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Containers are a huge pain and I don’t even think you need them depending on the ship other than maybe loading speed like OwlFancier mentioned, but they absolutely rock because knowing you filled all those containers on a massive ship is one of the cooler parts of the game’s ant farm, to me.
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May 5, 2021 13:59
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| # ? May 29, 2024 20:57 |
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I got my first cosmonaut coal facility up and running last night and started construction on concrete and prefab panel factories. Now that this republic is really starting to spin up it's so cool to just zoom out at night and see all the moving headlights knowing that they're keeping everything running. Definitely the best ant-farm game I've ever played.
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May 5, 2021 22:10
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Did they fix containers so that they're compatible with distribution offices yet? It was a major turn off from using them that I couldn't have trucks pick up containers from the container loading facility. Thankfully my republic wasn't really operating at the volumes or distances that made containers anywhere near necessary, so it was a "just to try it" thing.
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May 5, 2021 22:53
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Anybody have good map recommendations? I find that it's a struggle to find something on the workshop that has: - Interesting terrain that isn't just flat or so mountainous it can't be reasonably developed - A reasonably sized water connection - Resource deposits that aren't either miniscule or "Every mountain has iron, coal, or both." Confluence (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2084628526&searchtext=confluence) has a good balance of all of those, but that's the map I did my last game on, and I don't want to just build the same things on the same terrain.
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May 6, 2021 02:38
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I have been playing on this: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2410491779 Which is quite good, there is a nice starting area at the bottom left but the resources are all further out, there is an oil island you can cover with fire helicopters from the starter coast and you can make a nice game out of pushing east to get access to the narrower parts of the strait to break onto the big island with the majority of the big resource deposits on it. Slight downside is you might have to demolish some of the starter towns because they will whinge otherwise. But there is minimal actual infrastructure aside from a few ports and villages so there is a big emphasis on building transport networks to access new areas. And the lack of land connections to the main island makes an interesting challenge because even buying stuff in is quite expensive because it's far from the border and exporting things necessitates a lot of infrastructure development. There is a good bit of flat land but the big geographical features need to be navigated around and there is some definite geographical restrictions on where you can put things. I just started developing the small village on the island having managed to extend a highway all the way down the coast and across the strait so it now has a hydro plant which will help power the area comfortably and I dug the first iron mine, need to set up a steel plant somewhere and eventually build the airport I set up upriver, I think the development will have to sort of sit around the river on both sides because there isn't a lot of other flat land that won't be taken up by industry. The map I think is good for making you use all the different features of the game. 
OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 03:02 on May 6, 2021 |
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May 6, 2021 02:44
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That's a decent map - all of that guy's maps are pretty good. His collection is here: https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=2410556036 I was very partial to this one for awhile. Interesting features, but fairly easy and lots of open space yet with enough rivers and stretched resources (they're fairly sparse!) that you have to make some interesting decisions. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2140779329 I'm currently playing on: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2349706377 Which is absolutely one of the most thought-out/hand crafted maps I've seen. Absolutely beautiful without massive pre-built areas, but enough you can leverage them if you wish, but not a pain to demolish if you don't. That said, its definitely Hard Mode for getting around and getting to most ore resources, and either requires a lot of nasty terraforming or the offshore oil platform mod to make use of the most accessible oil field (from the Russian side.) I'd say Morgenrot is the easiest, and while I haven't played Roysk Island, that guy's other maps (Warstalensk and Rossokhov and Volomas) are sort of 'medium' difficulty (though the high resources version mitigates this somewhat.) They've got plenty of space and their own challenges, but you never feel like you're truly stapled in. Both Warstalensk and R&V kind of have a big challenge of being split between usable land and have some challenging resource locations without being truly painful. Once you solve the split, or just stick to one side generally, they're not super hard compared to other maps. The Passages is great but I only feel comfortable playing on it after putting shitloads of hours in and understanding weird aspects of terraforming and the sort of space required for things on a 'facility' level. For example, even one or two savegames ago I would have horribly blown a start on this map because I didn't have a good sense of "If I build the refinery here, I will eventually need a train station to carry fuel elsewhere, because its not very central, and I need this amount of space for that rail interchange, but I also want to fit a highway here, so I might need to think about moving <x> to <y>" etc. Other maps you can kind of go "Whatever, I'll just move 50-100m away and it'll be fine" but The Passages has you mostly in tight fjords with really unforgiving terrain and makes you really plan out what you're doing. I've actually come to struggle in the more open spots because I have less of a plan for open ended building now - having limited space and knowing what I 'need' to fit in it made me really take the time to align, angle, and place everything carefully and kind of drove the impressive designs I shared. That said, though, I spent probably upwards of 2hours (if not more, probably) on pause laying things out and deleting them and re-laying them out - and that’s only for my first town and not to speak of decorative trees and things. Fun, but sometimes you just desperately want to unpause and watch the ant farm. e: I kind of got off topic - if I had to recommend one, I'd say Morgenrot. Concentrations of resources are limited so for a single steel plant, you might need an extra coal mine or two, but ultimately they're easy enough to get to. They're less rich than usual, but plentiful in size and location. The terrain looks neat without being punishingly mountainous. Water is easy enough to connect to on either side, but has some challenges in bridging between the two because of narrow rivers and low bridges (which is a fun thing to deal with, imo.) Anime Store Adventure fucked around with this message at 03:21 on May 6, 2021 |
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May 6, 2021 03:15
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I'm very into this game, but I keep restarting because I always manage to gently caress up some crucial part of my design and then don't have the will and resources to tear it down and rebuild. Latest lesson: separate your 'power coal' supply from your 'industry coal' if you want to ever have consistent power  In fact I think the best thing to do is have a settlement near a coal deposit dedicated solely to power production, and have everything else far away just to be sure I don't gently caress it up.
