The critter sensing mechanics need a rework

[Flytrap]

The critter pickup and dropoff are a move in the right direction but they still have two problems:

1. Having a critter pickup turned on, means they'll keep wrangling critters forever, if the pickup is set to zero for that type of critter, even if the ranch where the critter is supposed to go, is full. They should wrangle as many as the not full ranch needs.

2. Setting the limit higher on the pickup, means there wont be any wrangling to transport the critter back to the main ranch, because the surplus room is not at the set limit yet, which is stupid.

Additional problem: The critter pickup and dropoff have no visual identifiers to show if its turned on or off, via automation.

Additional problem 2: I really hate the idea of wasting dupe time manually moving critters back to the ranches, by hand, when the eggs shouldnt even have been shipped out in the first place. The critter egg multiplying and raising mechanics clash with the ranch population automation like oil and water.

 

My bigger gripe: The ******* critter sensor and the autosweeper.

Problem 1: There is no way to tell the critter sensor that you want the number of critters and eggs to equal a desired amount, and only ship out the surplus. You can set it to critters and eggs = 8, and then the six critters will lay two eggs to replace the two that just died, then they lay a 9th egg, the sweeper turns on, and sweeps all three eggs into the loader, which puts them on a rail, and then you're back to a ranch needing two critters. Having a sensor count critters and one to count eggs, and putting that into an and gate will work but you're going to be wasting countless cycles waiting for the eggs to hatch, which is a lot of lost meat and eggs. Atleast this is a stable solution, albeit sub-optimal.

Problem 2: The sweeper picks up more than one egg at a time, which makes the first problem worse, and by solving this and problem 3, you could solve this entire mess

Problem 3: The eggs count as being in the room even while inside the conveyor loader or on the rails. Turn this off, make the sweeper pick up eggs one by one(or better yet, let us limit the carry size of the sweepers, which is a lot more versatile and elegant solution), and suddenly it will stop shipping eggs out once it reaches your desired amount, even if you're only using one critter sensor set to eggs and critters.

Problem 4: No ability to count individual critters, like the pickup and dropoff now lets us do, or the advanced critter sensor from its mod, lets us do. This would not fix my overarching problem, but it is a serious handicap on our ability to automate this ****, especially for critters like pufts and the divergents.

 

Surplus problems:

1. The incubator can only be emptied by dupes. The hatched critter cannot be unloaded by sweepers, flydo, sweepy, or them even just getting out of there themselves. Even if you stuff an incubator into the ranch, the sweeper will load it, and once the hatching is done, it'll sit in there. I dont even know if a critter inside an incubator counts as being in the ranch, it probably doesnt, and that should be problem 1.5 See the edit

2. Because the critter pickup HAS TO be set to zero for the selected critters to be wrangled and moved out, if there's a lot of critters in the room, and one ranch needs one specific type, then the sensors in the ranch will turn on the pickup, every single critter will be wrangled, and until the critter you actually want, gets wrangled, by random fuckin chance, the ranch will not be refilled, because there is no way to tell the pickup that you only want X of Y critter. Case in point, my surplus room has like 15 pufts, dense pufts, princes, and squeaky pufts in it. My normal puft and dense puft ranches are full, but the squeaky pufts need one more, so until a squeaky puft gets wrangled by random fuckin chance, the ranch will not be refilled. I've been waiting on the refill for three cycles now and not a single squeaky puft got wrangled in the first place. Therefore im ******.

 

 

Yes, im trying to ranch pufts, and i find it to be insulting that i cant engage with the fun critter ranching mechanics because the actual population controls are so fuckin **** in this game. Easily my biggest gripe with the game. No, im not doing this specifically for the output, YES, i know i can get those materials easier, but unlike you i WANT to engage with the fun content the game has to, and i cant because of the aforementioned **** critter controls, and it bothers me that seemingly im the only person who actually wants this to not be ****.

 

Edit: Yes, i know about John Francis' and GCFungus's puft automations. Francis himself didnt seem comfortable in his design because its complex and having watched the video, it seems fussy and easy to break. GCFungus outright reommended not ranching pufts simply because dealing with the population controls is so bad. Both of their designs requires dupes to just ferry pufts back into the ranch, manually. In short, yes, their solutions exist but they are workarounds to a bigger underlying problem that should be addressed by the developers, especially as more DLC's and critters get added, like the ones that came with the frost planet pack, which i am yet to buy, so i cant speak on it.

 

April 22 Edit: Critters inside incubators ARE counted by sensors.

[6Havok9]

12 hours ago, Flytrap said:

1. The incubator can only be emptied by dupes. The hatched critter cannot be unloaded by sweepers, flydo, sweepy, or them even just getting out of there themselves. Even if you stuff an incubator into the ranch, the sweeper will load it, and once the hatching is done, it'll sit in there. I dont even know if a critter inside an incubator counts as being in the ranch, it probably doesnt, and that should be problem 1.5

The critter sensor detects eggs and critters inside an incubator. Baby critters are useless (pardon me critters) so it's fine for them to just sit there until they grow up and get out. An unpowered incubator inside the ranch will effectively limit the critter population.

