For your regular metal woes, are you using your RC to harvest the dark? Tons of loose metal just laying about.
I had, but I guess I didn't go far enough out. I didn't realize how much metal was laying around in far flung sectors until my second game; or that meteor impacts left it behind.
Correction: Attempt #2 was not in a mismanagement spiral at all.
Meteorite must have broken the power lines in a drone dead zone between the main distribution grid and the wind generation mesa; which was an embarrassingly easy fix. So if we're still all gonna die of Mystery, at least we'll die with the lights on!
Now, if you'll excuse me, I guess I have some cyanide pills to recall.
Pop controls found. They probably should give a global button to push to either shut it down completely, turn it up or put it at levels that aren't breeding like rabbits. I have one of each wonder now and the Omega Telescope gave me the breakthrough to build biorobots, so I'll probably aim to make most of my pops biorobots. Much easier to manage.
Feel like I missed out on a breakthrough somewhere. Also not sure if nuking the ice caps is bug or if some doofus forget to mention in the expedition text, that it has a chance to cause great dust storms. Just got hit by two of those and I recall them rolling it shortly after ice cap nuking. Either that or it's just straight up broken because I didn't start seeing dust storms until those two and they were after I hit 50% atmosphere.
Currently just need to get 100% temp and vegetation. Plants will probably be last. I'll see if I can finish leveling all the land in my little zone before I hit those. Leaving the two cliffs up, but flattening the tops out.
I should see if I could in theory run an achievement capable game with a colony that relies on nothing but bots. Granted, I think I'd have to import everything because biorobots can only be made on site. So no option of researching them and then bringing them in to run shit that the drones can't operate. So might just have to run a game where I have a rule that disables achievements, but let's me essentially attempt to run a colony with out annoying meatbags. Though maybe there is a mod to import biorobots after researching them.
As far as advance resources go, seems like the order of achieving self-sufficiency is
polymers, not hard since a good setup will produce adequate water and thus fuel, which is used to make them.
machine parts, metals aren't to hard to come by and the Mohole mine can make this even easier to pull off.
electronics are probably the hardest, but depending on luck and one's choices, it can beat out seeds. Seeds are the other hard one to hit self-sufficiency on, but usually when that seems to be possible, based on my two games of play, it just rapidly snowballs.
Yeah, every time I nuked the ice caps I got a dust storm, even after they're not supposed to happen any more. Either I got bad luck, or 'chance to cause' means 'will cause'. It's still worth doing, but it's good to make sure you're set up for the storm ahead of time (plenty of storage, and making sure that resources are well spread out).
PSA: If there's something outside your drone command range, you can manually order drones to go do it. The only thing to watch out for it if they run out of power while they're out there, so keep an eye on them (you can send another drone to go save them if you need to, but if they all get stuck out there, you're in real trouble).
It needs some micromanagement, but it can be useful for fixing problems you can't reach otherwise.
Seeds are the other hard one to hit self-sufficiency on, but usually when that seems to be possible, based on my two games of play, it just rapidly snowballs.
There's a seed bearing indoor farm crop that yields around 1/sol, it seems to sustain a veggie-planter. Are there other seed demands to keep up on later?
Well I wasn't enabling pop controls as much as I should have, so I really need to crank out the food. I suppose with better pop control, it's probably easier to turn out enough seeds. It's just, given how slow vegetation levels are, it's really worth getting a few forestation plants going so one is at 40% before they can start using expeditions to speed up plant growth across the planet. Honestly, vegetation is probably the worst one because you hit a point where the forestation plants apparently don't help, still nice if you want to make areas green or wooded, but there is a point where it's just waiting for the game to offer up expeditions that help with vegetation.
Yeah, I got to a point where I had everything else at 100%, but vegetation was still at 52%. All I could do was wait for expeditions to increase it (despite the fact that I now had enough resources to send a fleet).
Eventually I just got a mod that removes the 40% cap on plants adding to the effect. I do get the logic behind it, but I was just stuck there waiting for sols on end. I'd like to replace it with one that just makes the vegetation expeditions always available, but I can't find one and can't work out how to make one.
Population control is a LOT easier now with the connected domes. Use a central residential dome and surround it with work/service domes. Then you just have one dome you can turn births on and off in.
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CaptainPeacockBoard Game HoarderTop o' the LakeRegistered Userregular
The pops dont like working in a dome they don't live in, but that can be compensated for.
Cluck cluck, gibber gibber, my old man's a mushroom, etc.
The pops dont like working in a dome they don't live in, but that can be compensated for.
I'd give them a lot more shit for complaining about a 5 minute walk to work if they weren't such good sports about being periodically starved and frozen.
