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I start with existing cities and then pick one to build up, you can then expand to others if you want, but I find it helpful to have a starting point, much like with terrain itself, existing features really help to give you structure to build around.
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Dec 6, 2021 19:16
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OwlFancier posted:I start with existing cities and then pick one to build up, you can then expand to others if you want, but I find it helpful to have a starting point, much like with terrain itself, existing features really help to give you structure to build around. This is absolutely true, even with some of the challenges granted by both existing settlements and terrain. My latest save is the first on a new map after 2-3 saves on The Passages, which is probably the most extreme case of "the map forces you into specific decisions to build around." It's a challenge, but its sort of a clear "Well, I have to find a way to solve this issue since coal is here, oil is here, flat ground is here," etc. My new save has some vaguely interesting terrain, but is mostly malleable and I'm actually finding it more challenging to design a good map-wide system because of the lack of any natural funnels beyond having a clear starting area and having to decide what the best designs are, functionally and aesthetically, in a total vacuum in most cases. If you hit a spot of confidence with 'easy' maps, I high recommend giving The Passages a shot because its beautiful and super fun. Anime Store Adventure fucked around with this message at 06:22 on Dec 7, 2021 |
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Dec 7, 2021 06:19
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I like building around existing towns if it's near to some resource I want, because it creates an organic looking 'old town' district. But the single shacks are getting bulldozed, sorry not sorry, have a bus station instead.
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Dec 7, 2021 13:03
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oh god I'm going to have to
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Dec 17, 2021 16:16
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I'm terrified to try making trains work. I've gotten comfortably to the point where I can get a single settlement up and running with a construction office and a simple export industry, and I'm not sure how to evolve next.
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Dec 17, 2021 16:22
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A second settlement with a construction office and a central industry. Glibness aside, that's usually the point where I get analysis paralysis too.
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Dec 17, 2021 19:17
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hailthefish posted:A second settlement with a construction office and a central industry. holy poo poo, that's exactly the term I've been looking for. It seems to be an issue across a lot of these types of games for me - W&R, Anno, Surviving Mars, Dyson Sphere Project...the transition from "getting started" to "definite progress" comes with this whole massive heap of possibilities and places to go wrong, and I'm not even playing on Cosmonaut mode and it just absolutely paralyzes me.
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Dec 17, 2021 19:26
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Your goals can probably be more like "run a steel play at full entitlement" or later "make automobiles at full entitlement". The settlements and smaller goals will spring up naturally from there I find.
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Dec 17, 2021 19:54
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Lib and let die posted:holy poo poo, that's exactly the term I've been looking for. It seems to be an issue across a lot of these types of games for me - W&R, Anno, Surviving Mars, Dyson Sphere Project...the transition from "getting started" to "definite progress" comes with this whole massive heap of possibilities and places to go wrong, and I'm not even playing on Cosmonaut mode and it just absolutely paralyzes me. I legit sketch out a small map in a notebook and designate transportation corridors based on where resources are, where I'll need extraction, processing, or manufacturing industries to set up, and where the population centers and transport hubs will need to be. Follow terrain and follow resources. Figuring out bulk to weight ratio helps too i.e., where are you going to set up industries based on how bulky they are to transport pre vs. post processing (e.g., coal). Something that needs say, three units of a raw resource to turn into one unit of processed product probably will have its extraction and processing facilities colocated and then ship the processed product out.
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Dec 17, 2021 19:56
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pshaw, I simply spend 6 hours while paused, building the perfect steel district & adjacent town then get bored when it's built and restart a different map
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Dec 17, 2021 20:15
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double nine posted:pshaw, I simply spend 6 hours while paused, building the perfect steel district & adjacent town then get bored when it's built and restart a different map  
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Dec 17, 2021 20:21
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double nine posted:pshaw, I simply spend 6 hours while paused, building the perfect steel district & adjacent town then get bored when it's built and restart a different map this but gravel
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Dec 17, 2021 20:33
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If you're not doing constant five-year plans you're playing the wrong game.
