Don’t sell leathers unless you truly have more than you could ever craft. Crank out hats or dusters to train up your crafters and sell those. Once you can make decent ones it adds value too.
Oh yes this. In my current frozen wasteland, I don’t have the time/manpower to make stuff so I just go with raw materials.
The history graph provides a nice illustration of how often I’ve been sending out missions and caravans. Each one of the big dips represents when colonists were sent out of the base.
I did go out of my way to choose a starting location that would be ideal for trading. I found a place on a road with two towns less than a day’s travel away. I can hit them both with just an overnight trip. There’s also a primitive tribe that takes a little more than a day to get to. It’s in a nice temperate forest, as my wood spike heavy defense strategy needs a forest to feed it. 50/60 day growing season. Small hills that include granite.
We’re pretty much a tailor shop and berry farm. Our main exports are berries, hats, dusters, and the occasional slightly used weapons. There’s also art, but that’s not an export since it’s heavy. One has to visit Pandale to purchase its sculptures.
The frozen wasteland must be a major challenge. Given a greater reliance on hunting that I assume comes with the short growing season I’m sure you are generating way more leather than you need.
I’m basically playing on easy mode in a location with a long growing season and plenty of wood and Cassandra set to medium.
Does it work if you put a thermogenerator over the geyser?
Right, install the geothermal generator right on the geyser (no other way to build one), and then wall it in. I guess some people don’t add ceilings but I do, and it’s fine so long as it has ventilation and/or cooling.
A big combat tip for new players. If you select someone and mouse over someone else you will see the chance to hit. This applies to both your guys and your enemies.
I mentioned above going “turn based” and unpausing in small increments. While you are paused, look over the enemies and see who they are aiming at and what their chances are.
For example, these lancers were targeting my back line of snipers a moment ago with about a 2% chance to hit. No problem keeping them under fire for now. After a brief un-pause Liaws got a shot off which made the lancers target her. Checking their to hit a 20% chance tells me it’s time to duck back behind the door.
Thanks! I put the checklist on Steam. I will be adding to it over time, so suggestions are welcome.
I never noticed that before in hundreds of hours of play. Cool!
BTW - I think multiple Lancers are the worst things in the game. Centipedes you can run up to and hack away, but those Lancers. GAH! They just shred you. I have 5 people missing arms, one missing a leg right now, and not enough resources to make replacement limbs.
Yes. Warmth will be generated even then.
Irgo proved to be a great addition to the colony and despite her annoying voice he really took to Tamara. They became lovers.
Just recently we received a message from Irgo’s father, who was incapacitated in the wilderness nearby. He was guarded by 11 fennec foxes. Now you may thing, a bunch of foxes no big deal right? Well, I once thought the same thing too. There’s no greater threat than a herd of angry animals. The closest my colony game to disaster was when a herd of caribou broke through my gates on the undefended side of my base and almost trampled people to death. A herd of small fast animals are even worse since even the one or two shots you are might be able to get off before they swarm around you will probably miss. Careful preparation will be needed.
Not wanting to leave my colony too poorly defended I figure the most I can spare is four good shooters. Irgo should of course join, and why separate him from his new lover so Tamara so she provides another gun to the party. Gabby is a good shot, and a fast mover ever since we got a bionic replacement for her bum leg. Guzman, a young orphan that we recently gave shelter to as he fled some bandits, rounds out the crew. I give them all fast firing weapons, a chain shotgun, the one charge rifle my colony has produced, and a couple of assault rifles.
I know that’s not going to be enough. Fortunately I took some risks right at the start that will now pay off. One of the colony’s founders had great skill at handling animals. Shortly after arrival he set out to tame some nearby big animals. Over the years through taming and purchasing we have quite a stable of animals including three adult megasloths and four grizzly bears of various ages. I’ve kept them out of combat and on hauling duty, but they have been trained to fight and now is the time.
There is one last preparation. I know I am going to need someone who can run faster than a fox. And not just a little faster. Their job is going to be to piss off the foxes and get them to chase them. Now Gabby is pretty quick with her fancy new leg, but not fast enough. She needs additional upgrades. I’ve got enough advanced components to make another leg or a heart, but between the manufacture and the installation that might take took long.
