Beyond Earth Initiative - WTF?

[Didz]

What is it with Roddenbury and this Beyond Earth Initiative?

I've had it twice now and the first time he killed my colony off with his pointless demands for mountains of resources. Now he's just started on my new colony with a demand for 200 metal.

This time I actually tried to just ignore him and not do the breakthrough research, but he still sends the rocket despite being cold shouldered. What exactly is my motive for even botheirng with this sponger. I don't see any point to helping him out?

[Skyblade]

Indeed he took a lot of my resources for little monetary gain! Took me some time to recover on my first playthrough.

[Didz]

So, is there any monetary gain?

I complied with his demands in my last game until he killed off my colony, but I never saw anything in return prior to giving up. And in my current game he's just started by demanding 200 metal without offering any reward and I've only got 184 metal in stock and I'm struggling to keep up with maintenance let alone expansion.

I wouldn't mind so much if there was some sort of reward (like money so I could replace my losses) but this constant begging is annoying, and what on earth is the logic of building a base on the Moon when we are already colonising Mars, and why ship metal all the way from Mars when the Moon is Earth's orbit. It just makes no sense. I'm wondering if there is some way to blow up his rocket, or block the access to it somehow so it won't steal my stuff. Pity I can't tell him to land his rocket in a cater and then not build a tunnel.
++++
Just discovered an earlier thread on this topic here https://steamcommunity.com/app/464920/discussions/0/2949168687310914034/
and -=[Digital*CHET]=- seems to think you can just refuse to land the rockets, which is worth a try.

[Doctor Lag]

This is definitely not an "easy" mystery. No easy mystery should drain your resources so dry as this garbage. If you ignore the rocket, eventually they land anyway and even at low priority will kill the colony - 16 GD times.

[Doctor Lag]

Seriously, this one is a run killer. I've only finished 2 mysteries so far but seeing it's the next and marked 'easy' I went with it. Even though my colonists are literally starving it still makes you load all your resources into the rocket it forces on you, and even with USA as the sponsor you can't make enough money to cover it. What a bunch of crap.

[Blake Walsh]

With any rocket which wants stuff you should land it outside the range of your drone controllers, then deliver the resources to it via RC Transport and load them with an RC Commander.

[Aturchomicz]

Originally posted by TC Doctor Lag:

Seriously, this one is a run killer. I've only finished 2 mysteries so far but seeing it's the next and marked 'easy' I went with it. Even though my colonists are literally starving it still makes you load all your resources into the rocket it forces on you, and even with USA as the sponsor you can't make enough money to cover it. What a bunch of crap.

And i thought the rockets didnt arrive fast enough

[Didz]

As mentioned above, in the end I found the simple solution was to refuse the rockets permission to land unless and until you had the resources on hand to satisfy them. I actually did this mystery in the end but only with a colony that was producing a huge amount of excess resources.

[gimmethegepgun]

Just use research instead.

[Aturchomicz]

Originally posted by gimmethegepgun:

Just use research instead.

What doies that even mean?

[Emmote]

Originally posted by Aturchomicz:

Originally posted by gimmethegepgun:

Just use research instead.

What doies that even mean?

That mystery gives you a repeatable breakthrough. Each project needs 4 help. Either materials or research.
Just do the repeatable research until you're done.

I did that and only ever sent 1 materials rocket up.
Probably the easiest and quickest mystery there is.

[split.pierre]

Just faced this mystery for first time, and luckily (along with some experience with crisis and time management) I managed to complete it, but honestly, it was quiet hard and almost killed my colony, so thought to share a bit on my experience for future players having a hard time at it.

My Mystery Log:
Sol 124 - Rubicon built
Sol 125 - Goddenberry reveals he's ill
Sol 141 - Spring City Completed
Sol 141 - Goddenberry passes away
Sol 152 - Aldrin Base completed
Sol 152 - Finished, although he didn't lived to see his vision become a reality, his legacy will forever live.

FIRST (Rubicon Station) - Metals / Water / Fuel
Early game, you better make sure to have your metal situation in order, When mystery came up I already had collected most metals that can be found in scanned sectors on the map and having my fuel production working, so i had a bit over 1k Metals by Sol 100. I also managed to research the fuel saving research that drops fuel required by rockets (this IMHO is a key factor, to ensure you don't go broke fueling SO many rockets, trust me, it's WILD amounts of fuel). So go for Rubicon first as Metals is the easiest thing to accumulate early on, but have your next investment in sight and start preparing for Polymers as soon as you can.

SECOND (Spring City) - Polymers / Polymers / + Dang Polymers
Holy cow this one was intense. I did started with one Polymer Factory almost full of employees fairly early, metals/polymers/research are the first things I usually go for (while avoiding buildings that requires machine parts and electronics, until i can make them). Then I took some time to say hey wait a sec. let me understand this mystery first to see if it's worth the effort, so went around reading more about it and realized how broke I was and that I was probably going to fail trying this mystery lol, BUT, I like challenges, that's why I play games after all, so let's plan ahead and speed things up. I had to build two more Polymer factories (total of 3 factories), fully staff them, and STILL wasn't enough, so yeah, I've imported a LOT of polymers to help, luckily polymers are on the "cheap" side for imports, so after almost killing the colony multiple times dealing with the Polymer demand shock, I managed to come out of it strong. By now I had managed to rush several things foreseeing the next demand shock:
- Rushed 1 electronic factory at ~20% staff (before the machine part factory),
- As i had only one rare metal extractor I also stopped all dome building plans to rush another dome (quiet far away) to focus on rare metals extraction, that was hard dome to get up running (My reasoning was, hey, if this crazy mystery breaks me, at least I should have a good money stream to increase my chances of surviving all those demand shocks.
- Then rushed a machine part factory (20% staff)
- While also bringing people from earth like crazy to expand FAST and fill up all production demand.

