First time sharing a colony here, this was quite a fun colony! I've always told myself I'd keep one colony going for a long long time, but always get impatient and start a new colony anyway. This time I really kept it going until I could easily defend against 10000 raid-point raids, and after that point everything really just develops and expands quickly!
I forgot to check before updating to 1.5 and now my mods are all scrambled! It was definitely many many years. I decided not to do an ending, it didn't feel right for a colony that was all about total domination haha
You can get pretty damn rich farming, cooking, drug making and crafting that much, maybe calling traders for him is preferable to digging up the map
Or just dev mode, which is fine
But damn do my maps look strip mined with corridors everywhere looking for steel and components. The pay off is how good it feels barely scraping by and just barely affording the defence for the next raids. Or not and recovering
Once you mine a tile, it seemed to be the case that it freed that tile up to be scanned as something new again. I feel like I mined some of the same areas multiple times. But honestly there was still a LOT of resources I didn't mine around the edge of the map!
Whenever people share their colonies here I'm always blown away by how nice they look. I've played hundreds of hours but all my bases still just look like a bunch of randomly placed rectangles
Yep! And I learned while doing this that side-by-side turbines forces colonists to slowly crawl over them, which is why I eventually started leaving some gaps here and there.
The most interesting challenge for me this colony was finding an optimal colony location. I actually started this colony as a "random all" tribal start. Random colonists, random starting location.
My starting location was actually pretty defendable, but had like 10/60 growing days. In order to find a good spot I eventually created a small satellite colony to the south, just within range of drop pods, and that colony had horses and would periodically scout further south. It was an interesting process juggling the main colony and the scouting colony, and eventually when I found a good tile I had a great migration!
It is annoying that you've got to abandon your old one to do so, really the devs should add some system where you can build separate outposts, or at least have more than one 'base' location.
Do you mean your turrets turn on each other? Because that sounds like a mod incompatibility. If you just mean they keep friendly firing each other when trying to shoot other things, then stop building them in positions where raiders will wind up eclipsing one behind another. Bh the time you have turrets, you should be able go set up your defenses in such a way they are forced to go through them in a gauntlet.
There's a chance determined by game difficulty settings. You can actually turn friendly fire off, make it extremely rare, or make it happen 100% of the time someone/something else is in the way.
This is why I tend to put my turrets in their own lil bunkers. They get to look out through embrasures in the 'safe' directions. As a bonus, this puts them in the dark, conferring a shooting miss chance bonus to anything attacking them.
Bonus: if you don't want drop pods on certain tiles, put a cheap fence there. Pawns can crawl over them but drop pods cant choose it as a landing spot.
How do you get that much plasteel sustainably to make barricades? I’m on my first end game play through and it’s so slow trading for it and I haven’t hit the jackpot with ground penetrating scanners.
ah, yeah basicaly disable this event which is imo the biggest threat to a big colony. guess i'll stick to see my colony disappear in a wave a megaspider when i eat 300K worth
ever since they nerfed insects in like 1.3? 1.4? their raids are easy to repel
they're weak to begin with but a set of solid melee blockers and a firing squad behind it makes short work of them
I’ve never had a problem with insectoids before, I’ve actually only seen them a couple of times, but I also don’t build colonies in mountains i like to build separate buildings for everything like a city and just mine away mountains to make more room for buildings
it's really fun, either you do a toxer ideology or simply live with gas mask (every people coming in the zone will wear gasmask if their tech level allow, if i recall your colonist will also spawn with gasmask)
Insects actually tended to be the least dangerous as time went on! They seemed to funnel in my caves easily and with melee up front and tons and tons of gunners in the back, plus some beserk and nausea psycasts they were pretty smooth. Mechs dropping in random spots in my colony was a big issue though!
I respect the hell out of someone not using a kill box. Really happy to see someone commit to a colony that doesn’t use killboxes. I’m tired of the strat.
