So the pacu breeder/meat method does not work anymore

[Operator]

due to the new mood update the pacu method does not work right? from what I see all my pacu are miserable and dont produce an egg before they die. is there a new pacu starvation method?

[Angpaur]

If "ate from feeder" bonus still works the same than once per cycle you can feed small amount of food, like 1kg of algae, untill fish lays one egg. After that you stop feeding and let it starve. But that will require separating each pacu, so they have a dedicated feeder.

This should allow you to spend only 3kg of algae per each pacu. You can also use seeds of course and limit them in same way.

[DeMoNsLaYeR575]

Shove Vole starvation farming is still the same, and they produce a ton of food.
Fed pacu farming is the same but you no longer have the option of infinite farming pacu in one tile by moving their eggs to a different room "out of sight".

Previously Pacu, that dont have an egg in the same room, would lay exactly one egg before death in one tile. So you just move the eggs to a different room (behind an open door) and they would move after hatching to the water tile they came from. Eventually getting hundreds or even thousands of pacu in a single tile. This no longer works so auto farms are the only real option now, but that is still a ton of food for almost no effort.

[Operator]

Originally posted by DeMoNsLaYeR575:

Shove Vole starvation farming is still the same, and they produce a ton of food.
Fed pacu farming is the same but you no longer have the option of infinite farming pacu in one tile by moving their eggs to a different room "out of sight".

Previously Pacu, that dont have an egg in the same room, would lay exactly one egg before death in one tile. So you just move the eggs to a different room (behind an open door) and they would move after hatching to the water tile they came from. Eventually getting hundreds or even thousands of pacu in a single tile. This no longer works so auto farms are the only real option now, but that is still a ton of food for almost no effort.

almost 700 cycles in i havent even lauched my first rocket, i'll try that shove vole out when i get my hands on them last time i messed with those dudes was like 3 years ago when pre dlc when they came out

[Kyle]

You will basically need to maintain a minimum number of feeder Pacu that you give algae or seeds, and then harvest their eggs into the equivalent of an evolution chamber.

I believe the theoretical minimum number would be 1 Feeder Pacu to 4 Dupes (for surf n turf specifically) but that doesn't account for downtime spent as a fry where it won't work on laying an egg. That adds 20% to your number. I'm just going to start with breeding 5 Pacu for 12 Dupes and call it a day, it should make a little bit of extra fish. They eat so little algae now (a mere 7.5kg/cycle/Pacu) so it's very easy to feed them that from a fish feeder. They also eat whole seeds, so that is now a viable method to tame them.

This is what I switched to once the update dropped. I'll admit I didn't come up with it but I also can't find where it came from, it's just an older Pacu ranch design. The automation is simple, you take all the eggs out of your feeder pool with a sweeper/loader, and drop them off on a tile above the pool to the left of the pool's entrance. This matters because Pacu are apparently programmed to always try to flop to the right to find a pool of water before the left. So, if you give the eggs access to the feeder pool via automation, they will always prefer to hop in your pool and fill it back up, no dupe labor required. If you want, you can add in another door with a NOT filter to make sure their only route is into the breeding pool, then placement doesn’t matter.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3086206965
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3086206718
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3086206505

Ignore the mess of conveyor lines, it's a new system. I made the breeding pool a bit bigger than it needs to be just in case I want to suddenly spike my fish production, all you have to do is change the setting on the critter sensor to a higher number. They only need 8 tiles of liquid each to be happy, and with the new update you can probably squeeze even more in a smaller space and they will still reproduce.

[Kyle]

After much testing and thought, they can still be starvation ranched. It will take more space, but not an impossible amount.

You can't let their happiness hit -10, or they have 0% reproduction. At -9, they will have the normal 7% reproduction rate and 20% metabolism from being glum. This means a tame Pacu in those conditions should still live long enough to put out an egg.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3086744533

So, you can technically cram 10 Pacu into 9 tiles with the new fort buff. The only issue with that setup is that their eggs will make them miserable and stop reproduction. So, you need to halve the max amount per pool. 5 Pacu in 9 tiles with a fort should be a safe number. Without the fort, it is 4 Pacu in 8 tiles.

If the number of wild/starved Pacu needed per dupe is 4 (for surf ‘n turf) then you would need a total of 48 pacu for 12 dupes. This is around 10 separate pools of 9 tiles with forts, 5 pacu in each for a total 90 tiles.

I'm just going to keep using the feeder system, since it's set up and I have other projects to work on, but it's definitely possible to starvation ranch them if you want. It just takes a lot of smaller pools. I'll admit I also have a soft spot for the critter forts, we have pet fish now.

[XceptOne]

I did some testing, too.
Reiterating what Kyle said:
Pacu needs at least 8 tiles of swimmable liquid to not be confined.
Pacus must be Glum but not Miserable, so at most 9 tame Pacus in a 8-tile-pool (without extra happiness) to leave them at -9 Happiness.

At first I used some automation to delay fry egg hatching a bit so fresh pacu frys won't overcrowd the pool, but it turns out that in all my tests without said automation the corresponding pacu dies a few seconds before its' offspring hatches.
This means offspring should never overcrowd the starvation pool into miserable state.
The most important thing was to remove laid eggs immediately via sweepers, keep the conveyor loader/dispenser outside of the pool (with door in between) and let the frys hatch on land.
This seemed to work reasonably well for a starvation ranch.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3087483136
Note that i didn't need the timer.
Also note that I tested in debug mode with super speed enabled. This means some long term tests under real base conditions are still required to be sure.

The strange part is that math suggested that a (glum ranched, tame) pacu has at least 428 seconds to live after its' offspring hatches, but in all tests without hatching delaying automation it died shortly before its' egg hatched anyway.