Hatch ranch collection

[zOldBulldog]

Although I watched every video on hatch ranching, I am still not completely clear on the ideal approach. I figured others are in the same situation so I wanted to make a thread to summarize all available know how. I am routinely updating this post to include the most useful information posted in the thread (as I understood them... apologies if I misquote someone)

What I know so far:

GENERAL

Room space and size:
- A hatch needs 12 spaces to be happy. Unhappy hatches lose productivity.
- Critter dropoffs and grooming stations need to be in a valid stable room (there is some argument about this, but better safe than sorry).
- 4 wide, 24 tall rooms seem to make the best stables, concentrating 8 hatches in a small space so that your rancher spends less time grooming them.
- Automation to fill the feeders and retrieve drops, eggs and meat as desired is a good idea.
- If relying on auto-wrangle to limit population, set the limit one below the room capacity, to avoid overcrowding since eggs count as population.

Hatch types and food:
- Wild Hatches. Keep a few of them in your nature preserve(s). They are maintenance free and you can always use them later if you need to restart or breed a type of hatch you did not bother with initially (like Sage Hatches).
- Regular Hatches are only useful to breed Stone and Sage Hatches. After that kill them and eat them.
- Use Stone Hatches for coal. Feed regular hatches sedimentary rock to increase the chance to breed stone hatches. Feed Stone Hatches your most abundant material.
- Use a Smooth Hatches to refine ores. You can feed ore to Stone Hatches to increase the chance of breeding Smooth Hatches, but it might be better to just wait for natural chance or you could lose a lot of valuable ore. Do not breed too many Smooth Hatches, as there is a finite amount of ore in the map, while there are other late sources of refined metal. Feed Smooth Hatches the metal ore you want to refine.
- Sage Hatches are good for garbage disposal, getting some coal out of the deal. Good for cleanup at Fertilizer Plants.


BASIC SET OF HATCH ROOMS
- Stone Hatch - coal production. One or more. A second one could be your overflow and likely to be your egg/meat source. (note that a Pacu farm is probably better for eggshell production)
- Smooth Hatch - metal refinement. Usually one, for Iron. Set the limit low, you want to refine only just enough metal to build a reasonable stock. Presumably it should be possible to control the ore based on your refined metal storage.
- Incubation room. Once you have the power, and controlled by timers so that they are active just long enough to get hugged and raise the rancher's stats.


AUTOMATION IDEAS
- Drowning chamber with sideways doors to drop eggs into water (or autosweeper dropping eggs into chamber), eggs hatch, drown, meat picked up by autosweeper.
- Route coal to Coal Generator, and to Kiln for ceramics and carbon.

[L37]

IMO stone hatches are the only ones worth ranching as they eat junk and produce useful stuff. Regular ones can work too, as (depending on asteroid) you will get stupid amounts of sedimentary rock too.
Sage hatches can de used to get rid of p-dirt, for example, but you have to sure you will not need it later. Also we have pokeshells for this now.
Smooth hatches... IMO are a trap. You generally do not want to refine large quantities of metals at all, as you will need ores for bulk of your building later. Especially now, with stupid amounts of lead in oil biome. With smooth hatches you will loose substantial amount of metals for initial breeding, then you will loose 25% on everything refined. Then you will find yourself in annoying situation when you have a bunch of refined metals from volcanos, from meteors, from space, and those you refined... but have no ores to build conveyors and have to use steel for it (which you will have to produce using refinery you tried to avoid by using hatches). Just refine tiny amounts you actually need using refinery (which you will have to use for steel anyway) and do not waste stuff on smooth hatches IMO.

[Dschinghis Pan]

Critters have a wildness stat, which increases over time. If you stop caring for them, they will become wild again.

I don't see a reason to keep regular hatches, once you got others.

Once you got your desired number of smooth hatches, you NEED to switch your stone hatches back to other food. If you don't they might not produce enough stone-hatch-eggs to sustain their own numbers.

Meat is of much higher quality than eggs, which only turn into omeletts. However you can easily automate collecting eggs, while for meat your need to find a way to butcher the critters while keeping their numbers stable.
That beeing said, for meat you might want to look into Volve ranching.

