Small PSA on winterhome

[snuggleform]

Don't clear the ruins TOO fast. If there are still ruins on map on day 7, you get the opportunity to rescue 4 engineers in one of the existing ruins. If you clear all the ruins before then (which is extremely easy if you put gathering posts in the right locations) you will not get this opportunity.

[Vulkandrache]

Faster Gathering just makes manpower more efficient.
Which is about the last thing to care for on this map.
Ive had 3 normal Thumpers going nonstop with 4 more just producing piles and getting deleted afterwards as a reserve for the last days.
Add to that 2 normal mines and its all good.
You dont really use that much coal on this map.
By the time it gets cold your population has shrunk enough that you barely even need heatzones anymore.

And the Outpost transition isnt a "transition".
It brings the Engineers home, scout the steel mine asap, wait for the last coal delivery to set out and send the team over.
There is no planing here. Its all predetermined by the map layout.

[snuggleform]

I disagree faster gathering is wasted. The more coal the better. You don't have infinite manpower, and as you start to evacuate people, you want the remaining people to pick up the slack. I find it very useful to be able to turn on heaters and level 2-3 heating as soon as possible (it keeps the sick down), and you need a lot of coal to be able to do that especially considering you change the coal to steel outpost. Faster gathering helps from the beginning to the end in this regard.

By the last few days I run level 4 heat, which takes me two advanced coal mines and 1 thumper + 2 posts to keep up with. The rest of the people are doing core activities like steel mining, food, etc. So I literally use faster gathering up until the end.

Maybe you don't care about having a high level of heat on all the time and that accounts for our differences?

I'm curious to hear about your approach, it sounds like we actually have different views on the mid to end game. What do you spend your research/cores on? Obvoiusly advanced steel mine is the one thing we have to agree on is the star upgrade for a full evac. With my initial 4 cores, I allocate 2 to a steam wall drill, and 2 to a steam coal mine. When my scouts are done on the west side bringing all the engineers in, I have them grab the two "nearby" cores (snowcliff, rusty dreadnought) before they go all the way balls deep to the east. One of these nearby cores I reserve for the objective requirement, and one I use to upgrade the existing steam coal to advanced coal mine. When the eastern cores arrive they go into a factory + another advanced coal mine because I like the heating high as I said and by the this point a lot of people are being evacuated out so efficiency matters.

[Vulkandrache]

My scouting is Engineers, Steelmine, other Engineers, Home.
After that they can do whatever. I dont need anything else for several days.
The first cores are enough for 2 Mines 2 Infirmaries.

Walldrill we had that discussion for other maps before.
Its a complete waste until way later. Double or triple Sawmill ftw.
On the third day the ruins east are cleared which gives massive space for hunters and thumpers.
Triple thumper, 6+ Hunters.
Thats when the coal from the outpost will come one last time, so thats when manual coal has to come online.
Days 4-6 are mainly for a complete resturcturing of the layout, gathering all tents near the Generator.

At the end, once the Generator fails double heatlevels of bad you need heat4 yes.
But at that point you only need a minimum amount of coal, food it stockpiled in both Ship and City
and the only thing needing heat outside of range2 are the steelmills.
At that point you have 10-12 houses for the last skeleton crew to keep things together with ducktape as you stripmine the city for the last scraps of steel.

[snuggleform]

Yeah we differ quite a bit. I don't bother restructuring, but maybe I should try it once. I just add a few steam hubs to strategic locations where it covers all the bunkhouses, but I do tear down 3-4 tents which are outside heat zones.

What's your research progression? If I had to guess it sounds like you do food research early since you only build 6'ish hunters..? I build close to 20 regular ones (on top of the ones you start with) since I ignore food research for a while. And where is this location where you prefer to build the kitchen you've me quite curious.

[snuggleform]

Just wanted to add I tried a couple things you suggested and I liked them; one is don't use wall drill use sawmills, and restructure around the generator. I'm not 100% sold on the infirmaries, I mean sure it helps but maybe I could use more coal to turn up the heat really high really early to prevent sick to begin with.

