Planet Crafter

The Game Room
21

Learn from my mistake! Spend down as much as you can adding and upgrading terraforming infrastructure before starting the move. Just throw it down anywhere in the general vicinity of where you’re going to end up; you can tidy up after you’re done moving.

My game has now started working on biomass. That’s mainly what I should have upgraded first since I was generating essentially zero when I started the move and now I’m generating I think in the teens. Meaning I increased biomass production by hundreds. I’m so annoyed with myself.

22

My only biomass right now is three grass spreaders, and they seem really flimsy. I just hit the “lakes” stage, I think, so I don’t have anything other than those. Maybe I need to get several more?

I just built my third nuclear plant, so I have a little extra energy to burn.

23

Grab a couple algae generators and flower spreaders if you can.

Electricity is forever the bane of my existence. Just launched another rocket for the sole purpose of getting uranium so I could place a third tier 2 nuclear generator.

24

Pro tip: Start stockpiling eggplant. Also put up an algae generator ASAP and start stockpiling algae samples. Tier 1 is fine, and you only need one or maybe two machines. (Collect algae underwater. Grab the strands that hang down.)

Looks like I’ve been doing flowers wrong all game. I thought the % bonuses listed on the flowers were global. They are not. They only apply to the machine the seed is planted in.

I discovered this when I realized I had forgotten to plant my last two golden seeds after repositioning all my tier 2 vegetubes. With those two empty I checked my oxygen production, which was 3562/s. So I planted those two golden seeds and expected it to jump up by a huge amount, but it only showed 3576/s. Puzzled, I then took them back out and popped them into my flower seeders, which had been spreading some 300% seeds (I think.) Now my oxygen shows over 4500!

Clearly my current setup is just throwing electricity away (even if it is a small amount) on vegetubes of any tier. The plan now is to focus exclusively on flower spreaders. Currently I only have Tier 1 flower spreaders, but good enough.

Here is the oxygen you get planting a 600% golden seed in each type of planter, not counting any rocket multipliers. (I’m not sure if I’ve unlocked a rocket that multiplies oxygen yet. Definitely the next thing I’ll check…) Worse seeds perform worse, of course.

Device Base w/Golden Energy Rate
Vegetube 1 0.15/s 0.9/s -0.35/s 2.57
Vegetube 2 1.2/s 7.2/s -1.25/s 5.76
Vegetube 3 13/s 78/s -7.25/s 10.76
Flower Spreader 1 161/s 966/s -28.8/s 33.54
Flower Spreader 2 325/s 1950/s -38.8/s 50.26

Rate shows you how much oxygen you’re getting per unit of electricity from each machine assuming a golden seed is planted. What this tells me is that none of the vegetubes are worth running once your oxygen is in the thousands/s. I’m already over 4500 oxygen per second even before I finish fixing my seed distribution, and every bit of electricity I have to spend hurts. Spending 10 electricity on my eight vegetubes is absolutely not worth the 57.6 oxygen they would be generating if I even had enough golden seeds to plant them all.

My problem is I didn’t know any of this until just now, so I have no eggplant on hand. When I want them now, they take forever to grow. I also didn’t have any algae, but my two t1 algae generators produce it pretty quick.

Here’s what a t1 flower spreader costs:
3 water bottles
1 super alloy
3 algae
2 eggplant
1 sulfur

The water and alloy are essentially free. For sulfur I’ll just make another run to the sulfur area through the iridium cave. (Probably toss up an outpost with an ore extractor while I’m there.) But the algae and eggplant…gah! I’m sitting there staring at the stupid food growers waiting for them to grow. It’s excruciating.

25

Oh wow, that’s helpful. I just finally built my first flower spreader, and I didn’t even notice that it needed a plant inside! I’ll fix that tonight.

Moved my base, hopefully above water level, on the plains near the iridium cave.

Some more quibbles:

  • Why do eggplants make fertilizer? What the what? I could barely see making beans be fertilizer–they fix nitrogen in the soil–but eggplants? Eh, whatever, have 3/4 of my food growers converted to eggplants now.
  • Is there any logic to what’s inside and what’s outside? T1 and T2 veggie tubes are inside, T3 are outside? The heaters that heat the atmosphere all have to be inside, but the nuclear reactor has to stand outside in the rain? I don’t get it.
  • Why the hell do I have a dozen lockers filled semifull with different ores, instead of turning them all into machinery that actually advances the game? They’re just sitting there doing nothing, dumbass! Okay, that’s a quibble with me, not with the game.
26

Ha! Yeah, the inside/outside thing is borderline madness. The crowning moment of derp is that while most machines eventually go from inside to outside as you get to higher tiers, nuclear generators are the reverse: The highest tier nuke goes inside. (May also be possible to put it outside; I don’t know.)

