Jump to content

Are my calculations wrong or are Pacus literally inhumanely hard to sustainably feed?


Recommended Posts

The Pacu is one of the new critters added, and, it's a fish. Yes. Big shocker. And its main selling point is to make food and its pretty damn good at that, one of them alone seems to be enough to feed about two duplicants I believe, or less, not sure. The 'Ate from feeder' buff is weird so I can't say much about this subject- But then onto the subject of: How do I feed them? And they seem to eat something as simple as: Algae! Now it has another use other than 'emergency' life support if your Electrolyzers fail. However, the amount it eats, is obscene. 140kg a cycle.

Now, you get quite a fair amount of Algae in the start of the game, usually at around 10 ton which is enough for a long time of oxygen, and also how the Swamp biome boasts more of it. However, the Pacu are ravenous so they should eat all of this within surprisingly little time. So how do you make additional algae in a truly sustainable method?

Of course, the pufts are here to save the day. They will consume 30kg and exrete 50% of it into Slime. That means they will create 15kg of Slime each cycle. Then to create it to Algae which requires 600g of Slime each second, and converts it to 200g of Slime. Aka, at a 1:3 rate. I guess you *could* use the Polluted water the Algae distiller emits and make it evaporate into Polluted oxygen and then further recycle it to Slime which then becomes Algae but this is a very specific proccess that not everyone partakes in. You can also use the Polluted dirt they exrete into even further recycling. Anyways, back to the simple maths. 15kg of slime a day at a 1:3 rate, 15/3=5. That means that one puft, will create 5kg of algae a cycle.

This... is not nearly enough. Not even close. That means for 140kg of Algae a cycle, you will need 28 pufts. That means that 30kg*28= 840kg of Polluted Oxygen is needed a cycle to sufficiently give enough Algae for a single Pacu. Or about 1400g PO2 a second.

This isn't even mentioning the space these Pufts will need. Each puft demands 16 tiles of space before getting angry. For 28 pufts you will need 448 tiles of space, aka roughly 4.5 max sized Stables. 

Another selling point of the Pacu was supposedly the lack of need of Grooming them to make them happy, but you are still indirectly grooming 28 pufts for the sake of a single Pacu.

And what are the methods of getting Polluted Oxygen? Well, a lucky roll of a Geyserm a Polluted Water evaporator which requires a vast amount of space, and again, turns all of its mass to Polluted Oxygen which is still 840kg of Polluted Water. 
Havent done any Morb herding, but I am not sure if they are enough unless in literal armies.


So you're starting to see my issue alright, A Pacu got some pretty darn crazy living expectations. Oh and, all this is for one Pacu which is going to feed two Duplicants. When you could've just used Shinebugs which are of all things, unusually good as farm animals because they got the same egg laying rate as one, if not more because they're going to be happy more often because of Grooming. They also eat Phosphorite which there is plenty of, trust me.

Lowering the amount of Algae these critters eat to like, 40kg would be more logical, or more ways to produce Polluted Oxygen because as of now, the choices are gimmicky and inconsistent. 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah I decided to move any eggs I find to some fish tank but NEVER feed them with the feeder.  Doing so leads to them being tame which leads to their eggs being tame which leads to a mass die off when the algae is gone.

Passively collecting wild meat seems like the way to go. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Your numbers are correct. The game is in alpha.

Pacus are not viable if not some changes to the slime - algae distiller, after you've spent your early game algae. You know, its a wonder nobody has mentioned the same problem with Hatches, who also eat 140kg of stone/cycle + produce a lot less meat.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, Carnis said:

Your numbers are correct. The game is in alpha.

Pacus are not viable if not some changes to the slime - algae distiller, after you've spent your early game algae. You know, its a wonder nobody has mentioned the same problem with Hatches, who also eat 140kg of stone/cycle + produce a lot less meat.

You can I suppose, use the hardened magma as stone to feed to stone hatches, or use Fertilizer/Dirt to feed your Sage Hatches sufficiently for coal. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What if you had 3 pacu ponds?

#1 is for tame, and you keep 1 fish in it.

Move all the eggs to a 2nd pond, let them hatch, and die.

Then have a 3rd pond with wild pacu as a reserve.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 minutes ago, onebit said:

What if you had 3 pacu ponds?

#1 is for tame, and you keep 1 fish in it.

Move all the eggs to a 2nd pond, let them hatch, and die.

Then have a 3rd pond with wild pacu as a reserve.

In pond four, you can store that whole micro manage stuff..

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah, Pacus need an adjustment in order to be really viable.  I did hear one suggestion to have them eat slime instead of algae, which would help a lot.

Has anyone tried raising a Gulpfish tank?  How well does that work out for creating ice / cold water?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

gulp fish are a problem in itself. they seem to die randomly in the wild and in your tanks when making fresh water.

 

Also a fish feeder only holds like 200kg of algea. that's a lot of hauling work for your dupes

Link to comment
Share on other sites

34 minutes ago, Bobanaut said:

gulp fish are a problem in itself. they seem to die randomly in the wild and in your tanks when making fresh water.

That is because Pacu are naturally found in the Swamp Biome, which is much too hot for the Gulp Fish to survive.  They die immediately upon hatching if the player does not intervene.

In fact, Pacu are the only critter that will eventually die off if the player does not take action, for the simple reason that the base egg chance for a standard Pacu includes 2% for a Gulp Fish.  No other critter has this risk.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 hours ago, SixbySix said:

you have so much material to feed hatches.  Its never a problem if all you want is coal.  I feed them clay which you get tons of as you clear the swamps.

I've run out of of clay, then sedimentary rock keeping a good sized herd fed over 600 cycles.  They really are eating the whole asteroid (and then I burn their poop, and send it to void via my coal generators).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Please be aware that the content of this thread may be outdated and no longer applicable.

×
  • Create New...