there really needs to be a more peaceful way to recruit people from pods or rescued visitors. I'm not entirely down with locking them up and forcing them to join me
Instant recruitment methods would be cool. Aside from family members automatically joining up, imagine if pirates you capture after a raid make an offer like "2 silver every month" which you can accept at any time, outside of the normal low percentage recruitment chance. Better pirates could demand 5 silver a month, something like that. And if you run out of money they just leave, similar to a prison break.
And of course you could kill them and reclaim all the silver you paid them.
Or other requirements like "man we're just eating raw meat over in the pirate base, I will stay as long as I get simple quality meals or better," with a little buffer zone if they have to eat corn once or twice. And maybe the ones who think highly of themselves might demand fine meals.
I kinda feel like there should be an option to recruit any non-hostile non-trader who is on your map. I also get the random people just passing through and I kinda feel like there should be a non-violent means of interacting with them. Like offer them food and a place to sleep, maybe some clothes if they are naked. I'd rather not see the old man I rescued from an escape pod and nursed back to health walk off completely naked with no food.
other than it taking longer, there's literally no reason not to build any and all structures out of stone. Stronger than any non-idiotic building material (like sure, plasteel and uranium is better, but who's gonna build a uranium base?), fireproof, abundant on basically any map, and generally pretty. The only real downside is doors get slower to open which isn't much of a hassle with auto-doors eventually.
Stone is the real space age miracle material in this game. Down with plasteel
other than it taking longer, there's literally no reason not to build any and all structures out of stone. Stronger than any non-idiotic building material (like sure, plasteel and uranium is better, but who's gonna build a uranium base?), fireproof, abundant on basically any map, and generally pretty. The only real downside is doors get slower to open which isn't much of a hassle with auto-doors eventually.
Stone is the real space age miracle material in this game. Down with plasteel
I find autodoors kind of annoying since they can't be powered off. The main gets gets them and maybe one other room, but that's it. Sometimes during a fallout event I need to turn off every non-essential electrical thing so that I can run all my hydroponics and not have people starve. Plus, doors opening slow sounds like an underling problem, not something a big important guy like me needs to worry about.
You could theoretically run a power conduit to like, right underneath it and either power switch it or just remove a section or something.
They don't automatically reconnect, so you can get it to connect to a section of conduit, then disconnect that section, it'll stick
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AegisFear My DanceOvershot Toronto, Landed in OttawaRegistered Userregular
So hydroponics. I notice the planters say that the crops'll die if the electricity is cut. In the case of say, a solar flare, will battery power still work in supplying needed power?
solar flares kill all power, so no. batteries will help with ellipses, but you better be sure you can isolate the hydroponics because flares can last a long long time.
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Nova_CI have the needThe need for speedRegistered Userregular
Getting over the initial learning hump was tough, but things are settling out now. I wasn't sure if I liked it at first, just because it seems so frustrating.
Anyway, I've been playing pretty much all day. :P Got a volcanic winter going on right now, but my food stocks are solid. I was a little worried about spoilage when there was a blowout and all the batteries drained, followed immediately by an eclipse and just before that ended a solar flare.
So I was without power for several days since the wind turbines on their own couldn't power everything.
+2
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AegisFear My DanceOvershot Toronto, Landed in OttawaRegistered Userregular
First thing is to check what traits your colonists have and plan accordingly. Personally, I never want a pyromaniac and will reroll them or find some way to get them killed. I don't want to be baby sitting them and arresting them when they go on a pyro binge. Next on the list are those depressed because they can be awesome in their skills and stuff, but if they're wandering around mentally broken half the time, they're not worth the food and resources.
At first I don't think it's worth catering to nudists/night owls until you have enough colonists to split shifts out/have specialists or get established because with small numbers of people you need to have everyone doing as much as possible.
Basic tips:
Get the simple stuff done. Beds, even if shared bedrooms at first. Table and chairs to eat at. Make sure people are sleeping warm. Split out the bedrooms as soon as possible after you secure food because that's a low hanging fruit in terms of mood modifiers.
