New player tips

[TPTI]

Wow, this is the best game ever made

Any more tips?

Arrest the wild people

Sell slaves in caravans

Gank the enemy 3 v 1

Attacks have RnG somehow - a 19 melee may not beat everyone every time, but will most times

A melee with high skill can down an animal in seconds, hunting - but will take damage. - draft mode

Use draft mode to retreat

A desert map just get the tree tech

A Swamp map fireproof with marsh

A club can get more prisoners than a knife - my melee was killing them all until I use club

Melee is the meta - non negotiable. At least early game

The wild healroot around the map give you free herbal aid

TRADE: Artists make huge money, don't buy telescope, TV, books - these are a rubbish waste. Skill trainers are good

SQUAD: 2 medics, 2 melee, 1 gunner, a farmer, anything else can switch around, avoid animals and crafting

[Khan Boyzitbig of Mercia]

Telescopes are a recreation type that cannot be gained otherwise, same goes for books, the largest and best TV type can only be bought. Books can passively research tech and teach skills passively and aren't single use. Selling drugs can be an effective trade option too.

As your wealth level increases so does the needed recreation types, always good to have variety.

[endymionologist]

Yeah some of the advice you appear to have gotten is bad, but it's important to understand that you can easily learn to play long and successful games even when following some bad advice, because the game is just that good.

[Hoki]

"Arrest the wild people" - thats an old one from when they were still considered pawns by the game. nowadays they are treated as animals by the game meaning you can recruit them as prisoners and have to rely on taming and all the animal related tricks.

"Sell slaves in caravans" - not using slaves much so no comment.

"Gank the enemy 3 v 1" thats just a tiny portion of the actual recommendation. in general try to get as many benefits for your pawns and as little as you can for the enemy. defending a chokepoint with 3 melee fighters where only 1 melee raider can engage at a time (that tip you posted) is just 1 example and ignores ranged fighters.

"Attacks have RnG somehow - a 19 melee may not beat everyone every time, but will most times" many factors go into hitchance and you should never end up with a 100% chance to hit.

"A melee with high skill can down an animal in seconds, hunting - but will take damage. - draft mode"
lucky hits can always happen even against a lvl 20 melee fighter. if you hunt stick to ranged when possible

"Use draft mode to retreat" dont know what context youre referring to

"A desert map just get the tree tech" wrong in like 80% of the cases i'd say. if you play industrial level like 'crashlanded' you dont need wood at all. Wood only matters to tribals and they already start with tree farming

"A Swamp map fireproof with marsh" if its wood its not fireproof no matter where you are. a swamp just makes fire spread less through weather and plant density

"A club can get more prisoners than a knife - my melee was killing them all until I use club" the reason is simple: slashing damage vs blunt damage. knifes cause bleeding which if not treated ends deadly. blunt dmg doesnt have that risk therefore less tending required

"Melee is the meta - non negotiable. At least early game" a statement without meaning. when does early game end?. the main role for melee is simply - tank damage. protection is more important than damage for them. a good weapon helps but dealing damage is rangeds role.

"TRADE: Artists make huge money, don't buy telescope, TV, books - these are a rubbish waste. Skill trainers are good" oh boy.... where do i start. art is a nice wealth multipler and can be easily done. alternativly drugs are another way to make money. telescope and tvs are simply recreation types and have specific benefits.
the telescope is its own recreation type and has to be put outside. it fills 2 types of needs at once (recration and outdoors; outdoors can be filled in other ways as well)
the tv can be used by anyone who is awake and in range. like the telescope it's its own type of recreation. biggest advantage is that it can be used by pawns bedresting therefore suited for hospitals

"SQUAD: 2 medics, 2 melee, 1 gunner, a farmer, anything else can switch around, avoid animals and crafting"
if this is about starting pawns... i personally would say it cant be further from the truth but everyone has their own preferred skillset.
medics dont matter early on as long as pawns can do the skill. keeps the patients in a clean room and treat them fast. that should prevent most infections. 2 melee, 1 gunner - same thing as the previous meta comment. you just want one with decent at least. another pawn would block the enemy from reacing the gunner and the other pawns could either add to the blocking or also have ranged weapons for more dmg. plants is a very versatile skill but high skill primarily just reduces the chance of botching and getting access to healroot as a crop (+workspeed) doesnt have to be high for starters but good to have one pawn with at least about 5 in it.
animal comes with an upkeep cost in food for tame animals
crafting is the skill you should try to get early on and if possible with a passion. its a skill that requires quite a material investment to level and do soooo much for the colony.

[XelNigma]

Walls give better cover than sandbags. sandbags are a trap.
Dont do long range shootouts. With such low chances to hit its about volume of bullets and they have more so you loose.
Step back, let them move in close then step out and shoot.

Dont use killboxes, it exploits the AI and you dont learn how to properly play the game and will get wiped from the first drop pod raid or sapper raid. Play with out exploits and you will learn how to deal with all raid types.

