Bammoth math

[Hokaeru]

Hi, I hope you are doing alright. 

I was doing some mathology with the new DLC critters and I found something interesting, but I'd love to have your opinion, perhaps I did a silly blunder when multiplying. 
Obviously this method needs cooling (patties come hot) and dupe labor (mostly grooming but also "rock"  crushing). 

The main idea is to find how sustainable is the bammoth after you run out of mercury and snow. I have read some people stating that when you get dreckos you should leave bammoths without backing it up so here I am. 

- A bammoth eats 4 plume squash per cycle. Which is 60 kg ethanol per bammoth per cycle. (15kg/cycle for each plant) 
- A bammoth excretes 30kg of patty per cycle, which is 8kg phosphorite a day. (1/4 of the 32kg phosphorite for the rock crusher recipe) 
- A bammoth thus feeds 1.6 pikeapple per cycle (5kg phosphorite/cycle each), which in turn means 2.67 floxes (0.6 pikeapple bushes/cycle each). On average, they would yield 163.4kg of wood (17% scale growth rate when fed for a 360kg harvest).
- In the ethanol distillery, this would give 81.7kg ethanol per cycle (50% yield from wood), which is 21.7kg ethanol more than invested per bammoth (initial 60kg). 

Obviously the bammoths give clay, meat and reed fibers as "byproducts", and the ethanol distillery gives CO2 and (P)dirt. 

What do you think ? 
I am building a setup in survival so it will take some time before screenshots.

[gigamoi]

A single wild arbor tree will give you 83.33kg wood/cycle or about 41.5kg "free" ethanol per cycle. A single bammoth can produce about 0.5 reed fiber/cycle for 60kg ethanol which is very weak compared to what a single drecko being fed for free can produce when its children are starvation sheered. The dirt, clay and meat/eggs are what is most interesting in the loop you describe. I really like it for the clay. (I'm not into BBQ much.) CO2 and Pdirt are best done by using the classic wood -> ethanol -> generator -> Pwater -> tree -> wood loop.

[Gurgel]

I am using Bammoths mostly for meat, even if I started for the fiber. So far I only have 2 in a stable (fiber) and all the initial wild ones (just meat) on a classic start. With 18 additional wild planted Plume Squash Plants to deliver to the stable, and most of the original wild ones and one Ethanol-fed Squash, I get enough Pemmican for about 9 dupes, maybe more. 

This is all pretty unplanned and not well quantified, but I think meat from Bammoths works very well and my intuition (having farmed Dreckos several times before) is that Bammoths are superior overall and a lot easier to do. 

[Tigin]

The biggest "trap" from an optimization perspective is trying to get ethanol from Ceres' ecosystem. Spigot seals and floxes could be decent for ethanol, but are overly-shadowed by arbor trees and oakshells in terms of per-unit production.

For me, I ranch 24 bammoths to feed 22 ravenous dupes:

Lumber production is easily covered by 12 domestic trees. It's not "self-sustainable" but is easily covered by a polluted water vent/cool slush geyser.

2 hours ago, Hokaeru said:

The main idea is to find how sustainable is the bammoth after you run out of mercury and snow. I have read some people stating that when you get dreckos you should leave bammoths without backing it up so here I am. 

That doesn't seem justified. Bammoths are a great food source because it gives the most production per unit. This means substantially less dupe labor and critter lag because they're so meaty and floofy.  A stable of bammoths gives you about 11k calories of meat per max-size stable. That's only 6 critters and 6 grooming errands! A starvation shove vole stable without powered incubators would need 21 grooming errands. A cuddle pip ranch would need 24 for less calories in omelette. Each shearing errand gives 5 reed fibers, also substantially more than dreckos per errand.

[Hokaeru]

Thank you for your input. 

I like the fact that they are "jack of all trades" and give you meat (+ the flox meat), a bit of ethanol, clay, reed fiber, even though every step is not optimal. 

Clever to underline the efficiency of dupe labor, didn't think of that. And nice screenshots. 

[Gurgel]

1 hour ago, Tigin said:

The biggest "trap" from an optimization perspective is trying to get ethanol from Ceres' ecosystem.

