The care and feeding of shove-voles

[Neotuck]

2 minutes ago, psusi said:

Then again, why the hell can they go through doors when doors say they stop critters?  Drakeos and pufts have the same problem though.

read up on them

voles can burrow though any tile NOT made of refined metals, if you want your door to be "vole proof" you'll need to make it out of steel

[psusi]

2 minutes ago, Neotuck said:

read up on them

voles can burrow though any tile NOT made of refined metals, if you want your door to be "vole proof" you'll need to make it out of steel

I know, and I'm saying that's stupid.  They should only burrow out if they are entombed.  Also even with steel doors, they can get out when dupes open them right?  Just like drakeos and pufts, even though doors say they stop critters, and they do for hatches.

[SakuraKoi]

4 hours ago, Neotuck said:

read up on them

voles can burrow though any tile NOT made of refined metals, if you want your door to be "vole proof" you'll need to make it out of steel

and weirdly enough, albeit not being able to burrow through "Nearly Impenetrable" tiles due to an hotfix update, they can dig through Tiles and Doors made out of "Nearly Impenetrable" material i.e Insulator and Wolframite.

[Angpaur]

6 hours ago, psusi said:

Also even with steel doors, they can get out when dupes open them right?  Just like drakeos and pufts, even though doors say they stop critters, and they do for hatches.

Not if it is a pneumatic steel doors. I've been ranching them for ~100 cycles now and none escaped. Same applies for all other criters - penumatic doors will stop them no matter what.

[psusi]

15 hours ago, Angpaur said:

Not if it is a pneumatic steel doors. I've been ranching them for ~100 cycles now and none escaped. Same applies for all other criters - penumatic doors will stop them no matter what.

Wait... is that what it is?  I thought that doors didn't stop drakeos because they crawl on walls, but now that you mention it, I think I used pneumatic for my hatch ranch but a manual airlock for the drakeos.  Goofy!

[ChickenMadness]

On 15/11/2018 at 12:42 PM, Angpaur said:

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

They're probably still alive on your map somewhere. I have a few wild ones that escaped the space biome.

[PhailRaptor]

5 hours ago, ChickenMadness said:

I have a few wild ones that escaped the space biome.

Good luck ever finding them.  They can be almost anywhere.  Abyssalite and Neutroneum are the only things they can't burrow through.

And I do mean anywhere.  While rolling map seeds, I found one where the Surface had all of a 2 tile gap in it's Abyssallite border, so I clicked "Show Navigation" on one of the Shove Voles.  About 2/3 of the map was navigable by the Shove Vole, all the way down to one of the cavernous magma pockets beneath the Oil Biome.

[SakuraKoi]

31 minutes ago, PhailRaptor said:

They can be almost anywhere.  Abyssalite and Neutroneum are the only things they can't burrow through.

That's absolutely wrong, they can not dig through natural Diamond and Wolframite! Not that it means much thou'~

Of course it is also worth mentioning that they can not fly, even if there is a hole in the Abyssalite, where the hole is there must also be a solid lest they can not burrow through. I was lucky enough with my map which unluckily had terrible space destinations and a hole to begin with.

[PhailRaptor]

1 minute ago, SakuraKoi said:

Of course it is also worth mentioning that they can not fly, even if there is a hole in the Abyssalite, where the hole is there must also be a solid lest they can not burrow through.

But they can walk on the surface of the Abyssalite.  So they can burrow through whatever other material -- Regolith, Mafic, Igneous, whatever -- and walk on the ceiling like a Drecko.  

I wasn't kidding when I said it could reach the magma pockets at the bottom of the map, either.  It had free reign of the Surface, and had access to a very large Magma pocket below the Oil biome, that went all the way to the bottom edge of the map.

[Neotuck]

Here's the navigation path of a single Vole on the surface

As you can see it can reach almost the whole map!

even the magma biome! 

[Sasza22]

7 hours ago, PhailRaptor said:

Good luck ever finding them.

They still need to eat. Critters always prefer to eat from a feeder. Put a feeder filled with regolith somewhere on the map and plastic traps on both sides. It should trap the vole when it comes close. Also make sure to sweep dirt and iron ore so they don`t have anything to eat.

[DaveSatx]

Burn them with fire!! cleansing holy fire!  otherwise you are doomed!