Tips & Tricks for beginners

[Moh1336]

So the question is, am I missing something that lead to the heater legitimately freezing or have I encountered a bug due to relying on stored power during the night hours?

I loaded an earlier save and paid a little more attention (and added some extra redundancies) I can (not so) happily say it was a me issue. What I had done is increased the heaters service area to cover a nearby drone hub but I completely forgot to recalculate the power usage. I went from having lots of reserves to exceeding the day time production so I ran out of power within one Sol. I most likely ignored the power shortage warning because I was building it at night so I expected to see it pop-up and assumed it was the usual nighttime/solar panel reason. Oops.

 

[Pope Thrax]

Aside from scanning anomalies, do the explorers do anything?

 

[PhroX]

Aside from scanning anomalies, do the explorers do anything?

There's a technology which makes them give research points (100 for the first one with diminishing returns)

 

[MadOverlord]

I'm confused about food consumption. How much do my colonists eat per Sol? This is a pretty important rate that I can't find anywhere.

I too was confused by the lack of basic information like this. Fortunately my son pulled an all-nighter playing the game, and as far as we can tell looking at the population and consumption figures, a non-gluttonous colonist consumes 0.125 food per sol.

 

[AlknicTeos]

(17) Inhabitants from different domes can work in the same outdoor building!
While people cannot use services of nearby domes, they can work collaboratively in outdoor buildings. So if you build two domes within range of a Mine, that mine can be staffed by colonists from both domes

... maybe reconsider, that people can use services from other domes

 

[Wenla]

WRT building metal extractors, just how close do they need to be to a dome in order to not get the "too far from domes" warning? Do they have to be right next door?

When you click dome, you can see 'effective sphere' (= blue lines) outside your dome. Put your extractors/factories which need workers, inside this circle.

 

[Rhaegor]

Is a deep scan different than a normal scan? I have a tech that allows probes to do deep scanning (and become cheaper). Do I need that tech to deep scan or does normal slow scanning deep scan already?

 

[GAGA Extrem]

Deep scanning for the regular sensor scan is a different mid to late game tech.
Once you have it any sector that has not been deep scanned (iirc the indicator for that is the sector border, dashed vs solid in the map view) can be re-scanned to find additional deep deposits (that require seperate techs to be useable) or anomalies.

 

[MikeLemmer]

How exactly do work & recreation interact? Does the recreational building have to be open during the same shift the colonist is working? Or a shift a colonist isn't working?

 

[Boldwyn]

Note that I have not found a way to move all drones from one controller to another.
(Also note I honestly don't have a clue if drones go back with the rocket if you send it back to Earth...)

At drone hubs you can "disassemble" a drone into prefab pack which you can build at another hub. I don't think you can do it with RC rover or rocket, but rockets should "release" their drones on launch and they will move to other controllers.

 

[ShoGuL]

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but can residents of a full dome have children? Or do I have to move a guy out manually every time the dome fills out to make room for children?

 

[AlknicTeos]

hm, I have a dome where people migrate constantly to other domes, even when they become homeless and have no work there. The outsourcing dome is in a good situation. Only one outdome factory, and also the stats are good.

 

[Barefoot]

I'm pretty embarrassed at the moment because I can't find a way to scroll right on the research screen. I've tried many different button push, scroll, etc but cant see what's just right. And I know I've unlocked some research but can't see which.
The solution must be pretty obvious to a lot of people, but not to me.
How do I do this exactly ?

Mouse toward the right.

 

[Barefoot]

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but can residents of a full dome have children? Or do I have to move a guy out manually every time the dome fills out to make room for children?

Children occupy separate living space in Nurseries, not homes/apartments, so if you want to have children, AFAIK you -must- have a Nursery.

 

[ShoGuL]

Children occupy separate living space in Nurseries, not homes/apartments, so if you want to have children, AFAIK you -must- have a Nursery.

This is not true. If you don't have a nursery, children stay in regular apartments. I also figured out that if you set a dome to 'wants children' (preferably with nurseries) children from other domes will migrate there.

What I don't know is whether there must be room in a dome for people to have children in the first place...

 

[GAGA Extrem]

Children will be born even if the dome has no more living space. However, there is a overcrowding penalty that seems to stack up as overpopulation increases.