I think I will just feed them wild-grown squash. Easiest overall. 

[Hokaeru]

I find it so tedious to wild plant with pips

[Primalflower]

it makes me sad how wild grown plants dominate discussion in this way

[Gurgel]

Why is that? They are a legitimate mechanism in every way, with even its very own critter to do it. 

[BezKa]

Two issues I ran into during my current run (and desperate attempt to get localvore carnivore and super sustainable) is that ethanol from distillers is way too hot and needs to be piped through a cold area, or an increase the power consumption of the whole setup by using active cooling. Thankfully ethanol has very low freezing temperature so at least breaking pipes isn't a worry

[Primalflower]

4 hours ago, Gurgel said:

Why is that? They are a legitimate mechanism in every way, with even its very own critter to do it. 

They're not an exploit, but they rub me the wrong way anyway. I'm very much not someone to care about the minutia of balance in a video game, but I don't really like this thing you can do where you just totally invalidate the fact that plants need to consume things in exchange for really just time and space, i guess. The fact that I care about it kind of says a lot when I only care about the broad strokes when it comes to balance. With wild plants, I guess there is still a temperature concern to think about, but a large part of why that's any sort of challenge in the first place is because a lot of plants will want things colder than they come from a geyser, so there is a consistent warm thing coming into the system that you need to account for.

I don't really like that any time arbor trees are considered, the entire loop that you're kind of supposed to do with them, feeding the polluted water from petroleum generators to refund their polluted water intake, is kind of barely considered in the face of just, spending a few minutes micromanaging pips. It simplifies things where I enjoy what limited complexity there was. I feel like it flies in the face of a lot of things about the video game and it kind of upsets me to see it talked about as the main strategy, the first thing you (ambiguous you, not you in particular) bring up in a conversation, rather than a fringe thing you could do

I kind of wouldn't be surprised to learn that the folks at klei underestimated this feature and mainly thought the playerbase would just use pip planting for nature reserves and by the time it came into their thoughts that people were using this to just completely invalidate any resource consumption barring oxygen it was too late and they would upset too many people if they removed/tuned it

[Gurgel]

2 hours ago, Primalflower said:

I kind of wouldn't be surprised to learn that the folks at klei underestimated this feature and mainly thought the playerbase would just use pip planting for nature reserves and by the time it came into their thoughts that people were using this to just completely invalidate any resource consumption barring oxygen it was too late and they would upset too many people if they removed/tuned it

That strikes me as really, really, really far-fetched. If they just wanted it for nature reserves, they would have limited it to decorative plants. 

The usual advice applies: If you do not like wild plants, do not use them.

[Primalflower]

26 minutes ago, Gurgel said:

The usual advice applies: If you do not like wild plants, do not use them.

i don't. i go through great lengths not to. and i'm much happier for it, after one colony where I tried it and then stopped playing 20 cycles later out of boredom. my problem, as I described in both of my posts, is really more social - I don't like how it dominates the discussion. Everyone else uses it, so that's what they're going to talk about. It was the first thing in this thread beyond the original post, and the much of the discussion about both the critters and plants in this DLC has sadly revolved around the idea of wild growing this, starvation ranching that. It's just, unfortunate, is all.

26 minutes ago, Gurgel said:

That strikes me as really, really, really far-fetched. If they just wanted it for nature reserves, they would have limited it to decorative plants. 

i don't think it was the only idea in their mind, i don't think the idea behind pips was really set in stone in that way. They put a feature in the game, probably with a handful of vague ideas in their mind as to how it would play out, and then let emergent gameplay do the rest. This doesn't really speak to whether they're happy with the results, or anything of that sort, but the fact that the way pips calculate and plant things is obtuse and lopsided, almost randomly, seemingly intentionally if it's been like this in the game for so long, really gives me the impression that the prioritized feature of the mechanic was just. putting random plants down, whether as a nuisance or as a way of creating pretty environments, because this is a sandbox game after all. "If they were thinking of this, then they would have done X specification" is kind of an easier thought to have in hindsight

[blakemw]

One of the big brain Bammoth strategies is to grow the Plume Squash plants in a Greenhouse to benefit from Farmer's Touch, and feeding the Bammoths the harvested squash (or in principle you can also let Bammoth roam between a Ranch and Greenhouse through an open door though that makes population management a little trickier).

