Various beginner questions

[Erikkolai]

1) Any advice on how to efficiently observe "flying lizard"? My survivors keep chasing them, and never seem to succeed.

2) Is there any way to cancel the "observe" order on flying lizards? Right-clicking it doesn't give a cancel option.

3) What's the best arguments for doing melee combat instead of ranged? So far it just seems more risky.

4) Is there any difference between "landing pod" and "spaceship debris" in terms of resources? Both provide scrap metal & electronics?

5) What's the purpose of the "spaceship deconstruction" tech? I haven't found any I can't deconstruct without the tech.

6) How do I obtain grain?

7) Should I go for 2 male & 2 female survivors for breeding purposes?

[Effendi]

1) It just works eventually, some get to far away or die eventually so you get another chance.
2) -
3) none, just some weapons have a minimum distance and then you either have a melee weapon or you need to run away
4) don't think so
5) it allows you to fully disassemble them, I can't do that without the tech
6) plant grain grass or graincob, or harvest them in the wild
7) afaik there's no children in the game, yet.

[spark.milanders]

2- click on the animal again and click on where you chose observe to cancel it. You do have to find the exact animal so lets say it's a herd you need the glowing one.
4- I can't tell what the difference is but some seem to give more gear like guns while others give more materials like synthetic fibers. Which one gives which I couldn't say.

[Erikkolai]

Thanks, very helpful. Another question:

In regards to crafting, what's the difference between:
- Crafting something 10 times
- Crafting something until I have 10

In example when cooking recipes.

[WhamyKaBlamy]

Originally posted by Erikklaz:

Thanks, very helpful. Another question:

In regards to crafting, what's the difference between:
- Crafting something 10 times
- Crafting something until I have 10

In example when cooking recipes.

Crafting 10 items will make 10 of the item then stop. Crafting until you have 10 will always craft the item until you have 10 of them.

If you want a one time supply of something, just craft it. If you want to keep something in stock to a certain number, use "until".

For example, I have 5 survivors right now. I have all of my meals set to "until 6". So my cook gets up, cooks the meals and whacks them in the freezer every day.

Also, with regard to Melee vs Ranged; You can equip one of both weapon. Having just a basic spear on you will make a big difference if things get close enough. Having a melee weapon also increases the melee range quite a bit. The.. uh, laser pike? Can't remember the name without being in game, but that thing is really nice and has a massive melee range.

[Rhogog]

Originally posted by Erikklaz:

Thanks, very helpful. Another question:

In regards to crafting, what's the difference between:
- Crafting something 10 times
- Crafting something until I have 10

In example when cooking recipes.

Crafting something 10 times means that you craft ten times and that's it - job's done. Crafting until you have 10 things means that settlers will craft until you have 10 things and stop as long as you have 10 or more but will keep monitoring the stock. Once that number lowers to, say, 9 they will craft again to keep it at 10 or more.

[Erikkolai]

Aha, makes sense. For some reason I thought of the 2nd option as "crafting something until I have 10 more". Thanks!

[Voidflakes]

Just to add for your first question, all of the flying creatures seem to be scavengers, so if you kill something and leave its corpse on the ground eventually you'll get a bird land near it. As long as it's not *too* close to where your survivors are roaming around, you should be able to get someone to observe it and get around 50% of the bar in one go.

[Rhogog]

Originally posted by Erikklaz:

Aha, makes sense. For some reason I thought of the 2nd option as "crafting something until I have 10 more". Thanks!

Btw, there's one thing with that "until" system that I find quite frustraiting atm. If you plan to mass produce something "until" you have certain amount the game doesn't check the number untill it's actually produced. What I mean is you can't build several tailor stations and put an order to keep stock of, let's say, 10 fur coats on each one. As soon as your stock drops to 9 all the colonists assigned to crafting will try to craft fur cloth and will drop crafting once the first fur cloth is finished and the "until" number matches the goal. This leads to loss of resources (they take unfinished fur coat to stock and never resume crafting it - in my experience at least) and what's more important - loss of crafting time which could be spend on crafting something else.

[Erikkolai]

Thanks again! A few more questions:

1) Let's say a weapon has a range of 15 tiles. Is the hit chance the same regardless of whether the enemy is 5 or 15 tiles away? Asking because of defense tower positioning.

2) Is there any drawback to drafting your survivors just in order to make them run? Does relaxation maybe decrease faster?

[DarkHorse]

1. I believe the hit chance is the same... however if its dark.. they will miss more often but that works both ways... the enemy will miss too. I've not got any lights outside except for a few mushroom pods glowing outside my ' base '

2. I don't know if there is any drawback but I often will do the same thing to get them into a position faster in certain situations.

To answer some of your above questions:

If you kill a bunch of beasts around your ' base ' during a raid or an attack..and leave their rotting carcases, you can then sneak up on the ' flying lizards ' and have plenty of time to observe them chow down on a carcas.


I don't think there is a direct way to cancel the observe other than just to tell them to do something else.

There is NO advantage to melee combat and will definately get your team killed later in game if you don't go ranged as much as possible.

I don't know the answer to the question about landing pods or scrap metal etc..

Spaceship deconstruction will allow you to salvage an entire piece of salvage until it is completely gone whereas regular salvage will leave the pieces but you wont be able to salvage any more from it after you have done a few.

You need to observe graincob and plant it in a farm... I suggest 2 of the largest size.
you also want 2 of the largest size of the silicon plants as well.

I am not 100 percent sure there is currently breeding in the game.

[Erikkolai]

Thanks! Incidentally, is there really any benefit to observing aliens? Does it unlock extra loot or combat bonuses against them? Or maybe unlock some tech down the line?

[DarkHorse]

Well I think down the line there will probably be benefits to observing the animals .. but right now observing the plant life is crucial to making food/farm/items... I suppose a benefit would be how badly they will MEss you UP and what they are going to do .. find out if they are docile or aggro

[evea]

2. to cancel an observe plant or animal, u have to cancel on the plant or animal you have originally selected first. it is highlighted on the map.

3. When you observe some animal u can discover there is animal that attack from distance and other attack to close. So for the close attack is better for animal with distance atttack.

[Juice]

Another thing to note about "crafting X times" vs "crafting until I have X": Many recipes make multiple items in one batch. For instance, making normal cloth out of cloth scraps uses 20 scraps to make 10 cloth every time. If you want 50 cloth, you can set it to craft "until you have 50," or "craft 5 times." If you craft 50 times, you'll try to make 500.