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Dec 17, 2021 20:36
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Well that's a load off
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Dec 17, 2021 20:39
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I usually spend a while looking at the resource distribution across the map (a good map helps with this) and what i need to do to get access to them, and then build infrastructure networks. Roads are good because you can build them with helicopters and rail is important for moving large amounts of goods, then I start building the necessary stuff to get an industrial plant online to exploit the new resources. A good map, I think, will necessitate you building in a lot of different areas to get all the resources so you will end up making multiple towns out of necessity.
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Dec 17, 2021 20:46
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I've largely been thinking of stuff like Heli offices to be later-game investments...should I be replacing my standard construction office with a heli office instead? I'd just presumed the initial cost investment would be bank breaking early on but if that's a viable start strategy I might rethink my whole approach...
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Dec 17, 2021 20:52
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In my experience, it depends on fuel costs.
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Dec 17, 2021 20:56
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I always throw down a helicopter office as soon as I am self-sufficient on fuel, which is usually the first industry I do after steel anyway. If the fuel is free they're absolutely worth the speed boost in construction.
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Dec 17, 2021 20:59
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Lib and let die posted:I've largely been thinking of stuff like Heli offices to be later-game investments...should I be replacing my standard construction office with a heli office instead? I'd just presumed the initial cost investment would be bank breaking early on but if that's a viable start strategy I might rethink my whole approach... Replace? No. Supplement? Yes, absolutely, the extra flexibility and speed is well worth it. I've been playing modded early starts lately and one of the mods I added is blimps, which can be used for construction, and I can't help but do it because they're so convenient. Also, hilarious looking.
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Dec 17, 2021 21:45
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Yeah the initial outlay for the helicopters and helipad infrastructure is expensive, but if you are either producing your own fuel or are willing to pay the cost, a heli construction yard is very good for getting long distance infrastructure built, because you will save so much time on driving, and it can supplement construction basically anywhere on the map, so it will stay useful for a very long time. I would suggest that you want all but one to be cargo helicopters because that's what you will be shipping the most of, and as big as possible. You can add an extra few slots to the helipad by building more helipads next to it so it can launch more helicopters, but it will not add more vehicle slots overall, just allow you to use more of them as helicopter slots, so you still want like, a crane, a paver, a bulldozer etc, to actually speed up the construction once you get the resources there. I would probably suggest a helicopter construction yard should be the first thing you go for after you've got your first settlement stable, because it will really help with building map-wide infrastructure networks for your expansion and literally everything you build subsequently. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 21:57 on Dec 17, 2021 |
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Dec 17, 2021 21:53
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OwlFancier posted:You can add an extra few slots to the helipad by building more helipads next to it so it can launch more helicopters, but it will not add more vehicle slots overall, just allow you to use more of them as helicopter slots, so you still want like, a crane, a paver, a bulldozer etc, to actually speed up the construction once you get the resources there. This is information I wish I knew quite some time ago! Also it's super expensive fuel wise, I would recommend against using it much or at all until you have either a surplus of trade income, or enough materials to steadily feed it, because you may otherwise get far, far more important rubles by exporting that fuel instead. It is, however, more logistically convenient if you have added cargo pad connections to your resources since they can carry any kind of cargo, and you don't have to worry about bus route timeouts if you have a workforce helipad Volmarias fucked around with this message at 02:16 on Dec 18, 2021 |
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Dec 18, 2021 02:14
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It can definitely be, yes, which is why I would only advocate it once you are in a stable financial position with presumably at least one industry set up in your first town. Generally I would plan out my first construction supply yard to service helicopters, but not build the helipads until later, then I would build a heli construction yard somewhere and assign it to the same buildings. A very important way to make them efficient is also to make sure you have plenty of landing pad capacity because they continue to burn fuel when idling in the air (which seems obvious, but if you have half a dozen of them waiting to go into the same concrete factory pad, that's a lot of fuel with how fast they burn it, even if you can't fill them much faster, it is still better to have them landed and waiting than in the air and waiting. That's the trick really, I find, is you want to minimise the amount of time they're in the air, which makes them very good for building across terrain obstacles that are not too far as the crow flies, and you can also use them pretty reasonably just as