[Nerankar]

- Do you still need a Stable room once you tamed your hatches?
"The Grooming Station is the primary structure necessary to create a Stable, the room seemingly helpful for maintaining and breeding critters in your colony; it can only be used by a duplicant with the Critter Ranching skill. Grooming is the means for taming most wild critters:
grooming a wild critter two days in a row will tame it, after which it will stay tamed. Grooming also keeps tamed critters happy so that they'll continue laying eggs." https://oxygennotincluded.gamepedia.com/Grooming_Station

- Is there any reason to keep regular hatches once you evolved them into Stone or Smooth?
Yes. A Stone or Smooth Hatch is unable to lay a Sage Hatch egg

- Is a particular type of hatch best for meat production? Or do you just send all excess to the meat room
All hatch types give you 2kg meat. So there is no difference there but the normal hatch has 25 hp. Sage has 25 hp too. Stone has 200 hp. Smooth has 400 hp. More hp means more time to "harvest" your meat. And it means your dupes can get harmed by a hatch.

- Is there any reason to keep Sage Hatches that isn't covered by the others?
Well, a sage hatch is eating organic mass. And they transform 100 % of their food into coal. Do you have a lot of polluted dirt? --> Sage hatch. Lot of normal dirt? --> Sage hatch.
You can feed them bristle berries. This dont give you so much coal because they dont eat a lot of that but they still lay eggs. So if you wanna have a egg farm feed with bristle berries because bristle berries only need water.

- Once you have a population of stone and smooth hatches, it is fine to switch the stone hatches diet to the most abundant material, right?
Yes. Why not.

- Is there a need to collect eggs, or is farming meat better once cooked?
Well eggs means egg shells. And those will be important.

- I found several cursory designs of automation for hatch farming, but nothing really complete and clear. Any recommendations?
Well my was a 4x24 room (4 wide; 24 height). Enough room on the ground or a stable (2 tiles wide), a drop off (1 tile), a feeder (1 tile). Feeder is getting his food by a auto-Sweeper. This auto-sweeper is also responsible for the coal and the eggs in this room. So everything stays clean.

[AquaX]

Sage hatch I think is more of converting your lower quality/ excess food into coal since I think they have a 95% conversion rate.

Smooth hatches are useful depending on your play style since they create refine materials w a decent conversion rate w/o losing so much or generating so much heat. They also don’t cost a large amt of power. Iron is a high offender. Unless you prep for a coolant system long before that, most players are rarely able to support it for long.

[CPT Chthonbeard the Pirate]

Originally posted by Dschinghis Pan:

Critters have a wildness stat, which increases over time. If you stop caring for them, they will become wild again.

Sage hatches excrete refined carbon, which is needed for steel.

This has been changed on release.

Critters that are tamed do not ever become wild again. Critters born tames (from eggs of a tamed parent) cannot be wild ever.

Sage hatches do not excrete refined carbon at all. I don't know where you get this. Instead the benefit of a Sage hatch is that it produces 100% output, as in for every kilogram of food it produces a kilogram of coal.

Normal hatches produce 50% output, as well as stone hatches, and smooth hatches produce 75% output, but only produce refined metal instead.

Getting your refined carbon is simple. Put coal in a kiln. There is no other way.

[asanger]

- Is there a need to collect eggs, or is farming meat better once cooked?

You want to collect your eggs in a 2 deep area filled with liquid with a locked door placed horizontally over the top.
Have autosweepers grab the eggs from the stable and move them into the water room.
The eggs will stockpile underwater but still hatch after 20 cycles as normal.
Your dupes can pick up egg to place in incubators as needed.
Any eggs not needed for the incubators will hatch after the 20 cycles and then immediately start drowning and turn into meat without having to waste dupe time to kill them.

