Egg collection technique?

[Jumpp]

So I'm trying to eat more eggs.

I've got a hatch farm, and I've noticed that they produce eggs very quickly so long as they aren't overcrowded. And I've noticed that eggs count as population.

So what I'd like to do is arrange for the stable to run in a steady state--where it maintains its near-max population, while producing eggs as fast as possible.

If I let the eggs fall where they may, egg production is slow because the unhatched eggs count as population and shut off further egg production until they hatch or get cooked.

I could configure a container to hold eggs, and then any eggs that get laid get quickly scooped up and egg production soars...but the stable can't maintain population because no eggs are hatching.

Anyone know of a technique I'm overlooking here? Some way to arrange for enough eggs to get hatched to maintain a stable population, while still letting egg production run at best speed?

[Gurgel]

The classic solution is a feeder-producer pair. One room just breeds new critters that are auto-wrangled to keep the second one topped up and the second one has all eggs immediately removed via auto-sweeper. I currently run 3 feeders with 3 dreckos each and 6 producers with 6 dreckos each.

[BadlyBurned]

I don't know how to automate eggs like you'd like, but I have a slaughter room that might help you understand some things I didn't.

I make a room for "natural hatching" of eggs. I put an critter drop-off in the room with autowrangle and amount of critters at 0.

It doesn't work on hatchlings, but as soon as they hit Day 5 and turn into Hatches, your Rancher will come and pick them up and move them to a stable if there is any space available.

Now I make a slaughter room with a tank of water inside and put a Critter Drop Off inside set to max 20. Now if there is no space in the stables, the hatches will go here instead. If there is space in the stable, the rancher will fill that space, making this completely automated ranching. I don't need to ever even look at my ranchers, they all just fill and unfill naturally forever.

If there was no space in a stable, the rancher enters a "slaughter room" with the hatch, and triggers a weight plate on the door that closes off the Critter Drop off using a 5 second Buffer Gate and a Not Gate. This causes the rancher to not be able to drop off the critter, so he just drops in on the ground (which is made up of ladders over water) and the hatch then falls through this "ladder floor" into the water tank below and dies.

Meat gets sweeped. Automation complete.

Not sure if that'll help you at all.

I use a similar setup with the NOT/BUFFER gate to automate my critter egg collection as well so they don't sit in stables and mess up the population. Or I use an autodropper as soon as I can, which I find is more difficult than its worth.

[rafker]

I don't have a save file right now, but what I basically did is:

have just 1 main room of creatures, filled enough with grabbers, so they always pick eggs up.
Usually, you can support only 8 pets in room (becuz of overcrowding), hence what you can do is make an infinite loop (must contain 2 bridges in it, at least I did it like this) on transport belt that can hold inside it 8+- eggs (yes, eggs incubate inside transport belt, and dupes can't take them away to eat, so they will hatch eventually). Auto-wrangling helps if there are too many critters in room.

Main problem here is that eggs count as critters as well, so u must put transport belt loop inside the other room with open doors. That gives you the ability to hatch them w/o blocking the egg production, and lets hatched critters enter the main room (the only problem here is when critters enter "hatch" room it will feel overcrowded, but that isn't that much of an issue)

Excess eggs on their part go into any container you set for them, so dupes can use those for cooking station.

 

P.S.

I have to mention, though, that it last worked in CU, I haven't played EU that much, but I never saw any mention of fixing this (the part where eggs incubate inside transport belts) (can you really count that as a bug?)

[Christophlette]

I've got a question about that... So to maintain the population in your ranch you use a infinite loop of transport belt. So hatches that will hatch will up the critter count above the critter limit. Do dupes take away the oldest hatch first to be butchered ? Or the youngest ?

Do eggs in the infinite loop count in the critter count ?

[rafker]

22 minutes ago, Christophlette said:

I've got a question about that... So to maintain the population in your ranch you use a infinite loop of transport belt. So hatches that will hatch will up the critter count above the critter limit. Do dupes take away the oldest hatch first to be butchered ? Or the youngest ?

Do eggs in the infinite loop count in the critter count ?

Well, dupes dont watch at their age, so no sadly

Yes, thats why you keep them in another room

[Christophlette]

So let me do the summary :

• One room with 8 hatches that are being fed to poop eggs
• One room that contains the infinite loop in highest priority with critter count set to 0. So hatched hatches are sent to egg pooper room in there is enough room.
• One room to butcher the surplus of hatches from the infinite loop room.
• One room to cook them all.

Is that right or I am missing something ?

[BadlyBurned]

3 minutes ago, Christophlette said:

So let me do the summary :

• One room with 8 hatches that are being fed to poop eggs
• One room that contains the infinite loop in highest priority with critter count set to 0. So hatched hatches are sent to egg pooper room in there is enough room.
• One room to butcher the surplus of hatches from the infinite loop room.
• One room to cook them all.

Is that right or I am missing something ?

No, that sounds about right. I don't use the infinite loop, but there are a variety of ways to complete full automation of eggs or meat.

