Critter Drop-Off

The Critter Drop-Off is a building used to manage captive critters. Duplicants automatically bring captured critters to a Critter Drop-Off for release, and the building is central to setting up controlled critter rooms and relocating excess animals. It can also be used to wrangle critters that cannot normally be wrangled, provided they are inside a room with a Critter Drop-Off set to Auto-Wrangle Surplus.

A Critter Drop-Off has a base overheat temperature of 75 °C. In hot environments such as the Oily Biome, it will overheat if built from Copper Ore or Iron Ore; Gold Amalgam is the safer material choice. The building also appears to stop functioning if it is flooded by any amount of liquid, so it should be kept dry.

A few practical details make the building much easier to use effectively:

• The drop-off limit cannot exceed 20 critters. To keep more critters, you need additional rooms with separate Critter Drop-Offs.
• If a room is set to Auto-Wrangle Surplus, Duplicants will wrangle even critters that are normally non-wranglable.
• Baby Hatchlings are not auto-wrangled by Critter Drop-Off behavior. They must either be manually wrangled or left to mature for 5 cycles before they can be wrangled as adults.
• The building is intended for release and relocation, not for direct storage of liquid-covered rooms, since flooding disables it.
• The wrangling process is handled normally by Duplicants and is not considered a bug or exploit, even though it allows access to critters that would otherwise resist wrangling.

In practice, the Critter Drop-Off is most useful when paired with a properly enclosed stable. Once a room is assigned a surplus-wrangling limit, Duplicants will keep the population under control by moving excess critters away automatically, while the building itself serves as the destination for released or relocated animals.