Sphere Mystery Survival tips

[ArtemusGintry]

Ok I have a terraforming game going and I got to the point that I received my mystery and it is the above. regrettably I have the polymers handicap where they cost 2x as much from earth than normal. after I realized what it was doing I started to take steps to curtail it but when most of my power comes from Solar and batteries this mystery is brutal. any tips or should I just reroll on this map?

[some moron]

Um why don't you manufacture them?

[ArtemusGintry]

I lose half of my colonist to the radiation and the other half are earthsick :( I need both Machine parts and Polymers for most of the storage techs so when they suck my energy out I am out of energy till the next Sol. then when the Cold snap takes place I'm done for.

[some moron]

I don't recall radiation sickness, maybe it's part of that mystery. But I'd say you need to get more efficient lol
I personally find polymer easy to manufacture because all it takes is water and you can get that by buying vaporators.
None of my colonists EVER get earthsick - unless I want them to such as tourists and seniors. Oh sometimes the ones with double sanity damage get earthsick .Because I play with maxed all four disasters.
I think no resources are required for any techs. Do you mean for the large storage machines? I never use them and see no reason to, and never research them.

Cold snaps are rough, and I'd say heaters are the only tech to rush besides the two research ones. Then maybe farm and that's probably all that's needs to be rushed.
My max difficulty games get freezes early and often and strong, so I know they are difficult but I never lose colonists, and manage to produce all the polymer I need.

Try putting a heater so it heats your dome and water storage AND polymer machine and any other machines outside that require power. Your first dome should probably be micro with 9 colonists, just to get through the initial evaluation phase. Your first dome should be near a rare metal which you mine and sell to earth. I also use inflation so believe me, i feel the pressure too!

[ArtemusGintry]

Thanks, I will check out those tips.

[King Gabe]

The spheres mystery basically comes down to a power supply challenge. It’s easiest to survive by shifting to wind power instead of solar, especially in your case with high polymer costs. Wind doesn’t need polymers to build or batteries for storage. This also slows sphere replication, since they need to drain battery power to multiply - it helps a lot to limit the number of spheres you’re dealing with and the easiest way to do that is not to have a bunch of batteries for them to feed on.

Heaters are useful for countering the cold snaps. I find it best to put one heater next to each dome, since the cold snaps double power needs for every affected building (domes included). It helps to cluster your power-using outside buildings inside the heater range of those dome heaters so that a cold snap only costs you the extra power to run the heater(s). It’s much easier to adjust for a fixed extra power drain every cold snap instead of the double power drain. Hope that helps

[Morbo]

Make that triple power consumption to normal. Base + 200%. I am currently playing a map with maxed out disasters and the Spheres mystery. I do it with Space X so you get the solar array which produces 40 power for an upkeep of mere 3 metals. That worked well. Also I keep a mix of solar and wind because machine parts get scarce when you rely on power alone. Once you get your first fusion, power is not an issue anymore.

The radiation issue is solved by researching radiation protection. The text messages of the mystery inform you about that research option... so actually reading the text messages is key here. ;)

[Morbo]

By the way I have a question myself - I have dismantled the Spheres in my playthrough but the damn cold wave won't stop.
Is that a bug or am I missing something?

[Bored Peon]

Self reliance is the big key. The sooner you can get yourself off having to import anything the quicker you will grow.

Machine parts should almost never be an issue. Simply import even the small preassembled factory and that can easily provide enough to keep you going. The same can be said for polymers by importing a factory.

I always prefer the wind power because it runs 24/7 and does not require a battery. You can also get elevation bonuses as well. The amount of metals to maintain solar power panels far exceeds the metals needed to make machine parts, since a factory makes multiple machine parts out of 1 metal.