Farmer's Touch is extremely strong, especially with a high level farmer, that's because the duration scales with the dupe's skill, so with no skill it's 1 cycle, but with 20 Agriculture it lasts 3 cycles, which also divides fertilizer usage by 3. And even with no duration bonus making micronutrients tends to be quite a bit cheaper than the normal fertilizer for the plant.

Reducing resource consumption to something like 60% of what it otherwise would be seriously alters a near-unity situation into being thoroughly resource-positive.

Also I reckon that since Fertilizer requires Dirt, Phosphorite and Polluted Water, it should easily slot into a Bammoth/Ethanol scheme. The Polluted Water can either come from burning some Ethanol, or Sublimating the Polluted Dirt and feeding it to Pufts, and distilling the SLime into Algae and PWater.

[6Havok9]

2 hours ago, blakemw said:

One of the big brain Bammoth strategies is to grow the Plume Squash plants in a Greenhouse to benefit from Farmer's Touch, and feeding the Bammoths the harvested squash

Another benefit of feeding critters harvested fruits is that you can limit their movement for quicker pathing.

I'm planning to do this and add sweetles and grubgrubs to the mix. I hope to further reduce the resource costs and possibly cover the dirt cost of fertilizer by dumping ungroomed grubgrubs in the farms and feeding them sucrose.

[Tigin]

4 hours ago, blakemw said:

One of the big brain Bammoth strategies is to grow the Plume Squash plants in a Greenhouse to benefit from Farmer's Touch, and feeding the Bammoths the harvested squash (or in principle you can also let Bammoth roam between a Ranch and Greenhouse through an open door though that makes population management a little trickier).

Farmer's Touch is extremely strong, especially with a high level farmer, that's because the duration scales with the dupe's skill, so with no skill it's 1 cycle, but with 20 Agriculture it lasts 3 cycles, which also divides fertilizer usage by 3. And even with no duration bonus making micronutrients tends to be quite a bit cheaper than the normal fertilizer for the plant.

Reducing resource consumption to something like 60% of what it otherwise would be seriously alters a near-unity situation into being thoroughly resource-positive.

Also I reckon that since Fertilizer requires Dirt, Phosphorite and Polluted Water, it should easily slot into a Bammoth/Ethanol scheme. The Polluted Water can either come from burning some Ethanol, or Sublimating the Polluted Dirt and feeding it to Pufts, and distilling the SLime into Algae and PWater.

This benefits from the ol' Factorio productivity double-dipping as it's one of the rare inputs that could come from another plant. Farmer's touching a single arbor tree means a tree could support 22 plume squash plants, which when touched yields 44 squash plants' worth of calories.

[blakemw]

1 hour ago, Tigin said:

Farmer's touching a single arbor tree means a tree could support 22 plume squash plants, which when touched yields 44 squash plants' worth of calories.

Mmm yes, recent patch change allowing farmer's touch to effect branches. I haven't really incorporated it into my thinking yet. Definitely a huge improvement to domesticated arbor trees, sure, the wild ones are free, but the domesticated ones can yield way more per unit space.

[Gurgel]

9 hours ago, Primalflower said:

i don't. i go through great lengths not to. and i'm much happier for it, after one colony where I tried it and then stopped playing 20 cycles later out of boredom. my problem, as I described in both of my posts, is really more social - I don't like how it dominates the discussion. Everyone else uses it, so that's what they're going to talk about. It was the first thing in this thread beyond the original post, and the much of the discussion about both the critters and plants in this DLC has sadly revolved around the idea of wild growing this, starvation ranching that. It's just, unfortunate, is all.