Mini-turrets are garbage. Slow fire rate, poor accuracy and explode easly. Dont waste time on them. Autocannons can at least land shots but they are so big they never fit into my base design so I just dont use turrets at all, but they do work if you wish to use them.

Friendly-Fire: You can safely stand in the first 3 tiles of a gunner and not take friendly fire.
This is very important during large manhunter or tribal melee raids where you have your melee guys blocking an open door and the gunner squad behind them.
or when you have a gunner shooting at a melee attacker hitting an ally. You need to be close enough so your not accidentally shoot your own guy.


Now grenades. Most people never use them because they seem random and unreliable.
And at a distance they are, just like bullets. But during thoes melee raids its crazy strong.

Frags explode in a 3x3 area, and when you order your grenadier to throw you will see a white box showing the white forced missed area. Have the grenadier close enough to the front so his friendlyfire protect keeps the grenade from hitting a wall but throw it far enough outside that there is a one tile gap between your walls/people and the white highlight area.
This way the grenade will ALWAYS land in that white area, and the area around the white is empty (save for enemies) and thus never damage your base or your people.

Like with bullets, the farther you throw the less accurate it gets.


When looking for a good builder make sure they also have either some starting skill in plants, ~5+ or a passion in it so you can level it up.
Builders will have to cut down trees as they build and not having any skill in plant cutting can really slow them down to a stupid degree.
Dont have your cooks also be your melee guys. They tend to spend a lot of time in bed and people will be eating raw ingredients in that case. Same goes for your medics.


When a pawn of yours has a mental break that you just cant deal with right now. Such as hes going to slaughter your own livestock that you need. Or worse is going to murder a fellow colonist. You have select another pawn and try to arrest them. If you a free prison bed.
The chance of a successful arrest is based on how well the two pawns like each other but also, and more importantly, the arresting pawns social skill.
Once you have them arrested, wait until they are dropped off in jail. THEN you can select the pawn and set him free. He will immediately rejoin the colony, but wont be happy about being arrested and looses out on his cathartic bonus for going on a mental break. and thus is likly to go on another break soon. Maybe this time a less harmful one that you can just let happen.
If your using ideology arresting them also strips them of any ideology position like leader or moral guide. So make sure to give that back to them too. (the size of the ritual for these dont matter at all so feel free to make it a small group instead of the entire colony)


Raiders will ignore livestock animals. such as cow, horses, ect. so you dont need to worry about walling them in. A flimsy fence will do fine for the most part. They will how ever attack any animal that can be trained. so thoes animals you do need to protect.


Speaking of livestock, you get more meat from slaughter domesticated animals than you do hunting. Hunting tends to destroy parts of the body which yields less meat when butchered.


While you cant ride horses or other animals with out mods, taking them on caravans will greatly speed up travel time.

[Phénomènes Mystiques]

The factions are like bully gangs, you need to keep them in their place.

[MadArtillery]

One of the biggest things, gear quality means a lot, especially once it hits masterwork. You may notice guns for example only deal more damage per bullet at masterwork and above. Gear at lower techs can be better than higher tech gear if there is a quality difference quite often. Material matters even more though. Plasteel is usually king but uranium is top for blunt. Both make pretty dang good armour. Steel is garbage trash teir, don't wield or wear it unless you are poor and desperate.

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by Hoki:

"A desert map just get the tree tech" wrong in like 80% of the cases i'd say. if you play industrial level like 'crashlanded' you dont need wood at all. Wood only matters to tribals and they already start with tree farming

Wood can be helpful for industrial if you don't have sufficient heating/cooling set up to deal with a cold snap/heat wave, or if you lose power due to solar flare.
And of course wood makes the fastest-opening doors out of materials you can have available early, and if you don't have enough Construction to set up power and an electric stove you need wood to cook food.

[Overeagerdragon]

* Cooking 8 to minimise the chances for foodpoisoning to a base of 1% (technical minimum); cooking 10 and it doesn't matter how dirty your kitchen is; chance will, in 99% of all cases) be the technical minimum of 1% (you can't get it to 0 without mods)

* A psychopath in your colony might not be a bad thing... those human corpses make good kibble.

* a breeding pair of boom-animals can make for a good boom-box build. Seclude a breeding pair somewhere then assign all newborns and excesses to the area infront of your killbox. Plant hay in that killbox for extra result. Free food for your grazers, extra burn oppertunities for "accidental" collateral damage and free meat afterwards... win-win-win.

* Prisoners make for a great way to train up your doctor... and their organs can be a real goldmine (or source of replacement organs)

* Do drugs.... no really; don't underestimate a meleecharacter hopped up on wake-up, Yayo or Luciferium. Also makes for a great way to get "friendly" with everyone on the map.

* Build a "luxury cell" for prisoners you want to recruit... the better THEIR mood and the warden social skill; the faster their resistance to recruitment (or conversion) drops.

* Self-tend is ONLY as a last resort... it carries a MASSIVE penalty. So let doctors tend eachother if you have even a remotely decent doctor.

* Set a small storage area to allow nothing infront of workbenches (any workbench) and set all bills to drop on the floor. Let your haulers do the hauling whilst freeing up your slav... I mean employee to have less traveltime.

