None uses unpowered incubator ranch repopulation strategy?

[Shame]

This is more of a pet peeve with more experience players, but something I have realised that for some reason even the most well known professional players never do is set up automated incubation system inside each ranch that doesn't require any wrangling or manually moving new critters from an incubation room into the ranch. Basically all you do is put an unpowered incubator inside the ranch within autosweeper range. It will repopulate the ranch automatically so you always have 4 - 6 hatches in there, since eggs take 20 cycles to hatch and in the case of hatches, their life span is 100 cycles. Then any excess eggs are just moved out for being eaten in one form or another.

This saves the hassle of moving critters around between rooms, possibly ending up with some dropped on the floor if using powered incubators with rooms dedicated for that. Powering incubators is pointless past the point where you have the amount of live critters to lay more eggs to sustain you anyway, because you are just wasting power and generating heat on getting the egg yield you would have got anyway just a bit earlier. You are not increasing your total potential calorie value, just speeding up the process, so if you have excess eggs stacked, that process is going to equalise at some point anyway.

Sure, you could have 8 hatches in each ranch at all times if you don't use unpowered incubator method, or you can just make a smaller ranch. I make mine max size anyway just in case, but that's just preference. I have only seen myself use the unpowered incubator method and suggested it to someone before to use for a more streamlined and automated way of keeping critters inside ranches populated. Why is this?

[Atrophus]

I have 5 ranches with 8 hatches each, and 8 unpowered incubators. Outside the ranch tho, cause eggs in incubators also count towards the critter limit.
As for why, you already outlined the reasons yourself. I only need to transfer a hatch to the ranch and an egg back to the incubator roughly once every 3 cycles and can feed some 27 duplicants with that simple effort.

[Shame]

Point is, you could make the ranches smaller, with another ranch set up and each one having unpowered incubators as to not have duplicants move critters from room to room. It would just automate the process further.

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by Shame:

Point is, you could make the ranches smaller

Ranches with fewer critters means more ranches, which means more space and more movement. The extra time spent running around every day to satisfy the extra ranches is probably more than the time spent hauling baby critters around every now and then.

[AlexMBrennan]

Max size rooms are popular because one max size room takes up less space than two half size rooms.

Designs that require extensive automation are less popular than designs that do not.

There is also the fact that putting the incubator in the ranch increases the distance hatches have to walk to be groomed by at least one tile which probably wipes out whatever time you might have saved by not having to move a hatched critter once every 20 days.