Hatch-Herding

[Jumpp]

Abstract: I once saw a hatch do something unusual and very convenient for me. I've never seen that behavior since, and I'd like to. Anyone know what was up?

I've had some success getting hatches to go where I want. When I want to move them laterally, I build pneumatic doors next to their burrows, then wait for them to move nearer to the goal, build another door, and repeat.

When I want to move them vertically, I herd them to a convenient natural tile, then dig a shaft beneath it and then dig out the top tile, dropping them where I want.

Once in a while, though, I get one loose in my base where there's no natural tile in which to burrow. These are usually difficult to move. I have to slowly deconstruct and replace tiles, herding him into a smaller and smaller area, until he can't escape and I can deconstruct the tile he's standing on.

On one memorable occsasion, though, the hatch cooperated. He was at the top of my base and I wanted to get him to descend through five decks of artificial tile. I deconstructed a tile several spaces away from him...and he leapt through it, down five spaces to the deck below.

I deconstructed another tile, again several spaces away from him...and once again he leapt through it. I repeated this a few more times until he came to rest at the bottom where I wanted him.

I've tried this since then, and the hatches don't cooperate. Only that one hatch, that one time, went jumping down these gaps.

Anyone know why he did that, and how I might get other hatches to do it in the future?

[heckubis]

Hatches have a path finding ai for finding food its not very far of a view range but you can lead them around with sweeping and placing bait. Some tiles like Clay have a higher chance of restoring their sleep cycles. but over all if your hatches are in an area that's easy to handle them in you have no real reason to coral them. they have a decor bonus and don't get in the way . the big jumps I have seen but haven't been able to successfully induce it without being lucky on deconstructing the tiles its on in mid motion..

I have started letting my hatches be in my base wandering around in unrestrained and I even started building routs for them to access other floors. they will eat the clay form air filters and any other waists that happen to occure but will usually keep to higher food areas

pufts are in a similar boat for me. I don't coral them but I hope they join in the colony as passive air scrubbers. I have a slime box set to 9 to clean its messes but they float around your base cleaning the air for you.

I don't much work with morbs as I usually don't let death happen and have other ways of getting rid of bad gas

[heckubis]

on a side note for finding them they do not show up as buried object they show up as a hatch on the tooltip as your panning across tiles. you can just mouse over the area your going to be building in and notice the tooltip show up giving all the hatches status info you can then plan your extraction methods from there before you even dig it free