Tips for beginners.

[Don Cool]

1. (After building water/power) When starting your base build the oxygen generator first, then the canteen and add the airlock to the canteen. The airlock should be facing your salvaged ship. This saves a lot of walking for your crew.

2. Dont build another canteen untill you really have to, had 2 mealmakers and a single table for a very long time with no problems. Check your mealmakers by clicking on the questionmark, plan/pant accordingly and initially for 2 ressource meals only.

3. Power : Dont be afraid to turn off the grid in the grid panel at night if things get hairy, people can eat on the floor and survive untill dawn rises and the solar panels kick in, make it your priority to build more power, dont rely on wind turbines ... they are a backup, not a primary source. Landing pads use tons of power, I turn them off at night in situations where I find power usage a bit too high.

4. Extremely important. Set manufacturing limits, you can do it right of the bat. To start with 10 of each and you can later adjust then numbers.

5. Solar flare warning, beside alerts: Turn off mines instantly, check outside and turn off airlocks, unfortunately you dont have much time here.

6. Constantly stop intake of colonists and choose who you wish to come, that means 100% for one type of colonist. 3 new workers arrive, stop intake and check work/food distribution flow. Begin intake again if you need more workers, maybe biologists ... when they arrive, stop intake again.

7. Buildings arent procedurally built in this game, they are built at once. The number of ressources on your top right are really the total number you have including the ones already allocated for the buildings. (this has confused me a couple of times)

8. Spread out oxygen generators.

9. React to the game, running low on food? Turn off visitors, they eat tons. Low on power? Turn off landing pads and recreational facilities.

10. In the beginning workers are the most important to create metal and bioplast, you want your mines and machines working at all times. About 15 workers before anything else is a priority, then its a mix of biologists/workers ... and then engineers for more advanced stuff.

11. Dont rush, if the base is selfsustaining and things are running okay, its better to set time to x4 and wait for the metal you need to be produced.

[AskAi]

Excellent tips, thanks!

[Tenzek]

Do not put an airlock on a canteen.

The O2 will be your center point initially, and your base will be a + shape coming off of it.

First, as you said, build your solar panel and energy collector. You want that done right away so the collector has time to fill before night. Let them complete both before doing anything else.

Then, add your O2 and your water on opposite ends of the chain, and again, let both complete before moving on.

You want to add a processing plant in a direction from your O2 such that you can add an airlock to it that will be as close to your mining site as possible. Add the airlock with just about the width of a mine from the mountains, and let them complete those two items.

In the two remaining directions of the plus shape, you want to individually place a *small* canteen and dorm as dead ends, let both complete. Add two beds to the dorm (or one if you're on the gas giant moon, as you start with only 4 people), then add a table and fountain to the canteen.

Add a storage room to the plant, and off of that room make your *small* biodome. Get 3 wheat and 1 tomato plant going to start. Later you will convert this to making herbs for med kits, and you won't need more than the 4 spaces. This will be enough food until you hit about 15 colonists, but you won't have the biologists to work much more until then anyway.

Add your first mine and your dock, then add one metal processor to the plant.

When the dock finishes, set your colonist ratio to 100% workers so you get metal to expand faster, then add a meal maker and either a TV or a plant to that canteen. (meal maker earlier if you see your prepared meals drop below 10)

At ~7 workers, switch over to 100% biologists and then work on a larger biodome. At ~7 biologists, switch to a more normal ratio. I like to start out with 40%, 35, 10, 10, 5. Finish gathering your 20 total, then consolidate your resources a bit before you expand. Adding a small factory with one structure for producing spares should be done around now.

Also, do not build off the canteen this early. You don't want that to be your central hallway, so build off the storage or biodome. Build away from the direction of the ports and mines. Save the adjacent space for a dedicated ore/medkit production area later. If you've built your main base away from that direction, you will save space to build a proper port area as near as possible that production later.

Of course I did not mention power expansion in this, but that is because it depends heavily on the planet you are on. Rule of thumb is to keep enough storage to survive the night from a full charge, and then you have some leeway from there. One large collector should cover you until you expand past 20 people.

[Don Cool]

Tenzek, I built all my bases so far off the canteen initially and had great success with it. Have you tried it?

[Tenzek]

I forgot to say, before you start to make spares, you need to get an infirmary to save your miners from injury. Otherwise they will stop working and bog you down.

Don, it will be a problem once you get to 130-150 pop. It will start having O2 problems unless you built a second O2 unit on the other side before expanding further. Expand through it later when you can afford the infrustructure, sure, but don't make it your initial direction or you will have built things in the way that you won't want there later.

[Saphirro]

1. airlock - Face airlock to the closest mine or probably two if you can for future this will reduce time to receive ores. After lock you can have pretty much anything but processing plant should be up to 2 building behind airlock or build there storage.

3 power - dont waste resources on small or medium. go for big ones for late game, better for maintenance. build them close to enterance and spread only collectors coz they need maintaining only when hitted by meteorite.

10. for each machine you need approx. 1.5-2 people. So 15 is overkill. Mine needs approx 4 workers to have a good production on early game 2-3 is enough.

