Seeking early game advice

[Kanosei]

So i'm still a relatively new player, 20sh hours deep iirc, and I am just now getting to t2 resources (nickel etc). However, I am nowhere near automating them and still rely on jumping down my 400m hole to collect them and grapple my way back up. I am looking to start a new world since the area around my CPH is an absolute ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and it would be easier to start fresh rather than destroy absolutely everything and rebuild (not to mention the area I started put me on top of a rather large peak with very little flat land to work with).

What i'm seeking is advice on a few of the early game things that really set me back and almost turned me off of the game to the point of quitting.

First, T1 automation. With just the one ore smelter to start, and no access to more until T2, is it worth using the basic ore smelters which have a much worse ratio for the sake of automation, or should you just have everything go into hoppers and smelt what you need as you need it?

Second, lab research. In my opinion, this is 100% the worst part of the early game and is strictly responsible for me quitting early on. Thankfully I had a backlog of netflix stuff so I didn't mind sitting afk while things researched. However, what is the easiest and quickest way to research what is necessary early on? Is there a specific order items should be researched? Is there a better way to research T1 other than herds of generators and hoppers fully of coal? If not, is there a way to somehow automate coal delivery to said hoppers, or some other way to power the lab that i'm not realising?

Third, threat vs defense. At the moment, I have probably 60 or so threat reducers spread randomly across my base so that I don't get attacked. While I know "losing" has no effect on regular difficulties, I still dislike seeing any losses. Is there an efficient way to get herds of threat reducers power pre t2 that is automated, or are you better off setting up a perimeter of turrets? If so, what is the best way to have them set up? It seems you need 2 generators to keep a turret going, which turns in to a substantial amount of threat early on.

Last, enriched coal. I almost feel like the enriched coal is a bit of a joke meant to waste a new players time. By the time I was able to get enough prstine phoskasjdal thingies to make one enricher, I had probably 40 ptgs running constantly, with at least 30 of them required a constant supply of coal. Is there a way to make this thing produce enriched coal faster, or to get pristines more reliably? After about an hour straight of farming the oozes and receiving not a single pristine, I looked up the rates which were something like 5/15/20/50 depending on the ooze. After reading that I decided to start counting oozes, and my conclusion is that the drop rates might not be registering properly. This was strictly on surface oozes as I feel during T1 it is much more efficient because you dont have to grapple your way back to the surface for power constantly. After killing exactly 400 of the white oozes (which should have gotten me roughly 20 pristines)... I had only gotten 4. I don't have an accurate time of how long it took me to kill them as it wasn't just x hours of roaming, but I would guestimate it was about 3 hours of time. On top of that, I cut power to my threat reducers to see if the waves would give better luck... they didn't. After about 10 waves I had received about 12 different pristines, none of which were the phoskjasldk required for a coal enricher. The only thing that was consistantly dropping pristines were the rare silver oozes that would show up on the surface, and they seemed to be around 50%.

Plus, any other advice for surviving T1 would be greatly appreciated.

I'd like to end this post with a suggestion, from one designer to another (and I may have more suggestions depending on the responses / ideas I receive about the issues above). I personally feel that hives and mynocks are in a terrible spot right now and are extremely detrimental to a new players experience. They are found relatively near to the surface, and attack any sort of t1 automation of iron or lithium. However, outside of placing turrets absolutely everywhere underground, it is impossible to deal with them until T2. I would personally suggest dropping the mynock spawn range down closer to that of T2, possibly around 250 and lower. Having a hive itself close is no big deal as it doesn't really negatively impact you aside from creating an impassible area, but having mynocks halt automation as low as like 50 can be a massive drag.

All that being said, I am really enjoying the game now that I have gotten past those initial issues. I'd love to discuss it more outside of the forums with you sometime DJ if you'd like, and i'd be willing to help you flesh out the tutorials / info boxes some (because lets face it, there is a lot of missing / poorly described info for several items) when i'm not at work. Thanks!

[Skiark]

It's very important when you start building to have the long term in mind, otherwise you're going to hurt badly later on (and likely have to rip things out to re-layout, which will be a major pain in the backside).

