Why do dreckos move a certain way when a door is added?

[BLACKBERREST3]

almost done. incubator setup is good. it uses invalid movement so they don't get trapped. had to use a mech door to hide a higher priority loader in the top left so now I can manually use the dispenser alongside sweepers. I'm able to herd all the dreckos to one side or the other and I don't need an atmo suit because the hydrogen/chlorine have their own chambers with a carbon dioxide pit that connects at two tiles on the bottom. too tired tonight, but i'll finish up the automation and post a blueprint and a stripped down version if it all works later.

Edited May 22 by BLACKBERREST3

[BLACKBERREST3]

done with door logic, going back to bed.

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[BLACKBERREST3]

don't know if this is bug report worthy, but resetting the time on a timer causes it to pulse green for a tick even when it is set to 0 green. This is actually a feature while I was working on this because i was using a rising edge detector and buffers, I was easily able to test 1 tick pulse on command that runs on both timers.

I also crammed in the door automation to my build. Fits like a glove [rats nest]. Timers can't be on at the same time, puts dreckletts at risk of tile trapping. Left timer is for juggling eggs between the first horizontal/vertical mech doors. Right timer is for juggling eggs to the 2nd vertical mech door for the sweeper to send to the loader that becomes visible to it for a configurable amount of time.

Edited May 22 by BLACKBERREST3

[BLACKBERREST3]

doesn't work, I tried to have a cold/hot zone cause I thought chlorine/carbon dioxide was a good insulator. it almost worked. Back to the drawing board. I'm going to need to isolate temperatures somehow. Maybe I'll make their chambers into separate modules far apart that I can herd them into.

On 5/18/2026 at 12:37 PM, MinhPham said:

 

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Edited Monday at 02:15 PM by MinhPham

 

I think I need to separate the carbon mealwood breeder pen and the hydrogen/chlorine/carbon pit into their own modules. I'll just ship the eggs between them over a distance. something like what minhpham posted would work. I haven't even gotten to the part where I math out how long to keep them in hydrogen vs chlorine. I was having a lot of trouble trying to heat/cool one tiny area with itself. 

[BLACKBERREST3]

This is looking much better now that I've separated the temps. Now dupes can have a place to breathe and shear. I'm going to use a timer to send them on a migratory journey to/from the shearing station and hydrogen chamber and they can eat along the way so they will never starve. The thermoregulator will be centered to balance heat dispersal. There is a vacuum in between the liquid locks to control temps a bit better. i forget if dupes can exhale carbon dioxide when not in oxygen, I'm going to assume yes which is why I have the gas pump on the bottom. The breeder pen will be all mealwood/oxygen environment and possibly a refrigerated carbon zone for the extra mealice.

[BLACKBERREST3]

did a bit more research on liquid locks. it appears that if I want to keep the vacuum a vacuum I will have to make them jump across so they don't contaminate the area. I don't know all of the details of what's changed. If they pull oxygen from a tile away now, does that mean that my lock isn't safe if one side is O2? Also for hot materials, to prevent flash boiling I'll just need to put a bridge of some kind over the lock or some background layer like a door/ladder etc. right?

Edited May 23 by BLACKBERREST3

[BLACKBERREST3]

3 tile locks should also count as jumping across I would think

 

[MinhPham]

Heat problem came from the dreckos themself, as their default body temperature is 35, no kind no insulation will help you, mealwood will stop growing eventually, active cooling is required, at least a wheeze wort is very convenience because they used phosphorite and dreckos poop them

[BLACKBERREST3]

8 hours ago, MinhPham said:

Heat problem came from the dreckos themself, as their default body temperature is 35, no kind no insulation will help you, mealwood will stop growing eventually, active cooling is required, at least a wheeze wort is very convenience because they used phosphorite and dreckos poop them

