Smooth hatches

[ShadowBandit39]

anybody used smooth hatches exclusively for the refined metal needs. (expect for steel of course) If so how many stables worth did you need to keep with your need for refined metal, or was it just too slow? (

[Prometheus]

Its not slow but I don't find it worthwhile. I always get plenty of metal. So I'd rather any hatch ranches I have be a source of coal. I use the crusher until I can set up proper cooling for a smelter. Also now that Lead is a thing the need to refine metals has gone down dramatically.

[fluxtorrent]

Smooth Hatch pro's:
-no power
-no heat
-easy setup
-can also be used to produce meat and eggs

Smooth Hatch cons:
-lower conversion efficiency
-Slow to produce
-more dupe work per kg


Ultimately its probably not worth it to rely on them alone, but they do make a good supplemental refining method and for early game conversion.

I recommend making the floor of their pen entirely out of mesh doors so that the metal and eggs drop straight through (obviously you need at least 2 regular tiles as well for the dropoff and feeder)
This makes it so they produce an insane amount of eggs and you can control their population better as it will only get overcrowded if you do it on purpose or they all suddely decide to lay eggs on the only 2 solid tiles lol

[✨Nutkun7993✨]

One stable is probably enough. Only refined the same among or slightly more you want to use because you generally want to keep raw ores for certain kind of building.

It slowly products so I think it's not suitable for immediate project that require large among or anything, but you can safely collect it little by little for future usage.

[AquaX]

Well technically iron ore is returnable due to vole eating them so at best it’s for players who are still bad at heat management.

[jballar]

it depends on how fast you want to do stuff. I normally have 2 stables (8 each) of stone hatches for coal, 2 glossy drecko stables (6 each), and 1 smooth hatch stable (8) and have plenty of plastic, iron for steel and coal. But at the same time, I build slow. On my last colony, at around cycle 450, I had enough steel to bunker door the entire top of the map (about 35 tons of steel), and all I used was smooth hatches.

If you want more smooth hatches, use rust dioxodiers and you will be drowning in iron ore. I think I had 200 tons of iron ore and that was with 8 smooth hatches.

[僕の名前 (仮)]

yeah I use them because they dont need constantly operating dupe and energy, I make steel with refinery and other metals with smooth hatches.

rust dioxodiers

yeah, but not all maps have rust.