What if no water can be found

[ThePanther]

Hi,
when starting a new game I often find myself in the situation, that I didn't find any water with my initial orbital probes. Even the tiles which state that there is a high chance for water often don't have any water on them if scanned.

What is your strategie for this situation, how do you manage the water supply for your first dome?

Do you bring in a bunch of vaporators? Is this viable on a hard start with a small budget?

Restarting the map and scanning other sectors feels a bit like cheating to me.

 

[Gilmund]

Yes, 1 is enough for a dome + extra 1 for fuel and soon enough you may give them +50% production.
The good part about vaporators is they only need metal to get fixed when extractors need machine parts.
A dome itself only cost 1 water if you don't do farms even if the dome is populated.

 

[Skirlasvoud]

Yup. I often land in a spot with no water, but whenever I do find one, the quality is usually low enough that 2 or 3 Moisture Vaporators are good enough to replace it anyway.

Besides, Water Extractors kick up a lot of dust. Better keep them away from the colony. I'll surround my domes with Vaporators and if I find any Water Deposits later on, they're just incidental bonuses to my fuel production that are kept a distance away from my regular infrastructure.

 

[Wandering Sentinel]

Typically you want to rely on Vaporators by late game anyways since water is the only resource that isn't otherwise available in "infinite" quantities (no resource consumption for power generation, Oxygen doesn't require anything other than MOXIES, all resources other than Rare Metals can be imported from Earth, Metals and Rare Metals can be produced infinitely by the Mohole Mine, Concrete can be produced infinitely from the Excavator and waste rock from other mines/extractors, farms only need water) if you don't use them. Starting the game by setting up a few Vaporators and setting aside an area specifically for a moisture farm is usually a good way to play through the game without worrying about water and sometimes not even needing extractors.

 

[Dirheim]

Typically you want to rely on Vaporators by late game anyways since water is the only resource that isn't otherwise available in "infinite" quantities (no resource consumption for power generation, Oxygen doesn't require anything other than MOXIES, all resources other than Rare Metals can be imported from Earth, Metals and Rare Metals can be produced infinitely by the Mohole Mine, Concrete can be produced infinitely from the Excavator and waste rock from other mines/extractors, farms only need water) if you don't use them. Starting the game by setting up a few Vaporators and setting aside an area specifically for a moisture farm is usually a good way to play through the game without worrying about water and sometimes not even needing extractors.

Really good advice!!!! But I´ve found that some of my early game I´ve had serious problems to find concrete, I´ve had to get it even shipped from Earth How did you get from the Excavator?

 

[Wandering Sentinel]

You get 50 concrete per day from the Excavator I believe, but there's a tech in the engineering branch that lets drones convert five waste rock into one unit of concrete. Once you get that tech, you typically stop needing to worry about concrete up until you get the Excavator, at which point unless you have a sufficiently large colony you won't be able to use all of it without major expansion. The Excavator is, I think, the last tech in the Robotics branch, but I could be wrong.

 

[ThePanther]

Thank you for all the advice and tipps. Just hand an anomaly which gave me the choice to get:
1. 200M $
2. 2 Drone hub prefabs
3. 4 vaporators

 

[MontharKragan]

It sounds like you landed on Tatooine instead of Mars, so it's time to get those droids over to your moisture farms. ;-)

 

[DragonShadow]

Typically you want to rely on Vaporators by late game anyways since water is the only resource that isn't otherwise available in "infinite" quantities (no resource consumption for power generation, Oxygen doesn't require anything other than MOXIES, all resources other than Rare Metals can be imported from Earth, Metals and Rare Metals can be produced infinitely by the Mohole Mine, Concrete can be produced infinitely from the Excavator and waste rock from other mines/extractors, farms only need water) if you don't use them. Starting the game by setting up a few Vaporators and setting aside an area specifically for a moisture farm is usually a good way to play through the game without worrying about water and sometimes not even needing extractors.

Unless you're lucky and you get the Core Water Drilling breakthrough for infinite water, lol.

 

[Gilgamoth]

The Excavator is, I think, the last tech in the Robotics branch, but I could be wrong.

I believe the tech tree is randomised each run through

 

[spannbeton]

I believe the tech tree is randomised each run through

Wonders are always at the end of the techs.

 

[Pointyearedgit]

I believe the tech tree is randomised each run through

The categories are the same, only the order *within* the branch changes. Wonders should always be at the end though.

 

[Wandering Sentinel]

Yes, and the Robotics and Physics tech trees have two wonders each, with the spots of the wonders always "locked" so that, for instance, the Excavator is always last in Robotics after the Mohole Mine and the Omega Telescope is always the last in physics immediately after the Artifical Sun.

Unless you're lucky and you get the Core Water Drilling breakthrough for infinite water, lol.

I meant without breakthroughs. And sure, the water is nearly infinite, but you need a lot of luck for it and most people won't go into a game setting their colony up around a breakthrough they've yet to find.

 

[Zinegata]

Really good advice!!!! But I´ve found that some of my early game I´ve had serious problems to find concrete, I´ve had to get it even shipped from Earth How did you get from the Excavator?

Don't ship from Earth. Build a separate concrete outpost and use an RC Transport to transfer.

I'd recommend this guide for reading: https://www.reddit.com/r/SurvivingMars/comments/8674e4/how_to_win_on_hardcore_530/

In particular, note the insight of how you will fail if you try to pick a spot that has "everything". You generally won't. Use transports.

Also I may as well plug my own guide as it has some start tips that presumes outright that you won't start with water:

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

 

[EntilZha]

It sounds like you landed on Tatooine instead of Mars, so it's time to get those droids over to your moisture farms. ;-)

"But I was going to Tosche Station to pick up some power converters. "

 

[Marcus]

Mmmmm hmmmmm. Robot Chicken showed us what those Power Converters are, yound man. Now get those droids to work!

 

[Strygah]

Hi,
when starting a new game I often find myself in the situation, that I didn't find any water with my initial orbital probes. Even the tiles which state that there is a high chance for water often don't have any water on them if scanned.

What is your strategy for this situation, how do you manage the water supply for your first dome?

Do you bring in a bunch of vaporators? Is this viable on a hard start with a small budget?

Restarting the map and scanning other sectors feels a bit like cheating to me.

If I land in the spot which is bad for starting a colony (i.e. building a dome) I usually build 1-2 or even 3 sensor towers and explore the territory around.

If you have 1 rocket you would need to build vaporizer + fuel refinery to fly back to Earth (by the time your 2nd rocket is ready, you will 95% scout a good location for a first base. If you have 2+ rockets you don't even need to get fuel.

Doing that you really only lose time which is not important in the game, except for a couple of achievements. The strategy works best with the Futurist (he has a tech for autonomous sensor towers), but is viable for every starting leader

 

[EEE_boy]

Only farming dome requires some water in the mid-term before you can build the water reclaimation spire. Vaporator is the short-term and long term solution.