Speaking if waiting for sols on end, Wildfire:
90 thousand beakers for this cure?I suspected my sub-1000 research capacity was a little behind the curve, but this is a hell of a way to find out.
The one time I pick one of these games up and don't go all-in on research, and this is the crisis I get? Well played, Luck-gods. Well played.
The pops dont like working in a dome they don't live in, but that can be compensated for.
I'd give them a lot more shit for complaining about a 5 minute walk to work if they weren't such good sports about being periodically starved and frozen.
Speaking if waiting for sols on end, Wildfire:
90 thousand beakers for this cure?I suspected my sub-1000 research capacity was a little behind the curve, but this is a hell of a way to find out.
The one time I pick one of these games up and don't go all-in on research, and this is the crisis I get? Well played, Luck-gods. Well played.
How's your cashflow? Research outsourcing can be quite affordable if you've got a decent export business going on.
The pops dont like working in a dome they don't live in, but that can be compensated for.
I'd give them a lot more shit for complaining about a 5 minute walk to work if they weren't such good sports about being periodically starved and frozen.
Speaking if waiting for sols on end, Wildfire:
90 thousand beakers for this cure?I suspected my sub-1000 research capacity was a little behind the curve, but this is a hell of a way to find out.
The one time I pick one of these games up and don't go all-in on research, and this is the crisis I get? Well played, Luck-gods. Well played.
How's your cashflow? Research outsourcing can be quite affordable if you've got a decent export business going on.
Cashflow is solid; the Space Y Corporation is not a charity, after all. So I can afford the $200/sol price tag, but that's still gonna be a long time without heavy investment in new lab space.
Which is fine, I've had the building ghosts laid down near a distant research bonus for a while now; just been waiting to get shuttle access to schlep food/supplies over there. (Which I conveniently just got!)
Yeah, I have some ideas for the next play through. I have a better idea on how to manage pops. I do want to see if I can do the no population outpost (can't really call it a colony if there are no people), but I'd probably have to disable achievements and go with the setup that has the biggest passive income.
I'm currently, trying to get the workshop milestone. I'm hoping that there is only one achievement associated with workshops because it's a fucking awful achievement because there is no indication on how many pops are in workshops. Biorobot pops are another one that there isn't a way to track them.
Just slowly waiting for 100% vegetation and wondering if I can get 40% of my workforce in workshops before then. If that's all I have to do with workshops, then I'm never touching them again because they are worthless. I had almost 30K research before shifting gears and the two repeatables were decent cash (need an option to just tell the game to auto queue those).
As for research, there is the communication expedition (I think that's the one) that boosts research as well. It has diminishing returns but if one has the resources, it's a good resource sink to up research output. Maybe that's the stacking thing someone was mentioning because I don't think outsourcing stacks. One could opt for the bigger chunk.
Also there is the explorer research boost that stacks. Diminishing returns there as well, but again if you need research and have resources to spar, always an option to have a small fleet of those sitting around doing nothing but contributing minor research boosts. I would avoid he magnetic field generator buildings as a research boost option because of the marsquakes. I wish I could get a 4th, probably a 5th & 6th one as well, magnetic shield expedition. So that I can take those things off line and not have to worry about atmospheric losses. Though haven't checked to see if you can turn off the part that cause quakes, while still getting research out of them. Also they are really pricy and slow to build.
The marsquakes didn't bother me too much with the magnetic field generators. They generate a pretty awesome amount of research once you can afford them, in addition to the obvious speeding up terraforming thing. You can totally get to 100% terraforming without them, but I spaced them out enough that having them around for the research was worth it even after I maxed out the terraforming side. But, by the time I had them I was running pretty solid resource surpluses everywhere, which will definitely mitigate the pain of repairs.
Are rival colonies much more than resource exchangers?
The wiki is pretty light on the whole diplomacy angle. It looks like the only options there are to bribe them into good standing, then trade or raid when you are.
My outsourcing doesnt allow stacking. Are you sure that standard?
It definitely used to be. It might have been patched out because it got super exploitable if you randomised the tech and got Martian copyrights early.
Research Martian copyrights for 1000 research, get enough money to buy 10,000 research, research Martian copyrights a dozen times, repeat until you can blitz half the tech tree before the diminishing returns catches up with you.
My outsourcing doesnt allow stacking. Are you sure that standard?
It definitely used to be. It might have been patched out because it got super exploitable if you randomised the tech and got Martian copyrights early.
Research Martian copyrights for 1000 research, get enough money to buy 10,000 research, research Martian copyrights a dozen times, repeat until you can blitz half the tech tree before the diminishing returns catches up with you.
