Incubator

The Incubator is a ranching building used to care for critter eggs and help hatch them under favorable conditions. It can maintain the ideal internal conditions for several species of critter eggs, but it does not directly speed up incubation by itself despite its description and power requirement. Its main function is to call in a Duplicant with Ranching I so they can perform the “sing to egg” job.

When a Duplicant finishes lullabying an egg, that egg gains the Lullaby effect and its incubation speed increases to 5 times normal for 1 cycle. The Incubator only summons Duplicants while it is powered and working; if it is disabled or loses power, no one will come to sing to the egg. However, once the lullaby has been applied, the bonus remains even if the Incubator is later turned off or cut from power until the effect expires. This makes it useful as a timed support building rather than a device that must stay on continuously.

• A disabled Incubator consumes no power and cannot be lullabied by a Duplicant.
• Duplicants will still deliver eggs to a disabled Incubator.
• Because the lullaby effect persists after power is removed, the building can be run briefly on a timer, then shut off while the egg keeps the speed bonus.
• Pairing it with a Clock Sensor and giving the Incubators high priority is an efficient way to apply the bonus without paying the full power cost all day.

After a critter hatches, a Duplicant will come to move it to a Critter Drop-Off or Fish Release. If the critter is not transported for too long, the Incubator will release it onto the ground once it becomes an adult and then request the next egg. The player can also release it manually with the Remove button.

In practice, the Incubator is best treated as a controlled hatchery aid: it protects eggs, lets ranchers apply the powerful hatching buff, and then gets out of the way while the egg continues incubating. Since the building itself is not the source of the speed increase, careful power scheduling can give most of the benefit at a fraction of the energy cost.