1st, you'l going to need a lot of ore "bandwidth", that will need to go to various factories. So prepare space so that you have at least 2 or 3 conveyors carrying on type of ore.

In my current game i spread the different kind of ores horizontally, but arrived to the conclusion that it was a bad idea so i would recommand you setup each ore type on it's own "floor"

2nd AUTOMATE EVERYTHING.... seriously...... EVERY FREAKING THING... even building iron gears and stuff like that which at lower levels can be very easilly done manually. Because later on you're going to need industrial quantities that can't be easily handled by hand.

And for the things that might look difficult to automate because of too many components (ie smelter injectors which can need 5), zippy merger for the rescue (it will force a 50/50 merge, even in the case of non-saturated conveyors).

Regarding mynocs, you should be able to find iron at a depths where you don't get problems from them (they don't spawn above a certain depth... can't remember how deep but something like 50-75).

Lithium will need tubes to go to safe depths and then you can convert to conveyors, or alternatively use a cargo lift

[Demerzel]

Basic smelter currently 4 ore / 1 bar on plentiful but you can't upgrade.
You must build them. '-.- It's there to use them. The world is infinite. You have infinite resources. Don't worry about ratio.

Second. AUTOMATE. Use conveyors. USE THE BASIC CONVEYORS TOO. If you need build 2 or 3 lines of basic conveyors because they are cheap.
Research. Just build PTG to every side. Later you can upgrade them.
Build slime attractor so you can farm slimes for pristine item for enriched coal. PTG 10 pps Enriched coal 20PPS:

Don't worry about lab speed. Just keep building up the ptgs around it. And MAKE SURE you automate the pod production too. So you only need to start the lab and collect the research.
You can't do this right from the start but overtime you can build up this too.

The key is to upgrade the powergeneration around the lab as you progress in the game.
If you are afking then you are wasting your time.

Use everything you unlock.

Third, Store power don't generate them. The key to win waves is to store a lot of power. Because threat is generated with energy production.
You can hold 500% threat attack with 8 MK2 turrett. You just need to store enought power.

Spread out your defense.
First build a lot of power storage box around your cph. So you can put a few failsafe turret around it.

Try building a big storage box with a few ptg.
for example. Put 3x3x1 ptg and then put 3x3x3 storage block on it. And from this cube deliver the power to your defense.
Upgrade laser power transmitters with the blue eyes from slime loot (slime attractor).

You need to build defense around each cph corner.
put 4-5-6-7-8 as many as you can within a reason storage blocks for each turrett. So you can store power for them too.

Last, Enriched coal I agree others aren't. No matter what I say some guy show up and say I'm wrong. I specifically built a world for enriched coal and it's just fail.
Official stance on it: It is suppliment.

For mynocks they are fine. You are supposed to build turrett everywhere later you can upgrade them for more coverage.

Automate everything. Use the basic conveyors. They are just 50 item / min but 5 cost only for 1 copper bars. So it's super cheap compared conveyers.
Consider using paralel conveyer lines for ore extracors while you are useing basic conveyors.
Build basic ore smelters as many as you can.
Priorize cargo lifts.
Find an iron vein and start producing rackrails from them.

Don't afk. If you don't have enought bars then go hunting for more smelters. It's this simple.

Personally I would recommend for you to remove the organic rock requirement from basic ore smelters.
You can do it buy editing a file.

\FortressCraft\64\Default\Data\ManufacturerRecipes.xml Or just keep looking for organic rocks.

For early game it's really the basic oresmelter which can give you a nice boost.
And try to use more then 1 vein for each resources. Or more ore extractors.

While you are in T1 just really try to scale up as much as you can in a layout where you can easily upgrade everything for better machine.
(conveyers with auto upgraders for example).

And start building shafts where it is needed. In T1 sometimes it's simpler just to build a new vertical shaft then building a conveyer line underground.

Use the auto excavator too. Set it up leave it and let it run.

Also while you are working on T1. Build huge shaft to the cold cavern. For later. For example lifts and cargo lifts power matter movers etc...

