tips for surviving in cold environments?

Started by jzero, December 20, 2015, 08:01:57 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

jzero

Hello. I am currently playing a colony in a tundra biome and I am having a lot of trouble with it. I can't seem to get any food grown, every time i try to grow food it is always too cold. And i know you will say to grow food inside but every time i do that it seems to take too long and all my people starve. And i should just hunt animals but all the animals in the tundra biome seem to have an insane chance of attacking the hunter and all my hunters get decimated by packs of beefalo, elks, or wargs. I have always up until this point played in a temperate zone but i found that getting too easy. I didn't think i could handle ice sheet so i tried tundra. Any tips on how i could improve my strategy?.
Actual cannibal shia labeouf.

BBoulanger

First thing you do is research hydroponics and grow rice. Best thing I can think of.
There is no try only do

jzero

I have tried hydroponics but everytime i do it i can never get the amount of power neccasary to grow enough to be sustainable about it. That is a great idea though and i will try to do that more
Actual cannibal shia labeouf.

BBoulanger

#3
I found Blitz's new series he's in a ice sheet. Try out his strategy might help you.
https://goo.gl/F4hLoy
There is no try only do

A Friend

"For you, the day Randy graced your colony with a game-ending raid was the most memorable part of your game. But for Cassandra, it was Tuesday"

Squiggly lines you call drawings aka "My Deviantart page"

BBoulanger

There is no try only do

jzero

#6
i would gladly carve up the raiders but the colonists whine so much about it ( i mean jeez you didn't even KNOW that raider) and i have watched blitz but i really want to make a cave base and he did a outdoor circle type base. And thank you for that quick and easy three step process. I will use it, and thanks to all of you who have replied so quickly to help me out with this
Actual cannibal shia labeouf.

narf03

I m playing on Ice sheet, with alot of saving and loading. A bad event at the beginning of the game is extremely deadly, you need alot of luck playing on ice sheet, a single Solar Flare / Short Circuit  event can turn all the heaters, hydroponic basins off and there goes all your plants or a Mysterious Blight will do the work. Now im pretty safe with enough food for few months.

First thing you supposed to do is reduce the amount of food consumption from the very beginning, kill your pet, leave it in the cold, so u can turn it into food later.

Look for a geyser, make it into your home, its free heat generator that always running, it helps a lot in the beginning, but sometimes -50 degree in ice sheet, you will still need heaters for plants to grow, once the temperature drops below zero, plants will die, so if you remove a tile that makes turn your room "outdoor" kill your plants unless the temperature is above zero.

Get your basic furniture up(3 beds, a table, a stool), then research for hydroponic asap, growing rice in hydroponic basins get 170% speed, while 1 or 2 person constantly researching, others gather steel, get 1 turret, 1 battery, 1 wind turbine, 1 solar gen up, turn off the turret, get enough power stored, add battery if its almost fully charged, dont waste time on Geothermal, you will need a sun lamp, 7-8 hydroponic basics minimum, you might need to harvest some of them b4 they are completely grown, try to do this as late as possible.

While waiting for the plants to grow, build cook stove, (+ butcher table if you want to eat your pet), add more power generation and storage,  Unless you have plenty of power generated and stored, always switch on the sun lamp b4 6am and switch it off after 8pm, its wasting alot of power, do not forget to then it on. Always keep an eye on the room temperature, do not let it fall below 10 degree, add another heater if need to, set the heater(s) to 30 degree. Dont waste your man power and steel on other thing b4 you secured your first batch of food production.

The best random event that can happen is raw food falling down from the sky, if this happens, basically you get 1-3 days worth of food, i dont rely on traders, you can try your luck, can setup the comms console after you start researching, and remember to turn it on only when you need it, you need to save alot of power for the sun lamp.

asanbr

IF you lose power and plants are about to freeze to death, you can save them by setting up a campfire. I had to do this several times and it saved me.

narf03

in ice sheet there is no source of wood(except getting from traders), only start with some of them and most of the time 80-100% already spend on walling the starting home or perhaps used in the campfire on the first night(if cant find a geyser, and unable to set up power generator + heater + battery on time, campfire is the easiest).