That's really funny. In my build, the cooling was fine given I had unlimited power. it was keeping the balm lily heated that was the problem even with tempshift plates and a hydrogen loop behind the balm lilies to equalize heat in that area. If I think about it in terms of entropy, it was really inefficient and wasting a bunch of power because the temps were actively trying to equalize each other. I thought that if it only had to be in the range of 25C for mealwood and 40C for balm lily, that I could use only a little power to keep a 15C temp difference between the two areas. The problem was that the area wasn't that insulated to begin with. I didn't have enough space to put insulated tiles beneath the farm tiles made of dirt. That's another thing I've noticed since playing years ago. Thermal conductivity seems a lot better than it used to be. It's so much more snappier and optimized now. I remember a time when it would take forever to bring down temps. Maybe that's just a false observation, no idea. I'm just gonna build 2 areas that transfers heat efficiently to the areas I want them to. Another reason my build failed was because the total heat in the system wasn't in the range I needed it to be in. That whole area needed to be much hotter to get the temp range I needed.

[Saturnus]

10 hours ago, MinhPham said:

Heat problem came from the dreckos themself, as their default body temperature is 35, no kind no insulation will help you, mealwood will stop growing eventually, active cooling is required, at least a wheeze wort is very convenience because they used phosphorite and dreckos poop them

See my previous post (here) where I used a thermoregulator placed in the starvation room to cool the breeding room. On average the power consumption assuming 35c dirt is used for the mealwood is less than 2W per breeding drecko. If it's 75c dirt from for example composting it's around 8W per breeding drecko on average, and ff it's 25c dirt from for example a pip ranch you don't need additional cooling at all.

The TR in the starvation room moves the heat there where it is absorbed by the dreckos and their scales, so the heat never builds up as it's constantly being deleted, or moved out as you use the reed fibers or plastic.

Obviously, once you have a base cooling loop you don't need the TR anymore, and can replace it with a sweeper and loader in that particular design.

Edited May 23 by Saturnus

[BLACKBERREST3]

I agree, doesn't take that much power to keep mealwood going. lesson learnt, don't grow balm lily and mealwood in the same area. I was able to puzzle out a good layout for sweepers and farm tiles for both dupes and dreckos. just good old trial and error. hoping I did the locks right and I don't have carbon in the vacuum chambers, but at least I can fit a mini pump in there if I need to. I also wanted to converge all the sweepers to as few loaders as possible and I was able to get all 4 on the right to one loader. dreckos just fall down when trapped in the mech door that hides the loader on the right.

 

 

Edited May 23 by BLACKBERREST3

[BLACKBERREST3]

That took way too long, I'm gonna make a separate post and post the blueprint there.

This post will remain for drecko movement mechanics and other things.

Edited May 25 by BLACKBERREST3

[BLACKBERREST3]

I don't know how I'm going to use this yet, but you can also make them one way path when they are upside down too.

 

 

If we had automation that set a door to auto, I could imagine so many possibilities. Auto doors with automation could allow so many things with critters.

I might have a solution to the herding problem. a singular circuit where I can trap them for X amount of time, shear and release. then I can process a few at a time. Hydrogen and Chlorine will live in the same room so they can pre-grow scales on the ceiling.

[BLACKBERREST3]

found another bug. idk how, but I keep duplicating micro grams in my water timer.

[BLACKBERREST3]

I've discovered that different types of items conveyor differently with doors. Copper ore will go up, but copper refined will not.  so it's not just eggs this works with.

[BLACKBERREST3]

I've gone back to the roots and tried a different approach. I ended up combining both of @Saturnus designs to create this thing. I don't think dreckletts or even dreckos could be stuck in this one. They can be stuck if dreckletts mature so make sure to set the frequency higher than 5 cycles to prevent them clipping into floors/walls. Also, found out dreckletts like to go in 1-tile width areas, but i guess dreckos won't. idk what the rule is there or if it compounds with invalid movement.

 

Very little automation is needed for this one compared to the last. last one didn't even work because the eggs got pushed to the wrong spots and I didn't test it right XD. I also had to think up a different system for automating shipping. maybe I'll only turn on the sweeper in certain situations instead of hiding a loader from it.

Edited May 26 by BLACKBERREST3

[BLACKBERREST3]

after hours I've finally hit a breakthrough. This is looking promising.