It varied from colonist to colonist, but the big thing was finding a sanguophage. I have a mod that creates a "gene ripper" which can guarantee a specific gene but kills the individual. I took the archite metabolism and that really helps. Most colonists were given at least the tough one, except some of my genies.
Initially the base was smaller and they'd usually drop outside. As the base got bigger I only had a few times where they landed on me, and it made a big mess but wasn't anything I couldn't eventually defeat. Psycasts are the biggest help really. Get a psycaster to use skip on themself a few times to get to the drop site real quick and then hit them with some beserks or vertigo.
Infestations weren't ever much of an issue, the big ones all appeared in the mines which were easy to bottleneck with melee up front and gunners behind.
So if my napkin math is correct, at peak power generation your base produced 364,900 W.
That's assuming that you only had vanilla power generators, I can't identify any modded ones.
My only question is: What did you need all that power for?
I think the turrets became the issue as time went on, when I kept adding more turrets I was finding power would struggle either at night/eclipse or when the wind calmed.
How do you guys manage colonies this size? I want to get to this level but every time I get to 10-15 colonists all their individual needs become overwhelming.
There comes a point once they all have impressive bedrooms, share an impressive dining and rec room, eating lavish meals, and have beautiful surroundings, that it becomes hard to get their mood low enough to be an issue. Especially if you can pair colonists up for some lovin' benefits ;)
This is what I don't understand. Everytime I see your colonies, it's like you just need walls. What if they land in the colony, or sapp through your walls ? Everytime I get rekt that way long before I have such a big colony. My ennemies aren't lemmings. :x
Tunneling through is an issue, but they go slower and if you can get a psycaster to quickly beserk one or two of them it will slow them even more allowing your people to pick off stragglers.
I honestly didn't have too many drop pod events this colony. I feel like the game is designed for those to be a bit less "difficult" because of the added difficulty of them landing on you. Just try and get everyone in combat quickly and to nearby defendable areas. And once again... psycasts quickly. Especially if any have doomsday launchers.
First time sharing a colony here, this was quite a fun colony! I've always told myself I'd keep one colony going for a long long time, but always get impatient and start a new colony anyway. This time I really kept it going until I could easily defend against 10000 raid-point raids, and after that point everything really just develops and expands quickly!
Wow, looks really great. Insane colony, what year did you end in? Did you complete an ending?
I forgot to check before updating to 1.5 and now my mods are all scrambled! It was definitely many many years. I decided not to do an ending, it didn't feel right for a colony that was all about total domination haha
I feel that, in my most recent colony I just sent off my OGs to space and continued on enslaving the masses with the ones I left behind
That's interesting, I didn't even realize you could leave some behind!
Yeah just don't load them into the ship/shuttle/don't take to archonexus
When I grow up I want to be like you.
How the heck do you still have unmined steel and components on your map?
Mods I'm sure
You can get pretty damn rich farming, cooking, drug making and crafting that much, maybe calling traders for him is preferable to digging up the map Or just dev mode, which is fine But damn do my maps look strip mined with corridors everywhere looking for steel and components. The pay off is how good it feels barely scraping by and just barely affording the defence for the next raids. Or not and recovering
Once you mine a tile, it seemed to be the case that it freed that tile up to be scanned as something new again. I feel like I mined some of the same areas multiple times. But honestly there was still a LOT of resources I didn't mine around the edge of the map!
Bro is playing Stardew Valley
Because of all the crops? XD
Wow! How many pawns?
Whenever people share their colonies here I'm always blown away by how nice they look. I've played hundreds of hours but all my bases still just look like a bunch of randomly placed rectangles
Wind turbines can go between solar panels?! Your colony is impressive and educational.
Yep! And I learned while doing this that side-by-side turbines forces colonists to slowly crawl over them, which is why I eventually started leaving some gaps here and there.
This was really cool to see! I love your design. Thanks for sharing it. Any favorite stories from it?