lift capacity for local constructions, because the short flights won't use that much fuel by comparison. But you can, equally, just throw fuel at them to solve problems, which itself is very nice. I usually build a fuel tank near the helibase and plumb it directly into the building, because especially if you add some extra helis, they will consume a fair bit more than one building can hold, so the spare tank is a good way to stockpile it for when you need a lot of it, much like with heating plant coal. I particualrly recommend it for highway building on the basis that unlike dump trucks, helicopters can drop aggregate and asphalt at the road site, and then gently caress off and get another load, they don't all wait in line behind each other for the paver, and they also don't need to do each road section in sequence they can just drop anywhere. Greatly accelerates the pace of building roads a long distance from your construction site which makes them worth the cost IMO. Generally my suggestion is that you want the heavy lift helis, I think MI16s? The ones that have like about 15t of lift capacity or so, and you want to wait until blowing a few hundred thousand on one doesn't seem utterly absurd, once you're at that point, I think that is a good time to make a helibase and start using it, because if you can afford the helicopter you can probably afford to run it too, though the volume of fuel used means you probably want to manually supply it to the base rather than magic buying it unless you are right on the border. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 02:59 on Dec 18, 2021 |
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Dec 18, 2021 02:52
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All you helicopter builders out here while I’m still paving roads without a mechanism in 1939! Let me take a moment to emphasize how much fun it is to mod your start date if you’re also okay dumping a ton of mods into the game. Early vehicle mods are mostly well balanced and at least for Soviet vehicles from about 1945 on, there aren’t any absolutely critical gaps. I started from 1932, and it does require using some NATO vehicle mods and if you want something like, say, a ship oil tanker, you’ve gotta go NATO as well. Still, it’s really fun especially if you hold yourself to only building more basic residential and other buildings on a small scale and then build up. Inevitably there aren’t era-appropriate buildings for everything, but there’s at least enough variation that I can have roughly “old (1930-1960)” “not old (1960-1970s~)” and “modern (anything else.)” For industry there’s really only “small and lovely” as a substitute for old and “the normal, massive, central” factories for modern, but it still kind of works. If you really lean into it you can limit yourself to not building a major refinery until a certain year, using only tiny modded ones that don’t give you nearly enough gas for your massive fleet of awful trucks that can only carry a few tons each because it’s 1947. It requires a lot of self policing but it’s breathed extra life into the game once it became a “solved problem” for me according to current rules. I like having old, lovely industries and cities that you want to modernize- but unlike the “old” cities on the map you’re in a stronger position where you can have the actual resources to upgrade but with the challenges of “oh poo poo, this is supporting a crucial thing - how do I do this project without interrupting the industry?” Like I said it’s weird and mostly a brain game I play for myself but it adds a lot if you’re that kind of player.
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Dec 18, 2021 04:12
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Do they have gigantic many tonne steam lorries as early vehicles? Bonus points if they somehow run on coal.
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Dec 18, 2021 04:59
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OwlFancier posted:Do they have gigantic many tonne steam lorries as early vehicles? Bonus points if they somehow run on coal. They do have some steam engine mods but unfortunately none actually use coal. e: I should qualify engine being train, I don't know if there's any steam trucks at all.
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Dec 18, 2021 05:30
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I haven't played this since the UI refresh. I was thinking about starting on the totally blank hills map. Do I still need to get a mod in order to build a church? Is this dumb should I just play with some prebuilt cities on the map?
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Dec 18, 2021 06:28
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Grevlek posted:I haven't played this since the UI refresh. I was thinking about starting on the totally blank hills map. Do I still need to get a mod in order to build a church? Is this dumb should I just play with some prebuilt cities on the map? You do need a mod to built a church but you don’t absolutely have to build a church. I try to follow the latter and keep a few cathedrals on my maps with a little bit of old city sometimes, but far from the entire population has access.
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Dec 18, 2021 07:27
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Anime Store Adventure posted:They do have some steam engine mods but unfortunately none actually use coal. there is a mod for a diesel refueling stop that takes a tiny amount of fuel to make it work and then draws from coal stocks. I've been using that with steam engines. It does get wacky if you have diesel and steam on the same line, though.
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Dec 18, 2021 08:24
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Log082 posted:there is a mod for a diesel refueling stop that takes a tiny amount of fuel to make it work and then draws from coal stocks. I've been using that with steam engines. It does get wacky if you have diesel and steam on the same line, though. That's a super smart workaround! I might check that out. My latest save I haven't quite jumped to rail yet and I suspect I might be into diesel before I'd use that but its way fun.