[snuggleform]

Just to add a few minor notes from me playing some more:

a) I think the first research should go into extra scouts. This way you can pick up all the cores on the map in a short amount of time. Faster gathering is nice but ultimately the way I now use my cores on advanced coal mines there's no need for thumpers later in the game so faster gathering is indeed "wasted." If you really spam gathering posts everywhere early like as soon as spaces free up you'll clean up the buildings and rescue the kids/workers/engis without needing faster gathering. The cookhouse's spot next to the generator sucks, but you can place another cookhouse in the spot of the sawmill you start with (dismantle it at the end of day 2; it might have a couple wood left on it but it's not relevant at that point and it makes a perfect spot for a cookhouse that's between your medical tents and housing cluster).

b) core usage should be 2 cores into a steam wall drill, 1 core for the first objective, 1 core for factory, then toss the rest into the best coal mines you can get. Infirmaries are totally unnecessary; if you focus on coal quickly then you can turn up the heat to level 2 and 3 very quickly which cuts your sick down to ridiculously easy numbers to manage (10-20'ish)- a much better payoff than going early infirmaries (still get 80-100 sick people a day if you didn't get your heating up). The first day you should build 1 wall drill + 1 sawmill right next to the wall drill, but I found that further sawmills are inconvenient to place and just aren't worth the effort. For example, I use the space to the right of the wall drill to make 11-12 hunters huts on day 2, but if you try to use sawmills here you can't use that space since that's where a lot of trees are. Having a steam wall drill may be excessive at the very end of the game, but having it early on means you can constantly spam bunk/house upgrades/resource depots and continually research with mimimal manpower investment. Also a steam wall drill has good heating to it which negates the need to provide a steam hub for it. I tried using a lot of sawmills but it's very awkward with manpower usage and building placement and people getting sick and spending coal trying to rectify that.

c) on day 19 you will get an event that tests both your hope and discontent. If you take the last option in faith/order then hope is satisfied forever (I recommend this because even though signing it kills some people, there is at least one event later on where a lot more people die in a panic event but they don't panic at all if you take new faith/order), and just be sure to smash all your discontent buttons at 5 am on day 19 and take people off extended shifts. Provided your heating is good at this point, the discontent bar should be satisfied EVEN IF you have a 3 x emergency shift debuff from continously having 1 workshop on 24 hour shifts prior to this point. If both discontent/hope are low, not only do you avoid having to kill or have people leave this event, but the people become sorry for trying to leave and you get a slight boost to steelworks production for 24 hours (perfect time to smash emergency shifts on both steelworks). Sometimes this event doesn't happen at all (not sure why) but if it does it happens on morning of the 19th day so watch out for it, and once morning is over you can go back to your extended shifts and smash emergencies left and right without care.

d) another minor note: on day 26 when the irreparable event occurs, the amount of remaining time you get depends on how much overrheating you have. To get the maximum amount of time, have a 0% overrheated bar when this event occurs. I was trying to squeeze the most overrdive usage I could but this was detrimental as I had a 50% bar going in and my time remaining was cut in half to 1 day instead of 2.

e) scouting pattern is ->first team: escort engineers from weather station, then go off to the east to pick up most steam cores (avoid the trailer for now). Second scout team goes to the west to steel and more engineers. The timing is quite good because by the time the second scout team reaches the steel outpost is pretty close to the time where you would actually want to switch to steel. By the time the first team arrives back with the lions share of cores is roughly the time you have both the research and space to put up level 2 coal mines. After this you can send one scout team to to the abandoned trailer and try your luck (I recommend just trying the luck since even if you fail you have exactly enough steam cores to do a full evac), and pick up the rest of the resources on the map at leisure.

f) faith is preferred even on this map. You can pick up shrines after houses of prayer which is a huge productivity boost, whereas order has to wait at least 3 days more to get their equivalent agitator. Houses of healing are really good and negate any need for infirmaries later in the game. Sure the foreman can get you more steel by the end of the game, but it takes quite a while to be able to get the foreman + agitators and have it catch up with the 3 extra days you have from early shrines.

