My meat farm design

[Neotuck]

This is a BBQ farm I put together that uses 5 stables (four sage and one glossy) and drowns the hatchlings for meat

All eggs are brought to this room were they are dropped on the mesh floor and slowly incubate over 20 cycles

The doors closes for 10% duration each cycle to drown any eggs that hatched

All meat and pincha peppers are brought to the grill to be cooked

The only micro managing needed is to use the incubators any time one of the critters in the sables die of old age.

[kuroko0820]

5 minutes ago, Neotuck said:

The doors closes for 10% duration each cycle to drown any eggs that hatched

it worked even the egg inside ration box ?

 

[Neotuck]

1 minute ago, kuroko0820 said:

it worked even the egg inside ration box ?

 

no I forgot that was patched, I'll fix it and edit the post

[Lifegrow]

6 hours ago, Neotuck said:

The only micro managing needed is to use the incubators any time one of the critters in the sables die of old age.

And this is the only difficult part sadly. Other than that you just have a drowning room with mechanical doors.

Spoiler

 

When you have a busy base, keeping an eye on all your stables becomes a real pain in the arse. I'm hoping they introduce some "critter proximity" sensor or something in the near future.

[Kroning]

49 minutes ago, Lifegrow said:

And this is the only difficult part sadly.

Have you read my post about it?

[Lifegrow]

8 minutes ago, Kroning said:

Have you read my post about it?

Haven't seen anything that's managed to conquer the micro-managing of critter numbers in a successful way yet to be honest (not just on klei forums, but anywhere  )

I've been keeping an eye on the forums, but aside from ridiculously over engineering the problem, I can't fathom how to do it in a sleek and compact fashion.

[Hellshound38]

I'm pretty sure you could automate the room hatches with some math and timing setup.

If you make them the size to hold 5, while your goal is to keep 4 in them and drop a single egg every 25 cycles, it should work out? 

[Kroning]

43 minutes ago, Lifegrow said:

Haven't seen anything that's managed to conquer the micro-managing of critter numbers in a successful way yet to be honest (not just on klei forums, but anywhere  )

I've been keeping an eye on the forums, but aside from ridiculously over engineering the problem, I can't fathom how to do it in a sleek and compact fashion.

It's ugly, but it works. Also need more tuning.

 

[0xFADE]

You could put the most common thing, grooming, closest to the ladders.

[PhailRaptor]

2 hours ago, 0xFADE said:

You could put the most common thing, grooming, closest to the ladders.

My experience is that this doesn't help that much, unless you do a narrow/tall room.  The simple fact is that you don't have to worry about just the Dupe's travel time, but also the critter's.  This is most problematic with Dreckos, due to the need for a floating island to really contain them.  If they're on the bottom of the island while the station is on the top, it takes time.

[landromat]

so, why it's not just underwater ration box?

[0xFADE]

58 minutes ago, PhailRaptor said:

My experience is that this doesn't help that much, unless you do a narrow/tall room.  The simple fact is that you don't have to worry about just the Dupe's travel time, but also the critter's.  This is most problematic with Dreckos, due to the need for a floating island to really contain them.  If they're on the bottom of the island while the station is on the top, it takes time.

I meant the hatch ones but they all look like they are as far away from where the dupe enters as possible.

the longer you make them travel the more likely they are to interrupt themselves by needing to eat or poop(screw this important thing I'm doing I gotta eat right now).

Ive had poor critters sitting on the grooming station while the dupe ran off. Some for the entire night. They should add a super sad animation for that. 

[Neotuck]

1 hour ago, landromat said:

so, why it's not just underwater ration box?

eggs don't hatch inside ration boxes, they will reach 100% incubation but won't hatch

[landromat]

10 hours ago, Neotuck said:

eggs don't hatch inside ration boxes, they will reach 100% incubation but won't hatch

But they hatch every time you start the game, right?

[Kabrute]

Oh no my dupes are starving, save:load 180k food available

[landromat]

Meat is not good source of food. If you're making meat stations, you already have too much food and just need egg dumpster

[JonnyMonroe]

On 5/22/2018 at 3:16 PM, Lifegrow said:

Haven't seen anything that's managed to conquer the micro-managing of critter numbers in a successful way yet to be honest (not just on klei forums, but anywhere  )

I've been keeping an eye on the forums, but aside from ridiculously over engineering the problem, I can't fathom how to do it in a sleek and compact fashion.

There's been like 3 designs posted since mark 2 went up. You just need to calculate how frequently you expect critters to die in seconds to work out how frequently you need to set an egg incubating to match that rate then use a water clock to control the mechanism to set an egg incubating on that timer (using natural incubation). If you want to get around the 100% incubation bug just incubate on a rail loop. If you want the egg outside the stable build the loop above the stable separated by open doors. When the egg hatches the critter will drop through to the stable.

Combine with a good egg sorter and/or meat farm and you can do completely automated ranching with no human monitoring. The real difficulty for me was making a molten slickster meat farm since they can't be drowned, take a long time to starve and require a crazy amount of cooling to freeze to death. Honestly that build took more time and effort than an auto incubator.

[Lifegrow]

9 minutes ago, JonnyMonroe said:

There's been like 3 designs posted since mark 2 went up. You just need to calculate how frequently you expect critters to die in seconds to work out how frequently you need to set an egg incubating to match that rate then use a water clock to control the mechanism to set an egg incubating on that timer (using natural incubation). If you want to get around the 100% incubation bug just incubate on a rail loop. If you want the egg outside the stable build the loop above the stable separated by open doors. When the egg hatches the critter will drop through to the stable.