Keep Stuff Clean and tidy. Haul those rocks out of the base, clean up the rubble. More low hanging fruit mood modifiers
Lights. If you're digging out a huge area, get some torches in there so the miners aren't in total darkness. They're already going to take mood hits for being in a dirty, ugly confined space so torches are a cheap way to remove another negative.
Simple hunts (non-herds or small animals) you can let hunters go off and do their own thing solo. Herds or culling dangerous stuff like wolves/bears you draft and bring a group for the kill.
Keep an eye on the predator critters. I usually scan them every day or so and check their food need. If they're low-ish, I need to be on the watch if they're going to start hunting my pawns. Or preemptively kill them so they're no longer a threat.
Firewall lines are good for defensive positions. That's a wall, sandbag, wall segment. Walls don't overlap so as you extend it'll look like wall, sandbag, wall, wall, sandbag, wall etc... That gives two hard cover and one half cover and still being able to shoot through.
Try not to defend across more than one direction. Your pawns will stupidly turn and shoot through their own if they can
Clear out all the space ahead of your defensive position. Give attackers no cover on their approach.
A bunker is great. Put a roof on it and have your pawns be in total darkness inside and there's a massive penalty for shooting into the bunker while there's a minor penalty shooting out. That plus hard cover because the walls are in the firewall design etc... is a great way to gain an advantage in a firefight. e: Clip off any rock outcrops that are near the kill zones so there's sheer perpendicular lines. Give minimal cover.
If you're feeling confident, use a dumping stockpile zone and cover the entire area ahead of your battle lines with rock chunks. It's fugly according to your pawns, but for you the commander of colony survival battles, it's a beautiful hazardous walk towards the meat grinder. You may want have a plain empty gap as some point because you cannot stand on chunks so pawns will keep moving towards you if you've left them no room before your bunker/lines. Oh and the rock chunks slow down anyone moving over them. So you slow down the movement of anyone approaching AND you can also dictate where they can stand by removing rock chunks in strategic locations
I like to get tailoring up ASAP to be able to craft replacement clothes. Some of the randoms you get into your colony may be naked. Which is bad because that just means a mood penalty no matter what. Mood penalty if they stay naked, mood penalty for wearing scrappy clothes that are left over from a raid.
On a similar note. Yeah, that body armour is great to keep people alive. Pity it has like 20 durability left because it's recovered from a raider but that also means no one likes wearing it. Leave it near the front of the base, say in an armoury room or something and equip it as you prepare to fight so you don't have a permanent mood penalty
Similar goes for weapons. Arm as necessary. You don't want to subdue someone who went berserk with a knife because that was their assigned gear for a fight. Neither do you want someone open up with their shotgun because that depressed pyromaniac you really should have harvested for organs decided to take his frustrations over his (lack of a) love life out on the doctor. Actually, come to think of it, depressed pyro trying to harm the doctor? Yeah let the guy get fragged with a shotgun.
Edit:
Scavenge animal corpses. You don't give a crap that a wild boar carcass was the handiwork of a wolf and half of it was eaten. There's still half a carcass out there ready to be butchered and hey, it didn't require time from your hunter to create! Tag it, get a hauler to bring it back in and celebrate with another 3-4 meals with hardly any effort. This of course assumes that the area is clear of the predator that created that free lunch... Treat the exercise as a nightly check. Scan the map for little red x marks which indicate an object that won't be automatically interacted with, check what it's on and if it's a corpse, scan around for the thing that made it and if it's safe, flip the interaction flag and pat yourself on the back for finding takeout. May also be an opportunity to scan for new herds of animals to hunt...
Colonists generally eat about twice a day. This means 20 pieces of raw food = 2 simple meals a day per colonist. Do not underestimate how much food this represents. 5 colonists over 15 days (one season) will require at least 1500 raw food or 150 meals. A single cell of crops will generate ~2 food per day. This means 2 hydroponics will barely feed a single colonist before you account for the fertility modifier which you probably want to leave as a 'oh shit' modifier due to solar flares, blight and whatnot. So, 2.5 tables per colonist.