g) law timing: radical, overcrowded, 24 hr (use one immediately, and then you can use 1 more the day after, but recommended to stop using emergency shifts until you clear the main 25% discontent objective; roughly by the time your hope laws can finish up the 50% hope requirement the emergency shift debuffs will have cleared so you can easily clear the discontent bar at the same time), 14 hr, house of prayer, shrine, evening prayer, temple (should push you over the 50% mark), faithkeepers (you're going to want this to silence the engineer that exposes your lie close to this point), carehouse, prosthetics (you don't need the prosthetic researches if you get the law this early), then travel up to new faith which should hit on day 18 before the day 19 check. After that it's mostly irrelevant, I get house of healing and then organic transplants on the road to victory. Note that you don't ever need to sign either of the food laws at any point to survive or get the rations requirement, it is a noob trap for this scenario (unless you're doing some kind of speedrun maybe? But the biggest limiting factor is steel by far for a full evac).

h) research: more scouts (don't need faster scouts, it's a waste), steam wall drill, steam steel, steam coal, tech 4, advanced steel, tech 5, advanced coal, heater 2, heater efficiency, repair station, hunting tactics, repair 1, optimized shifts, repair 2 + 3, factory, housing redesign, cook/medical insulation, finish up hunter upgrades, then get all the coal efficiency and mining upgrades which allows you to kick up to heat levels 3 and 4, then sort of whatever. I ran out of relevant researches to get by day 20.

i) use all the inner ring space on housing. Plan to move out the hunters hut, pub, tech shop, and whatever other junk is in the ring by day 3 or so. Build bunkhouses to dump your excess resources. You shouldn't need to build more than 1 steam hub for the western medical posts, and maybe 1 or 2 for the coal mines/steelworks later on. You may upgrade existing tents into bunkhouses that are within heating zones, but plan to dismantle every tent/bunkhouse that's not in the inner 3 rings or existing steam hub zones.

[Vulkandrache]

I had some RL stuff going the last 3 days, sorry.

Originally posted by wsc150:

Just to add a few minor notes from me playing some more:

a) The cookhouse's spot next to the generator sucks,

I know that spot sucks. I dont care. Its my spot.

Originally posted by wsc150:

b)and continually research with mimimal manpower investment. Also a steam wall drill has good heating to it which negates the need to provide a steam hub for it. I tried using a lot of sawmills but it's very awkward with manpower usage and building placement and people getting sick and spending coal trying to rectify that.

I ultimately ended up building a walldrill because of the wood needed for houses.
A normal drill. teching up to a level 2 is not needed.
I still dont understand the need for manpower investment on this map.
After the ruins are cleared there is no way to have everyone working anyways.
And ressources depot should be build to the absolute minumum. Maybe 8 total.
each one costs 5 steel at the end.

Originally posted by wsc150:

c) on day 19 you will get an event that tests both your hope and discontent. If you take the last option in faith/order then hope is satisfied forever (I recommend this because even though signing it kills some people, there is at least one event later on where a lot more people die in

d) another minor note: on day 26 when the irreparable event occurs, the amount of remaining time you get depends on how much overrheating you have. To get the maximum amount of time, have a 0% overrheated bar when this event occurs. I was trying to squeeze the most overrdive usage I could but this was detrimental as I had a 50% bar going in and my time remaining was cut in half to 1 day instead of 2.

If the city is in good condition you dont need the last law. Infact i didnt even go past the Temple.
And the irreparable damage doenst matter either. I finished my Survivor run with full dreadnaught on the morning of day25.
https://imgur.com/KZ83rsX

Originally posted by wsc150:

faithkeepers (you're going to want this to silence the engineer that exposes your lie close to this point),

You dont need faithkeepers.
You want them to expose your lie.
Ferrying the people is the second biggest bottleneck after steel.
Having 300 people run to the ship on their own suits me just fine.
Not having any Engineers to repair the third breakdown was funny but nothing improved pay-for-repair cant handle.

