Quick question, how do I make an Egg-dropper

[Alfons100]

Yes, I am running entirely modless but I want to start making more serious ranches, probably to get Steel, so I wonder how I'd be making an Egg-dropper to drop all eggs into a Nursery room on the floor, to prevent getting Cramped.

Do I need any mods to improve the ranches? I heard that Cairaths ranching sensors help a lot but I am not sure if I can install that on my current world?

[LookingForBaal]

No mods, you just need to alternate the power to a sweeper on and off fast enough that it gets halfway through its job.  Then make sure its far enough off the ground that it can't try to pick the egg back up that it dropped.

 

My buffer is set at 2 sec, sometimes it doesn't grab anything and it takes a second try like in the recording I just attached.  I would rather it run twice than deposit the egg where it's not supposed to.

 

Edit: Just for clarity I did pause and resume recording so that's why the circuit state hopped around.  It's just a NOT, BUFFER, and FILTER

[Lifegrow]

Heres a vid that should explain a little setup bud :

Spoiler

 

 

[Coolthulhu]

49 minutes ago, Alfons100 said:

Do I need any mods to improve the ranches?

You can have auto-maintained ranches in vanilla, but you'll need to rely on dupes to grab the critters. Drop the eggs into a room with "the arrow" in and set it to 0 critters auto-wrangle. Not perfect (dupes will often wrangle critters and leave them), but it's good enough, provided your other critter delivery points are high priority.

[avc15]

47 minutes ago, LookingForBaal said:

My buffer is set at 2 sec, sometimes it doesn't grab anything and it takes a second try like in the recording I just attached.  I would rather it run twice than deposit the egg where it's not supposed to.

In my experience, 3 seconds of on time never deposits the egg but always picks it up and drops it.

Could be differences from version to version or perhaps system to system.

[Coolthulhu]

1 hour ago, avc15 said:

Could be differences from version to version or perhaps system to system.

It varies even on same version and system because it is affected by game slowdown, like creature and dupe AI.

[LookingForBaal]

Yep, I was originally on 3 sec, thought it was working and then found the loader full of eggs.

From what I've read my base is pretty poorly optimized so maybe that's part of the problem.

[crypticorb]

@Alfons100 @LookingForBaal Keep in mind, an egg dropper only needs to run for a few seconds every cycle, and having it run continuously will induce FPS drop eventually. Automation is currently very laggy.

Fortunately, there's a very simple solution, which I posted a short while ago. Hook up your automation loop this way, and have an automation clock to disable the loop for 95% of the cycle.

 

[shanemadden]

Note that if you make your floor of doors, you can get most eggs to drop out of the primary stable before auto-sweeper tech.

[LookingForBaal]

Thanks cryptic, it's my only automation loop but I'll take what FPS I can get.

Just had to turn the buffer up a bit otherwise  the sweeper was picking up the egg that it had just dropped mid-air lol

[Lifegrow]

5 hours ago, crypticorb said:

@Alfons100 @LookingForBaal Keep in mind, an egg dropper only needs to run for a few seconds every cycle, and having it run continuously will induce FPS drop eventually. Automation is currently very laggy.

Fortunately, there's a very simple solution, which I posted a short while ago. Hook up your automation loop this way, and have an automation clock to disable the loop for 95% of the cycle.

 

This is all nonsense bud - the only real impact that automation has on lowering fps or "lag" is a) if you are running numerous pulse clocks on a 0.1 second timer - which doesn't apply, or b) you're running 1500 separate lines of automation, all packed full of various buffers/filters set to different timings - which also doesn't apply  

The impact of automation is barely noticeable ever unless you do dumb stuff with it, like making a mechanized gas pump out of 300 doors, or making a strobe circuit for your rec-room-friday-night-dance-off-competition (the theme of which was latinx funk fyi). As with everything in this game, the game suffers when you go big.