Tried it last night, it said I couldn't "outsource more than one project to Earth at this time," suggesting there may still be a circumstance where this is possible.
Doing some checking, it looks like yeah, they patched it to only once at a time.
It was very exploitable, so I get it.
And if you're happy to exploit things, you may as well get a mod to help things along anyway. I saw one building that just produces 5k research for a hundred power.
Well flattened the map. Gotten everything to 100%. Managed to get 200 vegans, now I never have to import vegans in an future games for the achievement. Still no sign of the 40% of my workforce in workshops milestone. At about 2k colonists, I'm thinking my best bet is to nuke the game. Partly because I think it made the machine I was using have a seizure. I actually really hate this milestone, partly because there is no fucking way to track progress for this. I also think I'll have an easier time with a new colony, since I now know how to keep my pop number under control.
Also they need to work on auto pop management. My colony had a huge population boom, then I enabled strict population control and had the idiocy where the boomer pop died off and still was dealing with tons of unemployment despite having hundreds of free job slots and housing. I think part of the issue, is that the game is tagging a home dome and doing it in a way that interferes with natural migration. Also putting a preference for specialists is a bad idea, game then shoves all of them in a dome, when you also want some security officers, medics and unspecialized peeps for services. Only worth using that filter to shuttle children to their Martian society acclimation dome and to put unproductive olds in a warehouse dome if you don't have forever young tech.
For those that have gotten all the milestones, does the game actually end or does it go on forever?
Also putting a preference for specialists is a bad idea, game then shoves all of them in a dome, when you also want some security officers, medics and unspecialized peeps for services.
This is a problem I've not yet had the luxury to have, but have been mulling over.
Would setting a pref for Engineers and Unskilled, then setting all the Engineer jobs to specialist-only, result in the optimal mix of grocers and part manufacturers?
Is available employment a strong weighting factor? Would you get more Unskilled than you had unskilled jobs?
I'd just let natural migration takes it's course, they slowly sort themselves out . . . kinda. Colonists in the incorrect job are better than no one working the job and unemployment, also better than having the game trying to cram all the specialists of a the preferred type into the same dome.
I need to figure out the mechanics for how the university picks specializations and the optimal ratio of universities to trainable colonists.
The game doesn't have an official end, you can keep going forever. But once you've hit all the milestones and done the mystery, there's not much to keep you in unless there's an achievement you're after.
If you want to force the 40% workshop thing, you can make sure you've built enough workshops, then shut everything else down.
(A good scheme if you can manage it is to build a workshop very early on before you get your population boom, so you can quickly pack it with most of your population, get a massive research reward, then tear it down again)
As for unemployment, I see the most common problem being that there's too big a gap between workplaces and accommodation. Passages are a good stopgap early one when you can't build the larger domes, but once you move up to mega/diamond domes, you can usually put everything you need in one dome, and use that as a guide for building more. I'm not sure what difference comfort makes, but if there's a nice house somewhere with no jobs, they might pick that over the job where you have to stay in a crappy apartment. That's why I only build crappy apartments everywhere.
So I'm not very far yet, but so far I only have 1 annoyance that I haven't found a way around. Drones won't get resources from depots out of their command sphere, which makes sense, but is annoying when my mining dome is away from my research dome and I have to manually transport materials to build stuff. Would be nice is they intelligently moved materials between hubs when you need them
So I'm not very far yet, but so far I only have 1 annoyance that I haven't found a way around. Drones won't get resources from depots out of their command sphere, which makes sense, but is annoying when my mining dome is away from my research dome and I have to manually transport materials to build stuff. Would be nice is they intelligently moved materials between hubs when you need them
If the drone Hubs have overlapping spheres, you can put a universal depot in the middle and set it to have a minimum of all resources, and the drones will use it as a relay.
For longer distances, you'll have to wait until you get the Shuttle Hub.
So I'm not very far yet, but so far I only have 1 annoyance that I haven't found a way around. Drones won't get resources from depots out of their command sphere, which makes sense, but is annoying when my mining dome is away from my research dome and I have to manually transport materials to build stuff. Would be nice is they intelligently moved materials between hubs when you need them
If the drone Hubs have overlapping spheres, you can put a universal depot in the middle and set it to have a minimum of all resources, and the drones will use it as a relay.
For longer distances, you'll have to wait until you get the Shuttle Hub.
Wait, the shuttle hub will do this?
Right now I'm at a point where I wasn't paying attention and need more colonists since I just built my research dome, but have no rockets since they are all refueling on Mars at this time...