In terms of having resources sitting around instead of working for me, I’m starting to give my food and water lockers the side-eye. One large locker is full of water, another is full of beans. Except, I don’t foresee a time or reason I would ever use either of them. If I need beans, I just grab one from my food growers. (Caveat that right now they’re temporarily growing eggplant.) If I need water, I run over to my lake water collector. And each outpost has its own rain water collector. It’s like once I finally filled those lockers it turns out I don’t need them anymore. (That’s probably why I was able to fill them in the first place.)

27

I just realized this is a holdover from all the other crafting games, where building duplicate facilities was often pointless, but saving up materials could be really helpful for the next major base-build or equipment tier. In Valheim there’s no reason to have ten different crafting tables, and you don’t need multiple Water Filtration Machines in Subnautica. So my habit–built up over years of playing those games–is to hoard resources. And that’s exactly the wrong approach here, where you can and should put nearly everything to work, with the option of deconstructing something when you can use its resources more efficiently. (I built my first T2 nuclear plant by deconstructing one of the T1 plants, and got a huge energy boost).

28

That’s an interesting insight. Though I will say I enjoy having six large lockers full of the five basic materials plus aluminum. It feels like I’m constantly having to make super alloys – usually three at a time – and it’s nice to just be able to grab whatever I need at the moment.

But still, I agree with your larger point. Spending down as much as possible seems like the wise move.

Exactly the same thing I did when I built my first T2. Three uranium rods is just so expensive, so getting one back by deconstructing a T1 just makes so much sense.

Note: (not related to this post) I did accidentally spoil myself on one of the late game technologies. I’ll just say that there are some automations reminiscent of factorio later on in the game. I’m pretty stoked for those…

29

I’m not at my computer to give a precise point in my journey, but I’ve unlocked T4 drills, for example. I’m in the Moss phase about 15% into the Flora phase progression.

I’m now starting to have much more intense meteoroid storms, and the building really shakes severely.

But, of note: this last one literally rained Super Alloys. Dozens litter the ground. So you have that to look forward to.

30

A couple T1 ore extractors in the aluminium spires will give you everything you need to make super alloys in roughly equal amounts. A small outpost with an advanced crafting station and Bob’s your uncle.

I’m at the “need moar powa” stage, combined with “my first base is underground with a whole bunch of resources I could use to make better stuff.” I might do a couple runs to move stuff over, but finding a decent source of uranium is my current roadblock. I found a cave full of it past the desert, but that’s empty now.

31

I haven’t even found that yet. I have found maybe a half dozen uranium all game. Almost all my uranium has come from rockets. I’ve launched three or four of the rockets that cause uranium meteor showers.

32

I decided to apply that concept of spending down instead of stockpiling. Hoo boy did that do the trick. Finally got to sit down for an extended play session yesterday.

I started with around 4700/s oxygen and maybe 3k/s each for heat and pressure. And then plant production was two digits, or maybe low three digits tops.

Here’s what I have now after 5 hours of collecting resources, spending down on machine upgrades, launching rockets, lather rinse repeat:

4 t2 nuclear reactors
3 t4 heaters w/4 heat rockets
4 t4 pressure drillers w/4 pressure rockets
9 t2 flower spreaders w/1 oxygen rocket
8 grass spreaders w/1 plant rocket
2 t2 algae generators
3 t1 ore extractors (aluminum, iridium, sulfur)
a t2 Biodome (and of course the Biolab)

I still haven’t managed to dismantle my solar panel array, which is 15 t1 and 5 t2. That’s almost 200 energy! For all other production buildings I dismantled all lower tier versions. I currently only have 23 energy available and nowhere near enough uranium to build another reactor.

Production is now:

Oxygen: 173k/s
Heat: 72k/s
Pressure: 79k/s
Plants: 4.5k/s

I blew right through Moss and am now 75% through Flora. At 1% every 40 seconds, I’ll reach Trees in around 17 minutes.

I tried to keep my production as even as possible but failed miserably. Oxygen is just never matched to the other two, and of course bio lags way behind. Ah well.

Not only did I spend down what was in my base, but I jetpacked back and forth between my outposts and collected all the scrap I had dropped on the ground to keep the ore extractors going. Turns out when you drop resources on the ground they are permanently there, even across sessions. Took me several trips from each, and I just kept dumping them into super alloys. Must have made untold dozens of them. Can’t wait until I get the higher tier storms to save me that hassle.

I finally bit the bullet and moved my jump/jetpack button from A to RT. Using my Xbox controller, in general I always put jump on A, action on X and inventory on Y. And of course B is cancel. But I couldn’t steer the jetpack with my thumb holding down the A button. I’m just about 30 hours into this game and have just now changed the control scheme from how I first set it up. The second I made the change and tried out the jetpack being able to steer? What a revelation!