- I found several cursory designs of automation for hatch farming, but nothing really complete and clear. Any recommendations?
Automation for ranches is really simple.
Sweepers to remove everything from the stables.
Eggs to the drowning room.
Coal to the generators and kilns.
Put sweepers beside your coal generators to supply those with coal to save the dupes doing it.
Put sweepers beside the kiln to automate the production of ceramic and refined carbon.
A storage bin beside the kiln for the clay that your dupes can feed setting the coal generators and kilns to priority 1 so your dupes never waste their time on them.

Icubators should be automated with clock timers to activate them in sequence for a small percentage of the day to save on power, just make sure your rancher has time to hug them.
Egg hugging is currently the only way for a dupe to raise their ranching skill.

[The Tempted Man]

Originally posted by asanger:

Egg hugging is currently the only way for a dupe to raise their ranching skill.

I run about 80 mods, so one of them might be doing this, but in my game, grroming raises husbandry too.

[zOldBulldog]

Updated original post to reflect suggestions up to here.

[CPT Chthonbeard the Pirate]

Originally posted by The Tempted Man:

Originally posted by asanger:

Egg hugging is currently the only way for a dupe to raise their ranching skill.

I run about 80 mods, so one of them might be doing this, but in my game, grroming raises husbandry too.

I was afraid of this. It seemed like how it actually worked :/

[Hedning]

Do not feed sage hatches food if you want coal. Food are calorie dense, which means the mass eaten and converted is tiny.

All hatches have the same meat production.

You have to keep grooming your critters not only for their eggs but also for their metabolism.

The critter dropoff needs to be in a room to function. A grooming station needs to be in a stable to function.

1 unpowered incubator per 5 hatches to keep your population stable. You may power your incubators only when you need your population to grow rapidly, eg when you first start your ranching. You can unpower them once hugged, however since it lasts exactly 1 day using a simple clock sensor means your rancher will miss every other day.

Here's my hatch farm. Food in, eggs and coal out.
https://imgur.com/ssOBk3k

Originally posted by The Tempted Man:

Originally posted by asanger:

Egg hugging is currently the only way for a dupe to raise their ranching skill.

I run about 80 mods, so one of them might be doing this, but in my game, grroming raises husbandry too.

I have been grooming for over 100 cycles. None of my ranchers have gained any skill points.

[CPT Chthonbeard the Pirate]

Originally posted by Hedning:

Do not feed sage hatches food if you want coal. Food are calorie dense, which means the mass eaten and converted is tiny.

All hatches have the same meat production.

You have to keep grooming your critters not only for their eggs but also for their metabolism.

The critter dropoff needs to be in a room to function. A grooming station needs to be in a stable to function.

1 unpowered incubator per 5 hatches to keep your population stable. You may power your incubators only when you need your population to grow rapidly, eg when you first start your ranching. You can unpower them once hugged, however since it lasts exactly 1 day using a simple clock sensor means your rancher will miss every other day.

Here's my hatch farm. Food in, eggs and coal out.
https://imgur.com/ssOBk3k

Originally posted by The Tempted Man:

I run about 80 mods, so one of them might be doing this, but in my game, grroming raises husbandry too.

I have been grooming for over 100 cycles. None of my ranchers have gained any skill points.

Anything and everything is a room though. There is no size requirement, and my critter drop offs work everywhere. Might as well say they work anywhere because they do.

[Hedning]

That's definitely not true. I don't know what the max size is, but not everything is a room and they don't work everywhere.

[CPT Chthonbeard the Pirate]

Originally posted by Hedning:

That's definitely not true. I don't know what the max size is, but not everything is a room and they don't work everywhere.

I have mine in "rooms" that are 300 tiles wide and it works fine. Maybe try again? The auto-wrangling might be a problem though if the critter can't get to the drop off though.

[Hedning]

It's not the auto wrangling. If I have a trussed creature it won't create a drop off errand unless in a room. The errand tab will be completely empty until I enclose it. 300 tiles may well be within the tolerance though.

[Prometheus]

Sage hatches are viable on the new forest biome. Between pips and ethanol you'll be making more than enough food for them and still have enough dirt for your other needs. Also the biome at base is very dirt rich. I have a relatively new save, haven't dug out the entire start biome yet and I have over 400 tons of dirt.