Hard mode Arks

[jwolfe]

Has anyone managed to crack the Arks scenario on Hard? And if so, what progress, tech wise did you use?

Because I rushed coal mines and even with two of them run 24/7 by bots, I am slowly running out of coal and everything is freezing solid.

I simply don't have the resource and research output to keep up with the cold waves.

[Anlauf]

Manage your ark heat well.
You can pretty much leave the arks close to dying before heating again.
Manage your workers, moving them around as needed.
Force extra shifts when possible to get new tech quickly.

[jwolfe]

You mean the 24 hour option? I've been hesitant to use those because I cant afford to have any of the workforce die until I at least the engineer autotomaton tech is unlocked.

[Stormy]

You're basically always gonna be on a tight edge heat-wise, it's impossible not to be. I would recommend trying to get 2 scouts with scout speed as soon as you can get away with and explore north as early as you can, I did it too late and paid a heavy price... Anlauf is correct, extra shifts should be basically up on everything, I regularly have emergency shift on a workshop because I can barely keep up my research in time. Make sure you don't waste steam cores (you dont need wall drills, steam sawmills or steam steelworks). I basically always got my research last minute to get the latest heat upgrade, I'm switching my people around/shifts a LOT. Play around with turning on/off the heaters. MAKE USE OF OVERDRIVE A LOT. It's a "free" resource, overdrive should never be at 0% Get most laws as soon as you can, fighting arena early to help with discontent from extra shifts...

Edit : Extended Shift =/= Emergency Shift. Extended shift (06:00-20:00 instead of 08:00-18:00, option on top left of each building once you pass the law) is probably the strongest law in the game and only costs discontent which is fairly easy to deal with. Emergency Shifts can have dire consequences so you should use those very sparingly.

[jwolfe]

So you reserve the cores for the mines? I'd guess one industrial hothouse is enough and cluster the infrastructure around the steam hubs you plant by the Arks.(because heaters are simply not enough).

[Anlauf]

In my runs, only one poor bloke die (easy, normal, hard). Always, but only one.
After that is stable.
On hard.
Until you get the hothouse, make soup and have the moonshine law.

But really, micro manage the s... Out of your guys.

[Stormy]

Same I only lost one guy. You should spam automatons early on until you have at least 7 or 8. I didn't need steam coal mines until day 18 or 19 (had a thumper I upgraded day 15 or 16 with 3 gathering posts I kinda rotated, one always with an automaton then 2). I can't stress this enough though as soon as the "2 paths to get steam cores" open send a scout north and then get to the snowbound dreadnaught (save beforehand), if you don't it'll be in the storm and your scouts will die (in hard at least it was already in the storm with like 12 or 13 days until the storm...) As Anlauf said also, you need lots of micro, soup + moonshine asap, get a new law everytime it's available except triage that you shouldnt need and would hurt your discontent/hope.

[Pulptenks]

I just complete the ark campaign with 3 days before the storm arrived... 2k food and using all my robot to get coal fast (because I send the 6k to manchester). When I reach the goal of 8.000 coal, the campaign complete :(

[Skorne]

Key to keeping your resources up is to get the automaton efficiency upgrades, I had 4 steam hubs for the arks and other buildings, 7 autos running; 2 for coal, 2 for steel, 2 for wood and 1 for food. Later you need a whole bunch more auto's too but if you can get these 7 going you have a solid base to build them. Getting scouts out early for cores and constant tech upgrades are absolutely imperative for beating this on hard (if you want to complete the side objective at least) so I took 2 workshops and chain 24 hour shifted them the whole scenario. I had advanced coal mines + 3 autos sat on charcoal kilns late game to help get to the massive 14k coal you need. You will also need lev 3 gen power and level 2 heaters for when it hits -90 towards the end. Things I didn't need to upgrade were sawmills lev 1 was sufficient, lev 1 hothouse (though had to build 2 extra and made soup for the side objective) and only went to level 2 steelworks. Oh yeah and you will need to build an absolute ton of resource depots as and when you need.

[erneiz]

