Mod request: Ability to restrict egg boxes to either fertilized or unfertilized eggs

[idreamofgeni]

I find egg boxes frustrating because I'll put several of them down, and I'll end up with, like, 1 box full of fertilized eggs and 4 boxes with 1-2 unfertilized eggs each, and a dozen fertilized eggs scattered around the pasture deteriorating because they weren't laid in an egg box due to lack of space! If I could set egg boxes to accept only one type or the other, it would drastically reduce this issue.

[Thanatos]

No need for a mod or anything difficult, just have 1-2 tiles as stockpile area in a room with good temp that is roofed. Restrict everything in this stockpile and only allow fert eggs and put as important. Viola no more issue:)

[VitaKaninen]

Here is my solution for this:

I filter eggs by fertilized or unfertilized in stockpiles or recipes. Then I make a recipe that uses only eggs that are unfertilized, and put it first in my stove bill list, and set it forever. This makes sure that any unfertilized eggs on my map are used and never sit around.

Then I make sure that fertilized eggs are never allowed in any stockpile, so they will never remove them from the boxes, and I put more than enough boxes for the animals to use.

[Security Cam #7]

Originally posted by VitaKaninen:

I use a mod that allows you to filter eggs by fertilized or unfertilized in stockpiles or recipes.

99% sure that's vanilla.

[VitaKaninen]

Sorry, you are right. I was thinking of ruined by temperature, vs not ruined by temperature. His issue reminded me of how to get rid of fertilized eggs that had been ruined by temperature, and I needed a mod to also accomplish that.

I will edit my post above.

[idreamofgeni]

Originally posted by Thanatos:

No need for a mod or anything difficult, just have 1-2 tiles as stockpile area in a room with good temp that is roofed. Restrict everything in this stockpile and only allow fert eggs and put as important. Viola no more issue:)

I'm talking about before it even gets to that point, before eggs are collected. I don't want a stockpile in a room for fertilized eggs because then all the chicks will hatch there instead of in the pen, which then wastes colonists' time roping them back to the pen.

Originally posted by VitaKaninen:

Here is my solution for this:

I filter eggs by fertilized or unfertilized in stockpiles or recipes. Then I make a recipe that uses only eggs that are unfertilized, and put it first in my stove bill list, and set it forever. This makes sure that any unfertilized eggs on my map are used and never sit around.

Then I make sure that fertilized eggs are never allowed in any stockpile, so they will never remove them from the boxes, and I put more than enough boxes for the animals to use.

Colonists can't actually remove fertilized eggs from egg boxes, at least not to my knowledge. Right clicking the boxes with fertilized eggs in them doesn't give any option to prioritize emptying it, and I've never seen colonists do it autonomously. You don't need to disallow fertilized eggs in storage to make that happen.

And define "more than enough boxes for animals to use", cuz I have had plenty of boxes in my pens. I don't see how more boxes will prevent the birds from laying only 1-2 eggs per box and filling all of them up. Plus, having a lot of egg boxes makes collecting the eggs a LOT slower. So I don't think that's the solution to my problem.

[VitaKaninen]

Originally posted by idreamofgeni:

Colonists can't actually remove fertilized eggs from egg boxes, at least not to my knowledge.

I will often do an urgent haul command and drag it across my base, and that will make them empty the boxes if there is a stockpile that will accept then.

You need to have enough boxes so that they are never all in use at the same time, like dining chairs. If they are all in use at some point, then you can get some eggs laid on the ground.

You original question was about designating boxes, which you can not do. I am Just guessing at what problem you are actually trying to solve with this. What is the problem you are having by not being able to designate boxes?

[idreamofgeni]

Originally posted by VitaKaninen:

Originally posted by idreamofgeni:

Colonists can't actually remove fertilized eggs from egg boxes, at least not to my knowledge.

I will often do an urgent haul command and drag it across my base, and that will make them empty the boxes if there is a stockpile that will accept then.

You need to have enough boxes so that they are never all in use at the same time, like dining chairs. If they are all in use at some point, then you can get some eggs laid on the ground.

You original question was about designating boxes, which you can not do. I am Just guessing at what problem you are actually trying to solve with this. What is the problem you are having by not being able to designate boxes?

I do urgent hauling across my map all the time, and it never applies to egg boxes at all. I always have to right click them to prioritize them emptying them, or they do it autonomously (though it seems to be a low priority within handling, even with Personal Work Categories). I'm not sure why it does it for you. There must be a mod difference between our games at work here.

And obviously you can't designate egg boxes, that's why I'm asking for a mod to do it. That's the point.

My issue that I want to solve, which I thought was clear in my op, is that birds will lay just a couple unfertilized eggs in multiple boxes, and the boxes containing fertilized eggs will fill up and there won't be any boxes left for them to lay more fertilized eggs in, so they lay fertilized eggs on the ground where they decay. What I want is to be able to restrict egg types in a box so that I won't have 15 boxes with 1-2 unfertilized eggs and 1 box with 25 fertilized eggs, and a pasture full of forbidden, decaying fertilized eggs, but instead could have 8 boxes set to unfert and 8 to fert. That way the chickens laying unfertilized eggs can't just monopolize the boxes and prevent the birds laying fertilized eggs from having a place to lay them.

[VitaKaninen]

Originally posted by idreamofgeni:

My issue that I want to solve, which I thought was clear in my op, is that birds will lay just a couple unfertilized eggs in multiple boxes, and the boxes containing fertilized eggs will fill up and there won't be any boxes left for them to lay more fertilized eggs in, so they lay fertilized eggs on the ground where they decay. What I want is to be able to restrict egg types in a box so that I won't have 15 boxes with 1-2 unfertilized eggs and 1 box with 25 fertilized eggs, and a pasture full of forbidden, decaying fertilized eggs, but instead could have 8 boxes set to unfert and 8 to fert. That way the chickens laying unfertilized eggs can't just monopolize the boxes and prevent the birds laying fertilized eggs from having a place to lay them.

