The care and feeding of shove-voles

[Jumpp]

In my last game, shove-voles went extinct. I didn't pay too much attention to them and I'm not clear on why they died off.

This game, I want to make sure I preserve some. How do people generally do this? The rules of their movement are unclear to me. I tried setting out a feeder for them, but as you'd reasonably expect, that feeder got frequently buried.

I'm hoping for a lengthy game this time and I'll need their help disposing of regolith. How is this done?

[Neotuck]

enclose some wild vole eggs you find in a metal room and seal it off

feed them with sweeper arm and feeder, make sure you have a robo miner to dig any regolith they poop

[Jumpp]

Awesome. Exactly what I was hoping for. Thanks much.

What's the virtue of making the walls of the shove-vole pen out of metal?

[Neotuck]

2 minutes ago, Jumpp said:

What's the virtue of making the walls of the shove-vole pen out of metal?

They can't dig though anything made of refined metals 

[crypticorb]

[SakuraKoi]

12 minutes ago, Neotuck said:

enclose some wild vole eggs you find in a metal room and seal it off

feed them with sweeper arm and feeder, make sure you have a robo miner to dig any regolith they poop

Spoiler

 

 

Just now, crypticorb said:

Spoiler

 

I reported both you to the PETA, expect an ad with barely and in shells clothed duplicants with puppy eyes in the next upgrade!

 

Seriously thou', I suppose 1kg egg shells and 10kg meat per 100 cycles per Vole plus getting rid of regolith (if you have meteor showers) is not bad for what could be maintained with a solar panel... but the refined metal cost is nothing to scoff at. Like 4t of metal and what are the wheeze there for? Or did you just not want to build the stuff out of Steel?

[Neotuck]

3 minutes ago, SakuraKoi said:

but the refined metal cost is nothing to scoff at. Like 4t of metal

3600kg, a few meteor showers should provide that

4 minutes ago, SakuraKoi said:

what are the wheeze there for? Or did you just not want to build the stuff out of Steel?

prevent overheating of the sweeper arm, even with steel it will still reach overheat temperatures 

[chemie]

I take care of them by pausing the game, opening sandbox, and deleting anyone I ever see.  they lag out and poop tiles where you dont want them

[SakuraKoi]

2 hours ago, Neotuck said:

3600kg, a few meteor showers should provide that

prevent overheating of the sweeper arm, even with steel it will still reach overheat temperatures 

I see and Niobium would maybe be overkill (I still dunno how many Wheezeworts one returns with).

Of course Meteor showers provide infinite iron, like my two volcanoes provide infinite gold which I right away invest into metal tiles~

 

In any event, I wonder... how effective is it to bait them (wild ones) with a feeder? One would think that their AI is set to look for food whenever they are hungry.

Otherwise, if the devs want a viable solutions for shove voles becoming a fpests which are not findable once let loose, that should be one. Perhaps one can also limit their pathing to hover near sources of food while setting them to hibernation (which'd disable pathing checks and only check for food/dirt, rego and iron ore) if none is reachable in a X tiles.

 

[Neotuck]

From what I've seen, wild voles perfer to eat from feeders over loose regolith on the ground.  And they eat so fast a single vole will empty a full feeder in a single feeding

That's why sweepers need cooling, they will work overtime keeping the feeders full

[psusi]

Don't you want to groom them?

[Neotuck]

37 minutes ago, psusi said:

Don't you want to groom them?

voles are clever escape artists and can easily escape the same way dupes can get in

It's possible to create an escape proof vole ranch but it's not really worth the trouble as there is little benefit beyond regolith dumping 

[PhailRaptor]

15 minutes ago, Neotuck said:

voles are clever escape artists and can easily escape the same way dupes can get in

Has the Transit Tube wall crossing been tested yet?

[Neotuck]

Just now, PhailRaptor said:

Has the Transit Tube wall crossing been tested yet?

yes and they can dig though plastic tiles

[tzionut]

I made same design, but next game i will improve it whit an storage compactor and a creature feeder. If you fill your storage at 20 tones, and drop everything on the ground, o shove vole eat all the dropped regolith in one bite. 

[Angpaur]

20 hours ago, Jumpp said:

In my last game, shove-voles went extinct. I didn't pay too much attention to them and I'm not clear on why they died off.

I thought mine extinct too. I observed them from time to time and there were some bug I suppose - they were just shaking in one place and not moving around. After few hundred cycles I wanted to start ranching them, but all I could see was only a few meat pices lying on regolith. So I thought I was just too late to save them. But then, during some excavation of regolith layers I found one single vole egg. Now I'm bringing shove vole population back to my asteroid

[psusi]

13 hours ago, Neotuck said:

voles are clever escape artists and can easily escape the same way dupes can get in

It's possible to create an escape proof vole ranch but it's not really worth the trouble as there is little benefit beyond regolith dumping 

They will eat the regolith faster if groomed, and produce eggs right?

[Neotuck]

39 minutes ago, psusi said:

They will eat the regolith faster if groomed, and produce eggs right?

oddly no

once tamed they have a set kcal limit and will get full when eating enough

but wild ones don't have a kcal limit and are always hungry 

[psusi]

2 minutes ago, Neotuck said:

oddly no

once tamed they have a set kcal limit and will get full when eating enough

but wild ones don't have a kcal limit and are always hungry 

Oh that's broken as fsck.

[Neotuck]

Just now, psusi said:

Oh that's broken as fsck.

yes but I hope it doesn't get fixed

if it does they won't be able to keep up with the regolith from meteor showers and we'll have the same problem with too much regolith as before

[Craigjw]

47 minutes ago, psusi said:

Oh that's broken as fsck.

You mean like fish and algae..

[psusi]

6 hours ago, Neotuck said:

yes but I hope it doesn't get fixed

if it does they won't be able to keep up with the regolith from meteor showers and we'll have the same problem with too much regolith as before

I would expect the fix to increase the amount they eat when groomed, not decrease it.

Just to make sure though, wild ones will just eat an unlimited amount of regolith and walk around with a million kcal in them?

[Neotuck]

9 minutes ago, psusi said:

Just to make sure though, wild ones will just eat an unlimited amount of regolith and walk around with a million kcal in them?

I think it's more of a mass deletion than to assume they are walking around with millions of kcal

[Lilalaunekuh]

1 hour ago, Neotuck said:

1 hour ago, psusi said:

Just to make sure though, wild ones will just eat an unlimited amount of regolith and walk around with a million kcal in them?

I think it's more of a mass deletion than to assume they are walking around with millions of kcal

Turn it round: Wild voles are much worse at digesting food, so they need more mass to stay alive

[psusi]

4 hours ago, Neotuck said:

I think it's more of a mass deletion than to assume they are walking around with millions of kcal

What?  What does mass deletion have to do with it?  I was talking about where you said wild ones have no kcal limit but tame ones do, so they stop eating.  If wild ones never stop eating, then don't they end up with a huge number of kcals?  But I guess you can't see kcals on wild critters so moot point.

It seems stupid that they can dig through anything other than regolith or sand.  They should only be able to dig solid tiles if they become entombed in them, so they can get out.  They shouldn't be able to just start digging around everywhere on the map.  They can be auto wrangled right?  So if you use two doors with an entry room with a drop-off set to auto wrangle above 0, that should put them back into the main room if they escape through the door.  Then again, why the hell can they go through doors when doors say they stop critters?  Drakeos and pufts have the same problem though.