I've tried to avoid wrangling as much as possible. The closest I've been to a "perfect" ranch block was by using critter dispensers controlled by a water clock. It's absolutely not worth it.

Having a separate incubation room directly next to the ranches works "just fine". You can't lose critters down a fire pole this way: they are either in the incubation room or in the ranch.

I just place  an incubator inside the ranch now. Smaller or less populated ranches are fine, but you can automate the incubator to be powered if the critter count is below your desired amount. Or, I just don't care if I lose some critters down the fire pole (sorry critters).

Pufts... Pufts are another story. They are worth some decent automation for the princes. I just stick the prince in a waterlocked corner: it never gets groomed and only eats oxygen. Good enough, puft production rate is... not very reliable. And I'm being gentle (sorry pufts)

I can share most of your pain 

[Gurgel]

For the eggs being counted while on the rails, you can actually loop part of them back from outside. I have used several different designs, including one that will only remove the first egg on the rails and loop all others back into the room and disables the sweeper for a time after an egg is detected on the rails. This effectively causes removal of just one egg at a time. This does solve the problem rather nicely and elegantly, IMO. 

The idea is that you need to leave "steering" the population behind and instead "regulate" the population. You need to become fault-tolerant (like in a lot of real engineering). I would say nothing is broken here, it just needs a bit more mental effort to get things working. And that is entirely in the Oni spirit. 

[Pproy]

17 hours ago, Flytrap said:

The critter pickup and dropoff are a move in the right direction but they still have two problems:

1. Having a critter pickup turned on, means they'll keep wrangling critters forever, if the pickup is set to zero for that type of critter, even if the ranch where the critter is supposed to go, is full. They should wrangle as many as the not full ranch needs.

2. Setting the limit higher on the pickup, means there wont be any wrangling to transport the critter back to the main ranch, because the surplus room is not at the set limit yet, which is stupid.

Additional problem: The critter pickup and dropoff have no visual identifiers to show if its turned on or off, via automation.

Additional problem 2: I really hate the idea of wasting dupe time manually moving critters back to the ranches, by hand, when the eggs shouldnt even have been shipped out in the first place. The critter egg multiplying and raising mechanics clash with the ranch population automation like oil and water.

 

My bigger gripe: The ******* critter sensor and the autosweeper.

Problem 1: There is no way to tell the critter sensor that you want the number of critters and eggs to equal a desired amount, and only ship out the surplus. You can set it to critters and eggs = 8, and then the six critters will lay two eggs to replace the two that just died, then they lay a 9th egg, the sweeper turns on, and sweeps all three eggs into the loader, which puts them on a rail, and then you're back to a ranch needing two critters. Having a sensor count critters and one to count eggs, and putting that into an and gate will work but you're going to be wasting countless cycles waiting for the eggs to hatch, which is a lot of lost meat and eggs. Atleast this is a stable solution, albeit sub-optimal.

Problem 2: The sweeper picks up more than one egg at a time, which makes the first problem worse, and by solving this and problem 3, you could solve this entire mess

Problem 3: The eggs count as being in the room even while inside the conveyor loader or on the rails. Turn this off, make the sweeper pick up eggs one by one(or better yet, let us limit the carry size of the sweepers, which is a lot more versatile and elegant solution), and suddenly it will stop shipping eggs out once it reaches your desired amount, even if you're only using one critter sensor set to eggs and critters.

Problem 4: No ability to count individual critters, like the pickup and dropoff now lets us do, or the advanced critter sensor from its mod, lets us do. This would not fix my overarching problem, but it is a serious handicap on our ability to automate this ****, especially for critters like pufts and the divergents.

 

Surplus problems:

1. The incubator can only be emptied by dupes. The hatched critter cannot be unloaded by sweepers, flydo, sweepy, or them even just getting out of there themselves. Even if you stuff an incubator into the ranch, the sweeper will load it, and once the hatching is done, it'll sit in there. I dont even know if a critter inside an incubator counts as being in the ranch, it probably doesnt, and that should be problem 1.5

2. Because the critter pickup HAS TO be set to zero for the selected critters to be wrangled and moved out, if there's a lot of critters in the room, and one ranch needs one specific type, then the sensors in the ranch will turn on the pickup, every single critter will be wrangled, and until the critter you actually want, gets wrangled, by random fuckin chance, the ranch will not be refilled, because there is no way to tell the pickup that you only want X of Y critter. Case in point, my surplus room has like 15 pufts, dense pufts, princes, and squeaky pufts in it. My normal puft and dense puft ranches are full, but the squeaky pufts need one more, so until a squeaky puft gets wrangled by random fuckin chance, the ranch will not be refilled. I've been waiting on the refill for three cycles now and not a single squeaky puft got wrangled in the first place. Therefore im ******.