THIRD (Aldrin Base) - 30 of each, electronics, machine parts and polymers.
At this stage (Sol 140-150), I had also made good progress with my research and had about 200 colonists, So I've put the repeatable Beyond Earth research in top priority and supplied Aldrin base 2 times, so spent ~10k in research on Aldrin and supplied resources twice, for which I now had money to import and quickly finish this mystery once for all.

CONCLUSION
The most frustrating aspect of this, is that there's no clear deadline to complete the mystery. Just know before going for this mystery, this is ALL about demand shocks and you gotta plan for it and be quick about it, also try not to start it too early as this can easily get you broke, have at least a couple domes populated and producing polymers & research before going for this mystery.
I didn't knew that doing the research could progress the 4 step supply for the projects, I had a good 900-1200k research per sol going, and could have cut my polymer investment by half (160 polymers is A LOT) if i knew how all this works clearly (I'm lazy sometimes I dont read everything, then pay for it), but hey, I'm proud of the work I've done, and actually surprised I made through.
I believe it's possible to supply once per project and research the other 3 rounds if you rush research production, and that's food for thought, next time I face this challenge I will lean on the research side and see how it goes (like being really lazy with landing/supplying their rockets, while rushing on research), but as always, there's no blueprint, it'll always depend on several aspects (environment, luck, research, management skills).

People died, people got crazy working so much, I've spent an absurd amounts of fuel, resources and money, but we survived, and I'm glad I could contribute to Goddenberry's vision for a more peaceful and resourceful human race.

Key researches IMHO to help you complete this Mystery:
- Advanced Martian Engines (less fuel for rockets, seriously this one probably saved the colony from collapse, the amount of trips I had to make was No Joke)
- Rocket Cargo (increased cargo)
- Polymer Factory (importing prefabs early can hurt your money management, you gonna need the money to import polymers/electronics/parts)

Fun fact: During all those demand shocks, i was trying hard to improve on transport efficiency, I've even researched and started building the Space Elevator while I was dealing with a fullon nightmare in my supply chain, got it to 20% in resources to build it, then gave up as I realized another shock on supply chain would not end up well (Maybe I just like pain ahahahha), if it takes too long i might lose the mystery, so that was postponed, along with many other endeavors i had to postpone like domes and tunnels.

Stats: As of now I haven't completed my run, i'm at sol 158 and have:
- 4 Fuel Refinery
- 4 Water extraction (Boosted)
- 222 Colonists in 6 domes
- 3 Polymer factories / 1 part factory / 1 electronic factory.
- 60% of map is still untouched.

As a residual effect of this mystery, I foresee issues with water supply, the amount of trips i had to make means I've used a LOT of water, depleted 3 ~10k water deposits, so next i'll be looking into improving my water consumption and extraction for the long run (loads of moisture vaporators incoming)

[Alex]

Instead of necroposting, why not publishing this as a guide?

Which I would downvote of course, since it makes no sense. This mystery is one of the easiest challenges. You don't need to rush production if you can't afford it yet, it's possible to finish it all solely with research. Besides, 222 population at sol 158 is way too weak.

[bateluer]

This is actually a really, really easy mystery to do, once you know what triggers the start. You simply delay the start until after you've built the Moho Mine, then you can practically sleep walk through it.

[MestreLion]

My tips on completing this very, very easily:

- It triggers at 120 colonists, so avoid early overpopulation until you have good infrastructure. Once it triggers, you have 70-90 Sols to complete it, so take your time.

- To minimize the chance of a setback affecting a partially-completed project, don't intertwine Rocket projects: complete one at a time, sequentially, in bursts. Once you start a new project, complete it as fast as possible.

- After each project completes, pause for as long as you want before start supplying the next: just land its first rocket in a nearby spot OUTSIDE the range of Drones/Resources, so it does not dry your colony. It can stay landed indefinitely with no penalty. Send Transports and Drones when you're ready for all its 3 trips.

- Don't leave the research as the the last (3rd) project! Otherwise the game will still force you to choose a project and land a rocket for it. So do NOT start supplying your 2nd Trade Rocket Project until you complete the Research Project. Research is expensive (5000, 5500, 6000, 6500, 7000), so better wait until you have at least 3000/Sol, preferably 5000+.

- Research is optional and expensive, but IIRC yields additional rewards beyond the project prize (Scientist Applicants and/or Research Bonus for tech trees)

- You must complete 3 out of 4 objectives, and 1 can be done by research (5 times), so I believe best combo is:
- Metals (Rubicon Station): easy, pick this first
- Port Vesta (Electronics): great prize, very expensive: Research instead
- Advanced Resources (Aldrin Base): good prize, doable requirement
- Spring City (Polymers): arguably the worst prize, expensive requirement. Forego

With this in mind, I let the first rocket landed for ~40 Sols until I had 6000 Research/Sol, then started Research (on Port Vesta) while supplying Rubicon's Metals, let Aldrin's first rocket landed for a few sols waiting for all research to complete, then finished it. It all took ~15 Sols, before Ruby even get sick.