Once you've diversified your food stores, consider moving to Fine food full time. This obviously requires a decent cook but the big stumbling block in moving to fine food full time is how much work is required to make the stuff. In the order of 4x more work, which means you need to make the creation of the stuff really really efficient. Here's what I do after learning about it:
Put a chair where the cook will be standing, or should I say sitting. They're going to need to get comfortable.
Place like 2-4 additional stockpile zones on either side. These are higher priority than your food stockpiles and will contain meat or vegetables. Hopefully you have both there. For each of those stockpiles, drop a stool right on top on the same spot. This prevents the cook from moving into that cell. They can still reach the stockpiles though. This is important.
Place another stockpile just behind the cook with the lowest priority and/or capable of holding nothing. This is purely so you can get a counter of all the food you're going to make.
For every bill you set to make food, specify to drop the item onto the floor when crafted. Put the source radius to something small, like 6 meters. It'll cover the stockpile zones and that's it.
Like so:
Result: Your cook will stand in one spot. They'll grab the ingredients off the side tables/stools without budging from the spot, cook with zero delay, drop the product and immediately start cooking the next one. So long as you have haulers (you DO have them, right?) they'll top off the ingredient stockpiles and carry the stuff from the drop zone into your freezer. This will make you produce fine meals faster than simple meals having the cook grab ingredients out of the freezer and dropping off the finished meal right at the back of your freezer for no god damn good reason other than to waste time.
AegisFear My DanceOvershot Toronto, Landed in OttawaRegistered Userregular
I would amend the previous awesome advice with: all of your random colonist recruits will be naked. Some will be missing pants, others shirts, while some will arrive wearing only a touque.
This would be great if they were nudists, but they never are.
I love when raiders show up and surprise, one of them is a colonist's husband or something. I can hear the Whedon banter in my head.
"Why does that guy know your name!?"
"That's uh.. that's my husband."
"Well tell your husband to stop shooting at us!"
"He never listened to me, that's why I left!"
I had a colony where one raider party had friends and family to two of my colonists (they were sisters)
That entire party got wiped out and the two sisters were not on speaking terms with the third. Killed friends. Killed father etc...
Well, if he surrendered we wouldn't have this problem now, would we?
Could just be unlucky TBH. The alternative would be to prioritise turrets. Making your own guns requires components and turrets allow you to add guns that aren't tied to the number of meatbags
I'm thinking if I were to restart my colony, I'd actually put Hydroponics research behind turrets. I'd claim land outside my mountain entrance, wall off a part and roof it, then set up the sun lamp inside there and grow stuff on the soil. I'm not playing on an ice sheet so there's still fertile soil and it comes with the bonus that I don't lose everything in a solar flare. And I get the thing up and running well before hydros would come online.
The purpose of that is to conserve components so I can build turrets. I'll then wall off and funnel everything through one vector, guard it with turrets and such which then helps protect my exterior assets and shore up defences so I'm not reliant on peashooters.
Firewall lines are good for defensive positions. That's a wall, sandbag, wall segment. Walls don't overlap so as you extend it'll look like wall, sandbag, wall, wall, sandbag, wall etc... That gives two hard cover and one half cover and still being able to shoot through.
I found an embrasure mod in the Steam workshop, which really cuts down on the defensive construction silliness for me. Colonist can shoot through them, enemies can't walk through them.
A wall with a hole in it is not exactly space-age design, and I got pretty tired of melee enemies just running through defenses because shooting is so shitty.
The problem with the embrasures is that they don't provide the half-cover bonus of the sandbags. They're effectively projectile transparent walls for you to prevent enemies from walking right through your line and start hacking away with their melee weapons.
Using them without employing full/half cover is just asking to get shot.
That said, they are PERFECT for creating a position at the front of your base to shoot those packs of manhunting creatures without any risk.
I just use them as an outer layer to a bunker or position so the defensive line/bunker is double thick walls instead of single thick. Expensive when it comes to building materials and time, and the alternative is to just plop them down right in front of the sandbags.
Embrasures are also excellent for infestations. They count as walls, your people are happy enough having an enclosed room with an embrasure in the wall, and in the event bugs dig in, just shoot them through the holes.
