Drones Aren't Good at Feeding Fire Slimes

[The Minted Lady]

Once again, I changed the configuration of my expansions to try and get the most out of my drones. Seems I'm still having trouble getting the best use out of them in Odgen's Retreat.

I created four ash trays and put a number of fire slimes in each. I also started a patch of odd onions to feed them.

Right now, I just watched as one Drone flew up to the onion/carrot patch, sucked up all the carrots, then tossed them all into a single incinerator. That incinerator didn't need every carrot to be full, but it kept on chucking them in to empty its little inventory.

Then, the Drone went back and scooped up all the onions, and fired them all into a second incinerator. Once again, it fired every last onion at one incinerator and didn't bother to take any to another.

So now I have two ash trays with full and happy fire slimes, and two ash trays that are almost empty. There were plenty of vegetables to fill all four, but the drone just couldn't be bothered to spare any.

[believor in Prawn]

yeah they jsut kinda do that
it is

partial automation at the price of not as good job and price

[purplecharmanderz]

Their ai has them take one load to one location, this is pretty easy to work around.

Fire slimes save up to 2 feeding cycles, so they starve after 6 hours in game. Each incinerator holds up to 20 units of ash, one of which is used per feeding. A full harvest from an odd onion plot is 30 items.

Unless you are manually trying to collect the plorts, you could easily pile a bunch of fire slimes into a single ash trough, with 30 I was consuming most of 150 pogo fruits. (Wasting almost a full plots yield though.) This would ignore the waste and can actually increase efficiency.

[The Minted Lady]

Well, my gradual goal is to have a lot of fire slimes in each trough, I'm just concerned that after I increase the number of slimes, the drones won't match their food needs.

Anyway. I do have extra trees growing around the ranch, so I can just scoop up some occasional berries to throw into the incinerators whenever I visit.

[purplecharmanderz]

While a fair concern, if the drones are picking up your plorts, you don't need so many incinerators.

[The Minted Lady]

Originally posted by purplecharmanderz:

While a fair concern, if the drones are picking up your plorts, you don't need so many incinerators.

It's more or less a test of what the drones are capable of. I've already learned that they don't seem to match favorite foods with specific slimes/largos, and if you have two corrals that use the same food, you need multiple gardens or the second corral may starve. Now, I'm seeing that they don't seem to be capable of keeping multiple incinerators full.

Additionally, my fire slimes seem to enjoy leaping to their death when there is more than a few in a single incinerator. So I'm spreading them out in an effort to stop having to constantly replenish the ones I have. I've tried putting toys in the incinerators, and that just seems to make them leap more.

[Zahkriin]

Originally posted by The Minted Lady:

It's more or less a test of what the drones are capable of. I've already learned that they don't seem to match favorite foods with specific slimes/largos, and if you have two corrals that use the same food, you need multiple gardens or the second corral may starve. Now, I'm seeing that they don't seem to be capable of keeping multiple incinerators full.

well you can tackle that issue if you "preset" some stuff.. and a garden just gives X food a day while a autofeeder feeds 6 units every 3,6 and 9 hours at high, medium and low setting respectively.

the amount of food your garden depends on the upgrades obviously.

so i guess for incarnators is no actuall inventory request, so they just pump everything in the incarnator wich is closest.

[The Minted Lady]

Originally posted by ID Zahkriin:

well you can tackle that issue if you "preset" some stuff.. and a garden just gives X food a day while a autofeeder feeds 6 units every 3,6 and 9 hours at high, medium and low setting respectively.

the amount of food your garden depends on the upgrades obviously.

so i guess for incarnators is no actuall inventory request, so they just pump everything in the incarnator wich is closest.

Yes, I've already learned all of this, thank you.

I gave it a couple more in-game days, and it seems the drones are a bit better at handling 4 incinerators with one odd onion farm than I thought. Each time I came back, while the ash troughs weren't completely full, they each had plenty in them for the slimes they currently have. I guess if you don't pile the fire slimes in the incinerators, you can have several and still be okay with the drones feeding them.