Just keep in mind that Hatchlings don't get auto-wrangled. That threw me off for a long time. As soon as they turn into full grown hatches, they can be autowrangled.

[Christophlette]

15 minutes ago, BadlyBurned said:

No, that sounds about right. I don't use the infinite loop, but there are a variety of ways to complete full automation of eggs or meat.

Just keep in mind that Hatchlings don't get auto-wrangled. That threw me off for a long time. As soon as they turn into full grown hatches, they can be autowrangled.

Thanks ! 

Do hatchlings need feeding during the time they take to grow ? Maybe I can leave them to starve and keep the feeding in the egg pooper room.

[BadlyBurned]

Just now, Christophlette said:

Thanks ! 

Do hatchlings need feeding during the time they take to grow ? Maybe I can leave them to starve and keep the feeding in the egg pooper room.

They don't need to feed, they will not starve before they turn to hatches

And yes, you can just leave them in an isolated room and let them starve. If they came from tame hatches, they will be tame hatches themselves and will need regular feeding. Just block off the room, and put in a sweeper to pick up/store the meat as soon as they die

[Christophlette]

7 minutes ago, BadlyBurned said:

They don't need to feed, they will not starve before they turn to hatches

And yes, you can just leave them in an isolated room and let them starve. If they came from tame hatches, they will be tame hatches themselves and will need regular feeding. Just block off the room, and put in a sweeper to pick up/store the meat as soon as they die

Thank you ! I think I'm gonna build my first hatch ranch just now

[BadlyBurned]

Just now, Christophlette said:

Thank you ! I think I'm gonna build my first hatch ranch just now

Try to find "auto dropper" build in the forums here. I forget who had posted how to do it, but it allows your sweeper to move eggs to a container that simply drops them on the floor. I know it works well for a lot of people, if I find a link I'll let you know.

[Kabrute]

skip all of this and have your hatch farm floor made of mesh doors (pneumatic)  The hatches will walk on them while the eggs will drop into them, since they are in a door they don't count as being in the room and can then be harvested as wanted or left to hatch where they are...

[Christophlette]

1 minute ago, BadlyBurned said:

Try to find "auto dropper" build in the forums here. I forget who had posted how to do it, but it allows your sweeper to move eggs to a container that simply drops them on the floor. I know it works well for a lot of people, if I find a link I'll let you know.

Yeah I heard the principle (but I didn't saw it). If I recall right it's a timer to disable the sweeper before the egg is in the compactor. I'll try to play with it and see if I can make something that works.

[Kabrute]

for the auto dropper @Neotuck  I believe is the one who said put a 3 second timer on the auto sweeper to make it drop things on the floor, build this in a small tower so the sweeper cant regrab what it drops...

[BadlyBurned]

3 minutes ago, Kabrute said:

skip all of this and have your hatch farm floor made of mesh doors (pneumatic)  The hatches will walk on them while the eggs will drop into them, since they are in a door they don't count as being in the room and can then be harvested as wanted or left to hatch where they are...

I do that, but I still need 4 tiles of non mesh right? I can't build Grooming stations, Drop offs, or feeders on mesh doors and have them work? Or can you and I just neglected that?

[Kabrute]

they need floors but you don't need drop offs or necessarilly even feeders using a dropper over the grooming station...

[Yury Ko]

20 minutes ago, Kabrute said:

they need floors but you don't need drop offs or necessarilly even feeders using a dropper over the grooming station...

can you make example?

[rafker]

28 minutes ago, Kabrute said:

skip all of this and have your hatch farm floor made of mesh doors (pneumatic)  The hatches will walk on them while the eggs will drop into them, since they are in a door they don't count as being in the room and can then be harvested as wanted or left to hatch where they are...

But you can't prevent dupes from picking them up though

[Kabrute]

dupes have a limit to their reach, set the floor low enough beyond the doors the dupes won't be able to get to them.....

@Yury Ko something like that, once you get a stable population close that left pneum door open if more critters needed.  Install a sweeper down there then lock that mech door

adjust buffer as needed to drop things neotucks 3 second dropper had a wider space between containers, set filter to the frequency of feeding, can attach a clock directly to the sweeper line and only when the clock is off will the sweeper feed......

[Yannick Vachon]

If you want another example of how it can be done, here is how I am doing it right now:

A) Those are my 5 stables, with a lot of decor so the ranchers does not stress out during the day. When an egg is dropped, someone pick it up toward the automatic storage in B.

B) There, the storage is set to a limit of 2kg (one egg). Once it is full, the sweeper pick it up and try to move it to the storage on the left but fails to do so because the automation signal goes to off. The eggs ends up at the bottom of the pit, where right now I have a few dozens of eggs.

C) Every night, the door at C opens up, giving a path for them to go up and getting their first meal. It is possible that they go down before the night is over but most of the time, a few of them will stay at the top where a rancher will pick them up during morning.