 

 

Yes, im trying to ranch pufts, and i find it to be insulting that i cant engage with the fun critter ranching mechanics because the actual population controls are so fuckin **** in this game. Easily my biggest gripe with the game. No, im not doing this specifically for the output, YES, i know i can get those materials easier, but unlike you i WANT to engage with the fun content the game has to, and i cant because of the aforementioned **** critter controls, and it bothers me that seemingly im the only person who actually wants this to not be ****.

 

Edit: Yes, i know about John Francis' and GCFungus's puft automations. Francis himself didnt seem comfortable in his design because its complex and having watched the video, it seems fussy and easy to break. GCFungus outright reommended not ranching pufts simply because dealing with the population controls is so bad. Both of their designs requires dupes to just ferry pufts back into the ranch, manually. In short, yes, their solutions exist but they are workarounds to a bigger underlying problem that should be addressed by the developers, especially as more DLC's and critters get added, like the ones that came with the frost planet pack, which i am yet to buy, so i cant speak on it.

 

2 hours ago, Gurgel said:

For the eggs being counted while on the rails, you can actually loop part of them back from outside. I have used several different designs, including one that will only remove the first egg on the rails and loop all others back into the room and disables the sweeper for a time after an egg is detected on the rails. This effectively causes removal of just one egg at a time. This does solve the problem rather nicely and elegantly, IMO. 

The idea is that you need to leave "steering" the population behind and instead "regulate" the population. You need to become fault-tolerant (like in a lot of real engineering). I would say nothing is broken here, it just needs a bit more mental effort to get things working. And that is entirely in the Oni spirit. 

Well, to be fair, I think the problem lie more in the fact its overly complicated to ranch puff morph than the sensor being bad (although the option to toggle it counting specific critter, eggs, etc could be interesting).

Since its actually not to bad to ranch normal puff, I was thinking if making it that the puff prince would lay different morph egg depending on which atmosphere it breathe would be a good change? Basicly, we would have the simple solution of having 2 ranchs, one with dense/squeaky puff for material and another with prince puffs either in oxygen or chlorine to maintain puff population. There would still be the option of the overcomplicated ranch were we keep 1 prince with other puff to minimise material loss.

[Flytrap]

On 4/17/2025 at 1:00 PM, Gurgel said:

For the eggs being counted while on the rails, you can actually loop part of them back from outside. I have used several different designs, including one that will only remove the first egg on the rails and loop all others back into the room and disables the sweeper for a time after an egg is detected on the rails. This effectively causes removal of just one egg at a time. This does solve the problem rather nicely and elegantly, IMO. 

The idea is that you need to leave "steering" the population behind and instead "regulate" the population. You need to become fault-tolerant (like in a lot of real engineering). I would say nothing is broken here, it just needs a bit more mental effort to get things working. And that is entirely in the Oni spirit. 

Ah, yes. I forgot about the one egg leaving at a time mechanism to regulate them.

 

It does work, but i wouldnt call it nice or elegant, and there in lies my problem.

 

This mess *can* be solved with automation, its just ass to do, and requires a bunch of nonsensical things like routing outputs back in because we dont have the means to properly control this ****, and vaguely, thats my problem. Is that the current ways we have of dealing with these problems, are overly restricting which mandates the creation of stupid designs.

 

Imagine a system where you make something, and then you just remake a bunch of the things you made, *by design*. My problem is more philosophical than practical, because none of these designs please my soul to create. Sure *it works*, but i hate it, and all because the tools at our disposal SUCK

[Gurgel]

8 hours ago, Flytrap said:

My problem is more philosophical than practical, because none of these designs please my soul to create. Sure *it works*, but i hate it, and all because the tools at our disposal SUCK

Well, then maybe Oni is not the game for you. Because these things are common engineering practices: You regulate with whatever you have available to create mechanisms and make unreliable mechanisms reliable. One of my profs called that "merciless cooperation". This is a theme that pervades Oni and also real-world engineering. 

Wanting things to be simple, straight-forward and easy to do is understandable, but that is not the Oni way (or the way of physical reality). In Oni, you have to experiment, think about how to make it happen, try and fail several times until you finally figure out a solution that works and then you have to make it reliable too. Removing that aspect would make it a different game. A game where sensors deliver you what you want, mechanisms are reliable and obvious, regulation is rarely needed and you do not need to think about how to get there. A game I would find boring. If this type of gameplay does not motivate you, then there is a mismatch between the design of Oni and what works for you and I do not think that mismatch can be fixed. 

From past history, Klei did fix some things that were excessively tedious to handle, like general alerting, slime accumulation from meteors or cooling in space, but they never have made any fundamental changes just to make things easy and that is how it should be for this game.