Recent Puft Ranch Designs

[ekimmak]

Does anyone have plans or the like for puft ranches? Every design I see involves using old style critter dropoffs, and not the new split type ones. I don't have that much room left, and no easy source of gold amalgam for making them with an oxylite refinery (there are gold volcanoes, but they're on another planetoid to my main base) and haven't found any POI that can be used for making supercoolant.

Nor have I actually researched Cryofuel propulsion, so that wouldn't be much help anyway.

I have a chlorine vent and a hot polluted oxygen vent in close proximity to each other, so I could use those as a way to feed the other strains of puft if needed. Are there any builds people have that I could borrow? I'm running a tad low on space, but I would like to set something up for the long term.

[Genryu_Strike]

Even by "New" design, the splitted Critter Drop-Off still do the same work when within the ranch. Also, limiting the number of Critters in Critter Drop-Off to a certain number will make Dupe not delivering new Critters into that "already full" ranch.

Also, why is Super Coolant needed?

Finally, what purpose of trying to ranch the Pufts?

[ekimmak]

I want Oxylite and Bleach Stone. Bleach stone for farming purposes, Oxylite for rockets.

I don't have supercoolant, so there's no easy way to get my hands on liquid oxygen, hence I'm locked at the Oxylite step for now.

[asurendra]

1 hour ago, ekimmak said:

I don't have supercoolant, so there's no easy way to get my hands on liquid oxygen, hence I'm locked at the Oxylite step for now.

You playing SO, right? Fertilizer is also an oxydiser, however its not as good as oxylite

[ekimmak]

Yeah, spaced out.

I actually used up all my fertiliser. I haven't made a feriliser synthesizer in ages, because I usually don't reach the point I can make use of them. I probably have enough dirt and phosphorite on hand, but my ice planet doesn't have any natgas generators to destroy the byproduct, and my oil planet doesn't have a cooling loop in play yet (I could space mine a little bit of iridium to make a fertiliser synthesizer in the oil biome, but I need oxydiser for that)

[asurendra]

If you have mechatronic you can build it in enclosed room and forget about it. Yes, there will be a lot of gas inside, but who care? It also doesnt need cooling as inputed pWater will adsorb enough heat to prevent overheating

[missasch]

Echo Ridge on YouTube has a few of them, here is one in a let’s play video

 

Here’s a short video about it

It does look like most videos are older and use the old drop offs.

[myxal]

On 11/6/2025 at 6:48 AM, ekimmak said:

Every design I see involves using old style critter dropoffs, and not the new split type ones.

Because those changes introduced throughout U49-U52 (new drop-offs allowing control of multiple morphs/species in a ranch, pick-ups, airborne critter trap) made puft ranch designs trivial. There's really not much to it: supply appropriate gas, put multiple drop-offs in a room, a grooming station, and that's it. I don't even bother with critter counter in the ranches anymore.

If anything, what remains interesting is the puft's morphing mechanics - as far as I'm concerned, this still requires you to run at least 2 ranches, and the decision where/how you ranch the prince. Here's them options:

• prince-only ranch and slime-only ranch(es): each produce eggs for the other. This dates back to the pre-U49 drop-off as the only "simple" way to guarantee the correct egg production. Doesn't provide bleach/oxylite puft eggs at all.
• single mixed ranch w/ slime pufts, worker-only ranches for oxylite/bleach/slime: This provides great numbers of bleach/oxylite puft eggs. A single prince can keep around 2 slime-only ranches producing. If that's not enough, shift the counts to have 2 princes and 4 slime pufts in the mixed ranch.
• mixed with bleach/oxylite pufts, worker-only ranches. Prince produces some slime puft eggs, which you may or may not want. Worker-only ranches produce prince eggs, and the workers in the mixed ranch reliably produce eggs for their own morph (unlike the slime puft). If you don't need the slime puft eggs and/or want to max-out gas usage efficiency, keep the prince in an ungroomed part of the ranch where it can't navigate to the grooming station. If you don't provide any useful gas to it (you monster), it will die prematurely -> increased labor for moving fresh prince into the ranch more often.

The nursery up there uses bucket-brigade of sweepers and loaders to ensure the even if a locked puft lays an egg it's swept away, as well as any meat and egg shells.

Automation is way over-engineered there and could use simplifying.

• gcfungus incubator automation chain (wight plate -> filter 5 -> buffer 200 -> buffer 200 -> buffer 200 -> filter 10 -> NOT -> incubator)
• trapped critter (trap output) disconnects incubator (this should just go straight into the NOT gate before the incubator)
• critter sensor says "enough critters, eggs here", closes the chute and whatever's on the rail continues onwards into the next chamber, and eventually into...

... the evolution chamber (I love naphtha):

Edited November 7, 2025 by myxal

[ekimmak]

I've decided to work with a conveyor shipping system to move eggs around. Puft Princes stay where they're laid, while the incorrect type will be sent through a conveyor rail system to the next ranch in line, until they get to the correct ranch.

I'll have to see how the numbers work out, and whether just leaving them a condo can keep the population stable... as soon as I can heat up the ranches enough that they aren't glum. The main problem with being in on a frozen planetoid is it's hard to kickstart the heat.

The fertiliser makes a decent stopgap, and wild pips ensure I won't run out of dirt, but I still don't really trust fertiliser makers.

[myxal]

36 minutes ago, ekimmak said:

The fertiliser makes a decent stopgap, and wild pips ensure I won't run out of dirt, but I still don't really trust fertiliser makers.

I'm curious what's behind the "trusting the fertiliser maker", sounds like a funny colony failure story  They are fairly slow, for sure. Just for farming I need 2-3 to keep up with a similar number of farming stations.

Oxylite really shines as oxygen source for the crew module, especially early on. With the small petroleum engine you need an extra fuel tank to make use of its increased fuel mixing ratio.

[creamizzing]

i make last year 

don't use critter drop off and incubator

it's korean explain 

 

[DevilBatLam]

Here is mine design, 4 type of puft, fully automatic repopulation, stable, but complex and need some experience when build

[Twiki]

I found the new drop-off logic to make puft ranching pretty trivial now. Just do a drop-off set to 1 prince, then another drop-off set to 1-5 (however many you need) of the other kind of puft you want. The rest pretty much takes care of itself.

[Overheal]

I'm spinning up Dense Puft ranching and what I basically did was the basic hatch ranch layout: enough room for the grooming and drop-offs, then a screen door+tile and a drop of naphta (can be any liquid tbh) above that to keep them confined near the grooming station. The conveyor loader for eggs is behind the door along the ceiling and the oxylite loader is on the floor, the sweeper can see both (didn't expect it to see through the screen door/move material across it but I'll take it) 

To prevent offgassing oxylite poop, there is 1.8+ kg of water on the floor where the pufts are + on the floor where the loader is. The rest of the floor is mopped up, because it's not needed. Those tiles are mesh so oxygen can feed up from my clay-production/deodorizer line. To prevent spillage beyond the loader, the +1 tile that's usually in the corner to make the room 96 tiles is right behind the oxylite loader. I'll edit with a picture later. 

If you don't like confinement, I'd do the same setup but just let them roam in airborne critter condos 

Edited November 18, 2025 by Overheal