Surviving Hard Difficulty on Disaster Heavy Map

[EEE_boy]

I made a few attempts at Hard difficulty with one rocket and on disaster heavy maps. Some attempts got unlucky meteor strike early game, some got metals depleted after great dust storm, and some ran out of electronics with rare metal being very far away from the initial base.


What’s your general strategy of surviving Hard difficulty early game with disaster level around 3/4/3/4? If you play on these settings with any commander profile except Rocket Scientist.


Let’s use each rocket shipment as a checkpoint, please share your working strategy as what to bring in each shipment, what build order, what research to aim for, and how to adapt if there is a deficiency (no water, no metal, no rare, or no anomaly that is easily accessible) etc.


Here is my strategy playing as Paradox as Sponsor and Hydro Engineer:

• Shipment 1

Cargo: 2 refineries, 1 explorer, 1 rover, 10 polymer, 10 machine parts, 5 electronics, 1 transport


Build: Sensor tower —> large solar —> concrete extractor —> battery —> more solar —> water extractor/ moisture evaporators —> refineries.


Research: start with social and robot lines, aim to unlock the Explorer AI and Earth-Mars-Initiative to get +200 research points. Then Physics line to unlock subspace heater. Bio line to unlock farm.


Note: generally wait for finishing scanning the initial 3 close-by sectors to see where about metal/rare/water are before placing down the refineries.

• Shipment 2

Cargo: polymer factory fab, machine part factory fab, drone hub, 10-15 polymer, 10-15 machine parts, some food, some drones.


Build: First dome->living quarter ->more electricity solar and battery ->oxygen->dinner/infirmary/grocer->water storage -> subspace heater-> farm


Research: aim to unlock +$1000 funding in social, solar panel dust repel in physics.


Note: my first dome will have machine parts fab and a temporary farm, it will have polymer factory fab near the subspace heater, so ideally should be close to the water source.

• Shipment 3

Passenger: focus on Botanists, Engineers, 1 medic and 2-4 non specialized.


Build: Second dome


Research: breakthrough techs


Note: my second dome will aim to claim metal deposit, as surface metals start to run dry at this point.

• Shipment 4

Cargo: potentially the last cargo for quite a while. electrics factory fab, 10-15 electronics, moisture evaporators (if water limited), drone hub, some drones, some machine parts.


Build: looking for place for 3rd dome to claim rare metal if the first two domes were unable, build a second cluster of water/oxygen/subspace heater around metal/rare metal deposits. some wind to combat dust storm.


Research: wind blade upgrade if going wind, moisture evaporator upgrade if water limited.


Note: disasters appear to be frequent at this point, usually game over

• Shipment 5

Passenger: Focus on Engineers, Geologists, 1 medic, some non-specialized


Build: maybe some wind to combat dust storm. The ratio of solar/wind at this point is 3:1 for lower ground, later if machine parts are abundant, should be 3:2


Research: aim to get Martian Uni


Note: If two domes are able to claim water/metal/rare metal then the rare metal dome can build electronics factory.

• Shipment 6

Passenger: Focus on Engineers, Geologists


Build: if electronics production is up, build a lab


Research:

• Shipment 7

Passenger: Focus on Scientists


Build: Plan another dome for nursery, school, and uni

• Shipment 8 and beyond

Cargo: if rare metal surplus

or Passenger: if labor shortage

Build: Plan another dome for farms only


If reaching this point, we have survived the early game.

 

[Tjapeh]

Hi, on 535% difficulty. (44N 112W)

It's possible to get up a dome within the first rocket, and that is what you should aim for. Use your second or your third rocket to send your colonists.
My starting setup:

Prefab: -Drone Hub -Fuel -Moisture
-Explorer (edit: I just looked at my milestones, and appearantly I did not take an explorer on the first rocket, probably a rover?)
-6 drones
-10 polymers
-25 machine parts
-5 electronics
-3 probes

(It's possible to go with less drones/probes and take an extra moisture)

Tactic:
-probe a few blocks around your starting position and hope for water or rare metal deposit. Find rare metals and/or water and land there. Generally the southern part of the map will have one or more water and one or more rare metal deposits.
-build one or two concrete farmers, power the first using solar panes (NO BATTERY!!!), and get enough concrete for a couple of wind turbines and a dome.
-build the dome next to a rare metal deposit.
-earn money and send for more machine parts/electronics (or food if you can't find water)

I started on the high ground and just used wind turbines for the start (no need for batteries = no need for polymers). When you have the dome up, you could use some solar panels for the day.

Dont worry to much about being selfsustaining at the start. You generally lack the supplies the get factories up and running.

For research, the one obvious one you should aim for is farm. The rest is kinda random so just take what is best in the situation

3d rocket (or 2nd if you were unlucky with probes/scanning).
-Rover
-Transport
-Machine parts/electronics (or food).

