To Sage Hatch or not to Sage Hatch? That is the question.

[zOldBulldog]

Most guides recommend producing Stone Hatches for coal and do not recommend Sage Hatches. Is that because once you have a solid population you end up feeding them cheap abundant materials?

I know that Sage Hatches eat organic materials, and those usually end up costing dirt and/or water... not cheap unless you place them in a Natural Preserve and mostly forget about them. So the Stone Hatch thing makes sense.

But I must ask, are Sage Hatches worth ranching for some purpose that I'm missing?

[madcow]

It produces double the coal of hatches and stone hatches. Also, if you don't want to handle germy dirty organics, it takes care of that for you.

[Ellip]

Sage hatches have a 100% mass conversion rate compare to hatches anre stone hatche's 50% conversion rate.

The problem of sage hatch is most of the things they eat are low in mass and the coal conversion depends on mass and not kcal or anything else.

This is the main issue since you have to provide 140kg of organic mass to get them to convert to 140kg of coal and it's really hard to produce 140kg worth of food or rot to do this.

Also the stuff they eat are useful elsewhere and usually limited is small amount on the map compare to rocks which you get by the tons and you'll probably never get rid of it all even if you play for 1000+ of cycles.

[zOldBulldog]

Ah, so use it for example to clean up the organics generated in a Fertilizer plant, if that plant's purpose is only to generate power and you don't need the organics. Got it.

[Ellip]

Originally posted by zOldBulldog:

Ah, so use it for example to clean up the organics generated in a Fertilizer plant, if that plant's purpose is only to generate power and you don't need the organics. Got it.

Yea you can also feed them leftover food from wild farms that you may have too much of. I just wouldn't make them my main coal conversion since regular and stone hatches are much better for that purpose. They are best use to convert unused and leftover food/waste into coal for power.

[Amiram]

kik
;)

[Hedning]

If you start in the forest biome you'll have plenty of dirt for sage hatches. The question is how much dirt do you wish to convert to coal?

Their ability to eat food should not be considered because they shouldn't eat food. Food is expensive to make and less mass per calorie, so it defeats the purpose of producing coal with it.