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May 6, 2021 12:33
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Thanks for the recs, those look great!
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May 6, 2021 13:03
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grate deceiver posted:I'm very into this game, but I keep restarting because I always manage to gently caress up some crucial part of my design and then don't have the will and resources to tear it down and rebuild. Leaving off the table just importing the coal direct to the power plant by setting one tick to autobuy in case you're going full cosmonaut. But I wouldn't wish that on any new person so you should also consider that. You're the only civic planner for a whole region. You're gonna gently caress up and unless you're broke you can probably fix it.
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May 6, 2021 15:28
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I feel like going all Juche on you power is simply wrong in this game. Just import power when you are underproducing and export through a different line when your wind turbines turn on.
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May 6, 2021 15:43
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You guys have been using the phrase “cosmonaut mode” a lot lately. That’s a self-imposed restraint thing and not a game setting, right?
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May 6, 2021 15:46
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WithoutTheFezOn posted:You guys have been using the phrase “cosmonaut mode” a lot lately. That’s a self-imposed restraint thing and not a game setting, right? Yep, I think I linked a Steam guide earlier that listed the common restrictions but it boils down to playing on the hardest difficulty and then not auto-importing anything past your starting area.
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May 6, 2021 15:57
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grate deceiver posted:I'm very into this game, but I keep restarting because I always manage to gently caress up some crucial part of my design and then don't have the will and resources to tear it down and rebuild. I supply industry with the same coal as power, but I have a couple things to help prevent disaster: 1) coal refineries go to a storage as a buffer. From the storage, I have a conveyor to another storage just for the power plant, and that one has the connection to power. 2) if that's a bit much, you could have your initial storage only feed a conveyor, with the branch off towards power given priority.
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May 6, 2021 16:16
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lol, I'm dumb, all this time I tried to sustain everything by myself when I can just autobuy 1 coal 
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May 6, 2021 16:31
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Generation Internet posted:Yep, I think I linked a Steam guide earlier that listed the common restrictions but it boils down to playing on the hardest difficulty and then not auto-importing anything past your starting area. The real challenge of cosmonaut mode is the absolutely dogshit throughput of customs houses.
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May 6, 2021 16:39
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grate deceiver posted:lol, I'm dumb, all this time I tried to sustain everything by myself when I can just autobuy 1 coal Seriously though, don't be too hard on yourself, this game is notoriously obtuse and actively fights your best intentions at times. Also, auto buying at the power plant means it won't draw coal, unless you have in fact managed to auto buy exactly one coal. Auto buy at the stockpile!
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May 6, 2021 16:41
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Volmarias posted:Seriously though, don't be too hard on yourself, this game is notoriously obtuse and actively fights your best intentions at times.
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May 6, 2021 16:48
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Yeah, ok, now that I think about it, I probably was approaching it all wrong. I was trying to build up an entire industry from scratch hoping the end product will make me enough money to get me started on another branch. But then I always either run out of money or am short on some resource. So would it make more sense to start with the expensive end products like steel, import whatever resource I'm missing, and then use that steel to build the entire chain backwards for cheaper? I guess even just producing something entirely from imported resources should at least make me some money, right? Can you for example turn a profit on selling energy from 100% imported coal?