 

[BLACKBERREST3]

just gonna assume it works until doesn't, I've got half of them within one cycle, the pathing is very efficient. I think I stumbled onto some real life concepts. is there anything called "herding cats with math"? This goes from a low probability branching path to a high probability one-way path. neat.

edit; it’s late, i forgot what a funnel is.

 

 

Edited May 27 by BLACKBERREST3

[MinhPham]

Given that their movement are random, it will take very long for them to move into the tiny hydrogen room

Edited May 27 by MinhPham

[BLACKBERREST3]

4 hours ago, MinhPham said:

Given that their movement are random, it will take very long for them to move into the tiny hydrogen room

It is random which is why I had to design a better funneling system that gives them the best odds to go into that chamber. I've had a lot more success with this design. here's a pic of what I want the atmosphere to be. I want to have the dupe areas be oxygenated with the rest of my base, so at times of low pressure, some hydrogen may escape, but that's fine, there will be a system of mechanical filters later when I'm exploring/digging that captures gas by density for the entire world so I'm not too worried about gasses escaping. Couldn't make the egg delivery be oxygenated because 1. it's underwater and 2. I couldn't fit it in with the shipping system I'm trying to use given the space constraints. I'm trying to tile it into my base. I've made the drecko hangouts be a mix atmosphere to give them the most time in hydrogen while climbing and also be able to trap them for a certain amount of time. The mix atmosphere should also help cool the thermoregulator since I was having overheating problems before [chlorine insulated the TR too much]. I have the double liquid lock wall on the right module because I couldn't fit a gap they could jump across to not contaminate the vacuum. If it's only 1 tile away they pull oxygen from, than surely a double liquid lock will prevent contamination. I'm surprised I haven't see that type of thing on the wiki or forums somewhere. Speaking of which, I just realized that I have to set the door permissions on the dreck traps for this reason. I can't have dupes entering the vacuum without jumping a gap or having a 1 tile space liquid lock buffer.

 

I also have a tile spaced buffer between the hydrogen/chlorine atmosphere to give the balm lily plenty of space to grow. If my egg shell conveyor works like I want it to, then I think I've got most of it solved. I'm about to put all of the automation back in like the liquid timers for their holding chambers, anti-dreck stuck weight plates [only because I wanted them to path in from all directions and they might get stuck coming in from the bottom]. Too many niche things I wanted to have in this build made it very confusing to puzzle it together, but I think I am finally almost done.

 

[BLACKBERREST3]

I completely forgot to make the third module for handling glossy dreckos. That one is much simpler though. hydrogen on top, mealwood on the bottom. I might just starve glossies though since I won't have a pw boiler/O2 condenser setup during this time and I would be in a dirt deficit if I started feeding glossies.

[MinhPham]

So on the left is a regular ranch where you increase drecko population, and right side is theoretically the infinite drecko shearing station.

I think there is still a hard limit on how many dreckos you can have, because a single plantcan only support 1.3 tamed/happy drecko or 6.5 tame/glum one, and the number is only 1&5 for glossy drecko  

Edited May 27 by MinhPham
Correct some "maths"

[BLACKBERREST3]

yep, the limit is how many plants I can feed them all with. I think if I constantly restart their starvation timers I can pack quite a few of them in there, but again, that is a bit more randomness added to the equation. I guess if I was super unlucky then several of them would starve at once while only a few are fully fed, but I think that situation is much more unlikely. Plus, I'd just renew those same drecko anyways so that's just meat I get quicker and I lose out on reed fibers which I don't need much of anyways. I do want a lot of phosphorus though so hopefully this helps with that.

I might need to go back to that earlier design I was working on, the hatching tank takes a lot of space and I might want another hatching tank for the glossies.

Edited May 27 by BLACKBERREST3

[MinhPham]

21 minutes ago, BLACKBERREST3 said:

I think that situation is much more unlikely

It is more likely actually ... For the game engine there's a list of drecko that they have to iterate from begin to end every couple seconds, the order of them won't change, so when there's not enough food some dreckos will always get to eat while the others always starving. I observed the same behavior while doing shove ranch test

[BLACKBERREST3]

oh! thanks for letting me know. had no idea that was a thing. so basically critters have a pecking order is what your saying or something kind of similar to build priority but with critter generation.