Wild Hatch Farm...Again! And a ranch too :)

[BLACKBERREST3]

Yeah pacu rush is definitely the way to go and you can skip hatches entirely. But...I really like them, they are my favorite critter so I'll attempt an overengineered solution. I usually go for a drecko ranch for plastic, it is way too easy to get plastic with them. I could always dump heat to a spom, but I feel like I don't need as much energy as I do water and atmosphere (doesn't even have to be O2). For longevity I was going to go straight to ranching shine bugs and get the third tier research out of the way with a shinebug reactor so I could make a steam loop and not worry about heat ever again. 

[MinhPham]

I built them all it's just in different order, either pacu or hatch first is a fine choice, drecko egg production is very slow so they can't be an early food source.

Hatches are required for coal, you need them for ceramic, i want some stupid amount of ceramics. Hatches need more spaice but easier to build.

Pacus are actually a better lime source than the pokeshells, also the omelette can be upgraded into mushroom quiche. Pacus cost less space but require more advanced tech for multiple liquid layers, otherwise it will need some stupid amount of liquid, which is a problem as a single pump can only do 6 tiles of water per cycle.

Drecko are required for reed fibers and plastics, some stupid amount of plastics so i can either melt them into sourgas->methane, or convert them into metal by melting the germ sensors, or both. But they're not my first plastic production either, going from regular drecko into glossy one takes time, i make my way into the oil biome and get plastic to make the turbines from them.

[BLACKBERREST3]

I don't see why this wouldn't work. I'm gonna update the post with a new pic.

[KittenIsAGeek]

On 5/6/2026 at 10:44 PM, BLACKBERREST3 said:

Wait, does this work for tamed glum ones too? I might've been ranching wrong. Pretty sure tamed glum still starve even when burrowed. Seems like wild hatches will eat their meat drops at night if dupes haven't swept them in time. My build solves this, but the down side is that eventually the critter cap will be reached because there is only a few thousand tiles per asteroid.

Hmm.   While they're buried, unless they're actively starving to death (10 cycles of starvation), they'll be fine.

Spoiler

I don't generally run starving because I almost always have something excessive to feed them, like sandstone.  If you do run starving, then you'll want to throw a sweeper in there to 'rescue' the corpses.  You'll lose a little to hatches, especially if there are multiple simultaneous deaths.

Spoiler

If they're tame, but didn't get groomed during the night cycle, their metabolism drops to 20% and their reproduction will drop to 2%.  Which means a hatch from a tame egg will lay its own egg after 55 cycles without any grooming, provided it isn't starving.  With the 80% metabolism drop, one chomp of sandstone will last 'em 8 cycles.
** EDIT: Reproduction Correction: It will be closer to cycle 65 because the reproduction won't increase while they're wandering around at night.

I think I had one ranch set up where I used pips to plant a bunch of mealwood and just let it go wild.  Put in two grooming stations with two ranchers on a night shift and ended up with a hundred hatches at one point without feeding them anything.  Sure they ate some of their own corpses, but I was still getting more than my outpost was using.

On 4/27/2026 at 8:37 AM, SackMaggie said:

If grooming station are used eventually hatch will not be wild... What am i missing here ?

Yeah, but wild hatches won't increase in population.  If you're keeping them wild, just don't throw the grooming station in.  If you want to increase your population, you'll have to tame 'em.

Edited Sunday at 05:31 PM by KittenIsAGeek

[BLACKBERREST3]

10 hours ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

Hmm.   While they're buried, unless they're actively starving to death (10 cycles of starvation), they'll be fine.

  Hide contents

I don't generally run starving because I almost always have something excessive to feed them, like sandstone.  If you do run starving, then you'll want to throw a sweeper in there to 'rescue' the corpses.  You'll lose a little to hatches, especially if there are multiple simultaneous deaths.

  Hide contents

If they're tame, but didn't get groomed during the night cycle, their metabolism drops to 20% and their reproduction will drop to 2%.  Which means a hatch from a tame egg will lay its own egg after 55 cycles without any grooming, provided it isn't starving.  With the 80% metabolism drop, one chomp of sandstone will last 'em 8 cycles.
** EDIT: Reproduction Correction: It will be closer to cycle 65 because the reproduction won't increase while they're wandering around at night.

I think I had one ranch set up where I used pips to plant a bunch of mealwood and just let it go wild.  Put in two grooming stations with two ranchers on a night shift and ended up with a hundred hatches at one point without feeding them anything.  Sure they ate some of their own corpses, but I was still getting more than my outpost was using.

Yeah, but wild hatches won't increase in population.  If you're keeping them wild, just don't throw the grooming station in.  If you want to increase your population, you'll have to tame 'em.

That is all the info I needed. I think I did it. I had to make two separate builds. One was for the wild hatches and the other is for tamed-glum and tamed-fed hatches. I have to rewrite the post to include everything that's changed. It has everything I want in it. except for a redirect to an active kill chamber, but I'm not sure I'll ever need one. Currently looking for a compact active evolution chamber, I have enough space left over. nvm, found out the war crime way.

Edited Monday at 03:41 AM by BLACKBERREST3

[BLACKBERREST3]

I reused the passive evolution chamber as the active one as well. They get trapped inside the door to get the meat while the passive ones remain on top. This is way over-engineered, but I think it uses almost every concept for hatches.

[BLACKBERREST3]

good news and bad news. I was able to build it early game. Bad news, I nearly ran out of metal. I'm gonna restart and rush print pacu. I'll have to build my hatch pet shop after volcano taming.

Simple pacu printer cheese. I probably don't have to farm any pacu, but I could dig out that build if I need to.

Edited 14 hours ago by BLACKBERREST3

[BLACKBERREST3]

tony really was on top of volcano and vent tamers.

[MinhPham]

The difficulty of pacu is the part where you had to "tame" them ... only -15% wilderness per cycle, once they are tamed the populationw will explode

[BLACKBERREST3]

THE PACU CHANGED TOO! You can't cheese with pacu anymore because they no longer see air tiles when considering room size and now they are miserable AND they don't reproduce. I didn't notice before it was too late XD time to restart again and maybe build a legit pacu ranch this time.