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May 6, 2021 16:56
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Things my republic was exporting, roughly in order: Prefab panels, from imported coal. A bit of tourism, with all the hotel resources imported. Oil. Food from imported crops, because the farm took very long to build. Not actually sure if it really made a profit. Bitumen and Fuel. After that I was a definitely positive cashflow. Power from wind-turbines. I started making steel from imported coal because there was no coal near my city. The production was capped by the customs office loading speed. I do think that the most efficient money makers are refineries and tourism.
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May 6, 2021 17:07
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If you're having trouble balancing the budget, building a power plant next to a border power hookup and selling the power from imported coal, or running a border refinery with imported oil and selling the end products both make a ton of money. Supply the people and profit spits out. These are basically the money cheats cosmonaut conduct is meant to avoid. Steel is comparitively complex to set up even on an import raws basis. E. I keep saying on the border because raw material import gets more expensive the more inland you get simulating fuel use (even if you have fuel turned off!) zedprime fucked around with this message at 17:12 on May 6, 2021 |
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May 6, 2021 17:09
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Even in my most autonomous saves I auto buy a single tick of coal at power plants and heating plants. It’s a fantastic backstop. If everything’s working it never gets used, but it prevents a disaster later. I often check my imports so if I see a trickle of coal in there I know some line broke or isn’t delivering enough coal to a plant somewhere. Same thing with food at a city warehouse.
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May 6, 2021 17:11
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Firos posted:The real challenge of cosmonaut mode is the absolutely dogshit throughput of customs houses. It's amazing how well the game can motivate you to become self-sufficient. Here's how I've been building my cosmonaut coal setup, learning a lot since it's the first one I've done: I think I made a mistake here with overestimating how much coal ore a processing plant can handle. Initially I thought I might ship more ore here from other mines but that was based on a misreading of coal mine output per workday as opposed to just per day. Now I think if anything I need another processing plant but I'd really have to mess with what's already built to get it there.  I'm working on getting cement up and running since it's an expensive secondary resource that I'm already producing both primary resources for. My plan to export the excess has been slightly delayed by the fact that you don't get cement hopper cars until 1970.  I've also planned out the power station since I've started coal. I'm putting it far away from everything else for the pollution and so I can sort out power-lines. I'm planning on shipping the coal in by train, probably a small shunter locomotive with a handful of hoppers.  The first thing I've been exporting every game has been food. I can produce about 4000 tons of grain in a year with one farm, and when that runs out I import grain on the same train I use to export food. It works really well now that you can specify the load of every individual wagon.
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May 6, 2021 17:12
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Also re: importing any aggregate, like coal or coal ore for a steel mill. It’s not worth doing auto buy because you need so much of it the delivery costs will kill you usually, and if you go to a border station for it you really need it to be on a train. Steel mills absolutely eat through coal at almost any level of productivity.
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May 6, 2021 17:15
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Generation Internet posted:The first thing I've been exporting every game has been food. I can produce about 4000 tons of grain in a year with one farm, and when that runs out I import grain on the same train I use to export food. It works really well now that you can specify the load of every individual wagon. Since I mentioned it here's my food setup: I have both of Robs modded food factories here, the smaller one was to get started and the larger one once I got the train going. Those warehouses are storing a mix of mostly grain and some food.  Here's my food export graph, the couple of big spikes is when I was exporting full trainloads before limiting it so I also had food for myself. 
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May 6, 2021 17:19
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Because there's only so many border crossings, and the throughput of each is pretty limited, over time you'll need to reduce your imports to things that you haven't set up yet, or need an extra bit of supply of, and reduce your exports to the most beneficial $/ton ratio you can. Don't export coal, or wood, or anything like that. Do export mechanisms, electronics, circuits, and nuclear fuel.
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May 7, 2021 01:23
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Alternatively, load everything onto boats or planes and use them for exports. It's nice watching the helicopters work.  
OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 01:35 on May 7, 2021 |
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May 7, 2021 01:31
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So, railway junctions. I think the variant that the game encourages is terrible. A train going along the mainline blocks a train going along the mainline in the other direction even if the branch line isn't used.  The best solution would be to run all railways with an empty spot in between them, but then I lost out on the construction snap assistance. I ended up widening the distance at every junction by exactly one, which can use the snap if the old line is already there. Now both directions on the mainline are separated by signals.  It is possible that the game actually uses true path reservations secretly, and the train could already pass each other without my help. But I think I saw trains getting blocked. For actual high traffic junctions I build a cloverleaf, of course. First attempt came out very crooked, tho.  With the primary investment to building rail being the time your construction trains spend blocking each other, I think I should just build half-cloverleafs everywhere next time. VictualSquid fucked around with this message at 11:41 on May 7, 2021 |
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May 7, 2021 11:37
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Volmarias posted:Because there's only so many border crossings, and the throughput of each is pretty limited, over time you'll need to reduce your imports to things that you haven't set up yet, or need an extra bit of supply of, and reduce your exports to the most beneficial $/ton ratio you can. Does this still matter if I'm importing directly to the stockpile instead of sending a truck? OwlFancier posted:Alternatively, load everything onto boats or planes and use them for exports. What this game desperately needs is ekranoplans 
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May 7, 2021 13:46
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The buy resources to stockpile just teleports it so you can do that as much as you want.