[snuggleform]

Ferrying people isn't a bottleneck at all. You can easily get all 500 aboard well before day 25.

Let's say you build the evac center by day 11, which is late by the way. Every day you can transport 50 people (without upgrade). So in 10 days you can fill the dreadnought. And this is also without needing to have people leave on their own. I find it confusing why you find ferrying people to be a bottleneck. If steel is the number 1 bottleneck, it doesn't matter what number 2 is if steel is the only thing holding you back the longest.

I also never said the last law was needed. You can reread if you want to see what I actually said.

I tried without upgrading to wall drill 2, but like I said it's worth it. It's better heated, doesn't get a bunch of people sick as spamming sawmills does. And sawmils are hard to find locations for (like I said, I put hunters huts in the locations where the trees are so sawmills don't yield much).

[snuggleform]

Just did survivor by day 24 at 13:48, using order. If you're trying to rush down a full evac I think order is actually better because of foreman. I think you're right that you don't have to upgrade the wall drill, I didn't and made it just fine. In order to pull off a fast full evac, you have to start 24 hour shifting the steelworks approximately when your evac center goes online (before that you might make "too much" steel and have storage issues which costs too much wood to fix if you're not upgrading wall drill, and you could use the research boost anyways to get some critical techs up). I didn't even bother getting heat 4. I used the strategy of allowing people to leave on their own; it's hilarious. Not needed, but it works. I had to take additives law because so many workers left on their own that FOOD became a bottleneck of all things.

[Vulkandrache]

Bottleneck wasnt the right word to use.
People in the boat dont need heat and magicaly dont need to eat.
And sure. You dont need to let people leave. But on my first serious try it happened by accident because i forgot to send the 2 Engi 2 kids. I decided to see what happens and works fine.
And its nice to not be pressured into having to send the ferry on cooldown.

About the steel. If you really wanted to cheese it you could put down steam hubs and pause the construction. 20 steel storage for free.

Going with Order is likely do be faster, thats not a surprise.
Boosting the level1 steelworks has little impact and the foreman overcompensates the earlier shrine. I did the 24h on the steelworks on cooldown after the initial quest.
All in all i had a few 100 steel leeway had i really needed it as there was some more stuff to dismantle and a last delivery could have been waited for.

[snuggleform]

I had some leeway myself, I took prosthetics before foreman not sure if that works out better or not. I also forgot to use 24 hr shift a couple times before the first objective; you can squeeze in 3 and the discontent will fade away by the time you raise hope to 50%.

[snuggleform]

Just did it by day 23 10:06 using order. Still not optimized - could have taken foreman earlier but I panicked and got carehouse/prosthetics because I thought I would miss the children deadline. I'm pretty sure foreman can be squeezed in before those 2, netting 3 days of foreman steel.

I shaved off a day I believe due to doing "orderly" evacuation (silence engineer, keep discontent low/hope high on da y19) since you control who leaves instead of losing tons of food production and engineers willy nilly. Yes it's funny that people leave en masse if you let things get out of control but it's just not optimal if you're trying to do a full evac as early as possible.

My research order was actually quite different this time - I decided to go scouting -> factory -> automaton 1 -> tech 4 -> engineer auto -> steam wall drill -> etc. The reasoning behind automaton is to have 1 automaton doing research; this makes up for the fact that you should be 24 hour steel all the time and gives your research some breathing room. I was able to complete every tech I wanted including heat 4 + all coal mining techs + all coal efficiency upgrades by day 21. The city's coal needs were met by 2 advanced coal mines, on heat 4 with heater 3. And I also squeezed in both prosthetics researches on time for it to be relevant as well, all the while 24 hour shifting steel.

I'm more or less convinced that infirmaries a noob trap.

[snuggleform]

Day 22, 20:14 full evac extreme, with order. I like the double automaton research build. Could still be faster I think if shifted steel a little earlier and use cheesy steel storing tactics. With a day 22 full evac you can avoid doing a lot of research - don't need heat 4, don't need pay for repair...saves you a lot of steel. You don't even trigger the last 2 repair cycles.

