Advanced Colony Construction (1.2)

This guide entails how to get the best out of your colony in Starbound.

Basic Summary.

----------------------------------------------------First Requirements-------------------------------------------------
To sucessfully use this guide you will need to be familiar with several basic colony aspects.
-how to make a colony
-how to build a decent looking house (not a plain square dirt house with wooden furniture)
-how to make plenty of money (you'll need it to be able to reap the benefits of advanced tenants.)


-----------------------------------------------------What you'll need---------------------------------------------------
A list of things that you will need to get the best of your colony.
-several thousand pixels
-plenty of wood and copper
-ores and bars (the higher the tier the better the benefits, but even iron and tungsten are great, in fact, getting a colony is certainly not a endgame thing and i recomend getting one as early as possible)
-work ethic


-----------------------------------------------------What you'll get------------------------------------------------------
What you shall profit out of this venture
-a sustainable source of pixels
-a sustainable source of materials
-a sustainable source of buffs and food.
-several achievements (6 i think?)
-immense satisfaction.

Part one; Location

---------------------------------------------Where to situate yourself-------------------------------------------------
The first and one of the most important steps in building a colony is picking a planet. There are several different pro's and cons about certain planets.

tier 1-2 planets:
-easy monsters
-fertile soil (mud)
-bad rewards from colonists.

tier 3-4 planets:
-higher colonist rewards (tier 2 medication/seeds)
-need for upgraded guards
-less prebuilt locations (if you like putting colonists in pre made structures)

tier 5-6 planets
-very high colonist rewards
-extremely dangerous landscapes (makes it hard to do some quests)
-need for high tier, expensive guards.





-a great place to fit two houses, note the reasonable flat ground.
Overall the best place to make a quest for achevement farming is tier 1-2 planets, however for this guide it does not really matter where you build your colony, i built mine on the starter planet for demonstration purposes (and it looks nice).

Part two: Building

Once you have chosen a suitable location for you colony you should begin to get some basic things done.

-Scape the landscape so it is perfectly flat with no background in places, it's ok to have hills, but if you have a plain with slight dips and holes in in, consider filling them in so you won't have a wonky house.

-Put some flooring down, make the scaped landscape look nice by laying down a layer of some block you want, i recommend stone slabs/bricks to make it look like a cobblstone road but just do whatever you like.

-build the houses. Most people trying to maximise profits will build a group of small apartments and cram in tenants so they can get the most rent to space ratio but this is detrimental to our purposes for several reasons. First, these apartments will not be big enough for unique tenants or different types of tenants like guards and cooks, they will also give you more rent, but less of other usefull rewards like high level crewmembers (impossible without large houses) and will all die if a monster gets into the apartment building.

A good house will have room for a bed, a light, a table, a chair, a wall ornament and a colony deed.




-two houses housing 3 tenants and their friends. note flooring.
-once you have build a house you will need to adapt it to the type of tenant you want, which we shall go into detail in in the next segment.

Part three: Types of tenants

--------------------------------------------------The guard--------------------------------------------------------------
-guards protect your colonists and are armed
-guards are the only colonists that scale with tiers and can be upgraded.
-the higher tier the planet, the higher tier your guard will need to be to efficently protect your colonists. (it's in your intrests because if a colonist dies, his rent counter resets (needs confirming))
-to summon a guard you will need at least one weaponised peice of furniture in a regular house, although it's not a good idea to put a bed or chair in a guardhouse because tenants can go to sleep and stop them from performing their duty.
-to upgrade a guard you must make the furniture out of a ore (iron, titanium, even solarium) this will cause him to have upgraded his armour and his weapons to that tier.
-guards generally carry a broadsword, a spear or a hammer as well as an assult rifle or sniper rifle. (they rarely carry shotguns) these weapons will always do normal damage.





-this guard is unreasonably spoilt! He should have no bed or chairs to distract him from his duty!
--------------------------------------------------The cook------------------------------------------------------------
-cooks are like merchants, only better!
-cooks sell food of sorts and will generally sell at least one rare food. (try to get a cook that sells great foods for boss fights)
-to summon a cook simply have a food related item in the normal house. (it's usefull to have a kitchen counter to cook with ingredients that the cook sells or a fridge to store food he sells.
--------------------------------------------------The merchant-------------------------------------------------------
-Merchants sell items and furniture for pretty expensive prices, they also sell weapons and armour for ludicrous amounts if you need them that badly.
-Merchants give you a covenient place to sell obselete weapons and items that you don't want, thats really their main purpose.
-to summon a merchant you must have a regular house but with several storage related items (crates, chests)
--------------------------------------------------The useless one---------------------------------------------------
-a regular tenant with nothing special about them
-gives quests more often
-loves to follow you if you play musical instruments.

