Are extra landing sites supposed to be almost impossible to set up?

[Sephyrus]

It seems like unless I get an iron deposit within spitting distance of the landing site, it's nigh impossible to make it work with the meager supplies I am given. And no matter how many times I try to retry the launch to see if I get a better roll on deposits, every single time iron is too far away, and if I try to reach it with any other structure, I run out of supplies before I can build the essential buildings.

Do I really have to crawl my way to the nuclear silos from my initial landing site? By the time I reach that place I will already have researched the entire tech tree. Hell, I already unlocked 2/3 of the terraforming techs, the only reason I'm not using them is because I want to see what nuking the poles actually does.

Am I missing something here?

[mreed2]

You can produce level 1 buildings even after you've researched upgrades -- this is necessary to bootstrap a new landing site into operation. When you bring up either the "Mines" or "Factory" list of buildings to build, there will be a small icon under each building ("i", "Ii", or "Iii", depending on what you have researched). Click on "i" under the building that you want to build, then click on the building itself -- you'll build the lower level building and the landing site resources will be sufficient.

If you haven't researched level 2 mines / level 2 factories, then you shouldn't be running into the above problem -- in that case, the issue is that you aren't building in the correct order. To bootstrap a new base you need to build the exact same set of buildings that the tutorial led you through, in that order, or you'll run out of resources. Going from memory, the order is: "Silicon Mine", "Glass Kiln", "Solar Farm" (positioned to give access to the iron resource), "Iron Mine", "Carbon Mine", "Steel Factory" (positioned to give access to chemicals), "Parts Factory", "Electronics Factory", "Worker Factory", "Plastics Factory", "Maintenance Hub", "Food Factory".

Any other order will result in you running out of resources before completing one or more of the buildings.

You should always be able to reach the iron deposit if you build the solar farm -- if you try to skip the solar farm, however, you'll rarely, if ever, be able to reach the iron deposit.

[BobthenotsoGreat]

To add, you can get bad spawns which do not allow the road connection. You bridge these with other buildings in the chain. Where you can you want to build the mine in the chain first so it can accumulate. The chains are...

Aluminium - Silicon - Glass - Solar
Iron - Carbon - Steel - Electronics - Solar

Then a choice of

Chemicals - Polymers - Maintenance

or

Parts - Worker Factory - Hub (s)

So join the mines with other buildings in each chain if you can't build the mines first. Each solar should put the next resources in range of the next chain.

[Sephyrus]

I figured out just sending out two landing sites was a marginally less tedious way of doing it. I did try with level 1 factories and mines but even then it was down to luck when it came to optimal positioning. Even with two landing sites the best strategy ended up being hyperlooping my way to the research site. There really is no real reason to use landing sites at all right now.

[Magistar]

Originally posted by Sephyrus:

I figured out just sending out two landing sites was a marginally less tedious way of doing it. I did try with level 1 factories and mines but even then it was down to luck when it came to optimal positioning. Even with two landing sites the best strategy ended up being hyperlooping my way to the research site. There really is no real reason to use landing sites at all right now.

I feel that the landing site actually spawns deposits nearby that allow a complete start. So far I have always been able to get aluminium, glass (silicon), steel (coal and iron) and then electronics (silicon and alu). It does take a while though and indeed you need to use level1 of everything. I think I have done this 2-3 times now.

[Liobuster]

the landing site does indeed spawn a basic set of resources around itself

also you dont have to use the exact same order as mreed mentioned
I for example leave out the glass kiln until I really need it but you really do have to ensure a supply of the most basic building materials which are Aluminium, Steel, and Electronics
the next step should be a beeline to maintenance drones as by that time your buildings should all be at half health.
from there on out you should be able to do pretty much whatever youwant

[Lumberfootz]

new landing sites are never impossible