 

[Zinegata]

(4) Make sure to bring a Transport Rover!
There are plenty of surface deposists for Iron (and sometimes Polymers) on the map. They are revealed after scanning a sector and can be collected by a Transport Rover. If you use the CREATE TRANSPORTE ROUTE button (or however it is called now), the rover will even automatically go back and forth between the two selected points and gather all surface deposits within range (until there are none left). Given that manpower is in short supply throughout the early game, this is an excellent methode to gather iron during the early game.

It's also a good idea to put power cables around your depots that are part of an RT's transport route. That way the rover gets recharged as it is loading or unloading.

(5) A Science Rover will be quite useful!
When scanning sectors you will find plenty of anomalies. Analyzing them will give you extra tech options, free research or other random benefits. Try to bring at least one science rover along if you can - it will make the early game a lot easier.

And as folks have pointed out there's an early tech that lets your Science Rover generate science research too. Having one of each rover is arguably one of the best starting setups (with the RC Rover being replaceable by a Drone Hub if you're willing to live / work around the maintenance cost of the hub).

(7) Make sure you have enough drones!
Once you have your basic infrastructure in place and start to expand your colony, you will need additional drone hubs - and more drones at existing ones.Some indicators for a lack of drones are: goods piling up, extractors stopping to work because stone isn't hauled away, rockets taking a long time to load, unload or refuel and mainenance or repairs taking longer than expected.

Alternatively move your depots closer to where the resources are needed using your transports. The biggest cause of drone inefficiency in the game seems to be excessive travel time between depots and the places / construction sites that need them. Tweaking your drone controller's coverage area also sometimes helps in this regard, as having too wide a coverage makes the drones pick up stuff from far-away depots rather than the ones right beside them.

(8) You do not have to build dumping sites!
If you do not have any designated dumping sites, your drones will just drop the stones next to the extractors. From what I noticed, this didn't seem to have any effect on performance. So if you hate the site of piles of waste rock - you don't have to suffer through that.

They look neat however and there are uses for rocks in dumping sites later in the game .

(13) Specialize your domes!
In the early game space within the domes is scarce. Most of the time a dome will only provide enough living space for a farm and one, maybe two production buildings. A good early game layout for Small Domes in my games was: Living Quarters x3, Farm, Clinic, Grocer, Small Park, 1 production building inside + 1 production building / mine outside. If you use a small production building like the Research Lab you can add an extra Grocer and Diner.

Alternatively, buy a lot of food and wait until you setup a dedicated farming Dome close to an abundant water source. Colonists don't eat a lot - so buying something in the region of 50 food should last you a while and is relatively cheap. Farms are also water-intensive so it has a strong synergy with the spire that reduces water consumption. One dedicated agri Dome can feed many more Domes for less cost.

(20) Spread out production shifts on your production buildings!
Most production buildings require a lot of electricity and/or water. If you are not planning on running 3 shifts, make sure you spread them out over the day to even out electricity/water demands to match your production - solar panels only work during the day, after all. This is particularly useful for farms, since they only have a single shift per day.

It should also inform your work shifts for the support buildings. There's less need to man the Grocer when everyone's at work at the factory .

 

[Revan Katarn]

Don't build that Moxxie several Sols before you ferry in first your colonists.

well, I've made a few noob mistakes, and that was one. Mainly because I couldn't find the option to build a farm in the dome, I thought it didn't require any tech... and I won't bring colonists to a starving Mars xD

But, anyways, that's life, you have to learn from your mistakes, and this is a game, so having fun is the most important thing (and messing with your scarce resources make everything much funnier ).

Cheers

 

[MontharKragan]

Tip: You can prevent materials from being loaded into a construction site by turning it off as soon as you place it. It helps to pause before placing buildings to better take advantage of this feature. A good use of this is for laying out your domes and tunnels.

 

[Bakta]

I'd recommend to rely on Moisture Vaporizers unless the map is exceptionally poor in terms of metals. Long-range expansion requires either plenty of drone hubs (which need electronics, so they are costly to maintain) or constant babysitting with a rover.

A case can be made to have an inventor instead of a rocket scientist as commander. No maintenance is really handy and Transports can handle routes early on until one research shuttles