Part four: Unique tenants

Unique tenants fall under the "useless" catergory above, but are slightly special, these tenants are the main reason you are going to want a reasonable large house with plenty or furniture. Frogg furnishing (at the outpost) sells special themed furniture from his emporium and if you buy at least 3 of these items from the same theme and put them in a house you will get a themed tenant!



-the house on the left holds the unique cabin degenerate.

The other way to get themed furniture is to craft it using blueprints you find in mini biomes and missions, they will provide their themed tenant the same way as buying furniture off Mr Frogg.

note, the lunar base themed tenant is a tier 2 guard, but is more expensive than a regular tier 2 guard to make.

Part five: Livestock and Produce.

-------------------------------------------------------fluffalo--------------------------------------------------------------
-fluffalo are your advanced livestock for advanced needs producing a variety of materials.
-in a good colony you'll probably want at least 2 fluffalo of each type, which costs a hefty amount of pixels, as well as a guard to protect them from monsters.
-ideally you'll want your fluffalo protected from large cliffs as well as having them fenced in to keep them in a certain area.
-this shows some fluffalo and a mooshi well protected by a tier 2 guard, even if they did escape their pen.



-----------------------------------------------------mooshi--------------------------------------------------------------
-mooshi are the best source of milk in the game
-cheaper than fluffalo
-mooshi should also be protected by a guard, or you can put them in the same area as the fluffalo.

-----------------------------------------------------chickens (all sorts)------------------------------------------------
-chickens are cheap and can be bought in droves.
-buy lots, and get their eggs, then make food out of that, then sell the food (you'll have heaps spare)
-robot chickens make double A batteries instead of eggs if thats what you want.

-----------------------------------------------------crops and seeds---------------------------------------------------
-not much to say here, plant your seed in a area that has been hoed? hoe'd? hoe'ed? cut with a hoe anyway and wait for the rain to water it.
-if you hoe mud you get the first plant you plant there watered for free! You tend to find mud on tier one planets.

Part 6: harvesting

-----------------------------------------------------Getting rich----------------------------------------------------------
This is the simple part, reaping your well earned reward!
-Your animals will produce their goods as much as your tenants will give you your rent, about every 20 minutes.
-As long as you picked a planet that rains, like the starting planet, your crops should grow frequently.
-Complete quests for your tenants and they will join your crew!
-Sell produce and items gained as rent to a merchant in your colony for pixels, or get pixels directly from rent.
-Cook food from produce, or buy it from your chef!
-Feel satisfied!
















Thanks for reading, this is my first guide and if you think there is something that I should add feel free to comment down below and tell me!

[I Am Alpharius]

Huh... a guide from 2017... bringing my childhood back it seems

[tetrakataki]

@weregamer Pretty sure it means furniture items that relate to combat (they have the "combat" tag in the code). This includes weapon racks, weapon displays, and armor displays. A lot of these items are found in glitch locales, but there's a few good ones in floran and avian dungeons.

[weregamer]

What does "weaponized furniture" mean? That phrase in English means something that was built to be furniture but somebody figured out how to make it into a weapon.

[Rootbeer]

At first I thought the ores and bars said "Oreos and bars"

[Gintoki Sakata]

This guide is very helpful for both newcomers as well as seasoned veterans. It has some not so well known tips and mechanics on how colonists work. I didn't know that the metal quality of the furniture judges the guards weaponry.

Thank you for making this guide!

[Hytheria]

If you can find a barren biome on a T6 planet, that biome has no monsters and still benefits from the rent rewards of being a T6. Good parts: Don't require guards to keep your tenants alive, and you can afk there for quite a while without being hassled. Bad part: You gotta deal with dry sand

[<Grand Theft Autism 4>]

I had no idea there were different kinds of tenants... I thought the roles were simply randomized

[Sonofzook]

Is weaponized furniture just stuff like weapon racks?

[archdemon20]

"hoed? hoe'd? hoe'ed?" I'm pretty sure this is for the humour, but on the off chance you're really looking for the word, it's 'tilled'. 😅😅😅

[DeputyLongDong]

had no idea that different planets got you different tier guards for your ship too. useful