Yeah, universal depos are great as relay depos or to setup next structures to hold resources for maintenance. I know some of the guides advise against universal depos but they are really useful for maintenance and relay points. You only want to use dedicated depos near structures that regularly consume or produce resources on a large scale. example, food depos near domes & outdoor farms. polymer depos near the polymer factory & domes that have tons of art workshops. ect, ect. Storage structure should be used sparingly since it uses machine parts, but those can be useful for tons of storage.
On resources, the devs might want to revise how things work for them. The two big offenders are that some resources fully deplete without a way to get them outside of things like the Mohole. The other being that there is a point where the player is drowning in certain resources and in some cases that can bone you (worst offender is metal since you have to move it away from the Mohole in order for it to keep working and even an non-upgrade Mohole can result in silly things, like filling up afar away plains with metal depos. Also human resources get wonky, given that a ton of the automated stuff shows up after getting colonists and that extractors do run out.
-Mohole should be adjust so that either metal production can be turned off completely or so the player has to choose between metals or rare metals.
-Waste rock needs another sink. Currently the chooses are either grab Brazil to turn it into something useful, research the means to turn it into concrete or turn it into atmospheric gases. Not everyone want to play Brazil every playthrough. We only need so much concrete before that creates issues. Turning it into atmosphere is only worthwhile until you hit a point where the drop outpaces losses and one wants to keep those structures at a minimum since they use machine parts. Maybe a structure that will randomly converts waste rock into metal, rare metals, polymers or fuel, this would keep Brazil's perk being good, but give everyone else an option to burn off waste rock. Make this structure use metal for maintenance.
-There should be the option to sell off resources that aren't rare metals. I'd be fine if we got paid 1/5 of what those cost to import. Also if it was setup only to unlock after a certain number of techs are researched, so that short sighted players can't easily whine about hosing themselves because they sold off a surplus that should have been kept.
-We should have threshold that allows us to tell stuff to stop producing once resources hit a certain level, while also having auto exports stop if resources deep below a certain level.
-metal and rare metal deposits probably shouldn't fully deplete. Upon depletion, they should give a very, very minor amount of resources. Not enough to make someone feel like they need to keep the extractors up, but something to make it worth keeping around.
-We have a ton of worthless techs that could be replaced with something else. One could be a research option that lets rare metal and metal extractors reclaim lost metals from building wear and tear. If I did this probably have it so that up to 25% of the lost material could be reclaimed and cap each extractor with the upgrade to only being able to produce 10 per sol. So for 40 resources lost to wear & tear, one would need one extractor to get the max benefit. 41-80 resources would need two to get the full benefit.
-Manned structures that could can either be upgrade to remove the need for workers or wonder moot by a fully automated structure, should either get a researchable upgrade or have a baseline feature, where each worker on it provides a baseline of one research point. The right specialist would double that. Idea being, that there is some value, other than tying up colonists to keep them from being unemployed, in leaving the structure up if the player invests in something that renders it moot.
-Water isn't really an issue but it's rather odd that water deposits have zero interaction with rainfall and moisture level. I'd probably give each deposit a capacity cap based on grade. Water levels would increase each time it rains and that amount would be based on moisture levels and rainfall duration.
So I'm not very far yet, but so far I only have 1 annoyance that I haven't found a way around. Drones won't get resources from depots out of their command sphere, which makes sense, but is annoying when my mining dome is away from my research dome and I have to manually transport materials to build stuff. Would be nice is they intelligently moved materials between hubs when you need them
If the drone Hubs have overlapping spheres, you can put a universal depot in the middle and set it to have a minimum of all resources, and the drones will use it as a relay.
For longer distances, you'll have to wait until you get the Shuttle Hub.
Wait, the shuttle hub will do this?
Right now I'm at a point where I wasn't paying attention and need more colonists since I just built my research dome, but have no rockets since they are all refueling on Mars at this time...
Not talking about rockets, but a building you unlock with CO2 atmosphere propulsion or with the Rocket Engineer commander occupation. On top of transporting colonists, they will also move supplies around, though IIRC only if the stockpile has a minimum or it's from a producer to an empty stockpile.
I think that so long as you have overlapping depots and drone commanders, they should transport it themselves.
Like, factory wants metal, so it sends a call out to any depots in range. If they don't have metal, they send out a call to any depots in range of them, and so on.
But relying on drones is slow work, and I'm not sure what priority it comes under, so if you've got them busy building, it can jam things up.
Shuttles are way better at it.
A decent stopgap can be to set up transport routes with the RC Transport. Just setting it to go to your mining operation, pick up everything in the area, then drop it off back at your main base.
