Fastest possible "hermit" colony?

[Communard]

By hermit I mean zero imports or immigration. Is it possible to set up a colony with only one Cargo and one Passenger rocket used? Assuming you scrap it for parts after you use it. Is it better to load up on pre-fabs or take raw materials? How lucky do you have to get with resources and techs/breakthroughs? Assuming the ideal scenario, how many sols would total self-sufficiency take?

 

[Gilmund]

By hermit I mean zero imports or immigration. Is it possible to set up a colony with only one Cargo and one Passenger rocket used? Assuming you scrap it for parts after you use it. Is it better to load up on pre-fabs or take raw materials? How lucky do you have to get with resources and techs/breakthroughs? Assuming the ideal scenario, how many sols would total self-sufficiency take?

You probly can't cause your initial machine parts and electronics pool to maintain your buildings will run out before with no import. The main prob is you need electronics at least to maintain a machine parts factory and you'll have a hard time to build polymer/machine parts/electronics factories in time to keep up with your maintenance needs from all your buildings.
Basic buildings will need polymer, it's fine you can have a polymer factory keeping up a certain amount of time. But polymer factories cost metal and machine parts. If you start using auxiliary wind turbines for the night you'll need machine parts. Even the basic concrete extractors you need to keep up with the maintenance of your dome and basic buildings need machine parts.

 

[ShaTiK]

I think the only feasible way is to rely on scrubbers to negate maintenance costs. You could get them at 7.000 RP if you are lucky, pretty early too - again, with generous scanning.
Apart from that cheesy tactics - I will agree with the other commenter - you will run of electronics pretty soon. Not to mention electronics factory need a LOT of workers and martianborn colonists don't have specializations. So, you need a uni, and it requires, again, electronics to build and run

 

[MK1980]

hmm that's actually an interesting challenge.

you start with a concrete extractors and solar panels. extractor will use up some machine parts. maybe 10 or so for the building and maintenance ? you can probably let the first one mine its ~500 concreate and build the next one later. 500 concrete should be enough for 2 basice domes and buildings (?)

metals can be collected by transport;

early electronics upkeep can be elminated by using landed rocket as drone hub. will only really need them to build the factory. requires luck/patience with tech to unlock both factories and hardbuild them rather than using prefab, but saves a lot of space on the original rocket

panels only use metal, batteries for stuff that must run at night will use some polymers.

water extractor will use machine parts. might be better to bring 2 vaporators for the first 2 domes? they only use metal.


so maybe set up dome 1 first. just a farm, 3 houses, grocer, infirmary. start getting martians.
then wait for tech for factories. concrete extractor uses up some machine parts, batteries use some polymers, everything else uses local metal or concrete.

build 2nd dome, build refinery, poly factory, machine & electronics factory, houses.

one of the domes must be near rare metals so you can actually make a rare metals mine for the electronics.

i think population will be the main bottleneck. if you wait for the first dome to be mostly full before building the 2nd dome, you might get all the local production online at once and man the stuff at least partially to become self sufficient and expand from there.

tricky

 

[Gilmund]

Yeah tricky but interesting though, would be a nice challenge (how long can i sustain without completely falling apart?). If your colonists in one or two domes are too much on mining you will lack food too. And you need a polymer factory to work too for your batteries as you will need to start machine parts asap for your concrete.
Prob is people will getting old and your population will just not grow but in the contrary you'll have less than before. Afaik you don't make +12 population with only 12 starting people, you'll have a prob there.

 

[ainyru]

Possible. Not even too hard. Just very slow. You have to wait 100+ sols for passive research before you can land colonists.

 

[Gilmund]

Possible. Not even too hard. Just very slow. You have to wait 100+ sols for passive research before you can land colonists.

And before you can even build concrete extractors as they need machine parts.

 

[MK1980]

well you can use up some machine parts. the concete extractor takes 2 to build and one every 3 sols or so ? so if you budgte ~10 machine parts for that task, you should be able to run it for about 25 sols at a rate of ~20 per sol. a stockpile of something like 500 concrete could be enough to build and maintain 2 domes and houses etc until you get a machine parts production going.

 

[Nickel NL]

And for population you could go fot the church sponsor and doctor commander. I'd did those and I used only 1 rocket and was 280+ at 120 sol I believe. No retards hahaha. That would be broken

 

[MK1980]

yeah i think i'd play that challange with a doctor commander. church might also help, but then you'd probably have to squeeze in prefabs for the factories in the cargo ship. you won't unlock that stuff anytime soon with that 0 base research and labs eat precious electronics for maintenance (and building) which is probably not affordable with the restriction of "no supply flights"

 

[Xavori]

This wouldn't be a hard challenge, just tedious.

The first must-have tech would be extra passengers on the only rocket you're allowing yourself. 12 colonists won't cut it for getting enough breeding going. You're also going to need a medical spire with bonus birthing, so you're waiting on that tech as well.

You're also going to have to be able to make all the factories yourself before you land your first colonists, and you're going to need to be really picky on making sure you get extra engineers to fill them immediately. So more waiting.

In fact, every part of overcoming the obstacles presented simply involves waiting for useful tech to offset the lack of injected resources and colonists.

 

[xMer]

To make it challenge there would need to be timeline limitations. like first colonists landing before day 10. Or some other limitation/ranking depending on what date colony was established

 

[starkaos]

A lot of it depends on sponsor and luck finding a good spot for a dome. USA would have a much easier time due to their 70,000 kg rockets. There is also the Janitor as Commander mod on the Steam Workshop which supposedly reduces the electronics cost of Scrubbers and automatically grants Scrubbers.

 

[xMer]

With mods everything is simple. also international mission seem to be a little too easy with 16m to spent on research