I’ve also got another small problem. The raid that occurred when I gave sanctuary to Guzeman yielded a few prisoners. Given they are pirates they’ve been getting the requisite wooden replacement parts before being sent on their way, however one has a shattered spine so he won’t be going anywhere on his own. He’s not worth building a new spine for, and the pirates aren’t exactly going to come peacefully to take him off my hands. He does however have a bionic heart. And that’s how gabby the galloping grandma got her bionic heart making her far faster than a fox.
Unfortunately I had let my colonists socialize with the heart’s former owner and some had become friends so the effect on the mood of the colony was greater than expected. Oh well, we can always up the chocolate ration.
Now we’re feeling ready. We load up a caravan with food, bedrolls, ample medicine, and some wood just in case we have a chance to set up some traps.
The rescue went well. The bears and megasloths were released to combat the foxes while everyone took up position. There was no time to set up traps but everything else went according to plan. Gabby ran forward to fire off a quick burst and then run off to the flank. Most of the foxes followed with my bears and sloths following right behind and picking off stragglers. Gabby led the foxes in a big arc around the rest of the party allowing them to take shots as the animals as they ran past. Much pausing and careful assigning of targets was done to prevent friendly fire. The foxes got some bites and scratches in but nothing serious.
Unfortunately it turns out Irgo’s dad is a bit of an asshole. I should have known since he didn’t have a good relationship with him to begin with, and everyone likes Irgo since he’s kind. I don’t mean to be judgemental, but I know my colonists are, and the guy is staggeringly ugly. Irgo is no beauty, but he must have gotten his looks from his mother. He’s also one of those preachy body purist types so not only will he not get along with Erika, our resident transhumanist, he’s not going to like our general policy of becoming bionic supermen. He thinks he’s too good to do dumb labor and isn’t really good for anything other than animal tending. To top it all off he’s a pyromaniac.
The group is encamped now waiting for Irgo Sr. to heal up enough to be able to make the hike back to base. I guess having family present inspired Irgo since he just proposed to Tamara, who said yes.
Irgo is happy we saved his father, and doubly happy now that he is engaged. Hopefully that happiness will make up for how he’s going to feel once Dad’s all healed up and we banish him.
Sorry to keep questioning you about this, I just absolutely love this concept. Do you happen to know if a naked geyser and a geyser with a thermo on top of it release the same amount of exhaust heat?
All I know is that during the summer I have to close off access from the geysers to the rest of my base, or my peeps start overheating.
I’ve used the exhaust from thermogenerators to heat my bases before in winter, but using them to grow plants in the winter is just such an awesome concept. I’d love to see the math on this for room size and growth rates and such.
Good story once again! Funny how much trouble you can get yourself into trying to save somebody just to find out they’re a bit of a dead beat.
I picked up one of those on a rescue myself over the weekend and frankly I’m still not entirely sure what to do with him. He’s got effectively no useful skills and I’ve assigned him to cleaning.
He’s got decent melee skills, so guess who’s taking point on every incoming raid. ;)
My current dilemma is do I banish him now or wait until after the wedding. I mean it would be nice for Irgo to have his father there, but there’s a lot of flammable stuff in my base.
I vote keep him around for the wedding, last run I had not one but two pyros I never got rid of because they both had critical skills. When they’d drop everything and start lighting the place up I’d have another colonists follow them around putting it out. We managed just fine to the end, got the ship built and left.
Hum, on the other hand, I had a colony destroyed by a pyro in a previous run that I’d put a lot of time and effort into because I made the mistake of keeping mortar shells and chemfuel in the same storage area, the pyro lit a shell which proceeded to kill the guy following him around trying to put it out and ignited all the chemfuel I had on hand as well and burned the entire place to the ground taking every colonist with it as they succumbed to heat and smoke trying to put it out.
It was glorious.
I think the pyromaniac trait has changed recently. It used to be that a pyro would wig out every season and start kindling. Now it seems to be tied to mood as I have a pyromaniac in my starting group, who has yet to set any fires despite being a few years underway.
Oh cool, that sounds like the right adjustment to make on that trait.
That sounds much better. Just keep the pyro content and they don’t light things on fire? Although, that’s probably less realistic.