With your 4th rocket, you should probably get more colonists to stock up on the research labs (so take enough electronics in the 3d rocket).

5th and further:
-Machine parts factory, drone hub, rover or transport, depends heavily on your research unlocks.
-Perhaps grab extra polymers to build a second dome? Although you can probably find some on the map.

Important: build tunnels so you can research anomalies and build more usefull sensor towers to speed up scanning.


Main point of focus: try to NOT build any batteries, this completely eliminates the need for polymers except for domes early on. WInd turbines generate 10 energy anyway on the high ground.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

I got 136.5k score on 535% difficulty using this general strategy. I did get kinda lucky with a breakthrough that grants 100% production on moisture.

 

[Gilmund]

Just got a big meteor storm on me and i lost 100 colonists out of 500 (first O2 then water then food). Big step back. Everything was shutting down, meteors even completely destroyed drone hubs which made me unable to rebuild things fast unfortunately cause i was lacking electronics.

There are things i can improve and i wonder how you build things.
I guess you always double your lines per dome ? Do you go for self sufficient oxygen/water/energy per dome (like 1 moisture vaporator, and so on+ direct wind or solar panel around) using your rover to pick what you need from one dome to another ? Do you try to connect your dome hubs (i think my mistake is here i spread too much partly cause i want people to relocate quickly from one dome to another)
Do you try to get asap the tech to build some anti meteor killers? (forgot the name) ?

 

[Zinegata]

Firstly, I've written a guide on how to setup colonies here:

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/surviving-mars-a-primer.1083069/

And there's this really good advanced guide on reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/SurvivingMars/comments/8674e4/how_to_win_on_hardcore_530/

Quite simply, you're greatly increasing the chances of failure by the insistence on early self-sufficiency. It's an overly ambitious goal for the early game. Prefab factories are expensive - in terms of money cost, space on the rocket, and your on-ground maintenance and labor costs. You are better off minimizing your off-world maintenance costs, import cheap food than try to grow it, and focus on rare metals exports.

Colonies moreover fail not because they are not self-sufficient. They fail because they run out of critical components needed to keep the colony running - either through daily wear and tear or due to a disaster.

Buying those components outright is in fact more reliable than relying on your own manufacturing - because the rocket ship can never be delayed or destroyed. All you need is money.

By contrast your on-ground manufacturing in the early game is fragile. You will barely have power surpluses. You won't have a lot of spare parts. One bad stroke of luck and the entire system could crash, leaving you with no spare parts on-site and worse no money to buy more stuff from Earth.

My current game has been a disaster-filled run (Dust Storms, Cold Snaps, etc) and yet the colony is thriving well into Sol 40 by just exporting rare metals. I do not produce any advanced resources yet. I have only started food production. But if you're consistently exporting 30 rare metal every 2 or 3 sols and you're efficient with your setup (which means minimal wind farms) then you will have enough to easily buy anything you need for the colony.

 

[Gilmund]

Thanks Zinegata. I'm already doing the exporting rare metal/exporting food thing. I guess i was really unluncky nearly all meteors did hit something which made me think something is wrong with my layout. My main issue is how avoid to go too big too fast (what gives more room to meteors or failures and is more costly per se).

 

[EEE_boy]

Thank you very much Tjapeh and Zinegata for the great advice and links shared with us.

It looks like exporting rare metal, going lean economy, and being flexible on expansion is the way to go in hard difficulty and disaster heavy map. Will read more and give it a try to see how much better my survival rate has improved.

 

[Tjapeh]

Yeah as Zinegata said, relying on rare metals is generally the best. (on higher difficulties)
Research labs are also pretty safe to build (since they are inside the dome), they just require a bit of electronics (buy them!)
Growing food yourself is also easy (again inside dome building) and should be your next goal.

After this, just look to your research, it is okey to import stuff and just wait for the research to build factories.
Although one machine parts factory never hurts. Electronic factories are just too expensive colonist and material wise (they sap your rare metal income!)

Don't try to expand to fast, expanding too fast is the major point of failure. One thing breaks down and you lose a dome and 30 colonists.
I myself went a long way with just two basic domes right next to eachother.

Try to grab a transporter or two and completely grab all the metal on the map, this way you don't need to go for a metal deposit.

Just a general tip:
You can put 2-3 extracters on one deposit. I mainly use this for water deposits early on, to ensure redundancy.
Could also be done on rare metal/metal, but you lack the colonists for that early game.

Also for redundancy, you don't need multiple producers. Multiple oxygen/water tanks in multiple locations is better (3 locations is sufficient). If they are right next to a dome, sometimes the dome takes the meteor hit instead of the tanks. Also try to use a bit of math. My general rule was that my domes could survive 75-100 hours without any production. This way you are always safe (and tanks are pretty cheap).
Ps: although the tooltip says so, water extractors do NOT get frozen by cold snaps.