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I always seem to get stuck in a low supply death spiral by the time I have 100 colonists. What guides for colony building do you all recommend?
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Jun 7, 2019 21:56
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frogge posted:I always seem to get stuck in a low supply death spiral by the time I have 100 colonists. What guides for colony building do you all recommend? Yeah, it took some practice to get me over that hump too. What tends to hit me is a combination of an aging population and the exhaustion of initial metal/water deposits, both of which start happening around sol 80 or so. Some thoughts of mine in no particular order:
So to sum up: get that sweet Rare Metals cash, invest in vaporators, and keep your factories max staffed.
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Jun 7, 2019 22:42
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Has anyone had their terraforming randomly stall? I have 100% water, atmosphere and temperature. My tree coverage is at 45%, but currently gaining 0% per sol. Adding new forestation devices or special projects makes no change. What gives?
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Jun 7, 2019 23:30
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BitterAvatar posted:Has anyone had their terraforming randomly stall? For whatever boneheaded reason, the forestation stations only work up to 40%. After that it's ALL seeding missions unless you snag a mod to stop that.
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Jun 7, 2019 23:35
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 I hope the chickens appreciate all we do to protect them.
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Jun 8, 2019 01:14
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my tips for colony building -use vaporators. i never put extracted water into my life support, i only use it for making fuel. vaporators are cheap enough and steady state, so you don't have to worry about suddenly running out of water. build plenty of water tanks to ride out disasters -machine parts are your big bottleneck at first. by about the third passenger rocket when you are bringing in engineers, bring a prefab small machine part factory so you can at least meet your own demand without having to ship in parts -be selective about windmills. use them for constant, steady state power like domes. outbuildings and extractors are fine to power via solar as extractors you generally don't want to staff at night anyway and you don't need to run concrete diggers round the clock either - if you need more concrete, just build another extractor. windmills eat machine parts for maintenance and they will go through them quick -likewise, use windmills or sterling engines to provide power for your domes and always-on buildings like homes, grocers, etc. use solar panels to provide power to shift buildings like factories. if you pay close enough attention you won't need many batteries to make up the difference -polymers are an excellent trade good. you won't need much polymer for maintenance and you should have plenty of fuel on hand -make absolutely sure you have a source of income other than rare metals. it's best to learn the ropes with a sponsor that has alternate funding like the usa, blue sun, europe, or even brazil Mechanical Ape posted:So to sum up: get that sweet Rare Metals cash, invest in vaporators, and keep your factories max staffed. on top of this, set priorities higher for more important factories. over time engineers will preference working in these factories. machine parts > electronics > polymers. likewise, have your geologists mining rare metals over plain metals
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Jun 8, 2019 02:12
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Also, absolutely do NOT expand further than you can sustain. If you have 120 colonists and have 60 open job slots: you're expanding too quickly! Stop that! expand more slowly with small factories to meet maintenance or something! Empty job slots hurt worse than filled unspecialized job slots!
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Jun 8, 2019 02:23
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yeah absolutely. colonists don't just appear out of thin air, you have to ship every one of them in so you should be very aware of how much labor you have on hand. your population won't grow naturally until you have quite a few colonists so be aware of how many people you have to work the jobs you build
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Jun 8, 2019 02:47
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Even once you get in a comfortable position resource-wise you need to be careful or your economy will spiral out of control if you have too many or too few martianborn colonists. Expand liberally if you can, but plan it all out to the individual if you can. Once you get more oxygen and water going on (possibly through terraforming) you can give the Cold Equations a rest.
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Jun 9, 2019 04:06
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Ahh-hahahahaha! I wonder how Chaos Mode is gonna screw me later because it gave me the most insane start: Jet hub and Martian Patents tier 1, Martian Copyrites tier 2, and an early 10% discount on social techs.
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Jun 9, 2019 10:54
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Alkydere posted:Ahh-hahahahaha! I wonder how Chaos Mode is gonna screw me later because it gave me the most insane start: Regular farms as the last tech in the biology line would be my guess.
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Jun 9, 2019 12:44
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Boksi posted:Regular farms as the last tech in the biology line would be my guess. Outside ranches are better anyway
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Jun 9, 2019 13:23
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Piell posted:Outside ranches are better anyway I'm still using inside farms because of the comfort boost. Is that not worth it? I'm also not a super colony builder - I think I've over- built my Brazil colony and am stuck in a downward slide.
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Jun 9, 2019 13:26
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One outside ostrich ranch seems to be able to feed about 200 people.
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Jun 9, 2019 16:04
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I just built my first shuttle hub. Do I need to have one in walking distance of a dome in order for people to travel using it, or will it automatically send shuttles to go pick people up if they want to move between domes?