Shuttles still need the depos up for everything. Honestly, I'm hoping the devs adjust the code on that so that depos are only needed for drop off and not pickup. This would solve the issue with landscaping nanites being essentially garbage tech because the fucking thing will pile up waste rock willy nilly, thus requiring drones, which it's not suppose to and far more baby sitting than drones. Even then, you'll get piles of waste rock in inaccessible spots, preventing landscaping progress because they are in the way and god help you if some of the in the way waste rocks are effectively invisible. If the shuttles could pick up waste rock that isn't in a depo, it would make landscaping nanites actually useful, rather than a fucking annoyance.
Also for maintenance stuff, it is really useful to have a universal depo that only accepts resources need for maintenance next to a clump of structures. Prevents an issue where stuff stays shut down for long periods of time because a drone has to hoof it to the nearest depo that is too far away for quick fixes. Just wish the drones were a bit more proactive and didn't wait for the structure to malfunction (would also accept a grace period where once the wear bar maxes out, there is 2-3 hour span before it just stops working because it really does seem like drones wait for things to malfunction, even if the thing is on the highest priority).
It costs a lot of resources to set up, but if you set up two triboelectric scrubbers within range of each other, they'll keep anything in the their area (including themselves) from needing maintenance ever again.
took me down to 4 people, three middle aged men, one senior female. We had written the Earth off for dead, and I had salvaged 6.5/7 domes worth of equipment struggling to keep the water pumps running. Then, as I kicked myself for not abandoning this colony a century ago, watching the machines die and the water tanks run low, and as the last vestige of humanity circled the drain:
A message from Earth!
Holy shit, I don't know if that timing was scripted or what, but that was a wild ride. Pulled it out, currently coasting through end game milestones and trying to fill up Vegetation.
Once you get through 66% of the tech tree it all seems like cake. The unmanned fusion reactors were the end of all my conceivable problems except for food, and the open (unmanned) farms are insanely bountiful, requiring only water and producing crazy amounts of seeds.
I was trading 50 parts for 250 food almost as fast as the shuttles could move them for a good minute before I got them up and running, and - like that- I was playing creative mode. It was weirdly anti climactic; but now I just get to have fun terraforming and landscaping, which feels richly deserved.
It costs a lot of resources to set up, but if you set up two triboelectric scrubbers within range of each other, they'll keep anything in the their area (including themselves) from needing maintenance ever again.
The dual tribolectric scrubbers + effectively infinite power were really the icing on the cake.
The one request I'd have late game is for the ability to make prefab buildings to setup remote sites without relying on shuttles to deliver the raw materials, and prefab dome layouts so I can just plop down a new dome Outpost with a standard mix of booze and services.
Yeah, universal depos are great as relay depos or to setup next structures to hold resources for maintenance. I know some of the guides advise against universal depos but they are really useful for maintenance and relay points. You only want to use dedicated depos near structures that regularly consume or produce resources on a large scale. example, food depos near domes & outdoor farms. polymer depos near the polymer factory & domes that have tons of art workshops. ect, ect. Storage structure should be used sparingly since it uses machine parts, but those can be useful for tons of storage.
On resources, the devs might want to revise how things work for them. The two big offenders are that some resources fully deplete without a way to get them outside of things like the Mohole. The other being that there is a point where the player is drowning in certain resources and in some cases that can bone you (worst offender is metal since you have to move it away from the Mohole in order for it to keep working and even an non-upgrade Mohole can result in silly things, like filling up afar away plains with metal depos. Also human resources get wonky, given that a ton of the automated stuff shows up after getting colonists and that extractors do run out.
-Mohole should be adjust so that either metal production can be turned off completely or so the player has to choose between metals or rare metals.
-Waste rock needs another sink. Currently the chooses are either grab Brazil to turn it into something useful, research the means to turn it into concrete or turn it into atmospheric gases. Not everyone want to play Brazil every playthrough. We only need so much concrete before that creates issues. Turning it into atmosphere is only worthwhile until you hit a point where the drop outpaces losses and one wants to keep those structures at a minimum since they use machine parts. Maybe a structure that will randomly converts waste rock into metal, rare metals, polymers or fuel, this would keep Brazil's perk being good, but give everyone else an option to burn off waste rock. Make this structure use metal for maintenance.
-There should be the option to sell off resources that aren't rare metals. I'd be fine if we got paid 1/5 of what those cost to import. Also if it was setup only to unlock after a certain number of techs are researched, so that short sighted players can't easily whine about hosing themselves because they sold off a surplus that should have been kept.
-We should have threshold that allows us to tell stuff to stop producing once resources hit a certain level, while also having auto exports stop if resources deep below a certain level.
-metal and rare metal deposits probably shouldn't fully deplete. Upon depletion, they should give a very, very minor amount of resources. Not enough to make someone feel like they need to keep the extractors up, but something to make it worth keeping around.