Combine with a good egg sorter and/or meat farm and you can do completely automated ranching with no human monitoring. The real difficulty for me was making a molten slickster meat farm since they can't be drowned, take a long time to starve and require a crazy amount of cooling to freeze to death. Honestly that build took more time and effort than an auto incubator.

I've yet to see a design that perfectly maintains critter numbers. I've seen a few that in theory maintain numbers, however one slip in timing and the whole thing is ruined due to the negative elements of over crowding.

The key word in my post is "compact" - the idea of spending a 1/3 of my usual base size just to maintain some critters is exactly the reason that new players find the critter management so confusing.

Size requirements alone put a lot of players off even bothering with critters - paired with having to construct a convoluted, over engineered system to maintain numbers - it starts becoming less ONI and more Farming Sim 2k18.

 

 

[PhailRaptor]

4 hours ago, JonnyMonroe said:

There's been like 3 designs posted since mark 2 went up. You just need to calculate how frequently you expect critters to die in seconds to work out how frequently you need to set an egg incubating to match that rate then use a water clock to control the mechanism to set an egg incubating on that timer (using natural incubation). If you want to get around the 100% incubation bug just incubate on a rail loop. If you want the egg outside the stable build the loop above the stable separated by open doors. When the egg hatches the critter will drop through to the stable.

I'm hoping you'll forgive me for this, but this is a rather complex player side work around to a UI problem.  The very fact that you're tossing out the idea of building a water clock as an "easy" solution is a complete oxymoron.

[Kabrute]

I played some farming sims, this is more fun because I feel like I have a larger range of options available.  While I am not arguing that the system as a whole still needs work in regards to critter management, I do feel that players now have all of the tools needed to work around 99% of the bugs and or issues they face.  In fact, I love this game because there are so very many different ways of doing any thing. That being said, when in room mode it shows critter count, so why not have a sensor that ties that value to automation?  And why count eggs as critters?  Shouldn't they be in a slightly different classification?  I mean seriously, I've raised chickens, watched docus on fish, etc, and I can say with full scientific certainty that only the Kiwi seems put out by its eggs, and I only say that because its the only case I've found with an egg the size of the parent.  O.o.

[JonnyMonroe]

56 minutes ago, PhailRaptor said:

I'm hoping you'll forgive me for this, but this is a rather complex player side work around to a UI problem.  The very fact that you're tossing out the idea of building a water clock as an "easy" solution is a complete oxymoron.

If you think a pump, a door, a valve and a hydro sensor isn't easy then I don't know where to start really.

5 hours ago, Lifegrow said:

The key word in my post is "compact"

Stable sizes have a hard minimum per critter. No solution will get you around that unless klei eases up an that rule. My last base before I took a break on ranching had 7 stables taking up about as much space as the rest of the base combined. I'll concede that no (automated) build will give you perfect 8-critters-per-max-stable constantly but you can design it such that you get an average of around 7.7 critters in the stable over time without ever overcrowding or 'expecting'.

[QuQuasar]

I've actually been working on this problem myself. I currently have an automated hatch farm design that is a single bug away from working (the bug in question being that weight plates don't update their value when you autosweep an egg off of them).
         
Rather than relying on timing, the fundamental idea behind my design is to detect when meat is created in the stable and get it to requisition a nearly-mature egg from the murder tank. This requires a bit of hotpotato-ing with the sweepers to ensure to ensure it only ever requisitions one egg (or maybe even a hatchling? That would require some rework...), and I don't think it will always get the most mature egg (there's a possibility of getting a new egg and having to wait 20 cycles for it to hatch), but the theory is sound.
         
I'm trying to rework it to use memory toggles instead of weight plates, or I could possibly use fridges (at the cost of power). I reckon I'm close.

[Kroning]

6 hours ago, Lifegrow said:

I've yet to see a design that perfectly maintains critter numbers. I've seen a few that in theory maintain numbers, however one slip in timing and the whole thing is ruined due to the negative elements of over crowding.

The key word in my post is "compact" - the idea of spending a 1/3 of my usual base size just to maintain some critters is exactly the reason that new players find the critter management so confusing.

Size requirements alone put a lot of players off even bothering with critters - paired with having to construct a convoluted, over engineered system to maintain numbers - it starts becoming less ONI and more Farming Sim 2k18.

Well, I'm not so pessimistic. Farms are big too, but noone complain about it.

Critters now is the easiest way to produce food. No temperature control, no fertilization, no water pumps, no energy needs. Only downside is micro (8 times for 100 cycles for hatches). I read a lot "I don't use farming" now, but never "I don't use ranching".

On the other hand, "sustainable base" without player interaction - is the last goal for most of us. Personally, I don't want it to be easy, because I am bored. But that's just me.

Anyway, I will not be suprized for Klei to introduce "critter's sensor" like they did with gas ones.

29 minutes ago, QuQuasar said:

I've actually been working on this problem myself. I currently have an automated hatch farm design that is a single bug away from working (the bug in question being that weight plates don't update their value when you autosweep an egg off of them).
         
Rather than relying on timing, the fundamental idea behind my design is to detect when meat is created in the stable and get it to requisition a nearly-mature egg from the murder tank. This requires a bit of hotpotato-ing with the sweepers to ensure to ensure it only ever requisitions one egg (or maybe even a hatchling? That would require some rework...), and I don't think it will always get the most mature egg (there's a possibility of getting a new egg and having to wait 20 cycles for it to hatch), but the theory is sound.
         .

Yeah. Had that problem too. Pity it's still not resolved.

 

[QuQuasar]

21 minutes ago, Kroning said:

 

Yeah. Had that problem too. Pity it's still not resolved.

 

Sweet, thanks for reporting it. I added a comment to your bug to confirm it and help Klei prioritize it.
         
Question for everyone: which critters drop through vertical doors the way morbs do? I'm assuming hatches do, at least.