sheep and chronotyper

[weirleader]

has anybody else had troubles with the chronotyper and sheep? I have an animal processing plant set up with pens for cows, pigs, chickens, and sheep; each pen has a breeder to feed them and a chronotyper to pull out the babies into a secondary pen where they are again pulled out once they've grown to adults (and then some are slaughtered for food while others are ground for mob essence).

The trouble I'm experiencing is that not all baby sheep are being pulled and so when I come back after a long absence (I tend to leave the server running so that other automation continues) I'll have an incredibly full pen of sheep (estimating over 100 in a 5x5 space). This only happens with the sheep which is what I find so strange. All other animal pens seem to be working fine. And this happened in 1.0.6 and continues to occur in 1.1.5

[Magicthize]

I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to rectify this problem. As far as I can tell sheep are more prone to clipping through the walls as the baby sheep try and get back to their parents thereby causing an occasional adult to traverse back to the breeding pen and thus begin exacerbating the problem (perhaps it's also something to do with sheep growing faster when they're allowed to eat grass?). I don't have a 100% reliable solution but the way I've minimized the problem (I check maybe once a day and only rarely do I have more breeding sheep than intended) is to use walls not fences and I've also placed a double line (5x2) of conveyor belts to push the babies back into the pen, though really all that happens is they spend their entire lives running on a treadmill. I also make sure to only have 3 breeding pairs in each pen as that keeps the numbers manageable.

I don't know if you're aware but you don't need a 3rd pen to slaughter the animals as a grinder/slaughterhouse won't kill babies. I have my system set up so that my mob grinder will run until it has filled its tanks then switch off and then the slaugherhouse takes over and des the same.

[weirleader]

I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to rectify this problem. As far as I can tell sheep are more prone to clipping through the walls as the baby sheep try and get back to their parents thereby causing an occasional adult to traverse back to the breeding pen and thus begin exacerbating the problem (perhaps it's also something to do with sheep growing faster when they're allowed to eat grass?). I don't have a 100% reliable solution but the way I've minimized the problem (I check maybe once a day and only rarely do I have more breeding sheep than intended) is to use walls not fences and I've also placed a double line (5x2) of conveyor belts to push the babies back into the pen, though really all that happens is they spend their entire lives running on a treadmill. I also make sure to only have 3 breeding pairs in each pen as that keeps the numbers manageable.

I don't know if you're aware but you don't need a 3rd pen to slaughter the animals as a grinder/slaughterhouse won't kill babies. I have my system set up so that my mob grinder will run until it has filled its tanks then switch off and then the slaugherhouse takes over and des the same.

Wow, lots of great answers there! Thanks! I like the treadmill idea and had no idea about the babies. I had already decided to limit my pens to 5x5 with walls instead of fences (they started out 9x9 and when I tried using fences to push them closer to the chronotyper that didn't go well).

I might eventually try to switch between grinder/slaughterhouse (I like the idea), but I also might just wait until my next new world as what I have works and is already overkill... I'm at 60000 meat ingots in my DSU and counting and I only currently use mob essence for my green slime farm which is in turn only needed every now and then for sticky pistons. Of course, with 1.1.5 I haven't even begun digging into what's new so perhaps that will change.

[Magicthize]

Breeders, chronotypers, grinders and slaughterhouses only have a 5x5 range anyway so there's no point making them larger as that just means you'll just potentially run into the problem of animals never breeding or being slaughtered. I was always a little annoyed they couldn't be upgraded though I suppose a 21x21 grinder would be massively OP if used for something like base defence.

To be honest I only added the slaughterhouse when I discovered the a future need for pink slimes (laser drill precharger in 1.1.5). I've always had more than enough food being produced by the slaughter of the animals for mob essence but I guess it's nice to have it as an option.

So far all of my mob essence is being used in my mob grinder I don't really need mob drops that often so much of the time the breeders are inactive. I will need to set up an enchanting station at some point so I'll have a 2nd use for all the essence.

[weirleader]

yeah, when I was planning it at the start, I went larger because I wanted the sewage but didn't factor in that you can't extend the range of the chronotypers.

I tried solving it with fencing but that just made it worse, so I finally resorted to a full overhaul and was annoyed to discover it still didn't solve my sheep problem.

I didn't realize a mob grinder would also produce food...?

Setting up an enchanting station is a good idea, I suppose... though with MPS I hardly feel the need. What do you enchant (or plan to enchant)? I'm currently sitting on 130 levels and have no idea what to do with them.

[Magicthize]

The mob grinder collects all the items that the mobs drop when they're killed so you'll still get chicken, pork, beef, leather, feathers and wool. Kind of makes the slaughterhouse somewhat redundant.

I don't need to enchant things that often but I do always carry a Diamond pick with Fortune (primarily to increase the drops from when I'm gathering lots of nether quartz but is also useful if I see Certus Quartz, Diamond, Redstone, etc) and a diamond Axe since treecapitator doesn't appear to work with the gauntlet and they need repaired every so often so having tons of mob essence is useful.

I'm hoping MPS will allow enchants and stuff to be put on them at some point in the future though I'm not sure how that would be possible or if it wouldn't be even more OP.

[weirleader]

The mob grinder collects all the items that the mobs drop when they're killed so you'll still get chicken, pork, beef, leather, feathers and wool. Kind of makes the slaughterhouse somewhat redundant.

#@$@#$ -- that would've been good to know sooner!

I don't need to enchant things that often but I do always carry a Diamond pick with Fortune (primarily to increase the drops from when I'm gathering lots of nether quartz but is also useful if I see Certus Quartz, Diamond, Redstone, etc) and a diamond Axe since treecapitator doesn't appear to work with the gauntlet and they need repaired every so often so having tons of mob essence is useful.

true -- I do carry a Diamond pickaxe with Fortune as well, although I sometimes forget to use it because the power gauntlet is so freaking handy.

I'm hoping MPS will allow enchants and stuff to be put on them at some point in the future though I'm not sure how that would be possible or if it wouldn't be even more OP.

yeah, the MPS stuff is already so powerful, I just can't imagine boosting that any more than it already is.