't abandon the colony long before it matters.

• Most asteroids: Stone Hatches. You normally have lots of granite and igneous rock.
• Forest and Swampy Starts: Sage Hatches, eating Dirt.
• Oassise: Normal Hatches, eating Sand.

So like, sand is not too valuable to feed Hatches... on Oassise. And Dirt is not too valuable to feed Sage Hatches, on Aridio.

One approach I take is to slaughter the hatches once there's a "normal" amount of the resource left. For example a typical Terra map, and Terra is pretty generous with things like Dirt and Sand, has about 800 t of Dirt and about 4000 t of Sand (and for reference, about 20000 Rock). While a typical Oassise map has about 12000 t of Sand, and a typical Aridio (or other forest start) has about 4000 t of Dirt.

How do these numbers work out? Lets say feeding Sage Hatches 3200 t of Dirt, a hatch eats 140 kg/cycle, so 1 t keeps a hatch alive for 7.14 cycles, 3200 t of dirt is enough for 23000 hatch-cycles, if you decide to run two Ranches, for 16 Sage Hatches total (enough BBQ for 9.6 Dupes), you would "run out" (be down to Terra levels) of dirt after 1400 cycles. Incidentally those numbers also basically apply to feeding Sand to Hatches on Terra! though the inconvenience of hunting down the Sand may be significant if you aren't a dig-the-whole-map-out-player. And we can also extend it to Stone Hatches, where on Terra you could run 2 Ranches for 9000 cycles before running out of rock.

In reality, I often don't even play a colony for longer than 500 cycles, and aren't even going to come close to depleting the "super abundant" hatch food, the only inconvenience I experience would be occasionally having to designate more dirt for digging (since personally I preserve as much terrain as possible). But it is of course possible to experience running out of the super-abundant food by playing on max hunger difficulty with a large population or playing for a very long time, but generally you can kick that bucket way down the road before transitioning to something fully sustainable.