D) Then, if a stable needs a new hatch because of one being dead, a hatch from C will be moved there toward A. All excess will go to D, a zone where water goes up every night, killing hatch while not soaking up my duplicants.

The only thing missing for me is to auto-pick the eggs in the stables. I will do it once my power grid can support it. Until then, it works pretty well with 10 stables and 48 duplicants. But it does not give enough meat to feed them only barbeque though...

[Capsup]

@Yury Ko @Jumpp @Christophlette

If you want an example of a compact build, here's my hatch stables that I put at the bottom of my barracks and can thus get it built very early in the game:

The hatches only have those 4 tiles to walk on. Everything else is used for storage in the 96 tile stable. The auto-sweeper picks up eggs and drops them into the water below to be drowned automatically once the egg incubates naturally. The automation is simple, it's just an oscillator that goes high for 3 seconds every 60 second:

 

[martosss]

2 hours ago, Capsup said:

@Yury Ko @Jumpp @Christophlette

If you want an example of a compact build, here's my hatch stables that I put at the bottom of my barracks and can thus get it built very early in the game:

The hatches only have those 4 tiles to walk on. Everything else is used for storage in the 96 tile stable. The auto-sweeper picks up eggs and drops them into the water below to be drowned automatically once the egg incubates naturally. The automation is simple, it's just an oscillator that goes high for 3 seconds every 60 second:

 

Ah, so you're exploiting the fact that a sweeper without electricity drops items(eggs) - nice

[BadlyBurned]

Here is mine if it helps. I had to make an adjustment as Fish Release no longer works for land critters. This is an early game, so its not even 100% done but the concept is solid. This design requires no power or sweepers, but they will be added later for convenience. 

This is good for beginners who don't understand Logic gates or don't have the resources to make sweepers, belts, etc etc. I most likely will make a whole new automated stable once I start getting more resources in the late game.

I know this seems like without power that it would take up too much Dupe time, but with 50% of the eggs falling by themselves through the mesh door flooring, I don't even have a collect an egg every cycle. Very little duper involvement is needed beyond the drowning phase, which you'd still need even with an automated ranch.

 

 

1) Stabes have mesh flooring so over 50% of coal and eggs just drop below. I should have the bottom stable curve down and attach to Chamber 3 so to complete the mesh door floor falling area the whole way down.

2) This room is for egg collection by supply Dupes. They enter that room, and the NOT/BUFFER gate closes the door on that level 9 priority storage which is set for eggs. Because they can't reach it anymore, they drop the eggs which fall to Chamber 3.

3) This room is not accessible by any supply dupes that can enter Chamber 2. That way they don't pick up the eggs again in a loop and ruin it. Ranchers must have access here so they can autowrangle critters when they naturally hatch.

4) This is the drowning room. Same concept as Chamber 2. The Critter Drop off is closed once a Dupe enters, causing them to drop the critter into the water to drown. A sweeper will be added to collect and move that meat.

 

This is now 100% automatic. I never have to touch the stables, they all refill immediately if there is space open, and if not that critters get drowned for meat. You must set priorities on the critter drop offs so that the ones in the stable have a higher setting than the one in the drowning room.

 

[martosss]

53 minutes ago, BadlyBurned said:

Here is mine if it helps. I had to make an adjustment as Fish Release no longer works for land critters. This is an early game, so its not even 100% done but the concept is solid. This design requires no power or sweepers, but they will be added later for convenience. 

This is good for beginners who don't understand Logic gates or don't have the resources to make sweepers, belts, etc etc. I most likely will make a whole new automated stable once I start getting more resources in the late game.

I know this seems like without power that it would take up too much Dupe time, but with 50% of the eggs falling by themselves through the mesh door flooring, I don't even have a collect an egg every cycle. Very little duper involvement is needed beyond the drowning phase, which you'd still need even with an automated ranch.

 

1) Stabes have mesh flooring so over 50% of coal and eggs just drop below. I should have the bottom stable curve down and attach to Chamber 3 so to complete the mesh door floor falling area the whole way down.

2) This room is for egg collection by supply Dupes. They enter that room, and the NOT/BUFFER gate closes the door on that level 9 priority storage which is set for eggs. Because they can't reach it anymore, they drop the eggs which fall to Chamber 3.

3) This room is not accessible by any supply dupes that can enter Chamber 2. That way they don't pick up the eggs again in a loop and ruin it. Ranchers must have access here so they can autowrangle critters when they naturally hatch.

4) This is the drowning room. Same concept as Chamber 2. The Critter Drop off is closed once a Dupe enters, causing them to drop the critter into the water to drown. A sweeper will be added to collect and move that meat.

This is now 100% automatic. I never have to touch the stables, they all refill immediately if there is space open, and if not that critters get drowned for meat. You must set priorities on the critter drop offs so that the ones in the stable have a higher setting than the one in the drowning room.

Nice setup, so you're exploiting the dupes' drop effect when locked out. However, I'd say @Capsup's idea is better, since it requires no dupes to walk around, so it's really automated!