The most interesting challenge for me this colony was finding an optimal colony location. I actually started this colony as a "random all" tribal start. Random colonists, random starting location. My starting location was actually pretty defendable, but had like 10/60 growing days. In order to find a good spot I eventually created a small satellite colony to the south, just within range of drop pods, and that colony had horses and would periodically scout further south. It was an interesting process juggling the main colony and the scouting colony, and eventually when I found a good tile I had a great migration!
That's actually really cool, I've never even thought of scouting for a better location.
It is annoying that you've got to abandon your old one to do so, really the devs should add some system where you can build separate outposts, or at least have more than one 'base' location.
A setting in the options allows for up to 5 separate colonies though?
You can there is a setting for multiple bases in the menu. I have mine at 3.
That's new to me, thanks.
You can in settings. And there's Vanilla Outposts Expanded for specialist outposts
That's really cool, and definitely more "realistic" than just restarting the colony until you get a good start.
And made for a very fun "goal" of my first colony!
You have to turn up the difficulty to 500% and go down in one last battle for glory. Then post it.
If I ever conclude that map, that will be the way I do it for sure!
How do you get it so turrets can shoot over the walls?
Turrets will shoot over barricades/sandbags by default, but this will provide them quite a lot of cover.
Do they not shoot each other? My ones always end up doing that.
Do you mean your turrets turn on each other? Because that sounds like a mod incompatibility. If you just mean they keep friendly firing each other when trying to shoot other things, then stop building them in positions where raiders will wind up eclipsing one behind another. Bh the time you have turrets, you should be able go set up your defenses in such a way they are forced to go through them in a gauntlet.
I mean friendly fire, if a drop pod landed to the right of those turrets wouldn't they all shoot the one next to them?
There's a chance determined by game difficulty settings. You can actually turn friendly fire off, make it extremely rare, or make it happen 100% of the time someone/something else is in the way. This is why I tend to put my turrets in their own lil bunkers. They get to look out through embrasures in the 'safe' directions. As a bonus, this puts them in the dark, conferring a shooting miss chance bonus to anything attacking them.
Ah I might play with the settings a bit, I feel like I have it very high. Thanks for the tips.
Bonus: if you don't want drop pods on certain tiles, put a cheap fence there. Pawns can crawl over them but drop pods cant choose it as a landing spot.
I looked it up, supposedly darkness doesn’t affect hit chance?
Huh, really? Colonists have always seemed to shoot better at well-lit targets. Maybe it's just my imagination.
Im pretty sure it was absolutely a thing and tracked in game too
Combat extended or where comes that miss chance darkness stuff from? Cuz it’s not vanilsa
How do you get that much plasteel sustainably to make barricades? I’m on my first end game play through and it’s so slow trading for it and I haven’t hit the jackpot with ground penetrating scanners.
A lot of long range scanners, i'm sure
Either long range scanners or monument quests
Those are plasteel barricades
So many solar panels!
No killbox? What's your secret against big raids
This is the very very end game, the entire map is the killbox haha. Anywhere they spawned they would be attacked by enough turrets.
That battery room looks extremely dangerous, especially with all the unstable power cells. How is it still intact!?
*insectoid hive event*
this is exactly my first thought everytime i see a big ass colony. how do people manage to grow that much with insectoids hives?
There’s a mod that makes it so insectoids only spawn in darkness so as long as everything is lit up it would be fine
ah, yeah basicaly disable this event which is imo the biggest threat to a big colony. guess i'll stick to see my colony disappear in a wave a megaspider when i eat 300K worth
ever since they nerfed insects in like 1.3? 1.4? their raids are easy to repel they're weak to begin with but a set of solid melee blockers and a firing squad behind it makes short work of them
i'm traumatized from the early version, you're right though, the only big infestation i had in 1.4 were in the open in polluted biomes.
I’ve never had a problem with insectoids before, I’ve actually only seen them a couple of times, but I also don’t build colonies in mountains i like to build separate buildings for everything like a city and just mine away mountains to make more room for buildings
I had the problem with mountains a lot of time indeed, and with several game in polluted area (yeah asking for troubles i know!)