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May 7, 2021 14:00
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OwlFancier posted:The buy resources to stockpile just teleports it so you can do that as much as you want. But again, bear in mind that per ton transport costs are a thing, in particular a thing that Adds Up Very Fast.
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May 7, 2021 16:00
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Yeah, one of the things with cosmonaut is that physically importing products is cheaper than teleporting, which is important when you only start with a million rubles.
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May 7, 2021 16:07
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Generation Internet posted:Yeah, one of the things with cosmonaut is that physically importing products is cheaper than teleporting, which is important when you only start with a million rubles. Also when it's against the spirit of Cosmonaut, or at least the version you're playing.
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May 7, 2021 16:16
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For sure, it's just nice that it has an actual gameplay benefit versus simply moral superiority. It's also really nice that the teleportation exists as a quality of life feature because the game would be an unplayable nightmare without it sometimes!
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May 7, 2021 16:19
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Generation Internet posted:For sure, it's just nice that it has an actual gameplay benefit versus simply moral superiority. Buddy, if you can't be morally indignant that someone is having fun wrong, then what's even the point?
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May 7, 2021 16:30
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oh god I finally cracked and bought this and I have no idea what I'm doing.
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May 7, 2021 16:37
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Generation Internet posted:For sure, it's just nice that it has an actual gameplay benefit versus simply moral superiority. One of the secrets of this game is that while it's very finicky with many moving parts that only fit together in particular ways, it is very "easy" in that money can bail you out of almost any problem (except not having workers at your heating plant...but it can buy new workers to replace the dead), and money is functionally unlimited because you can take infinite loans. You can't even really get into a debt spiral because you can just pay off old loans with new loans and the interest increases slowly enough that you'll inevitably make money as long as you get around to exporting *something* of value, some day. So there's really no un-recoverable failure states except due to self imposed limitations.
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May 7, 2021 16:49
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Benagain posted:oh god I finally cracked and bought this and I have no idea what I'm doing. Same, I've been trying to take it very slowly cause there is just so much to digest. My recommendation is start by setting up a self sufficient power plant by mining and processing your own coal and then transporting it to your plant. It was very satisfying when I turned off the import power/coal buttons and my little town kept running and my income started to actually go up for a change as I was exporting excess power.
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May 7, 2021 16:54
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This game really took me some effort to learn over the course of a week or two but it was worth it. You just gotta be willing to scrap a save and start fresh. I also started with power, and then construction. Every new save I'd try a new system or industry, and start over once I got the thing working but realized somewhere in my build I left myself unable to scale it up. So then the next save you go in and build it again but instead of your basic facility you try to build it in a way that incorporates trains, or build a highway system, etc.
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May 7, 2021 17:00
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One tip that really helps when I inevitably screw up the layout of some industry. Build everything in pause mode, that way if you need to delete a construction so long as it hasn't actually started (unpaused) you can do so for free.
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May 7, 2021 17:07
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| # ? May 29, 2024 20:57 |
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The number one thing that isn't obvious is you need to flatten anywhere you want to seriously build up. The game will helpfully let you build on small flattened spots in a hilly spot and then when you try to build anything else throw up it's arms like I can't build that dense are you crazy. If you flatten the whole thing you can build things right up next to each other. Flatten about twice as much land as you think you'll need. Most buildings can technically work with just a single road hookup but they generally work best with a bunch of trimming to get goods to and from more efficient loading setups than are provided by the building itself. Getting more into personal taste, screw around a while in a game with a ton of money using rubles to buy everything instantly to get an idea of how things hook up and work together. Then restart and do the same thing without buy it instantly and build it yourself. Importing goods for cheap is not intuitive - we discussed that a bit on this page already but you can get cheap inorts by either driving a car or train into a border crossing and telling it to pick up the material, or get it imported directly to your buildings by import magic where you pay more than the equivalent fuel cost to drive it in. You can take advantage of that by building your first construction depot near the border to import the construction materials you need for cheap.
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May 7, 2021 17:18
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