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Jun 9, 2019 16:37
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They just go pick people up
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Jun 9, 2019 17:03
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Mzbundifund posted:I just built my first shuttle hub. Do I need to have one in walking distance of a dome in order for people to travel using it, or will it automatically send shuttles to go pick people up if they want to move between domes? shuttles are basically drones which consume fuel, can hold 3 things or 1 colonist, and have unlimited range Platonicsolid posted:I'm still using inside farms because of the comfort boost. Is that not worth it? I'm also not a super colony builder - I think I've over- built my Brazil colony and am stuck in a downward slide. it is worth having at least one farm in each big dome for the comfort boost as comfort++ = productivity and reproduction rate, but outside ranches are strictly better for food production
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Jun 9, 2019 17:16
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Oh, nice, once you have 100% Atmosphere and open the domes, people can just walk from one dome to another without needing a tunnel.
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Jun 9, 2019 19:18
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Pfft, who needs people? I'm doing a chaos theory + max disasters Brazil run where I'm terraforming Mars with a totally unmanned mission. I've got the elevator, mohole, sun, and the telescope up, 13 billion in the bank, and the terraforming is coming along nicely. No need to worry about food or domes, disasters and leaks are eh whatever, I don't even need to bother with valves or power switches.
Wafflecopper fucked around with this message at 01:31 on Jun 10, 2019 |
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Jun 10, 2019 01:28
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Wafflecopper posted:Pfft, who needs people? I'm doing a chaos theory + max disasters Brazil run where I'm terraforming Mars with a totally unmanned mission. I've got the elevator, mohole, sun, and the telescope up, 13 billion in the bank, and the terraforming is coming along nicely. No need to worry about food or domes, disasters and leaks are eh whatever, I don't even need to bother with valves or power switches. Haw, I saw someone on Youtube (Avaak right?) who did a "No Humans" colony to the max with Brazil. Good job.
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Jun 10, 2019 01:56
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Space elevator kind if breaks this game doesn't it. Of I'm running low on something I don't need to reinforce that supply chain anymore, just buy it from space.
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Jun 10, 2019 02:25
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kidkissinger posted:Space elevator kind if breaks this game doesn't it. Of I'm running low on something I don't need to reinforce that supply chain anymore, just buy it from space. A lot of things break the game. It's actually pretty hard to run a satisfyingly sustainable game because of the way late game wonders make resources essentially infinite.
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Jun 10, 2019 03:48
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Well, all other mineral resources ARE finite so late-game you're kind of expected to rely on wonders to keep up. Or start a new game if you want. Trying out a game on a rather resource-starved map right now, but with meteors set to "MAX" so hopefully I can call down some metal from heaven.
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Jun 10, 2019 04:39
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 I may be expanding a little too quickly.  That's the free Mega Trigon prefab the USA gets for 2,000 science a sol, arranged to reach three science spots (One's hiding under the milestone announcement). I had to move the concrete extractor to make room for it, which meant I needed to wait until Decommission Protocol was researched.
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Jun 10, 2019 08:38
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Demiurge4 posted:A lot of things break the game. It's actually pretty hard to run a satisfyingly sustainable game because of the way late game wonders make resources essentially infinite. this is how haemimont did the tropico designs also. it's not a question of if the game can be broken, but rather, how you will choose to break it, or if your game breaking inflection point is delayed by stacking on a ton of difficulty modifiers the inflation handicap appears to be stealthily broken because the price of rare metals also inflates, i think
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Jun 10, 2019 13:33
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kidkissinger posted:Space elevator kind if breaks this game doesn't it. Of I'm running low on something I don't need to reinforce that supply chain anymore, just buy it from space. Honestly space elevator was just QoL by the time I built it, 3 and later 6 rare metal refineries once I bought a second rocket plus abusing base 1k science martian copyrights and outsourcing gave me enough cash to import everything I needed. It was Chaos Theory that broke it as much as anything, that and the refineries. No colonists to support plus effectively infinite money = a really easy game, who knew. In retrospect I kind of defeated the purpose of the game by not landing colonists. It sounded like a fun idea for a run at the time. Wafflecopper fucked around with this message at 14:43 on Jun 10, 2019 |
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Jun 10, 2019 14:38
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I don’t mind games that intend for you to crack them open. That’s why I love Disgaea games, you either break the game or the game breaks you. Hell the later ones have a Cheat Shop haha.
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Jun 10, 2019 14:55
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I'm totally hooked on the game, put probably 10 hours into it just this weekend but I still feel like I'm an ignorant newbie messing around with stuff he doesn't quite understand yet. Someone upthread mentioned polymers as a commodity that you can export? Does that happen automatically or do I need to set the factory to allow exports? Because in my recent game it seemed like the only thing being exported was the rare metals. Also terraforming, is it ideal to have an area off to the side where you focus your terraforming efforts or is it better to have the terraforming buildings spread around the whole colony?
