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#### Warning: Don't place more than 4 meat/milk collectors??

When placing 5 or more milkers I now receive the following message in local chat: "Warning: Too many milkers can confuse the animals and make collection less efficient."
When placing 5 or more meat collectors I receive a similar message: "Warning: Too many collectors can confuse the animals and make collection less efficient."
I've had way more than 4 of each collector for quite some time, and with the modestly large number of animals I have, they fill up pretty fast. What is the problem with having more than 4 of each, exactly? My tentative guess is that when there are 4 or fewer collectors, they fill up all at the same time rather than one at a time, but I haven't tested that yet.

Posted 5 months ago by Shepherdmoon | Permalink

### Replies

- At more than 4, the rate of which they collect slows down. Of course with more animals, that effect is counteracted, and may be better to use more. You cannot place more than 10 collectors.
  Posted 5 months ago by Palindrome | Permalink
- The warning seems confusing, I think we need more information.
  Posted 5 months ago by Shepherdmoon | Permalink
- I have 4 collectors, they fill one at a time from left to right.
  Posted 5 months ago by Wandering Confusion | Permalink
- Well, I've confirmed that 4 milkers and meat collectors fill up one at a time, and not all at once... maybe... I think that behavior of them all filling up at the same time might be based on placement.
  Posted 5 months ago by Shepherdmoon | Permalink
- That warning has been in place since last year's change in diminishing rate of returns per increased number of collectors you have.
  Posted 5 months ago by kevbob | Permalink
- Wow, I missed something from a year ago? How did I do that?
  (Thanks, Kevbob, btw, for the link)
  EDIT: I still on some weird occasions get collectors filling up at the same time, not one after the other. Maybe that is a bug.
  Posted 5 months ago by Shepherdmoon | Permalink
- Only since the new housing and the img upgrade cards have we been able to have this many animals in our house at one time. I think this should be adjusted now that we can fit more, and 4 collectors just ain't gonna cut it with 40~43 piggies, but 9 makes them collect so slowly, at least for the first 5. I noticed once 5 are filled, the last 4 go super fast.
  Posted 5 months ago by Lorraine ♪ | Permalink
- Basically each time your collected would collect from your animals there is a change they will fail to do so.
  To explain better, the time used to be 24 minutes per collection (I've never tested how the cards affect it). So every 24 minutes they would collect from every animal. If you had four or fewer collectors this would happen every time. If you had five or more there was a chance it would skip a tick.
  With five that chance was only around 5% (I never collected enough data to really figure these chances out). So over one real day you'd normally get 60 collect ticks, but instead you might get 57.
  But if you have 10 piggies then 60 collections would make 600 meat. So if you checked your collectors once a day then four would mean you'd only get 240 meat, but five would mean you'd get 300, since the chance you'd get fewer is too small to worry about. If you had 10 piggies and checked the collectors once a day the right number would probably be seven or eight (though again, I don't have enough data to say which). You may check them more often than once a day, but you may also have 30 piggies instead of 10. Right now I think only trial and error can determine the right number of collectors unless we get a lot more data, but unless you have very few animals, it's certainly more than four.
  Posted 5 months ago by Humbabella | Permalink
- With 9 collectors and 41 pigs on my home street, I can collect before going to bed, and wake up the next morning 7-8 hours later and either have all 9 filled with 60, or about 7 filled with 60, 8th filled with like 40 and the last one empty.
  Posted 5 months ago by Lorraine ♪ | Permalink