-We have a ton of worthless techs that could be replaced with something else. One could be a research option that lets rare metal and metal extractors reclaim lost metals from building wear and tear. If I did this probably have it so that up to 25% of the lost material could be reclaimed and cap each extractor with the upgrade to only being able to produce 10 per sol. So for 40 resources lost to wear & tear, one would need one extractor to get the max benefit. 41-80 resources would need two to get the full benefit.
-Manned structures that could can either be upgrade to remove the need for workers or wonder moot by a fully automated structure, should either get a researchable upgrade or have a baseline feature, where each worker on it provides a baseline of one research point. The right specialist would double that. Idea being, that there is some value, other than tying up colonists to keep them from being unemployed, in leaving the structure up if the player invests in something that renders it moot.
-Water isn't really an issue but it's rather odd that water deposits have zero interaction with rainfall and moisture level. I'd probably give each deposit a capacity cap based on grade. Water levels would increase each time it rains and that amount would be based on moisture levels and rainfall duration.
one thing to note about universal depots: shut off fuel on them. If something strikes your fuel it will explode, and will remove everything on that pad. Make a separate fuel depot to put fuel on so you don't lose everything!
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I had, but I guess I didn't go far enough out. I didn't realize how much metal was laying around in far flung sectors until my second game; or that meteor impacts left it behind.
Meteorite must have broken the power lines in a drone dead zone between the main distribution grid and the wind generation mesa; which was an embarrassingly easy fix. So if we're still all gonna die of Mystery, at least we'll die with the lights on!
Now, if you'll excuse me, I guess I have some cyanide pills to recall.
Feel like I missed out on a breakthrough somewhere. Also not sure if nuking the ice caps is bug or if some doofus forget to mention in the expedition text, that it has a chance to cause great dust storms. Just got hit by two of those and I recall them rolling it shortly after ice cap nuking. Either that or it's just straight up broken because I didn't start seeing dust storms until those two and they were after I hit 50% atmosphere.
Currently just need to get 100% temp and vegetation. Plants will probably be last. I'll see if I can finish leveling all the land in my little zone before I hit those. Leaving the two cliffs up, but flattening the tops out.
I should see if I could in theory run an achievement capable game with a colony that relies on nothing but bots. Granted, I think I'd have to import everything because biorobots can only be made on site. So no option of researching them and then bringing them in to run shit that the drones can't operate. So might just have to run a game where I have a rule that disables achievements, but let's me essentially attempt to run a colony with out annoying meatbags. Though maybe there is a mod to import biorobots after researching them.
As far as advance resources go, seems like the order of achieving self-sufficiency is
polymers, not hard since a good setup will produce adequate water and thus fuel, which is used to make them.
machine parts, metals aren't to hard to come by and the Mohole mine can make this even easier to pull off.
electronics are probably the hardest, but depending on luck and one's choices, it can beat out seeds. Seeds are the other hard one to hit self-sufficiency on, but usually when that seems to be possible, based on my two games of play, it just rapidly snowballs.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
PSA: If there's something outside your drone command range, you can manually order drones to go do it. The only thing to watch out for it if they run out of power while they're out there, so keep an eye on them (you can send another drone to go save them if you need to, but if they all get stuck out there, you're in real trouble).
It needs some micromanagement, but it can be useful for fixing problems you can't reach otherwise.
There's a seed bearing indoor farm crop that yields around 1/sol, it seems to sustain a veggie-planter. Are there other seed demands to keep up on later?
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
Eventually I just got a mod that removes the 40% cap on plants adding to the effect. I do get the logic behind it, but I was just stuck there waiting for sols on end. I'd like to replace it with one that just makes the vegetation expeditions always available, but I can't find one and can't work out how to make one.
I'd give them a lot more shit for complaining about a 5 minute walk to work if they weren't such good sports about being periodically starved and frozen.
Speaking if waiting for sols on end, Wildfire:
The one time I pick one of these games up and don't go all-in on research, and this is the crisis I get? Well played, Luck-gods. Well played.
How's your cashflow? Research outsourcing can be quite affordable if you've got a decent export business going on.
Cashflow is solid; the Space Y Corporation is not a charity, after all. So I can afford the $200/sol price tag, but that's still gonna be a long time without heavy investment in new lab space.
Which is fine, I've had the building ghosts laid down near a distant research bonus for a while now; just been waiting to get shuttle access to schlep food/supplies over there. (Which I conveniently just got!)
It stacks? Awesome, screw that lab, I'll just double down on those sweet sweet rares.
... Is that a mod or a perk of a specific sponsor? I definitely would have stacked it in my runs if I could have.
That's why, IMO, Brazil is the best country to play with. No other patron can optimize like them.