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Dec 18, 2021 09:03
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I keep giving up on early starts because it just takes so long. This game desperately needs like 3 more levels of fast forward. Does anyone actually play on any settings other than paused and 3x?
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Dec 18, 2021 14:42
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Anime Store Adventure posted:You do need a mod to built a church but you don’t absolutely have to build a church. I try to follow the latter and keep a few cathedrals on my maps with a little bit of old city sometimes, but far from the entire population has access. Yeah, as long as people are happy in your glorious communist society they won't actually want to go to church. Like you might get the "can't visit church" thing but it won't make them unhappy.
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Dec 18, 2021 15:16
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Arven posted:I keep giving up on early starts because it just takes so long. This game desperately needs like 3 more levels of fast forward. Does anyone actually play on any settings other than paused and 3x?
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Dec 18, 2021 16:51
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Arven posted:I keep giving up on early starts because it just takes so long. This game desperately needs like 3 more levels of fast forward. Does anyone actually play on any settings other than paused and 3x? Play? No, but I do occasionally use 1x speed as a glorified screensaver to watch the trains and trucks go by. zedprime posted:I think the trick is to get comfortable with basic needs supplying and order of operations so you can replace pause with 1x or 2x. Things move a bit more expediently if you reserve pause for absolute existential crisis. Also this. At a certain point it's definitely more efficient to plan out new infrastructure while your existing infrastructure keeps running.
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Dec 18, 2021 17:41
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Ok my unemployment is at 60% and I don't know how the gently caress to employ everyone? A bunch of the larger industrial facilities like the refinery or mines aren't anywhere near maxed out for staff though.
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Dec 29, 2021 15:54
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Did you start on a populated map? If so move people out of their old houses into ones near your transport lines. Otherwise buy more bus
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Dec 29, 2021 16:19
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So is that unemployment number counting all the preexisting villages?
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Dec 29, 2021 22:24
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Counts off total population yep. This is where the overlays can be really nice, turn on the one that shows you where unemployed people are to get a good idea of what's up
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Dec 30, 2021 00:31
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Minenfeld! posted:Ok my unemployment is at 60% and I don't know how the gently caress to employ everyone? A bunch of the larger industrial facilities like the refinery or mines aren't anywhere near maxed out for staff though. You just answered your own question. Also, good for large population centers where you don't have enough jobs for everyone, Radio and TV stations!
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Dec 30, 2021 23:54
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I'm playing my first cosmonaut type game, and I need some help understanding what I'm doing wrong here. To start with I finished setting up my starter location with all the construction, and a small clothing sweatshop to keep my money supply up. And then got started on setting up steel production, with a secondary residential area to supply workforce. On finishing up the coal production line and a heating plant I started moving people in to grow it while the rest of the steel stuff gets finished up, but nobody was showing up for work at the bus stop - I made the mistake of doing this just before winter and everyone died or escaped due to the lack of heat since no one showed up for work. So I reloaded a bit earlier to try and sus things out and do it right, but I'm just lost. This is my little residential area, with the coal and steel stuff there in the background. I have 97 productive workers, and all workplaces nearby are set to very low max workers, and all the constructions are suspended.  But no matter how long I wait no worker ever shows up at the bus stop, not a single one. It's all passengers. Still my unemployment hasn't moved much (solid at about 2% with 1780 population, 1019 workers). Nearby there are a: School, Kindergarten, Hospital, Cinema, Pool, firestation & small shopping center - but they should only take 37 to staff at max with where I've set them. So where is everyone?!
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Dec 31, 2021 03:27
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sloppy portmanteau posted:I'm playing my first cosmonaut type game, and I need some help understanding what I'm doing wrong here. To start with I finished setting up my starter location with all the construction, and a small clothing sweatshop to keep my money supply up. And then got started on setting up steel production, with a secondary residential area to supply workforce. On finishing up the coal production line and a heating plant I started moving people in to grow it while the rest of the steel stuff gets finished up, but nobody was showing up for work at the bus stop - I made the mistake of doing this just before winter and everyone died or escaped due to the lack of heat since no one showed up for work. So I reloaded a bit earlier to try and sus things out and do it right, but I'm just lost. Start by turning it off for passengers/students unless they need it
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Dec 31, 2021 14:32
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