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Nova_CI have the needThe need for speedRegistered Userregular
Are shorts supposed to be this common? Is there a way to prevent them?
My current game just ended with the fourth explosion caused by a short before I even got to the first winter. It caught my entire food supply on fire and everyone died trying to fight it (So, either everyone burns to death or everyone starves to death). I get shorts all the time, constant explosions. I'm playing with Phoebe Chillax on Rough.
I can't imagine finishing this game even being possible playing with Cassandra.
Hell, it doesn't seem possible With Phoebe. I'm guessing you're only supposed to get very far if you turn off random events?
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Fleebhas all of the fleeb juiceRegistered Userregular
edited August 2016
Fuse mod is a must-have
you don't have things that need electricity sitting out in the rain, right?
Are shorts supposed to be this common? Is there a way to prevent them?
My current game just ended with the fourth explosion caused by a short before I even got to the first winter. It caught my entire food supply on fire and everyone died trying to fight it (So, either everyone burns to death or everyone starves to death). I get shorts all the time, constant explosions. I'm playing with Phoebe Chillax on Rough.
I can't imagine finishing this game even being possible playing with Cassandra.
Hell, it doesn't seem possible With Phoebe. I'm guessing you're only supposed to get very far if you turn off random events?
What is shorting out and are you putting it under a roof?
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Nova_CI have the needThe need for speedRegistered Userregular
edited August 2016
The power conduit.
And it's inside my base. Like, I don't build anything out of wood because my base would be constantly burning down.
EDIT: And it happens regardless of weather anyway.
EDIT2: I'm careful about the rain because the first time I built batteries, I built them outside. :P
I played the same map for like 30 hours over the weekend with no batteries and no electrical explosions at all, so there's that, too
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Nova_CI have the needThe need for speedRegistered Userregular
A battery thing I guess? Anyway, the message that came up was Bzzzzzt, but the explosion happens somewhere along the power conduit.
I downloaded the fuses mod, so maybe that'll help?
I'm rather ticked. I just managed to get through a major raid that got me some good weapons. Not even a day passed before this explosion killed the entire colony.
Posts
Instant recruitment methods would be cool. Aside from family members automatically joining up, imagine if pirates you capture after a raid make an offer like "2 silver every month" which you can accept at any time, outside of the normal low percentage recruitment chance. Better pirates could demand 5 silver a month, something like that. And if you run out of money they just leave, similar to a prison break.
And of course you could kill them and reclaim all the silver you paid them.
Or other requirements like "man we're just eating raw meat over in the pirate base, I will stay as long as I get simple quality meals or better," with a little buffer zone if they have to eat corn once or twice. And maybe the ones who think highly of themselves might demand fine meals.
Stonecutting, you are my new best friend.
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
Stone is the real space age miracle material in this game. Down with plasteel
challenge accepted.
They don't automatically reconnect, so you can get it to connect to a section of conduit, then disconnect that section, it'll stick
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
Anyway, I've been playing pretty much all day. :P Got a volcanic winter going on right now, but my food stocks are solid. I was a little worried about spoilage when there was a blowout and all the batteries drained, followed immediately by an eclipse and just before that ended a solar flare.
So I was without power for several days since the wind turbines on their own couldn't power everything.
"Rebuffed by X -5"
"Rebuffed by Y x3 -14"
Stop asking people out
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
At first I don't think it's worth catering to nudists/night owls until you have enough colonists to split shifts out/have specialists or get established because with small numbers of people you need to have everyone doing as much as possible.
Basic tips:
Get the simple stuff done. Beds, even if shared bedrooms at first. Table and chairs to eat at. Make sure people are sleeping warm. Split out the bedrooms as soon as possible after you secure food because that's a low hanging fruit in terms of mood modifiers.
Keep Stuff Clean and tidy. Haul those rocks out of the base, clean up the rubble. More low hanging fruit mood modifiers
Lights. If you're digging out a huge area, get some torches in there so the miners aren't in total darkness. They're already going to take mood hits for being in a dirty, ugly confined space so torches are a cheap way to remove another negative.
Simple hunts (non-herds or small animals) you can let hunters go off and do their own thing solo. Herds or culling dangerous stuff like wolves/bears you draft and bring a group for the kill.
