How to train your Dreckos

[BLACKBERREST3]

 

How to train your Dreckos

 

 

 

My other post was getting a little messy and I've since tested all sorts of things on Dreckos and Dreckletts. I wanted to have one post that consolidated all that info. Dreckos move weird. Hopefully I can explain why. There is a lot of overlap with how other critters move as well, but our focus today is Dreckos. If you see [Critter Overlap], this means that some or all other critters also follow this rule.

 

Rule 1: The Basics

They can climb

 

Adults can jump gaps, infants cannot [Critter Overlap]

 

Adults can jump 2 high platforms, infants cannot [Critter Overlap]

Dreckletts can round a corner horizontally, within a 1 tile area, Dreckos cannot.

Neither Drecko nor Drecklett can traverse a 1 tile wide corner vertically. In this example, they are stuck on the left side of the wall.

 

 

 

Dreckletts will sleep at night. Dreckos will not. [Critter Overlap]

 

Rule 2: Liquids

Dreckos and Dreckletts drown in sufficiently flooded tiles. This is exactly 350kg of water. Dreckos and Dreckletts will path into 1 tile water but not 2 tile water. [Critter Overlap]

 

Dreckos and Dreckletts will take the least amount of tiles away to safety when drowning. [Critter Overlap]

 

 

Under certain circumstances, they will not path into any full water tiles at all even if there is a path beyond it. [Critter Overlap]

 

I stole this from MinhPham. Dreckos can jump 1 tile gaps through liquid locks. [Critter Overlap]

 

Dreckos can skip a tile of water if they come at it from an angle off the wall. Dreckletts cannot. In the example below, all the Dreckos will eventually be trapped in the center room and cannot escape. This is called one-way pathing. Using the bottom left door as an example, The left vertical edge of the pneumatic door and the horizontal edge 1 tile to the right of the liquid lock acts as a gap that Dreckos can jump over. Corners are treated as 1 tile wide gaps.

Dreckos and Dreckletts will preference the path to the right when spawned/hatched in a liquid lock or any liquid that is sufficiently flooded [Critter Overlap]

 

 

Rule 3: Doors

All Doors and all their edges are possible paths [Critter Overlap]

Dreckos can jump and Dreckletts will climb onto locked Doors. [Critter Overlap]

They will only walk on open doors if they have a path to it. In this case it is the closed bunker door and a 1 tile gap to the open mech door on the right. Dreckletts cannot reach that area as they cannot jump 1 tile gaps. [Critter Overlap]

 

Orientation and placement matters. In this example Dreckos are ONLY able to jump 2 tiles vertically onto open doors. They cannot climb the open door on the left because there is not an edge to walk onto to and they cannot jump 1 tile vertically. Dreckletts cannot jump at all. Hatches for example are able to jump 1 tile vertically in this same setup.

 

 

 

Dreckos and Dreckletts fall through open doors and locked pneumatic doors, but do not fall through locked mech doors. [Critter Overlap]

 

Dreckos and Dreckletts will not fall through open doors with a tile under them. They do fall through locked pneumatic doors however. [Critter Overlap]

 

 

Dreckos and Dreckletts will not path into a dead end of mech doors. Anywhere a critter would normally be able to walk through, but cannot seem to do so under certain circumstances is what I've been calling Invalid Pathing. Saturnus pointed that one out to me. [Critter Overlap]

 

In this example, the invalid path starts at the first vertical mech door. Dreckletts will be able to path up to the top edge of the door, but will not venture further in. The reason why Dreckos can venture further in is the same reason they can venture past the liquid locks. They can "jump" a tile gap from the corner into the invalid path whereas Dreckletts cannot.

 

Dreckos and Dreckletts fall off when climbing vertical doors, but not horizontal doors. Invalid pathing applies to horizontal mech doors, but not to vertical mech doors in this example because Dreckos can walk onto the edge of the vertical mech doors from the horizontal edge.

 

 

Since there is no edge to walk to, they are all trapped in this example.

 

 

Dreckos can do backflips. This is because they can correct themselves when climbing on surfaces they shouldn't such as open door/door surfaces, air/door, and even door/liquid surfaces. This causes them to get stuck in tiles quite often when opening or closing doors in this state.

Dreckos can also WALK ON AIR! They are magical creatures. Same reason as above.

They can clip into walls and floors. This is because while climbing on edges, the edge will "disappear" during the locking state and because they like to correct themselves midair as we've seen previously, they will correct themselves into a prison of their own demise.

 

It doesn't even have to be a door closing to trigger clipping either.

 

Rule 4: Combination

This is what tripped me up the most out of all of them and this is my best guess so far. This uses a combination of a few rules mentioned earlier plus some new ones.

- They will take the shortest path to safety

- They will generally avoid sufficiently flooded tiles 

- In some cases, the edge of the door will act as a pseudo barrier in it's pathing AI preventing the Drecklett from pathing up and walking through a full tile of water

- Dreckos will be able to jump the corner gap to pass through the sufficiently flooded tile of water, but because Dreckletts cannot jump gaps, they are unable to perform the same feat.

 

Dreckletts are able to round a 1 tile wide corner onto the floor of the liquid tile and correct themselves to the other side. This happens more often or even only at higher game speeds, I could not repeat this on 1 or 2 speed. From the previous rules, we know that Dreckos cannot cross over because they are not able to round a 1 tile wide corner and they are only able to jump 2 tiles vertically onto an open door. Just like the basilisk lizard, they can run on water!

 

We see more of the horizontal pseudo barrier effect at play. Dreckos cannot round the corner as they require one more tile of space to do so, but Dreckletts can. This makes for a really efficient Drecko trap out of two wires and one critter sensor. To clarify, Dreckos need 2 tiles of traversable space to move whereas Dreckletts only need one.

 

This is another example of Dreckos requiring one more tile of space to move.

This Drecko can move to the floor.

 This Drecko is stuck on the underside of the door

 

 

 

 

Edited yesterday at 01:26 AM by BLACKBERREST3

[BLACKBERREST3]

You have no idea how long it took to figure all this out and create a build that didn't get them stuck in tiles 🥲

Edited Friday at 12:46 PM by BLACKBERREST3

[BLACKBERREST3]

updated the post to provide more accurate info on one tile wide corners and vertical door pathing.

[BLACKBERREST3]

reminder for me to post more info here on horizontal pseudo barrier door rule and other useful rule combos, info can be found on my other two drecko related posts.

updated, should probably be under basics as it is a standalone rule, but this last one is pretty advanced so it makes sense to put it towards the end.

Edited yesterday at 01:30 AM by BLACKBERREST3