[crypticorb]

30 minutes ago, Lifegrow said:

This is all nonsense bud - the only real impact that automation has on lowering fps or "lag" is a) if you are running numerous pulse clocks on a 0.1 second timer - which doesn't apply, or b) you're running 1500 separate lines of automation, all packed full of various buffers/filters set to different timings - which also doesn't apply

Your experience may differ from mine, but judging from other peoples reactions it was at least worthwhile to share. I swapped over 10 iterations of this loop and it made a moderate difference on my laptop, about 5+ FPS gain on average.

The removal of the incessant beeping alone makes it worth it, even if automation SFX are limited to the automation overlay.

[Lifegrow]

3 minutes ago, crypticorb said:

Your experience may differ from mine, but judging from other peoples reactions it was at least worthwhile to share. I swapped over 10 iterations of this loop and it made a moderate difference on my laptop, about 5+ FPS gain on average.

The removal of the incessant beeping alone makes it worth it, even if automation SFX are limited to the automation overlay.

If you were running over 10 pulse clocks, i'd say that was the epitome of asking for trouble  I can't imagine what sort of base you were running that would require "over 10 iterations", but i'd imagine that the fps gain from automation would be the least of your worries. 

Also, not sure if you're talking about within the automation overlay or not, but just in case you were unaware 

Spoiler

 

[LookingForBaal]

Haha, I'll take what I can get, even if it is just perceived improvement.  I don't know if my filter being set to 30s is any different than the 95% clock but I doubt it is any worse.

 

My issues probably come from pathfinding or the bajillion storage compactors that all accept just about anything.  Would be nice to know what it is but my game is running fine for the most part.  The only frustrating thing is the 5-10 second freeze in the morning when everybody gets out of bed.  I could swear one time I had everyone on red alert and it still happened... meh

[Lifegrow]

14 minutes ago, LookingForBaal said:

Haha, I'll take what I can get, even if it is just perceived improvement.  I don't know if my filter being set to 30s is any different than the 95% clock but I doubt it is any worse.

 

My issues probably come from pathfinding or the bajillion storage compactors that all accept just about anything.  Would be nice to know what it is but my game is running fine for the most part.  The only frustrating thing is the 5-10 second freeze in the morning when everybody gets out of bed.  I could swear one time I had everyone on red alert and it still happened... meh

Apparently it's believed to be caused by the reports system inflating the save files - however i've not seen any direct proof that it's the reports per se, but it seems to make a lot of sense. 

[Lancar]

Extremely simple egg dropper:
1 smart cargo compactor that can hold only enough kg for 1 single egg (i think its 2kg). Link that with automation wire to a Sweeper. On the other side, have a cargo compactor (non-automated) set to 1 priority level higher than the smart one.
Keep it all out of dupe reach to prevent them from messing it up.

That's it.

When en egg is put into the smart container, the sweeper activates and picks it up to put in the other container. As soon as it's picked up it'll lose power and the egg drops.
No timers, no lag.

[crypticorb]

54 minutes ago, Lancar said:

Extremely simple egg dropper:
1 smart cargo compactor that can hold only enough kg for 1 single egg (i think its 2kg). Link that with automation wire to a Sweeper. On the other side, have a cargo compactor (non-automated) set to 1 priority level higher than the smart one.
Keep it all out of dupe reach to prevent them from messing it up.

That's it.

When en egg is put into the smart container, the sweeper activates and picks it up to put in the other container. As soon as it's picked up it'll lose power and the egg drops.
No timers, no lag.

This is actually brilliant, I like it. An on-demand system rather than a looped automation.

Instead of an unreachable cargo compactor, you could use a shipping loader that doesn't allow dupe interaction, that way you wouldn't have to position the compactor awkwardly, allowing a bit more flexibility.

[AndreyKl]

1 hour ago, Lancar said:

Extremely simple egg dropper:
1 smart cargo compactor that can hold only enough kg for 1 single egg (i think its 2kg).

Depends onto critter, 2kg is for hatches, everything else is less, shine bug is around 200g.  

[Lancar]

16 hours ago, AndreyKl said:

Depends onto critter, 2kg is for hatches, everything else is less, shine bug is around 200g.  

Yeah, that's true. I guess it wouldn't work for anything less than 1kg. I usually just automate hatches, since imho they're the most useful critter.