Keep an eye on the predator critters. I usually scan them every day or so and check their food need. If they're low-ish, I need to be on the watch if they're going to start hunting my pawns. Or preemptively kill them so they're no longer a threat.
Firewall lines are good for defensive positions. That's a wall, sandbag, wall segment. Walls don't overlap so as you extend it'll look like wall, sandbag, wall, wall, sandbag, wall etc... That gives two hard cover and one half cover and still being able to shoot through.
Try not to defend across more than one direction. Your pawns will stupidly turn and shoot through their own if they can
Clear out all the space ahead of your defensive position. Give attackers no cover on their approach.
A bunker is great. Put a roof on it and have your pawns be in total darkness inside and there's a massive penalty for shooting into the bunker while there's a minor penalty shooting out. That plus hard cover because the walls are in the firewall design etc... is a great way to gain an advantage in a firefight.
e: Clip off any rock outcrops that are near the kill zones so there's sheer perpendicular lines. Give minimal cover.
If you're feeling confident, use a dumping stockpile zone and cover the entire area ahead of your battle lines with rock chunks. It's fugly according to your pawns, but for you the commander of colony survival battles, it's a beautiful hazardous walk towards the meat grinder. You may want have a plain empty gap as some point because you cannot stand on chunks so pawns will keep moving towards you if you've left them no room before your bunker/lines. Oh and the rock chunks slow down anyone moving over them. So you slow down the movement of anyone approaching AND you can also dictate where they can stand by removing rock chunks in strategic locations
I like to get tailoring up ASAP to be able to craft replacement clothes. Some of the randoms you get into your colony may be naked. Which is bad because that just means a mood penalty no matter what. Mood penalty if they stay naked, mood penalty for wearing scrappy clothes that are left over from a raid.
On a similar note. Yeah, that body armour is great to keep people alive. Pity it has like 20 durability left because it's recovered from a raider but that also means no one likes wearing it. Leave it near the front of the base, say in an armoury room or something and equip it as you prepare to fight so you don't have a permanent mood penalty
Similar goes for weapons. Arm as necessary. You don't want to subdue someone who went berserk with a knife because that was their assigned gear for a fight. Neither do you want someone open up with their shotgun because that depressed pyromaniac you really should have harvested for organs decided to take his frustrations over his (lack of a) love life out on the doctor. Actually, come to think of it, depressed pyro trying to harm the doctor? Yeah let the guy get fragged with a shotgun.
Edit:
Scavenge animal corpses. You don't give a crap that a wild boar carcass was the handiwork of a wolf and half of it was eaten. There's still half a carcass out there ready to be butchered and hey, it didn't require time from your hunter to create! Tag it, get a hauler to bring it back in and celebrate with another 3-4 meals with hardly any effort. This of course assumes that the area is clear of the predator that created that free lunch... Treat the exercise as a nightly check. Scan the map for little red x marks which indicate an object that won't be automatically interacted with, check what it's on and if it's a corpse, scan around for the thing that made it and if it's safe, flip the interaction flag and pat yourself on the back for finding takeout. May also be an opportunity to scan for new herds of animals to hunt...
Colonists generally eat about twice a day. This means 20 pieces of raw food = 2 simple meals a day per colonist. Do not underestimate how much food this represents. 5 colonists over 15 days (one season) will require at least 1500 raw food or 150 meals. A single cell of crops will generate ~2 food per day. This means 2 hydroponics will barely feed a single colonist before you account for the fertility modifier which you probably want to leave as a 'oh shit' modifier due to solar flares, blight and whatnot. So, 2.5 tables per colonist.
Once you've diversified your food stores, consider moving to Fine food full time. This obviously requires a decent cook but the big stumbling block in moving to fine food full time is how much work is required to make the stuff. In the order of 4x more work, which means you need to make the creation of the stuff really really efficient. Here's what I do after learning about it:
Put a chair where the cook will be standing, or should I say sitting. They're going to need to get comfortable.