Well, I can see how that would be a problem for you if wild planting does not do it for you. I do appreciate that you are not trying to aggressively change the discussions (as some others would probably do). I do not think anything can be done however. Wild planting is a legitimate, long-term mechanism that has been present for about 5 years, see 

I expect it is here to stay and personally I see nothing wrong with it. That is not to deny it not working for you, but my personal view. Personal views are often different and on issues that are not rational (and game enjoyment qualifies) that is a good thing. One of the great things about Oni is that there are infinite different ways to play it.

Here is a personal experience: I am not using SPOMs (or other ready-made "cookie cutter" designs). I find them boring and simplistic to use. What I do is I stay out of any and all discussions on them. A similar approach may or may not work for you.

Anyways thanks for your clarification.

[Carib94]

6 hours ago, blakemw said:

One of the big brain Bammoth strategies is to grow the Plume Squash plants in a Greenhouse to benefit from Farmer's Touch, and feeding the Bammoths the harvested squash (or in principle you can also let Bammoth roam between a Ranch and Greenhouse through an open door though that makes population management a little trickier).

Farmer's Touch is extremely strong, especially with a high level farmer, that's because the duration scales with the dupe's skill, so with no skill it's 1 cycle, but with 20 Agriculture it lasts 3 cycles, which also divides fertilizer usage by 3. And even with no duration bonus making micronutrients tends to be quite a bit cheaper than the normal fertilizer for the plant.

Reducing resource consumption to something like 60% of what it otherwise would be seriously alters a near-unity situation into being thoroughly resource-positive.

Also I reckon that since Fertilizer requires Dirt, Phosphorite and Polluted Water, it should easily slot into a Bammoth/Ethanol scheme. The Polluted Water can either come from burning some Ethanol, or Sublimating the Polluted Dirt and feeding it to Pufts, and distilling the SLime into Algae and PWater.

I was starting this as well since I was fortunate to have a Pwater vent on my ceres seed. And with sweetles/grubs also spawn on ceres this can be quite a treat if we just farmer touch and grub grub rub lets say 25 squash plants(a full ranch of 6 bammoths basically) would that support possibly more than like 10 bammoths?

[Hokaeru]

This is also what makes bammoths special, not only are they giving you diverse resources with only a few errands, but also if you can invest the labor and cooling, they are completely self sufficient, because in this loop you only give power and labor, the ethanol you get some more back.

[Caesar Sushi]

I'm ranching them because they looks so funny but they are just a worse version of Dreckos

Staying on the Ceres planetoid (so no oil/nuclear) i went with a ranch heavy base that used the new Flox critters to produce wood and dirt to run both an ethanol generator and an arbor farm (p.water from the generator, dirt from floxes) for power but when i did the math on phosphorite Bammoths would eat up 1/3th of ethanol directly (in practice it's even worse since less ethanol means less p.water giving you less arbor trees to produce ethanol)

Dreckos also produce more meat/reed fiber if you need a source of phosphorite and cost nothing, the only upside is clay production which can be done trough either offgassing or a morb farm

The other DLC critters have their use: Floxes are less efficient arbor/pips/oakshells but combine their functionality, Spigot seals produce nector and tallow (and are a fun challenge to ranch) but Bammoths are just shitty Dreckos 

[blakemw]

17 hours ago, Caesar Sushi said:

I'm ranching them because they looks so funny but they are just a worse version of Dreckos

Dreckos are horribly overpowered and badly in need of a nerf, and have been for a long time. I usually don't use Dreckos because they are too overpowered. NOTHING should be as good or anywhere near as Dreckos. Dreckos should be nerfed, like starting with "no food = no scale growth".

[NeoDeusMachina]

2 hours ago, blakemw said:

Dreckos are horribly overpowered and badly in need of a nerf, and have been for a long time. I usually don't use Dreckos because they are too overpowered. NOTHING should be as good or anywhere near as Dreckos. Dreckos should be nerfed, like starting with "no food = no scale growth".

That's not going to change anything as long as balm lillies require no resources to grow.

The issue with dreckos is that they produce so many important resources for literally free, including plastic if you use the critter fluxomatic properly.

Then there is wild planting with Pips, which means more plants per drecko but still technically feasible for free. But that applies to anything using wild planting, which is a whole other topic.