Never AFK. If you don't have resource produce more. Build more extractor more lines more from everything. Scale up. And shape your enviroment. Stairs lifts cargolifts.

You can automate every single machine in the game.

And spread out.

[Demerzel]

Really just think BIG.

More then 1 vein for every resources (except if you find ridicules big veins 10-20million eg... then use more ore extractors.)

More conveyer line.
Basic 50 / min
Conveyer 100 /min
tubes 150 item / min.

On 1 side a hopper can only output 50 item / min. So for 1 storage hopper to reach 100 item / min you need two conveyer line which leads to each other.

C H C
C C C
C

In this way for example.

Think big. Produce industrial quantity.
Start automating everything.

NEVER store Bars.

Instead make buffers near the smelter and use the buffer for personal bar source if you need.

Use everything you unlock. If you don't have any idea what you can do with a machine read the Help or Post on forum.

Scale up. :)

You can find organic rocks later in the game at the direction where the bees comming from.

And the slime attractor is really important. Becaus eof the blue eyes. You can craft +100% lenfs from it. From green laser 10pps-> 20pps. Etc...

Example: http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/450736355943786560/6A980F415882889A5889C584CF14C12D8978A072/

[Gangnam Style]

Originally posted by Kanosei:

First, T1 automation. With just the one ore smelter to start, and no access to more until T2, is it worth using the basic ore smelters which have a much worse ratio for the sake of automation, or should you just have everything go into hoppers and smelt what you need as you need it?

I personally didn't bother with the basic. And people do disagree but having the extra costs just wasn't worth it to me. Which ment I would had to haul extra ores up just to smelt them. What I did was feed one or both those surface t1 ores to my smelter with another hopper that I manually feed in t2 as I need them. This way it's never idle but t2 (or what I say JIT bars) takes priority.

As for coal power, At the start I usually just dig under my CPH and put a 3 row strip of hoppers with PTG on the sides. This way I can just feed my single coal hopper which will share among the others and power all my PTGs (under my CPH). As I need more, I just extend the strip while adding more generators and a single power block will bring it up to ground level which you can draw from anywhere. This way I can keep a single coal input line and everything is out of the way.

Originally posted by Kanosei:

Second, lab research. In my opinion, this is 100% the worst part of the early game and is strictly responsible for me quitting early on.

Nothing you can do about that. Best way I found is to just plan ahead. Build a single automate research pod chain and add the next ore as you progress.

I built mine as a tower. I've seen others do it like a blade. Even with unlimited space, I personally dislike pod chains flat and spread out. It just feels too spread out.

Power = everything in this game. Which leads to the next point.

Originally posted by Kanosei:

Third, threat vs defense.

Turrets. I never bother with a perimeter. Completely useless imo. They only attack your CPH, so why bother protecting everything else. I concentrate my turrets around my CPH which allows me to focus fire attackers. Which also had the additional benefit of having to wander around less to collect the loot. My current game, I got lucky and got a strong run of eyes. Eyes let me make mk3, which killed them even faster.... which drops even more eyes which makes more turrets. This cycle completely feeds itself. I don't bother with reducers. Even early mid game, I welcomed threat. More pristines and I mean it. I'm currently dropping several hundred pristines/hour.

Solar. You do need crystals so make sure you are able to get down there. At this point there's no need to automate that so I just manually drop down to collect every once in awhile. You don't need alot of them anyways for this.

Originally posted by Kanosei:

Last, enriched coal.

Don't bother. Useless imo. By the time you can get them you should have fully functional solar setup or even jet. My current world is fully solar. Even powering a dozen resin machines in my resin farm is nothing. Which is funny, cause the resulting resin allowed me to move to organic mk2 panels which made them even better. (Don't waste your time on mk1)

BTW, I know my comments about the basic smelters is probably in the minority. I think it was the organic rock which I dislike the most. It's easier to get now so my opinion may change in the future. Organics were (or just seemed) harder to gather in large quantities. They do seem to flow pretty quick now so it might be worth considering.