Place like 2-4 additional stockpile zones on either side. These are higher priority than your food stockpiles and will contain meat or vegetables. Hopefully you have both there. For each of those stockpiles, drop a stool right on top on the same spot. This prevents the cook from moving into that cell. They can still reach the stockpiles though. This is important.
Place another stockpile just behind the cook with the lowest priority and/or capable of holding nothing. This is purely so you can get a counter of all the food you're going to make.
For every bill you set to make food, specify to drop the item onto the floor when crafted. Put the source radius to something small, like 6 meters. It'll cover the stockpile zones and that's it.
Like so:
Result: Your cook will stand in one spot. They'll grab the ingredients off the side tables/stools without budging from the spot, cook with zero delay, drop the product and immediately start cooking the next one. So long as you have haulers (you DO have them, right?) they'll top off the ingredient stockpiles and carry the stuff from the drop zone into your freezer. This will make you produce fine meals faster than simple meals having the cook grab ingredients out of the freezer and dropping off the finished meal right at the back of your freezer for no god damn good reason other than to waste time.
This would be great if they were nudists, but they never are.
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
Once I did I found I had a freaking vampire in my midsts! Well, maybe not a vampire, but I can't be certain.
It was my doctor. Biologically she was 19, chronologically she was freakimg 1083
"Why does that guy know your name!?"
"That's uh.. that's my husband."
"Well tell your husband to stop shooting at us!"
"He never listened to me, that's why I left!"
That entire party got wiped out and the two sisters were not on speaking terms with the third. Killed friends. Killed father etc...
Well, if he surrendered we wouldn't have this problem now, would we?
Like, people, plz.
Also, my colony ended last night.
I was still using the starting weapons. So I guess the game expects you to just focus on research? The best weapon I could craft was a bow.
It's time spent frozen in cryosleep caskets.
It's also why parents can end up being younger than children sometimes.
I was super confused at seeing a daughter older than her mother until I clued in what that second number in brackets meant.
I'm thinking if I were to restart my colony, I'd actually put Hydroponics research behind turrets. I'd claim land outside my mountain entrance, wall off a part and roof it, then set up the sun lamp inside there and grow stuff on the soil. I'm not playing on an ice sheet so there's still fertile soil and it comes with the bonus that I don't lose everything in a solar flare. And I get the thing up and running well before hydros would come online.
The purpose of that is to conserve components so I can build turrets. I'll then wall off and funnel everything through one vector, guard it with turrets and such which then helps protect my exterior assets and shore up defences so I'm not reliant on peashooters.
http://www.cad-comic.com/cad/20160727
I found an embrasure mod in the Steam workshop, which really cuts down on the defensive construction silliness for me. Colonist can shoot through them, enemies can't walk through them.
A wall with a hole in it is not exactly space-age design, and I got pretty tired of melee enemies just running through defenses because shooting is so shitty.
Using them without employing full/half cover is just asking to get shot.
That said, they are PERFECT for creating a position at the front of your base to shoot those packs of manhunting creatures without any risk.
Can just stack some sandbags in front of them, I suppose.
My current game just ended with the fourth explosion caused by a short before I even got to the first winter. It caught my entire food supply on fire and everyone died trying to fight it (So, either everyone burns to death or everyone starves to death). I get shorts all the time, constant explosions. I'm playing with Phoebe Chillax on Rough.
I can't imagine finishing this game even being possible playing with Cassandra.
Hell, it doesn't seem possible With Phoebe. I'm guessing you're only supposed to get very far if you turn off random events?
you don't have things that need electricity sitting out in the rain, right?
What is shorting out and are you putting it under a roof?
And it's inside my base. Like, I don't build anything out of wood because my base would be constantly burning down.
EDIT: And it happens regardless of weather anyway.
EDIT2: I'm careful about the rain because the first time I built batteries, I built them outside. :P
I played the same map for like 30 hours over the weekend with no batteries and no electrical explosions at all, so there's that, too
I downloaded the fuses mod, so maybe that'll help?
I'm rather ticked. I just managed to get through a major raid that got me some good weapons. Not even a day passed before this explosion killed the entire colony.
It happened in the freezer, set the entire room ablaze.
Everyone died trying to fight the fire.