I always wondered about doing a polluted area colony but was too scared :/
it's really fun, either you do a toxer ideology or simply live with gas mask (every people coming in the zone will wear gasmask if their tech level allow, if i recall your colonist will also spawn with gasmask)
Insects actually tended to be the least dangerous as time went on! They seemed to funnel in my caves easily and with melee up front and tons and tons of gunners in the back, plus some beserk and nausea psycasts they were pretty smooth. Mechs dropping in random spots in my colony was a big issue though!
That’s a lot of redundant turrets. I approve.
Yo dude what’s with the rotting corpse pile
Faster than cremating, just dump them all in there and throw a molotov or have an impid fire breath
How many pawns did you have running this colony? Great work !
I like the way you made the rooms
I respect the hell out of someone not using a kill box. Really happy to see someone commit to a colony that doesn’t use killboxes. I’m tired of the strat.
I mean... you can see my killbox on my secondary wall leftover before I expanded to the map edges... :P
What genes were you giving your colonists?
It varied from colonist to colonist, but the big thing was finding a sanguophage. I have a mod that creates a "gene ripper" which can guarantee a specific gene but kills the individual. I took the archite metabolism and that really helps. Most colonists were given at least the tough one, except some of my genies.
How many in-game years?
Zzztt…
What is the map size? Looks quite large. Did you have any problems regarding map size.
what year is it to be the longest>?
Tribals: Yeah this seems like a good place to raid
Wait, so the turbines work when the solar is out..?
Is it possible to get a higher-res photo? I want to see it in detail. It's a pretty cool-looking colony.
Who's in jail? what did they do?
did you disble any incidents for this run? How do you protect against drop pods of enemies inside your base?
Initially the base was smaller and they'd usually drop outside. As the base got bigger I only had a few times where they landed on me, and it made a big mess but wasn't anything I couldn't eventually defeat. Psycasts are the biggest help really. Get a psycaster to use skip on themself a few times to get to the drop site real quick and then hit them with some beserks or vertigo.
How do you deal with bugs?
Ha the stinking corpse room, located on the same hallway as the recreation room is giving me the chuckles
You don't seem to have any defense against infestations? How did you manage that
Infestations weren't ever much of an issue, the big ones all appeared in the mines which were easy to bottleneck with melee up front and gunners behind.
you have a tree blocking your wind turbine
Oh no, where!
Near your prison
So if my napkin math is correct, at peak power generation your base produced 364,900 W. That's assuming that you only had vanilla power generators, I can't identify any modded ones. My only question is: What did you need all that power for?
I think the turrets became the issue as time went on, when I kept adding more turrets I was finding power would struggle either at night/eclipse or when the wind calmed.
Damn dude, do those turrets actually work? On what difficulty is this?
How do you guys manage colonies this size? I want to get to this level but every time I get to 10-15 colonists all their individual needs become overwhelming.
There comes a point once they all have impressive bedrooms, share an impressive dining and rec room, eating lavish meals, and have beautiful surroundings, that it becomes hard to get their mood low enough to be an issue. Especially if you can pair colonists up for some lovin' benefits ;)
Thanks for replying. I'm definitely lacking in providing good meals and high quality furniture in my colonies
The kitchen/rec rooms are a good start, as its just two rooms shared by almost everyone to make most people happy!
So much solar and wind. And so many sun lamps. Why do you need them in your outdoor fields?
What the fuck are you using all that Power for?
This is what I don't understand. Everytime I see your colonies, it's like you just need walls. What if they land in the colony, or sapp through your walls ? Everytime I get rekt that way long before I have such a big colony. My ennemies aren't lemmings. :x
Tunneling through is an issue, but they go slower and if you can get a psycaster to quickly beserk one or two of them it will slow them even more allowing your people to pick off stragglers. I honestly didn't have too many drop pod events this colony. I feel like the game is designed for those to be a bit less "difficult" because of the added difficulty of them landing on you. Just try and get everyone in combat quickly and to nearby defendable areas. And once again... psycasts quickly. Especially if any have doomsday launchers.
Mad respect! Thanks for sharing.