Designing an Insect Jelly Farm

[Barley]

I remember seeing a lot of forum posts earlier of people asking each other if they'd managed to make a  farm for the insects. I decided, since my current colony is prospering, to give insect farming a shot. Not done yet, but I will update this post as I go.

First, I mined away a nearby mountain. I did so in "strips" of 3. Each strip is nice and long to maximize firing distance. This way, I could isolate hives from each other and eliminate or access them as necessary. I mined out as much of the mountain as I could to encourage a hive to spawn.

Next, the moment the hives spawned, I drafted my colonists and purged the insects through superior firepower, superior lines of sight, and superior "Running Away when they get close". This took about half a day.

Now, I'm building turrets and reinforcing walls. The Path to the turrets will be covered in stone chunks to slow the bugs. The adjacent strips are being repurposed into hallways that allow my colonists to bypass the defense and chunk lines to retrieve jelly and bug corpses.

Note that any hive expansion is purged IMMEDIATELY. I can't allow the hives to multiply beyond 3, or the problem is destined to grow exponentially and overwhelm my colony. Plus, they tend to spawn hives in the quick-access halls, which is bad for obvious reasons.As it is, I almost need a colonist on constant standby to kill the bugs that spawn about once a day from the hives.



Note that if this works out, and the turrets are able to stem the bug tide, I might let any hives that spawn in the areas across the hall from the original hive cluster to stick around under the watch of even more turrets. The key is isolation, and swift purging of "Rogue" or excess hives.

[Jakub k.]

hm you could just cover the hive with wood blocks like this:
   
     W
  WHW
     W
Then the hive cant reproduce,and the jelly spawns on the spaces.there is a chance your colonist could get hurt through the space,therefore it'll be great to use conveyor belts from a mod

[Barley]

Ok. I'm putting a quick progress report in before bed. Tomarrow Ill give a more extensive report.

IT MAKES CRAZY-MAD AMOUNTS OF MONEY OH MY GAWD!

Actually, Jakub, that wont work. Because there's more to this motherload of resources than just jelly.

This arrangement needs a slight update: You should use 5 turrets instead of just 3. 4 will kill just about any bug if you got 5 layers of stone chunks in the way, and the fifth turret is insurance. Also, make sure to close off the room to prevent bugs from spawning in the access halls, since otherwise the entire factory counts as one room and the bugs can spawn out of containment.

I got 4 hives in the kill hall now. That's 80 jelly per spawn, which seems to happen once every 1-2 days. Better yet, I now have a source of INFINITE MEAT! The design has minimal risk of colonists getting hurt, though I do advise you personally oversee the extraction of jelly. Just let the jelly build up for a couple days and then have all your colonists priority retrieve the jelly at once. This way you can instantly respond to a bug spawn (typically only a single megascarab you can run from or beat down). As it is I just let the farm run itself, and let the colonists retrieve the jelly automatically. The new threat system means they run from the bug spawns anyways.