Gears set the date of your first hatch. The hatch is a Level 2 blueprint, but gears only come off a Level 3 bench, so until then all three are loot: crates, road barrels and whatever you feed the recycler. Garage doors and stone gates want the same gears, and the box rarely holds enough for all of them.
The ladder inside is its own blueprint. Learn the wooden ladder together with the hatch, or the hatch blueprint sits in your list doing nothing. Every ladder takes rope, and rope is loot as well, so keep a few coils away from whoever crafts the satchels.
The frag hatch belongs in a stone or sheet metal floor. Once the floor around it goes armoured, craft the armoured ladder hatch instead, or this one tile becomes the way in.
Questions
Ladder Hatch ×10: how many resources?
Metal Fragments ×3,000, Gears ×30, Wooden Ladder ×10.
Which workbench does Ladder Hatch need?
Workbench level 2.
How long does Ladder Hatch take to craft?
25 s for one, every step included.
How much scrap does researching Ladder Hatch take?