I don't think so. Just outsource, then outsource again.
I'm currently, trying to get the workshop milestone. I'm hoping that there is only one achievement associated with workshops because it's a fucking awful achievement because there is no indication on how many pops are in workshops. Biorobot pops are another one that there isn't a way to track them.
Just slowly waiting for 100% vegetation and wondering if I can get 40% of my workforce in workshops before then. If that's all I have to do with workshops, then I'm never touching them again because they are worthless. I had almost 30K research before shifting gears and the two repeatables were decent cash (need an option to just tell the game to auto queue those).
As for research, there is the communication expedition (I think that's the one) that boosts research as well. It has diminishing returns but if one has the resources, it's a good resource sink to up research output. Maybe that's the stacking thing someone was mentioning because I don't think outsourcing stacks. One could opt for the bigger chunk.
Also there is the explorer research boost that stacks. Diminishing returns there as well, but again if you need research and have resources to spar, always an option to have a small fleet of those sitting around doing nothing but contributing minor research boosts. I would avoid he magnetic field generator buildings as a research boost option because of the marsquakes. I wish I could get a 4th, probably a 5th & 6th one as well, magnetic shield expedition. So that I can take those things off line and not have to worry about atmospheric losses. Though haven't checked to see if you can turn off the part that cause quakes, while still getting research out of them. Also they are really pricy and slow to build.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
The wiki is pretty light on the whole diplomacy angle. It looks like the only options there are to bribe them into good standing, then trade or raid when you are.
It definitely used to be. It might have been patched out because it got super exploitable if you randomised the tech and got Martian copyrights early.
Research Martian copyrights for 1000 research, get enough money to buy 10,000 research, research Martian copyrights a dozen times, repeat until you can blitz half the tech tree before the diminishing returns catches up with you.
Tried it last night, it said I couldn't "outsource more than one project to Earth at this time," suggesting there may still be a circumstance where this is possible.
It was very exploitable, so I get it.
And if you're happy to exploit things, you may as well get a mod to help things along anyway. I saw one building that just produces 5k research for a hundred power.
Also they need to work on auto pop management. My colony had a huge population boom, then I enabled strict population control and had the idiocy where the boomer pop died off and still was dealing with tons of unemployment despite having hundreds of free job slots and housing. I think part of the issue, is that the game is tagging a home dome and doing it in a way that interferes with natural migration. Also putting a preference for specialists is a bad idea, game then shoves all of them in a dome, when you also want some security officers, medics and unspecialized peeps for services. Only worth using that filter to shuttle children to their Martian society acclimation dome and to put unproductive olds in a warehouse dome if you don't have forever young tech.
For those that have gotten all the milestones, does the game actually end or does it go on forever?
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
This is a problem I've not yet had the luxury to have, but have been mulling over.
Would setting a pref for Engineers and Unskilled, then setting all the Engineer jobs to specialist-only, result in the optimal mix of grocers and part manufacturers?
Is available employment a strong weighting factor? Would you get more Unskilled than you had unskilled jobs?
I need to figure out the mechanics for how the university picks specializations and the optimal ratio of universities to trainable colonists.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
If you want to force the 40% workshop thing, you can make sure you've built enough workshops, then shut everything else down.
(A good scheme if you can manage it is to build a workshop very early on before you get your population boom, so you can quickly pack it with most of your population, get a massive research reward, then tear it down again)
As for unemployment, I see the most common problem being that there's too big a gap between workplaces and accommodation. Passages are a good stopgap early one when you can't build the larger domes, but once you move up to mega/diamond domes, you can usually put everything you need in one dome, and use that as a guide for building more. I'm not sure what difference comfort makes, but if there's a nice house somewhere with no jobs, they might pick that over the job where you have to stay in a crappy apartment. That's why I only build crappy apartments everywhere.
PSN = PessimistMaximus
If the drone Hubs have overlapping spheres, you can put a universal depot in the middle and set it to have a minimum of all resources, and the drones will use it as a relay.
For longer distances, you'll have to wait until you get the Shuttle Hub.
Wait, the shuttle hub will do this?
Right now I'm at a point where I wasn't paying attention and need more colonists since I just built my research dome, but have no rockets since they are all refueling on Mars at this time...
PSN = PessimistMaximus
On resources, the devs might want to revise how things work for them. The two big offenders are that some resources fully deplete without a way to get them outside of things like the Mohole. The other being that there is a point where the player is drowning in certain resources and in some cases that can bone you (worst offender is metal since you have to move it away from the Mohole in order for it to keep working and even an non-upgrade Mohole can result in silly things, like filling up afar away plains with metal depos. Also human resources get wonky, given that a ton of the automated stuff shows up after getting colonists and that extractors do run out.
