Insect Hive Farms?

[Dartonian]

I'm having a lot of difficulty with killing these insects, might as well make them productive, right?  Anyways, what are your best designs for insect farms?

[rexx1888]

my best concept is a cooler that reduces the temp of every room in my mountain to -50 and to not farm them.. they are far too much work for very little pay off. the single colonist im likely to lose is reason enough to say "forget that"

[Grizzlyadamz]

I had a thread here just yesterday for the last couple days. Might be of use to you.
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=19547.0

-50

You only need -17 & the hives won't spawn.

[Thane]

Largest room possible without collapse and no pillars. 4-8 plasteel turrets around the edges. Clear the hives down to two or three every 2 days. Amazing stupendous Profit! (too OP must nerf next patch)

[Barley]

My hive farm has been super-successful. Almost too successful. Dare I call it gamebreaking? Because now I barely have to farm, create art, tailor clothes, or anything else! Here's my farm design, currently undergoing an upgrade.


The entire farm is enclosed, so that bugs can ONLY spawn in the room. The red lines mark the paths colonists take to collect jelly, haul corpses for butchering, and occasionally repair a turret. Like I said, I'm upgrading the facility with electric doors to speed up collection, and a wider hallway for better capacity. The blue rectangles are the "Kill Zone". The rubble in front of the turrets slows the bugs down, giving the turrets an extra 10 seconds or so to kill the megaspiders.

You can see one colonist with a charge rifle. He is currently preforming a "Culling". Since the hives spawn exponentially, its important to send a colonist down ever couple days to destroy excess hives. This will prevent excessive bug spawns and give colonists better freedom of movement to collect jelly. The optimal farm size for my setup is 3-6 hives.

I get something like 20*[# hives] insect jelly per day, plus around 1.5*[# hives] bugs per day. Enough to feed a colony of 10 simple meals indefinitely. I currently supplement the meat with corn so my cook can create fine meals instead. I forbid the jelly itself as a special treat and to sell to merchants for mad amounts of money. This is waaaay more profitable than statue spamming, and has the extra benefit of infinite food.

[Dartonian]

How did you set it up in the first place? Every time I get an infestation, the bugs are either in my freezer, or my storage room, or both. Also, how did you have the time to haul all the stone,build the turrets and doors,etc. before you got killed? And one more question, how do you prevent the insects from breaking through the walls?

[Grizzlyadamz]

Huh, so do the hives not spawn 'outdoors'? Do they limit themselves to a single room?
Mine were spawning as far as 10 blocks away, around corners.

how do you prevent the insects from breaking through the walls?

They probably aggro as soon as they spawn, so they never have the opportunity to attack the walls.

[Too-DAMN-Much]

well it's certainly not vanilla, but i think i found the way i'm going to farm jelly, embrasure wall with turrets outside and forbidden doors, very little colonist risk, seems a bit cheaty, but whatever.

this isn't a serious colony attempt but just messing around since i didn't like the map, however i think it's also my most evil yet, prisoners who are recruited get to leave the bug room!

[b0rsuk]

I may be wrong about it, but I think reproduction doesn't spawn as many bugs as the initial infestation.

I suspected turrets are the way to go, but I can't wait to hear what happens to your farm in a solar flare!

[Too-DAMN-Much]

the embrasure is a wall that can be shot through so worse case scenario i move my guys up to the outer wall until the bugs are dead.

[Barley]

When the hive appears, immediately kill all the bugs around it. Bug spawn rate is pathetically slow after first spawn, maybe one per day, and never more than one at a time even from multiple hives. Once the initial purge is finished, you'll want to set up the killzone with all your haulers. Finally, install the turrets and enclose the room so nothing spawns outside the killroom. The Bugs will try to cut through the walls, yes, but if you have a guard or a turret ready the bugs can be aggro'd and killed before they can do lasting damage.

It took me about 3 in game days to set up the farm.

[Grizzlyadamz]

I may be wrong about it, but I think reproduction doesn't spawn as many bugs as the initial infestation.

When the hive appears, immediately kill all the bugs around it. Bug spawn rate is pathetically slow after first spawn, maybe one per day, and never more than one at a time even from multiple hives.

Yep, just one per day, (new hives spawn one shortly after as well).
Are you saying multiple hives share a bug-spawn timer? I'm pretty sure each of mine spawned their own bug every day. Though maybe there's something which prevents them from spawning simultaneously, if that's what you meant- I noticed hives don't spawn simultaneously, instead waiting an extra hour or two before triggering.

[UnseenSpectacle]

Here is my climate controlled 30 hive farm. It may be a bit overkill but it was my first preplanned farm and was designed with the capability to regain control of the room after a solar flare.



The main problem with a 30 hive farm is that I cannot clear the corpses and jelly out fast enough! I have a trade beacon zone with nothing but jelly. I have freezers overflowing with bug meat. My wargs dine on bug corpses. I set bug bonfires. I do everything I can but I have not completely gotten the room cleared. Maybe one of these days....

[b0rsuk]

It's strange that bugs basically don't eat anything. You can't starve them not just because of the jelly, but because they eat their own corpses. And the hives feed on air or something.

[giannikampa]

I made my only open entrance be in an infestation, dug a triggering tunnel in nearby hill then it started. Now the hill keeps collapsing. In a big cold snap all the hives died and all insects went pacifist all around. Then infestation started again after a year or so. Shure many others did this.
Not so good for farming jelly (you can try some runs while they sleep) but no one passes alive throu the gate. see attached a panoramic view.

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