That event that checks both hope/discontent has various timings. I don't know what causes it, but this time it triggered super early on 16. I think it may have to do with how soon you evac all the kids. On all my previous playthrough when I evac kids quickly, the event happens on day 19 but this time I delayed the kids until the very last second and the event triggered earlier. Not a huge deal either way; you get bonus steel production if you meet the check but if you evac the kids at the last second it means you can get foreman earlier which I think makes up for that 1 day of bonus steel.

Yes it turns out you don't strictly need wall drill 2 BUT I did find wood tight at times I was forced to pick some cheaper research instead of the research I wanted. On the other hand, if you build 2 automatons there aren't enough cores to go around for a wall drill 2 (as well as 2 advanced coal mines + factory) so it's a tossup. If you highroll the abandoned wreck you can fit it all in I suppose and also highrolling the abandoned trailer gives you a lot of steel so that's just information to keep in mind if you want to highroll the game.

[snuggleform]

Oh my, I discovered something. I doubt I'm the first to notice but I haven't seen this posted in any thread or talked about in a video: the one outpost team you have can "rotate" between the different outpost locations, thus harvesting 1 delivery for each outpost resource per day.

The rule appears to be: a particular resource has a cooldown of 24 hours (for example, you can get at most 1 delivery of coal per day), but they are independent cooldowns between different resources (for example, as soon as the coal shipment goes, you can move your outpost team to steel and they will send a shipment as soon as you set up there, then you go back to coal. Wait until the coal outpost sends a shipment again which is 24 hours from when you started, then repeat.) Also, only one shipment can be on the map at once. So if you have a coal shipment going to the city but it won't unload because you don't have the capacity, you can't send a steel or food shipment until the coal shipment is cleared.

I'm not certain if this is intended or not. To be absolutely clear: this is not the "old" exploit where you could dismantle and send infinite coal shipments just spamming build/dismantle on the same outpost, but since the resources have independent cooldowns you can rotate between the 3 sites with 1 outpost team and gather them all. To be able to get all 3 shipments in a day you need the faster outpost teams research, but if you're comfortable with 2/3 shipments then you don't need that research.

My guess is this is unintended because it seems like you should have to choose between the 3 options, but I don't really know for sure. What do you guys think? This probably makes the map ridiculously easy since you can maintain both coal and steel outposts with little effort, and if you wish later on you can get all 3 with research every day if you want to.

[Aturchomicz]

Originally posted by wsc150:

Oh my, I discovered something. I doubt I'm the first to notice but I haven't seen this posted in any thread or talked about in a video: the one outpost team you have can "rotate" between the different outpost locations, thus harvesting 1 delivery for each outpost resource per day.

The rule appears to be: a particular resource has a cooldown of 24 hours (for example, you can get at most 1 delivery of coal per day), but they are independent cooldowns between different resources (for example, as soon as the coal shipment goes, you can move your outpost team to steel and they will send a shipment as soon as you set up there, then you go back to coal. Wait until the coal outpost sends a shipment again which is 24 hours from when you started, then repeat.) Also, only one shipment can be on the map at once. So if you have a coal shipment going to the city but it won't unload because you don't have the capacity, you can't send a steel or food shipment until the coal shipment is cleared.

I'm not certain if this is intended or not. To be absolutely clear: this is not the "old" exploit where you could dismantle and send infinite coal shipments just spamming build/dismantle on the same outpost, but since the resources have independent cooldowns you can rotate between the 3 sites with 1 outpost team and gather them all. To be able to get all 3 shipments in a day you need the faster outpost teams research, but if you're comfortable with 2/3 shipments then you don't need that research.

My guess is this is unintended because it seems like you should have to choose between the 3 options, but I don't really know for sure. What do you guys think? This probably makes the map ridiculously easy since you can maintain both coal and steel outposts with little effort, and if you wish later on you can get all 3 with research every day if you want to.

NERD