33

Sweet! I’m mid-moss right now, and am in a “Explore More” phase of the game.

New quibble: games that have an optional run mode. WHY? Do you think I, an escaped convict sentenced to a barren planet, want to go for a leisurely stroll? NO I DO NOT. You sentenced me to a barren planet until it’s terraformed, by the way took away my ability to sleep, and gave me fancy boots that let me run without getting tired. I DO NOT WANT TO WALK. So why do I have to press the shift key all the time if I want to move at a normal pace?

This is an issue with like a million games, of course–but I’m gonna gripe anyway.

Stayed up late playing this beautiful game and am gonna dive right back in, right now.

34

Every game should be required to offer a “Toggle Run” checkbox in settings. Click once and run for the whole session. Speaking of running, it’s weird how running makes you swim faster.

I badly need to explore. I don’t think I’ve explored much of anything for the last three terraforming milestones. I did, however, receive a message with coordinates I’m supposed to go check out. Hopefully there will be something good there.

I stumbled across an interesting tidbit regarding resources: Chests have resources based on how far you have advanced in the game. Theoretically that means that you shouldn’t open any chests in the beginning, or at least as few as possible. If you wait until later they will have better stuff.

35

Minor spoiler:

It’s the beginning of a mini storyline separate from the main quest. Definitely worth checking out. Some very nice goodies at the end, too.

Just finished the atmosphere stage (starting the fish stage). Yay–I can finally breathe!

I do recommend exploring more in general. The machine optimizers have a huge (5x) productivity boost, but you need “fuses”, which are only found in chests (or bought with the trading rocket).

36

Just got into insects, and it’s impressive how much the world has already changed. Also unlocked T2 ore extractors, so I’ve got those cranking in caves for super alloy, iridium, and osmium. With that, I can pretty much just bootstrap more of them to collect whatever I want, just a matter of power. Speaking of power, the fusion reactors have solved that for awhile. By my math, I can do something like six times my current terraforming speed before it gets close.

I’m definitely struggling with biomass. I don’t know if its the multi-step process for everything or what, but it just feels like I’m dragging.

Machine optimizers are fantastic. Rockets eventually have diminishing returns, so the 5x multiplier keeps things moving. So far, tracked down a pressure fuse, a heat fuse, an oxygen fuse, and a plant fuse. Just plopped a couple tree spreaders next to my plant fuse-boosted optimizer.

37

Clearly I need to start exploring. So far I have three optimizer fuses: two oxygen and one plant. My oxygen is still way ahead at 180k compared to heat and pressure at 120k each, plus my oxygen buildings are all spread around my base spreading flowers and grass. What I really need are heat and pressure fuses.

The plant fuse looks promising. I still haven’t put up any tree spreaders, because again I’m not looking for oxygen, but with a plant optimizer it will surely help with my pathetic biomass rate.

I’m halfway through trees heading for insects, but progress is slow. I don’t want to say it’s a crawl, but it’s definitely limping.

Oh good, I’ll go finish that now then. Or, rather, after I toss up some tree spreaders. I explored it some but then came back to base to add more heaters and drillers and then got distracted. I had found two or three coordinates, one leading to a golden chest, and had opened the stone doors and explored a little bit but not a ton. I had also separately stumbled across the graveyard behind the waterfall, which feels like it’s related.

38

Fish is moving pretty slow. I just unlocked T5 heaters, so that was a big help, but the others are kinda lagging. Well, there’s always something to improve.

I was getting so many super alloy meteor storms that I was getting annoyed… but I’m glad I saved up. The T5 heaters (and probably other T5s) really need it in large quantities.

I only ever found pressure and plant fuses. Three pressure and two plant. Mildly annoying that I can’t yet boost the others. But I’m building up a trade empire so I can just buy what I need. “High quality food” looks pretty simple and can be almost totally automated.

The underwater stuff looks way better in the fish stage. Not quite Subnautica, but still nice looking.

39

Oh, is that how they work? I plopped one down in the moonscape biome, which has a ton of osmium, etc. on the surface, but it only ever mined the base materials. I’ll try it in a cave.

The natural meteor storms are doing a pretty good job at supplying me for the moment, though.

Just unlocked T5 drills. The T5s are big! Had to move them to a new area.

40

Finally brought my plant production up to speed with 3 tree spreaders (one each of the first three seed recipes) and a beehive all right next to each other with a plant optimizer boosting all four. My plant production jumped up from ~14k to 109k.

Now I’m thinking a few more rockets and then I’ll finally not be too distracted to go finish that side quest from the message.

My main problem is that cool new stuff keeps unlocking and I’m all “ooo, and incubator! what’s that do? ooo, a water filtration thingy! what that do?” heh.

EDIT: And within 5 seconds of unpausing to resume my game, the butterfly dome unlocks. I’m building that fucker immediately.