Some tips for starting on 3rd planet

[Black Jesus]

So I'm sitting here doing reports for my online courses and I tell myself to take a break to prevent the onset of insanity... So I'm gonna toss some tips to help with the final planet! Yay!

1.) Slow down: When starting on any planet you should take it slow once you get some more experience you kinda learn to multi task and wing it so things comes together just in time. On the 3rd planet however you really don't want to do this. If you need interior constructions do them first (last in, first out) because engineers and bots will prioritize exterior construction first.

2.) No mine just trade: On the 3rd planet you start with a few medical supplies but no medic so the supplies are effectively useless to you until you get a medic. So you don't want to disable your workers in the mine just yet. Since you need a medic anway for later why not get a few medics as soon as possible and focus on getting a strong medical supplies economy the resources you save on the mine can allow you to put up a command center and lab faster. Get biologists for food and medical herbs and medics to produce supplies your workers can produce bioplastics and you can use the supplies you have now and will get later to buy metal this will enable you get through the starter phase and move into early game where you can mine and produce metal once your situated.

3.) Monitor welfare: Your welfare does more then give you a general sense about the health of your base and community it also dictates whether you get colonist shuttles or not. Keep your welfare high to receive more people I usually start by calling down a few extra biologists and then a few medics once you have those focus on getting all your starter structures.

4.) Build order: The general flow I use is Power>Power Storage>Water>Oxygen after that make a canteen asap by now the colonists should be gulping down fistfuls of air and they're gonna be thirsty so make your canteen and water fountain now and then construct a dorm and bunks. Once you have all of that get a bio-dome and then a lab after that get a processing planet. Then prioritize a command center you can probably sit here for a while till you run low on spares as you'll only have a few power producing structures somewhere in all of this around this time I usually end up constructing a second solar and power collector after that I go for a factory as I'm usually about out of spares and then I get a storage. Solars, power collectors and extractors are all the largest size, everything else is the smallest size except for bio-dome I use the size up from the smallest.

5.) Telescope rush: You really need to rush telescopes once the starter base is done and you have the power and metal for it. The reason is simple - Solar Flares. The game slows time down to 1x as soon as the flare starts and pops up a notification but it's usually too late to save anyone more then five feet from a airlock so we need to detect them before they arrive and then set the base to Yellow Alert so the colonists run inside thanks to the last few patches once they're in they stay in till the alert is lifted.

6.) Intruders? Go to yellow alert: Unless your trying to get idiots killed never go to red alert when intruders are around always go to yellow alert unless you have no guards. Why? Because red alert tells any yahoo near the intruders to go John Rambo on the intruders problem is even with a gun colonists tend to fair poorly against intruders and even if they win they will quickly die due to combat wounds. Put it on yellow alert to keep non-combatant colonists from going Leeroy Jenkins mode into a line of gunfire. And keep a sizable corp of guards with guns make your own guns it's alot cheaper that way.

7.) Laser broadside: Maybe it's me but the 3rd planet seems to have not only a higher rate of meteor impacts but they seem to bypass lasers alot more even at 94% so I've gotten into the habit or creating laser clusters or broadsides Now if one laser is charging another can fire the only way I see a meteor getting through is in the super rare case where most consoles are unmanned and I find these clusters to be much more effective they also look cool to.

[:WTF: Grendel]

Decent tips, I found the Gas Giant Moon (3rd Planet) was easier than the other two... but I've already put some 40hrs into playing the game so that probably made some difference.

I found that expanding on the 3rd Planet must be done very slowly in the beginning until you've constructed enough infrastructure to support your current set of colonists. Once I've built one small version of each structure and enough power to support said buildings I also expand my colonists very slowly to get about 30 total, mostly Workers, Biologists, Engineers and at least 2 Medics.

Once those basics are set, I go for broke and build nothing but the biggest as I expand my colony proportionally so I don't over-expand and suffer from my colonists getting side-tracked and trying to multitask (which they are horrible at doing btw) and not accomplishing anything productive.

As for security... eventually you want a large command center built by your airlock near the dropship and spaceport pads... crammed full of guard stations and an armory... I usually try and remodel this section of my base once my prestige gets high enough to garner unwanted attention.

Feel free to check out my profile for some screenshots of colonies I've tinkered with... this game can be very fun early on but after a bit it become boring after achieving mostly everything... we need more stuff to do in the game aside from Steam Achievements and whatnot. Don't get me wrong about the boring statement, this is a game I can enjoy playing when trying to give myself a break from other FPS and RTS games I frequent.