I am having trouble with this on Hard. I can finish it, but I always lack the coal save Manchester. Here's my breakdown on what I did and hopefully somebody can point out at which point I could do better:
1. Enacted Soup law
2. Built 4 gatherers near the 4 resource clusters. Assigned the automaton to the lone coal pile, assigned all 45 engineers to 3 wood crates for the first day, those gatherers aren't going up until tomorrow anyway.
3. Built Workshop, Cookhouse, and Medical House. Left houses for the next day.
4. Assigned 30 engineers to all the gathering post containing wood and steel, left the one south with the 2 coal piles alone, the automaton would go there after the initial pile runs out. The other 15 went to the cookhouse, medical house, and workshop.
5. Started going towards Extended Shift law. Of course, use this on all the workshops. But the people will be really fussy about it and start demanding rest. I had no choice to comply to this one since I can't comply to the heat in homes.
6. Researched Beacon and sent the ones that were in the cookhouse to scout after they're done cooking. After that, picked faster gathering > workshop upgrade 1 > hothouse > more scouts.
7. For scouting, it's hard to explain, but picked all the closest spots and not going back before picking up everything. There are 4 'areas': southwest, southeast, north, and east. Since the factory blueprint is in the southwest, went there first and return immediately after.
7. Built 3 more Workshops and used the 10 engineers that first ran out of their resource pile, dismantled those gatherers after they're done.
8. After Extended Shift law, went straight towards Moonshine. Built the arena and pub house, but didn't man it. Need to get those workshops going.
9. After more scout research is complete, picked up the rest of the lvl 1 tech: heater, steam hubs, coal thumper and steelworks. The scout research needs to be done before or right as the first scout that found the factory blueprint went home.
10. Built 2 steelworks, coal thumper, and 2 gatherers. Steelworks were only ever be manned by automatons.
11. Used 5 engineers that was at a gathering post to do the extra scouting mentioned above, and the other 5 manned another workshop after the piles run out.
12. Only started the heater on the ark after it's just about to get frozen. They can actually last quite awhile when cold. After the heater isn't enough, I used the steam hubs and generator overdrive and alternate between them. Played around with heat and tried to conserve as much coal as possible
13. After more gatherer run out of pile, assigned 1 to the cookhouse and 4 to the hothouse. I didn't use extend shift on hothouse and cookhouse. The other 5 engineer go where ever seems appropriate.
14. Researched coal mine > wall drill > storage improvement > bunkhouse > generator power upgrade 1 > workshop upgrade 2.
15. After the first scout team returned, built factory and immediately built an automaton. Did not send the scout back to help the 2nd team southwest, I need them to go north asap. But for that, I need to use up all of your steam cores. After that automaton I have 4 more steam cores, used them for wall drill, 2 coal mines, and the last one can go either to the engineer giving you the medical automaton tech or build another automaton, but gathering the resource needed for that could take a while so I gave it to the engineer.
16. After Moonshine I went for Prosthetics. On the way, I preferred Radical Treatment and Double Rations. I cannot afford to have more medical house and the people will be REAAAAALLY fussy about the cold and I just cannot seem to fulfill them. Even if I somehow could early on, they will be asking for it again later. This is why discontent was always high and I can't afford Overcrowding.
16. At this point my generator will really start to consume a lot, so I need to move engineers from a few workshops to the coal thumper and gatherers. The only remedy to this is more automatons. Hopefully my 2nd scout returning from the southwest area could help with that.
17. Researched Generator Efficiency 1 > Better Heater 1 > Better Overdrive > Coal Mine Efficiency 1 > Steam Steelworks > workshop upgrade 3 . I should slip faster scout in there but I needed these things fast since the cold is getting really severe and I was burning through coal reaaaaly fast.
18. Researched generator power upgrade 2 > heater efficiency upgrade > house > steam coal mine > industrial hothouse > workshop upgrade 4
18. Next, I finally managed to automate 2 coal mines, 1 wall drill, 2 steelworks, 1 coal thumper+ 2 gatherers.
19. Upgraded my hothouse and built another one, then automated both of them. Automated the cookhouse too.
20. And lastly: Researched Generator Efficiency 2 > Better Heater 2 > workshop upgrade 5 > generator power upgrade 3 > integrated automaton 1 > integrated automaton 2 and then I ran out of time.

[priitm]

I got perfect ending hard mode ark with saving Manchester with exactly 3 days spare time. So quite some room to small mstakes.
key points for me:
priority no 1, get 2 scouts with 50% speed boonus as soon as you can - you need thos cores.
priority no 2, get automation upgrdes as soon as you can.
extended shifts everywhere all game.
2 worskops from start and added 2 more as soon i had some automations running
2 coal mines(upgrades whenever i could) and addded 2 thumpers later to keep spare automations occupied.
2 steam iron mines (upgraded to advenced in very late game)
2 sawmills (used steam ones in late game, but probably not needed)
1 hothouse with 6 enginers and cookhouse with 1 enginer for most game, for final push 3 advanced hothouses and 2 cookhouses. bit overkill as i had 4k food + 300 raw food in end.
Heating wise i had 4 steam hubs close to arks and all heat needing buildins close to them. for late game also second level heaters were needed.
Had one healing house with extra beds perk. Used overdrive if i noticed sick people numbers rising. There seems to be mechanic, that if peple get some warm the can work again for some time in cold before starting to get sick. So let overdrive run few hours and turn off.

[Azov]

I completed arks and saved Manchester on hard. Are you looking to save Manchester? In either case, for coal you want to add thumpers + gathering posts on top of those 2 coal mines. Use automatons on coal mines so they can be worked n 24/7, use people on thumpers/gathering posts and some more automatons on gathering posts. Don't use range upgrade for your generator, don' use more heat than "liveable" to save coal, turn on overdrive and reduce heat lvl to save some coal on early stages.

[jussr]

Hmm. For the people who've done this successfully, how often are you sending your scouts back with the cores they've collected vs sending them on to check out another place sooner?

[erneiz]

Well, tried again and finally barely managed to do it, sending that last convoy in the last hour, after turning every single heat off hours before. What I did differently was picking faster scouts. After tweaking some more I also found that I don't really need the last generator power upgrade if I do really mean heat management. Everywhere except the med bed was cold or chilly all the time. Never managed to get advanced coal mile, maybe I should've skipped the coal mine efficiency upgrades in favor of straight to actual upgrades? Maybe could've skimped on generator and heater coal discount tech too?

[erneiz]

Originally posted by sparklecatty:

Hmm. For the people who've done this successfully, how often are you sending your scouts back with the cores they've collected vs sending them on to check out another place sooner?

I've only sent back scouts home exactly 5 times: the first time is when I got the factory blueprint, the second time is after clearing all the areas in the southwest, third time is after clearing all the areas in the north, fourth time is after clearing all the areas southeast, and the fifth and last one is after clearing all the areas in New Manchester direction.

[priitm]

Originally posted by erneiz:

Never managed to get advanced coal mile, maybe I should've skipped the coal mine efficiency upgrades in favor of straight to actual upgrades? Maybe could've skimped on generator and heater coal discount tech too?

stright upgrades are always better :)
not sure, maybe i got coal mine efficency at some point when i had spare time, but no generator nor heater effecienty techs for sure. generator 10% is small one as you dont have area upgrades here and heaters i use pretty much only at end game...