I must say, I do not have that problem. Why not just increase the number of male birds so that you only have fertilized eggs? They taste the same, I assure you.


If you don't want to for some reason, then I would guess your pen is too large, and they to not make it back to an egg box before the need to lay an egg overtakes them, and it drops where they are standing.

When they lay eggs on the ground, are they right beside the egg boxes, or are they out in a field far from the boxes?

How many actual laying birds do you have, and how often do they lay eggs? Right now, I only have turkeys, and I have them set up for 10 adult males and 12 adult female, and they are using 3 of the 14 available boxes. I was raising multiple bird types at one point, and just never got rid of the extra boxes.

Point is, if I only have 12 females, and they lay 1 egg every 1.333 days, and collectively they are only using 3 boxes, then they are obviously laying new eggs into old boxes, and not choosing a new one. One box has 1 egg, then next has 11 eggs, and the last one has 25 eggs. I make sure all my females are fertilized, but if I didn't I assume they would be using 6 boxes?

Also, I keep my pen indoors, so I do not have to worry about frostbite or deteriorating eggs, but I understand why you would not want to do that.

[The Blind One]

Not the perfect solution but you could place a 1x1 shelf in your chicken pen that only allows fertilized eggs. Handlers will then pick up the fertilized eggs and put them on the shelf where they will not decay and incubate overtime. Once incubated they will pop right into the pen, no problem.

What I usually do with chickens is keep them breeding until I have the desired amounts of fertilized eggs (utilizing the shelf trick I just mentioned). Then separate the males and females again into different pens so they don't overbreed.

After the chicks hatch you slaughter the excess males and females, and voila, you have your desired amount of chickens. I always keep a roosters around with a spare in case I need them to breed more or one gets lost due to an accident.

The ideal target amount of chickens is: 2n female chickens per colonist to make fine meals. It is recommended to go a little bit over 2 so you have some spare eggs but 2 per colonist is roughly the sweet spot for all fine meals with eggs.

My personal favorite combination of animals is 1 chicken and ~0.5 cows per colonist. You'll end up with all fine meals made out of eggs, milk, meat and veggies.

Be noted that chickens are amazing at producing eggs. I would not actually recommend breeding them for the meat. While the meat output isn't bad, the work required to slaughter all the chickens and keep them breeding is annoying and they can quickly overwhelm entire pens due to their tendency to explode in populations without the pen being able to support their gluttonous and ravenous appetites.

I recommend growing animals like horses and cows for meat.

These animals are better in that you can breed them more consistently, you get better meat and leather from them and they are much more efficient to slaughter. You'll need to kill a lot of chickens to get the same amount of meat off a horse or cow carcass yet they take the same time to slaughter individually so bigger animals are much better to keep for meat / leather.

[VitaKaninen]

I keep my birds so that I have a constant source of killable animals to keep my psycasters topped up from their kill focused weapons. I only allow them to do that slaughtering, so they are always ready when a raid comes.

[idreamofgeni]

I don't really understand why you guys are trying to talk me into workarounds. There are sillier mods out there for crying out loud, I don't know why y'all feel the need to talk me out of wanting this as one. There's hundreds of mods I don't find useful, but I don't try to talk people out of wanting or using them, I just don't use them.

Y'all don't have the problem I do? Great. Happy for you. You don't have to use this mod if it gets made.

[VitaKaninen]

Everyone should play the game like they want to. The vanilla boxes seem to work fine for everyone else, so it makes me think you are doing something different.

It might be easier to slightly alter your setup instead of altering the game files, but I am not telling you what to do. I would have thought you would want to identify why the vanilla boxes work for everyone else except for you, but maybe you are not interested.

[The Blind One]

Originally posted by idreamofgeni:

I don't really understand why you guys are trying to talk me into workarounds. There are sillier mods out there for crying out loud, I don't know why y'all feel the need to talk me out of wanting this as one. There's hundreds of mods I don't find useful, but I don't try to talk people out of wanting or using them, I just don't use them.

Y'all don't have the problem I do? Great. Happy for you. You don't have to use this mod if it gets made.

I actually agree with you. The eggboxes would work infinitely better if you could set them to accept or not accept fertilized eggs. 100% agree. Wish there was a QoL mod that did that.

But knowing that there isn't. What's the next best option? You got to work with what you got.

[Pong]

In real terms there are two ways this could work:

1) The hens could be trained to sense whether their eggs are fertilized, and then thoughtfully sit in the appropriate box.

2) An archotech eggbox daemon could resolve the uncertainty of a hen's quantum eggstate, shooing her to one box or another and thus preventing pen entropy.

[The Blind One]

Originally posted by Pong:

In real terms there are two ways this could work:

1) The hens could be trained to sense whether their eggs are fertilized, and then thoughtfully sit in the appropriate box.

2) An archotech eggbox daemon could resolve the uncertainty of a hen's quantum eggstate, shooing her to one box or another and thus preventing pen entropy.

The animals already will only leg fertilized or non fertilized eggs in the eggbox if it already has one of the item. They cannot lay fertilized eggs in an eggbox containing unfertilized eggs and vica versa. The option to specify isn't unreasonable considering this fact. It's just for player convenience. How does a player know whether an egg is fertilized or not when they pick it up anyway? :P Did you question that?