Fungal farms and money problems

[The Firebird]

I have seen some amazing builds where people has cornrows of fungal farms no normal farms. Are fungal farms realy worth it i have never used them and do not know much about their food output. If they are better then i might as well use them instead of normal farms to place more apartments or production buildings

Second thing is. I did a brazil playthrough recently but i ran into a financial death spiral. A series of disasters led to pipes bursting like crazy which i repaired and a lot of buildings not working so in turn i spent a lot of cash to make sure my networks keep running but now i am out of cash and i have horrible relations with the other colonies. the colony died. How do i manage my finances to maximise my need. I even researched stuff but the cash and need was flowing out much faster how do i limit this and make my colony self-sufficient early on to avoid having to rely on imports from earth

[Blake Walsh]

The novelty of fungal farms is that they produce food continuously instead of in batches, this makes them pretty decent as an emergency food source if the "Hunger" game rule is in play. They also only require metal for maintenance which is nice and they require very little water and free up space for more accomodation.

In the long run though they are very much inferior to farms and they are expensive to build and inflict sanity penalties on the workers due to being outdome. If you aren't using the Hunger game rule then fungal farms are nearly completely pointless unless you get an event/mystery that prevents resupply from Earth and are suffering a food crisis. Otherwise farms are better once they have been buffed by techs and soil quality - buffs the Fungal Farm does not get.


So far as finances, you have to live within your means. Quickly get a source of income which is either exporting rare metals or importing tourists, keep a generous buffer of funds (at least 1 bil) at all times so you can quickly repair things by ordering an emergency supply pod with the required resources: supply pods can land during dust storms and quick repairs helps stop things getting out of hand.

In general, avoid long pipes and instead use isolated life support grids, Vaporators are your friends, they are expensive upfront but only require metal maintenance and can be built flush up against domes, an upgraded Vaporator produces 1.5 water which is plenty to supply a Micro dome and to fill a tank for dust storms, a micro dome is a good way to exploit rare metals (land a ship with colonists nearby to staff it). You can connect life support grids with Tunnels which are indestructible except to Meteors: Tunnels are expensive up front but cheap and reliable in the long run.

In general, consider not just the cost of building something, but the ongoing cost of maintaining it, it's possible to scavenge metal using RC Transports for a long time so things which only require metal maintenance tend to not be burdensome to maintain, polymer is pretty easy to produce so you can use things that require polymer maintenance quite freely. Avoid nearly everything that requires Electronics maintenance until you have a factory to make it (you can make an exception for Research Labs: but no Schools, University etc and definitely no Electronics based luxury services: Playgrounds are more than enough for children, and Grocer+Diner+Infirmary is enough for adults to be functional). Same for Machinery, limit the things that require machinery maintenance until you can make it yourself. And if you're playing on a map with frequent Meteors avoid making anything expensive (like Tunnels, Wonders) until you have Meteor Defense system because Meteors love destroying nice things.

[Zlorfik [CH/BY]]

My advice: start a new game with the church as sponsor and the last ark rule active. Once you get to 100 colonists (may take you a couple of tries), go back to your brazil game and laugh at how incapable you were.

But seriously: build only what is absolutely necessary and build it only less than one sol before you really need it. Avoid buildings that use expensive materials as upkeep unless you are producing them already. Only get from earth what you really need at this very moment. Drone hubs are a real sucker for electronics and you'll have them from the start. An RC controller while more expensive and heavier initially can support time periods when your spaceship is travelling from or to earth. Otherwise it makes for a great base for your drones (early game).

[fractalgem]

If you're playing as Brazil, play to your strength-your ability to turn mountains and plateaus into money *without* needing fiddly colonist support.


Focus on drones. Bonus points if you play as an inventor and thus don't have to maintain or power drone stations, but drone command vehicles will work too to mine remote mountains.



Always have some emergency cash so you can order a supply pod with more drones and emergency maintanence supplies-just in case some disaster knocks alll your drones out at once.