automated egg separator for sustainable critter farms

[habuky]

The idea is simple: from the eggs being laid by a certain critter, a specified amount is separated and stored out of reach for auto-hatching after 20 cycles. If the timing is correct, the eggs should replace the elderly just in time.

The goal is a fully automated farm, without micro-management.

I made an example for a sustainable PACU farm:

You start with 2 Pacus in the left breeding pond. Their eggs are moved by sweeper 1 (S1) to fridge 1 (F1).

S2 moves them to either F2 or F4 if F2 is already full. F2 is limited to e.g. 2 eggs and powered to prevent them from hatching. S3 is on a 3sec pulse and drops the eggs while trying to move them to F3.  As soon as there are 2 eggs on the weight plate, S3 stops and not further eggs are collated to populate the breeding pond (the hatched baby critter will jump in the pond by themselves).

The other excess eggs are moved by S4 (on the same pulse as S3) from F4 to F5 and dropped in the pond and are left uncared for until they become meat.  (Automation to move meat and dirt not shown).

TIMING Eggs take 20 cycles to hatch. Pacus life 25 cycles and need ~2 to lay their first egg. Thus there should always be 2 Pacus left.

 

For OTHER CRITTERS, the top part can be used for any critter. The automation needs a water based clock, to drop the eggs roughly 20 cycles before the old ones die.

Unfortunately there is a BUG, inhibiting the weight plate automation: the weight plate does not reset after the eggs hatched. Thus my design is not yet working, unless you use a water clock... or you have a better idea

 

[Kabrute]

use your automation to form a dead end rail over the spawning area, the amount of slots on the rail is your storage limit, critters will hatch off the rail and land in their new home.

[Neotuck]

1 hour ago, Kabrute said:

critters will hatch off the rail

really? I got to try this

[0xFADE]

I built a fridge surrounded by open doors in the same room. This isolated them from the room total while letting them freely enter the room when they hatch.  The egg buffer has a higher priority than the conveyor so there are always eggs left.

[0xFADE]

The super mini egg room.

[habuky]

 

The idea of the small fridge with open doors sound very handy. But will probably only work with shine bugs. Pacus for example are not hatching from fridges, at least in my tests yesterday. And how do you prevent over-crowding? @0xFADE

 

The rails ideas is also very neat. But here as well one will face overpopulation. The rails and the auto-loader gets filled straight in the beginning, Afterwards, as soon as the eggs from the rail hatch, they are replace by eggs with roughly the same age from the loader. Thus leading to an increased breeding rate.. or did I get it wrong? @Kabrute

[Kabrute]

If done properly the dead end rail should have your normal eggs passing it on their way to the cooking room, this way when something hatches, the next fresh egg coming from the farms is what gets loaded onto the hatching rail.  Very slow hatch rate and the first time its built kind of sets up the start of your "hatching" cycle. The real benefit is that even if your dupes cooked every egg in the base and all teh critters died you would still have the ones incubating on the rail. 

[Miravlix]

Dead end rail?? A rail that ends at a Bridge?

 

[0xFADE]

Yeah the rail system is nice and would protect eggs.  Yes a bridge to nowhere.

[Hellshound38]

Do eggs in the rail count toward creature count? If not that is perfect.

Otherwise I guess maybe a ceiling made of open doors with the egg rail above them might work? (for non flying creatures)

[0xFADE]

The eggs on the rail do count. I've watched my puft room go under full once an egg being shipped away is out of the room.

[habuky]

I tried your approach @Kabrute, and it seems to work fine ... but only for the first round.

Once the Pacus hatch, the baskets stay behind and block the conveyor rail. (red circle). The next eggs (2nd red circle) bypass the dead end and go straight to the egg dropper. Or did I miss something?

[Kabrute]

I did not experience that issue o.o, I will investigate, would you mind uploading your save?

[habuky]

3 minutes ago, Kabrute said:

I did not experience that issue o.o, I will investigate, would you mind uploading your save?

Not at all.

SIM LAB 32 PACU Farm2.sav

[Kabrute]

definitely a bug
 

and make this adjustment

after some simple testing this is why I don't have the bug

empty box passing through a bridge is removed

I build my dead ends with a feedback loop out of habit keeping my generators full of fuel, which is why i did not experience this bug myself.

[habuky]

30 minutes ago, Kabrute said:

and make this adjustment

Thanks, very much appreciated!

[Kabrute]

on second thought move the last bridge to feed across the input of the "feeder" bridge to prevent feedback overload block out..  That is move that end bridge so that its output feeds across the output of the bridge feeding the dead end rail.  This way there will always be a free space on the "cleaner" bridges output.