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Jun 10, 2019 16:44
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Basebf555 posted:I'm totally hooked on the game, put probably 10 hours into it just this weekend but I still feel like I'm an ignorant newbie messing around with stuff he doesn't quite understand yet. You can trade polymers with other colonies, which is what they were taking about, but you can't export them back to earth. Only rare-metals as you say. The only terraforming stuff which location matters for is forestation plants and lakes, and with them you probably just want to expand in tandem with the rest of your colony.
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Jun 10, 2019 16:57
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I didn't even know you could trade with other colonies. I definitely get this feeling that there's entire areas of gameplay that I haven't even touched yet.
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Jun 10, 2019 16:59
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Basebf555 posted:I didn't even know you could trade with other colonies. I definitely get this feeling that there's entire areas of gameplay that I haven't even touched yet. Yeah you have to set a landing pad to be a trading pad and you can control it from there.
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Jun 10, 2019 17:21
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Basebf555 posted:Someone upthread mentioned polymers as a commodity that you can export? Does that happen automatically or do I need to set the factory to allow exports? Because in my recent game it seemed like the only thing being exported was the rare metals. if you click a landing pad there are two buttons, one demolishes the pad, the other switches it to a trade pad. once you do that you can set an export and an import, export polymers and import whatever. if there are other rival colonies on mars, they might send you trade offers. if you accept, they'll send a rocket and you have to fuel it up, it will load whatever quantity of export items and unload whatever quantity of import items also switching the pad from landing to trade resets the name  yes i am a nerd who renames rocket pads, why do you askBasebf555 posted:Also terraforming, is it ideal to have an area off to the side where you focus your terraforming efforts or is it better to have the terraforming buildings spread around the whole colony? you can build greenhouse plants and atmosphere plants wherever, but you want them to be relatively close to fuel and waste rock supplies, respectively lakes can be anywhere you can pump water to. but you want them to be somewhat close to your forestation plants, since lakes put a little water into the atmosphere but greatly improve soil quality for your plants so, it doesn't really matter where you place the terraforming objects, but you do want them kind of close to your colony so they can be serviced by drones
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Jun 10, 2019 17:56
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lol I've played the game for like 15-20 hours and never built a landing pad.
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Jun 10, 2019 18:03
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they aren't necessary but they are super convenient, they completely eliminate dust from rocket landing/liftoff so you can drop rockets near other things without worrying about maintenance problems here's a screenshot i posted previously, with landing pads you can get rockets in real close to your other stuff 
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Jun 10, 2019 18:06
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Basebf555 posted:lol I've played the game for like 15-20 hours and never built a landing pad. They're pretty cheap and they make it so you can land your supplies right next to the depot without blowing poo poo up.
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Jun 10, 2019 18:08
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kidkissinger posted:They're pretty cheap and they make it so you can land your supplies right next to the depot without blowing poo poo up. And without getting dust all over your crap, yeah. They're handy. Can't believe they weren't in the original release.
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Jun 10, 2019 18:56
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Speedball posted:And without getting dust all over your crap, yeah. They're handy. Can't believe they weren't in the original release. I didn't play this game until like six months after release, it blows my mind what essential things weren't there originally
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Jun 10, 2019 20:06
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Selling polymer seems pretty backwards to my playstyle. Nowadays I don't make any myself at all until I'm in the 3 dome+ labor surplus stage of the game - you can get 20-25 polymer for 50 concrete, which doesn't require any labor and only modest upkeep.
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Jun 10, 2019 20:31
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metasynthetic posted:Selling polymer seems pretty backwards to my playstyle. Nowadays I don't make any myself at all until I'm in the 3 dome+ labor surplus stage of the game - you can get 20-25 polymer for 50 concrete, which doesn't require any labor and only modest upkeep. Yeah that's how I feel too. On one hand Polymers are the easiest advanced resource to make. On the other hand polymer plants take up a bunch of water (basically 2x water per active shift because they also need fuel) and water isn't always available. Polymers are the resource I'm most likely to trade away excess concrete or food for or ship in from earth.
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Jun 10, 2019 20:36
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metasynthetic posted:Selling polymer seems pretty backwards to my playstyle. Nowadays I don't make any myself at all until I'm in the 3 dome+ labor surplus stage of the game - you can get 20-25 polymer for 50 concrete, which doesn't require any labor and only modest upkeep. i see the merit in this, i usually have plenty of fuel to do something with and i like to use polymer factories as engineer generators - keep them at medium priority and they'll act as draws for your universities to train up factory workers for future machine part/electronic production. concrete is really cheap and abundant though
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Jun 10, 2019 20:37
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