Shove Vole
Shove Voles are Critters that live on the surface of the asteroid and can burrow (pass) through most tiles, and walk on walls and ceilings. The only exceptions are tiles made out of Abyssalite, Insulite, Wolframite, Diamond, Neutronium, and Obsidian. It cannot burrow through the Gravitas Door or Pneumatic Door of any material type.
Behaviour
They eat debris and excrete it as a solid tile but at a 50% loss of mass, renewing the asteroid's surface after meteors hit and destroy it.
Combined behaviors of Voles and Pips can be utilized to re-create regions with wild-growing plants.
Variants
Shove Vole
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Shove voles produce more Meat than Delecta Voles, but otherwise has no unique properties.
Delecta Vole
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Voles with a body temperature between 60 and 100 °C have increased odds to lay Delecta Vole eggs. Delecta voles have Quills, and the rate of Quill Growth is determined by a property called Picky Eater.
Picky Eater can have any of the following statuses:
- Just Right: +12.5% Quill Growth
- Caused by: No other status being triggered.
- Too Cold, Too Hot: +2.5% Quill Growth
- Caused by: Eating material that is outside of the temperature range of 70 ↔ 80 °C.
- Hungry: +0% Quill Growth
- Caused by: Critter not being fed.
- All Done: +0% Quill Growth
- Caused by: Quill Growth reaching 100%
Despite the description, Delecta Voles do not need to eat Regolith to grow their quills, Dirt or Iron Ore also works fine.
When Quill Growth reaches 100%, the Vole can be sheared at the Shearing Station to produce 8 Tonic Root, which can be made into Curried Beans.
Domestication
Care should be taken when bringing them into a sub-surface stable as a source of meat.
Once unleashed into the asteroid, it is difficult to track them down, steel airlocks or Pneumatic Doors as the sole access are advised as well as metal or obsidian tiles wherever abyssalite is missing, plus Robo-Miners if you feed them. Note that airlocks have to be built from steel, as shove voles will pass through airlocks built from copper, aluminum or iron; pneumatic doors can safely be built out of any material.
Critter Traps and feeders might be able to catch an escapee.
While they may be able to burrow, they can not fly or use ladders. If space is not an issue, building a platform with a 2-tile wide gap separating it from other walls can stop Voles from escaping. However, the eggs that drop down still need to be collected and placed back on platform.
Tips
- Shove voles are an almost fully sustainable food source that does not require feeding. One vole will provide 1075 kcal/cycle of meat or 1344 kcal/cycle of barbeque provided the eggs are incubated and voles are groomed.
- A vole takes 4 cycles to incubate, 5 cycles to mature, and 6 cycles to produce an egg. Total time to produce an egg : 4+5+6 = 15 cycles
- Or, without incubators, 20 cycles to incubate, 5 cycles to mature, and 6 cycles to produce an egg. Total time to produce an egg : 20+5+6 = 31 cycles
- A vole drops 16,000 kcal on death: 16000/15 = 1066.67 kcal/cycle of meat (1333.33 if turned into BBQ) and 16000/31 = 518.13 kcal/cycle (645.16 BBQ).
- A tamed vole will start with 43,200 kcal upon hatching. Note: Delecta Voles start with fewer calories and will starve before producing an egg, if tamed.
- If you can fully support your shove vole over long time, you can get 15 eggs every 100 cycles, leaving yourself with 2400kcal/cycle of uncooked meat and 3000kcal/cycle if cooked to Barbecue.
- One incubator will support 1.5 voles (if fed) or 3.75 voles (if not fed).
- Because they drop so much meat (and thus barbeque) they can be used as an alternative food source for radiant bugs if diamond is in short supply or unavailable.
- Viewing the navigation of a wild shove vole allows you to see the map (and determine the location of the pod if your seed has miscalculated pod location)
- Shove voles do not get the overcrowded debuff.
- Because shove voles do not get the overcrowded debuff, a small room stable can hold an arbitrarily large amount of shove voles. This number is limited to how quickly duplicants can groom and keep them happy. Care must be taken to avoid excessively large numbers as they will drop your frame rate.
Trivia
- Although difficult to notice, shove voles only have 2 feet, not 4, despite the fact that it looks like it should be a 4 footed critter.