11. exactly. once you have everything set your limits a bit higher and keep producing for a while maybe even go for trading.

12. once avilable rush bots. make at least 50% of colony carring bots. minimum should be 10 at all time. and build automatic bot repair platform.

13. once your colony is good dont expand but slowly repleace small building with big ones. better for late game.

14. wind is too RNG an not reliable. focus on solar energy even on 2nd planet.

15. for trading build multiple airlocks.

16. recommending building starports/landing pads at one pleace and do 3 airlock enterance followed by 2 command centres none or miminum conections to them to build up security and build close dorms so they dont go too far.

17. till they dont fix cabins dont build them. they are very bad for big colony.

18. dorms, cabins, sick bays are dead ends you cannot connect aditional buildings.

19. dont overbuild starch plants for very late game you will be stuck with tons of them over the colony.

20. keep high morale, lower morale meens lower production



and How to energy ? read my thread that i tested and feels that way. http://steamcommunity.com/app/403190/discussions/0/483367798514081135/

[Tenzek]

The problem with multiple airlocks for trading is that lots of intruders can come later game. Make sure they all terminate into one guard room, and not along separate paths. Otherwise, you can scatter intruders all over your base.

Also, I build mostly starch plants. 3:1 ratio wheat to tomato. That starch is great late game, because all of the engineering stations use plastics. Semiconductors, rifles, bots and spares all need it, and you basically want to stockpile all of those.

[Saphirro]

dont agree with starch but if you try beta you have more recepies so you can play differently. on P2 i ended up with stockik 550 starch.

[Saphirro]

Planet 3. this is how i build it http://imgur.com/L43Onxj
pretty good location N53 E145

[Porcuspine]

Tip 11 is one to live by. If there's nothing else to take out of this, it's that one. Slow and steady truly does win the race this time.

[Jalindo]

All the tips above are awesome. Keep in mind there are lots of different ways to play the game successfully, so not all tips are "do this or you die". Try to read into the tips and see why they came to this conclusion.

For instance, tip #1 will have disagreements because some people will want to build airlock towards colony ship to speed up collection of resources, whereas others (Saphiiro, myself) will prefer to place airlock towards nearest mine to speed metal collection efforts, and early on resources are used to build more externally than internally, so nearness to airlock is a nice to have rather than a need to have. Still, great tips all around by the posters above.

As for the starch question, Wheat+Meat and Wheat+Tomatoes are both great recipes for mixed meals. Wheat makes starch but Tomatoes don't. Therefore, I've found some success with balancing Wheat with Tomatoes to limit the starch production while still getting adequate mixed meals. With adequate airlocks, stockpiling bioplastics from massive starch can be a decent trade good as well.

I also prefer balancing wind turbines and solar panels as a method of redundant energy supply and turning off the entire grid if I run out so that batteries can recover. It significantly reduces the string of the black out period.

List of guides if any beginners need them.
Colonists/workshops not working checklist: http://steamcommunity.com/app/403190/discussions/0/483367798506060710/
Colonist Priority Guide: http://steamcommunity.com/app/403190/discussions/0/483367798507030927/
Updated Recipe List v1.02: http://steamcommunity.com/app/403190/discussions/0/483367798514654678/
Beginners Guide Tutorial Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amMivfOoxlA&list=PLyj9o-jOVyzQafOQ5jvGL7dhN8ZLKYDHM

[Tenzek]

I'm surprised that people are having starch problems. You needs so many plastics later that you burn through the starch quickly, and saving up a ton helps that initial push to build. I always find starch to be my bottleneck for making guns and robots once I start to try to produce them continuously.

[Tenzek]

Originally posted by Saphirro:

Planet 3. this is how i build it http://imgur.com/L43Onxj
pretty good location N53 E145

Here is mine. I stopped when I hit 100 pop because I had made a few mistakes in the layout that I saw would be a major hassle later on.

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/394421705877143231/C1D79B46B88362B24CE09EB7C15C1AE1E63256BD/

The power cells spread out pretty far, so I had to pan back to show the whole thing, but hopefully it's clear enough to get an idea.

[HiggMusic]

Was still wary due to losing $$ on df9, which I realize is completely irrational since this game is finished and has already received a patch. Reading this thread made me not want to wait a second longer <3 thanks :)

[Don Cool]

Jalindo, I always build two airlocks to start with, one to the ressources from the ship and then I build a factory with an airlock attached to where the mines are going to be. I also take into account the airlocks placement so the initial base is in between making walking far less dangerous.

But you are absolutely right, there isnt a single solution, although a few things are almost necessary to succeed.

[Tenzek]

It also greatly depends on your goal. If you just want the 100 pop achievement, then you don't need to be as meticulous, but if your goal is to get the max possible pop, there is simply an objectively optimal set up to do it with.

On a completely unrelated note, I forgot to mention that the base on the 3rd planet in my screen shot is N:0 and W:178 That base I have there is taking up far less than half of the available space to build. It is the most open map I have seen so far.