[DjArcas]

Originally posted by Kanosei:

All that being said, I am really enjoying the game now that I have gotten past those initial issues. I'd love to discuss it more outside of the forums with you sometime DJ if you'd like, and i'd be willing to help you flesh out the tutorials / info boxes some (because lets face it, there is a lot of missing / poorly described info for several items) when i'm not at work. Thanks!

Anything in particular? I went over a great number of these on stream on Friday.

[1200V2]

Protect your conveor belt, beam power down, place an energy block and a turret. And you will be protected. And you will not feed the hive mind. In my first game i did not know this and ended up with a resin growth of 100 levels :( / It was fun to remove it with bombs.

[Kanosei]

Thanks everyone for your tips and advice. It's nice seeing multiple people help out, and not a single "get gud", lol. Is this really the internet? =P After reading everyone's input, my last question would be if there is an ideal research order for the lab? For example I learned the hard way that the resin research is pretty much useless pre-T2, lol.

Originally posted by DjArcas:

Anything in particular? I went over a great number of these on stream on Friday.

Ah, I was unaware. Is there a vod or youtube video of the stream I can watch somewhere?

[Peacock]

Here is the youtube channel: http://= https://www.youtube.com/user/projectorgames

There is no ideal order, since much research is blocked due to you missing requirements. I would advise going cheapest first.

AS for automated setup you can build something like this:
http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/272844811422414185/131AE80214D4C6B4535497D54B86434E62FCB03A/

[Undead_Duckling]

Why would you prefer using a single smelter for tin, copper, iron *and* lithium if you can have one for each ore? Terrible waste of time, imho.

Enriched coal gives you twice the amount of power per block of coal, which basically doubles the amount of ptg's you're using to power your early game laboratory or early game defenses: Not a bad deal until you can get biomass.

About base defense:
T2 turrets around your cph will keep you safe until around ~1200 threat. After that you want to expand your defenses towards the enemy, so you can wear them as they fly towards your base.
Once you get the T3 sniper turrets - and enough power - you're pretty much safe until the bosses show up, which is around 5-6k. Then it's all about missiles and building lots of MK4 batteries with T2/T3 turrets towards the overminds.

[Kanosei]

Thank you for the link Peacock! Now, a few different people have mentioned the slime attractor, but I can't seem to find it. Does anyone know off the top of their heads if you need a specific research to make them?

[Yugata]

Enriched Coal - Early on I actually found the machine pretty easy to build (I must have been lucky)
I use enriched coal ONLY for the research lab. I mean you can only fit ~24 ptg around it (4 on each face of it). So using enriched coal can "double" the amount of ptg you can slap on it.
Of course running 24 ptg will burn A LOT of coal very quickly, so I stack a crap ton of hoppers in a pyramid shape off to the side as storage. I think I have either 15 or 21 hoppers to hold the enriched coal when my research lab is off.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=694400691

But once you reach late game, you can pretty much either tear this whole thing down in favor of jet turbines for research, or you can keep this thing just to power the smaller things in your base. I kept mine to power my mining and automation.

[DjArcas]

Originally posted by Kanosei:

Thanks everyone for your tips and advice. It's nice seeing multiple people help out, and not a single "get gud", lol. Is this really the internet? =P After reading everyone's input, my last question would be if there is an ideal research order for the lab? For example I learned the hard way that the resin research is pretty much useless pre-T2, lol.

Originally posted by DjArcas:

Anything in particular? I went over a great number of these on stream on Friday.

Ah, I was unaware. Is there a vod or youtube video of the stream I can watch somewhere?

https://www.youtube.com/user/ProjectorGames/live

[DjArcas]

Originally posted by Kanosei:

Thank you for the link Peacock! Now, a few different people have mentioned the slime attractor, but I can't seem to find it. Does anyone know off the top of their heads if you need a specific research to make them?

It'll be live for all users within about 8 hours.

[Dodgeball]

As far as research order, a balanced approach is typically best. It does no good to have Mk5 batteries when you don't have the logistics to get t2 ore out of the ground to make them, etc. I still don't always know what's where, as it's constantly changing/updating, but in general I'll tend to update in the same order as I think of the economic chain: power -> extraction -> logistics -> defense.