-Mohole should be adjust so that either metal production can be turned off completely or so the player has to choose between metals or rare metals.
-Waste rock needs another sink. Currently the chooses are either grab Brazil to turn it into something useful, research the means to turn it into concrete or turn it into atmospheric gases. Not everyone want to play Brazil every playthrough. We only need so much concrete before that creates issues. Turning it into atmosphere is only worthwhile until you hit a point where the drop outpaces losses and one wants to keep those structures at a minimum since they use machine parts. Maybe a structure that will randomly converts waste rock into metal, rare metals, polymers or fuel, this would keep Brazil's perk being good, but give everyone else an option to burn off waste rock. Make this structure use metal for maintenance.
-There should be the option to sell off resources that aren't rare metals. I'd be fine if we got paid 1/5 of what those cost to import. Also if it was setup only to unlock after a certain number of techs are researched, so that short sighted players can't easily whine about hosing themselves because they sold off a surplus that should have been kept.
-We should have threshold that allows us to tell stuff to stop producing once resources hit a certain level, while also having auto exports stop if resources deep below a certain level.
-metal and rare metal deposits probably shouldn't fully deplete. Upon depletion, they should give a very, very minor amount of resources. Not enough to make someone feel like they need to keep the extractors up, but something to make it worth keeping around.
-We have a ton of worthless techs that could be replaced with something else. One could be a research option that lets rare metal and metal extractors reclaim lost metals from building wear and tear. If I did this probably have it so that up to 25% of the lost material could be reclaimed and cap each extractor with the upgrade to only being able to produce 10 per sol. So for 40 resources lost to wear & tear, one would need one extractor to get the max benefit. 41-80 resources would need two to get the full benefit.
-Manned structures that could can either be upgrade to remove the need for workers or wonder moot by a fully automated structure, should either get a researchable upgrade or have a baseline feature, where each worker on it provides a baseline of one research point. The right specialist would double that. Idea being, that there is some value, other than tying up colonists to keep them from being unemployed, in leaving the structure up if the player invests in something that renders it moot.
-Water isn't really an issue but it's rather odd that water deposits have zero interaction with rainfall and moisture level. I'd probably give each deposit a capacity cap based on grade. Water levels would increase each time it rains and that amount would be based on moisture levels and rainfall duration.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
Not talking about rockets, but a building you unlock with CO2 atmosphere propulsion or with the Rocket Engineer commander occupation. On top of transporting colonists, they will also move supplies around, though IIRC only if the stockpile has a minimum or it's from a producer to an empty stockpile.
Like, factory wants metal, so it sends a call out to any depots in range. If they don't have metal, they send out a call to any depots in range of them, and so on.
But relying on drones is slow work, and I'm not sure what priority it comes under, so if you've got them busy building, it can jam things up.
Shuttles are way better at it.
A decent stopgap can be to set up transport routes with the RC Transport. Just setting it to go to your mining operation, pick up everything in the area, then drop it off back at your main base.
Also for maintenance stuff, it is really useful to have a universal depo that only accepts resources need for maintenance next to a clump of structures. Prevents an issue where stuff stays shut down for long periods of time because a drone has to hoof it to the nearest depo that is too far away for quick fixes. Just wish the drones were a bit more proactive and didn't wait for the structure to malfunction (would also accept a grace period where once the wear bar maxes out, there is 2-3 hour span before it just stops working because it really does seem like drones wait for things to malfunction, even if the thing is on the highest priority).
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
A message from Earth!
Holy shit, I don't know if that timing was scripted or what, but that was a wild ride. Pulled it out, currently coasting through end game milestones and trying to fill up Vegetation.
Once you get through 66% of the tech tree it all seems like cake. The unmanned fusion reactors were the end of all my conceivable problems except for food, and the open (unmanned) farms are insanely bountiful, requiring only water and producing crazy amounts of seeds.
I was trading 50 parts for 250 food almost as fast as the shuttles could move them for a good minute before I got them up and running, and - like that- I was playing creative mode. It was weirdly anti climactic; but now I just get to have fun terraforming and landscaping, which feels richly deserved.
The dual tribolectric scrubbers + effectively infinite power were really the icing on the cake.
The one request I'd have late game is for the ability to make prefab buildings to setup remote sites without relying on shuttles to deliver the raw materials, and prefab dome layouts so I can just plop down a new dome Outpost with a standard mix of booze and services.
one thing to note about universal depots: shut off fuel on them. If something strikes your fuel it will explode, and will remove everything on that pad. Make a separate fuel depot to put fuel on so you don't lose everything!