How do you start a new colony?

[Abadayos]

So I've been wondering lately how everyone else has been starting out their colonies from Story AI selection to initial 3 colonists and basic start up build.

So here we go:

What story AI do you pick and why?

How do you pick your starting 3 colonists? Do you go for whatever 3 you get given at teh start? You go for a dedicated miner, dedicated grower/cook and a researcher or a high crafter, social, merc/combat person?

What size map do you go with? Small, medium, large, stupidly large?

how do you start up your colonies buildings once you have your stockpiles and pre-landing pause scout? Do you make wooden huts to throw down beds and expand to better stuff later? Or go for metal buildings from the get go? Stand alone buildings or dig into a mountain? Do you wall off and make a killbox from the start or not bother till later? Research asap or wait a bit? Grow your own food or just harvest plants around already?



For me I go for the ramping up difficulty, the biggest large map and roll for a 10/10+ miner/grower, 12+ researcher and a general person with no drawbacks/limits.

For startin out I usually do bedrooms outside next to a mountain and dig the rest in. After the digging is eventually established the rooms built are merged and turned into the kill box. Preference is to set up near a geo vent and rich soil if possible.

[christhekiller]

I usually pick Chill Cassandra Classic or Cassandra Classic

It depends on what I'm going to go for. If I'm going to be mining into a mountain I usually get everyone with at least a 5 or more in mining. If I'm going to be building an actual town I'll go for people with good construction skills. And on top of that I try to find an expert grower, shooter, and either social or crafter (depending on who I get first). I'll rarely pick people who can't do stuff unless they're exceptional in two of the fields I'm looking for.

Medium

Well, this is gonna need more 'splainin
Usually I mine into a mountain. If I'm building a town I'll start off with wooden buildings with wooden doors dirt floors. I'll usually try to get rooms for everyone then a spare room for a prisoner. Then I'll build the cafeteria, then focus on getting more rooms then focus on production, usually starting with trading/ researching, then expanding to improve my woodcutting, stonemaking, and eventually machining. All the while I try to rely on growing my own food but if food stores get lowish I'll go harvest some natural plants. If I'm digging into a mountain my colonists will sleep under the stars until I can mine out the rooms for them, and usually the first attack doesn't happen until I have my rooms ready.

[Dr. Z]

Most time I played Randy Random. Since the game is optimized I use medium mapsize.
When choosing my first colonists I serch for one good miner, one farmer and one crafter ("good" means 9+ at that skill) and the impotant thing: NO ONE INCAPABLE OF FIREFIGHTING!

Right from the start I search for an area next to a large mountain with a steam geisyr nearby and quickly build a room with the following inside:
Nutriend Paste Dispenser
Sleeping Spots
Lamp
Batterie

Outside I build 1 or 2 solar generators, growing zones and since Alpha 4 a sawmill.

I try to build as much as possible inside the mountain and get a defense up and running with as few above-ground buildings as possible to defense effectively. I also start digging out an emergency exit through the mountain to a far away placce on the map and build a panic room for my colonists to hide, then I seal the route with walls to prevent the raiders from using it.

I don't like the killbox design of many bases posted here. I use sandbag formations and turrets to have good old movie-style shootouts. I like that personal component.

[a89a89]

1. Randy random because its RaNdOm

2. I go with a constructing guy level 7 or +, a grower level 9 or + and a miner level 7 or +

3. I mostly go with 250 by 250

4. I build a log cabin and put a couple beds inside and make a room in the cabin used as the prison

[ctgill]

Random Randy
Make sure to get two people with shooting 7+ (although I do roll for a 10+ most times on one)
and in those rolls I make sure to get growing 7+, social 6+, and research if I can at 6+

Off the start I pause, zoom out and look for the bunched up steam geysers and proceed to delete my premade zones, setting new zones by the geysers I then have my best shot take the enfield and my other two grab the pistols. From there I order them to haul metal and logs (two trips each if its not too far) over to the new area before pausing to lay out a build for an initial shelter.

[Japzzi]

I choose Cassandra Classic as my story teller because she gives me a good challenge Sometimes I go with Randy if I want to have epic amounts of lulz ^^

For characters I always have atleast one colonist who excel at shooting stuff. The rest are just rather random.

I choose the ''largest'' in the Small category.

And for my town I always build my settlement with stand alone housing. I might put some rooms into the side of a mountain. I never liked building bases inside mountains since I find them easy to defend (Except when giant centipede killer robots arrive D:)