* set a grow zone to NOT cut OR sow underneath ambrosia and your planters will still harvest it when it's ripe.

[TPTI]

Crazy
I didn't know how to process chunks until watched Adam Vs Everything

Now we will be a real industry
Freeze room
Fire room
etc

[Hoki]

Originally posted by gimmethegepgun:

Wood can be helpful for industrial if you don't have sufficient heating/cooling set up to deal with a cold snap/heat wave, or if you lose power due to solar flare.
And of course wood makes the fastest-opening doors out of materials you can have available early, and if you don't have enough Construction to set up power and an electric stove you need wood to cook food.

fair enough - wood has its uses in emergencies.

doors i recently switched to animal flaps instead. if you do corpse processing you will have too much leather anyway and if you use patchleather you and also clear out a few storage slots from hunting.
Doors already come with low hp therefore you use them away from battle that also means you could go even lower with hp and do the flaps instead. just use normal doors where you wanna keep animals in/out though.

[- BusterZlista -]

use killboxes and all the tricks to exploit ai, never do cringy rp and always optimize, punch down any pawns who mentally breaks, if it dies then good, since itd just be a waste of resource to keep tending him, and if not, then tend to him with no medicine, to maximize gain out of the situation, if bleeding and the 6 hour safety window has passed and without medical capability, then strip it if clothed, and forbid feeding and care, put it down into a corpse feed room so that you do not need to move it when it dies

get as many antigrain warheads as you can to skip raids, if your killboxes or killtunnels or anti sapper halls cant handle it

cool your hallways (in the mountains) constantly to avoid areas where insects can spawn, always at atleast -28 degrees celcius for safety, the cooling exhaust pit can be layered with barricades to stop enemy drop pods from landing there - the insect areas can then be contained to a few specific places for easy handling

all of your hallways are to be sectioned into rooms, with corners poked out so that you can maximize the amount of positions your defenders can take, and still form rooms

build outside bunkers with automated turrets to slow down and kill your enemies, if your base isnt a manufactorum yet and there is still outside space

everything must be made out of inflammable material, structures - furnitures, the slowdown is not a problem to you nor ever must it be your concern, order your pawns to collectively punch on a wall until a path is given, if needed, you will need to harvest the mountains themselves to do this, strip them until there is none left and then set up camp in another mountain area, build columns to minimize accidents, do as befit the situation

the rooms of your structure must always be 11x11, perfectly laid out during the planning phase and all resources are to be kept in the center, most especially flammable and explosive materials, the enemy drop pods like to target center most areas, so section out high explosives and small explosives to maximize damage against the enemies, and to keep your most valued assets safe, there can be small specialized storage rooms dotting the corners of your hallway, all must be perfectly positioned for maximum efficiency

you shall never have imprisoned slaves or enslave a non-slave, it is a waste of time and resources, of your pawns and of your feeding that goes into a useless pawn, you must have full control or not at all, always recruit to maximize gain

never completely destroy your enemies and raid only to their last base, they have infinite resources to give you, and you will go to war with the other factions, leave atleast 1 worthwhile faction to trade with you, or rely on space trades or become self reliant from your colony

always remember how long it takes for the pawn to forget something, to keep usage of them effective and productive for the colony, all drugs are to be rejected from the colony, as it creates more upkeep for your pawns, and will create unnecessary burdens to the colony, make your pawns strong naturally, a drugged pawn is worthless, and must be kept downed to the hospital bed or floor until it recovers

never fight enemies in open battle, or in disadvantageous situations, always fight them in the deepest part of your colony, the path leading to your killbox through your melee killtunnels, lace it with as many melee pawns as you can, workers if needed and your killboxes will be full of your best shooters

siege raids can be tempted to assault the colony, or just use wargrains as instructed earlier, fodder pawns and ranged will be used in tandom to kill the besiegers, snipers will be placed behind cover youve prepared beforehand (from planning), fodder will be positioned behind mountains or walls until they are needed to engage in melee, then the snipers will pull back into your completely inflammable-made-of-stone colony, then wait as enemies ignore your unpowered sentry guarded halls, cramp themselves to be butchered by the main melee force into the kill tunnels, then finally trickle out into the killbox to be finished off by your best shooters and sentries, loot is then counted and stockpiled

if all else fails, then relocation might be necessary, leave behind the most worthless and move on with the best pawns you still have, with as much food and medicine as you can carry, preferably with the ones who have no important relationships to minimize potential issues, if in the middle of enemy raid, then use the worthless to distract the enemies until your party can escape

mortars are to be stockpiled in shelves until they are needed, remove the roofing of some exposed hallways and position them there, shells are kept inside of pocket storage areas in the halls themselves, with granite doors and walls placed to separate them, the 11x11 rooms are good for this, but the use and stockpiling of different shells are a waste of time, and are hassles, and directly effect your colony's productivity, so use antigrain only, if no antigrain then fallback to plan B, from your planning of course, why am i even writing this, huh, good point

[TPTI]

insane many thanks