N0xiety

I am currently playing on an ice sheet with -95c coldest. But i have seen it go down to -124c when volcanic winter hit while it was allready winter :) Here is what i can tell you. Grow rice since it is the fastest growing food and plentifull. Don't use hypdrophonics, energy is everything in ice sheets or tundra since winter means less or no energy at all. Use wind turbines where ever you can they are cheap and produce lots of power even if they are upredictable. Build your solar panels between turbines to save space. When your colony grows and you have money, spend it on plasteel and build ship reactors for more steady power even if it might cost alot. Save lots of energy for the winter in batteries. Make indoor heated farms. Build your base on several geysers and direct the heat inside + this will give you some steady energy. In your garden building always include 1 or 2 geysers and make it seperated from your main building by 2 thick walls and doors so no heat will escape. Your colonists can live with wool parkas when the solar flare hits but your crops can't. If its still too cold when the solar flares hits quickly craft campfires inside your garden. For insulation always use double walls with double doors for outer walls of your base!!!(This includes your freezer too you don't want that cold to get inside your base.) You don't need space between double doors it will actually be better if you place them one after another with no space. Buy wood from traders they are cheap and have atleast 1000 wood for emergencies.

My current Ice sheet run includes 14 ship reactors with about 70 solar panels with 30 wind turbines and it just became stable really. It is not an easy feat to heat and provide electricity to my huge 14 sunlamp indoor farm on top of that heating the base itself for the mood. I still can't keep my turrets online even with all this power and only activate them when something comes close while using battery power. Winters were really hard with no proper clothing and base heating, temps droping down under -100c winter at start but i prevailed. I didn't even need to care about enemie attacks maybe %80 the time since anything but mechs die to hypothermia at winter which is half the year really and even if natives reach me they are so fked up from hypothermia they break so easily when shot at. Now i am experimenting on a freezer trap with 30 coolers. It actually seems to work great and works even on mechs with the room temp droping down to -220c. Tho it doesn't kill the mechs but only makes them sleep. I have to stop the trap and manually go shutdown the incapacitated mechs. Other than that it decimates anything else really. Humans go in and after about moving 25 tiles with chunks to slow them down they get downed and die in seconds from hypothermia. I feed them to my wargs :) Oh speaking of wargs they are great for these maps. Wargs and Thrumbos can live even when winter comes at -100c without any kind of heating and are free to go outside. Thrumbos still get a bit of hypothermia but wargs get it so slow its not even noticable if you don't leave them out like for a whole day or 2. Forget huskys tho since there are no pet clothing they die quick at winter and can't go outside.

narf03

how many geysers on your map ? having 2 in a base is difficult, and u can have 2 in your garden ? the difficult part playing on ice sheet is at the beginning, once you survive pass the 1st month, technically you can win the game easily, when you can build a ship reactor, food should no longer your problem.

N0xiety

#12
Quote from: narf03 on December 27, 2015, 04:05:00 PM
how many geysers on your map ? having 2 in a base is difficult, and u can have 2 in your garden ? the difficult part playing on ice sheet is at the beginning, once you survive pass the 1st month, technically you can win the game easily, when you can build a ship reactor, food should no longer your problem.
I don't know if i am lucky or not but geysers are plenty on my map. I have 12 geysers on the map with 2 of them being 25 blocks near each other and another 2 being atleast 75 blocks from the ones that are really close. So garden with 2 geysers at the most SW corner of base and the living quarters branching towards 75 blocks NE with 2 geysers heating making it 4 total geysers in base. Can give you the map seed and coordinates but i warn you its avarage temp at winter is -95.1c and at winter temps can hit -120c really. Quite hard to start with had to restart a couple of times.

rmurdocci

I've been alternating between tundra and icesheet since the latter was introduced (once upon a time, tundra was the coldest biome) and can speak to your question. I play long end-game (no ship) with mountain bases.

For tundra in particular, I start with the usual closed room (usually closing a natural cave) and 3 sleeping spots. Quickly build a research station and focus on geothermal (I don't trust solar) to power your base. Survive by eating the initial stock of meals and hunting rabbits and squirrels (need both a butcher and cook stations). Build 2 wind towers for any initial power needs. Hydroponics is researched next.

If RNG is good to you, you'll be able to have a very rudimentary base with a lot of power (geo), food growing capabilities (hyrdoponics) and climate control (heaters) by Sept/Oct (tundra usually starts in June, with growing season spanning only June and July). From here, is just an issue of adding some security, mining your base out of the mountain, and killing the first few waves of enemies to upgrade your gear and weapons before you can start properly hunting hordes of muffalo(e?)s, elk/deer, and even oliphants depending on your map.

On a side note, I've noticed that A12 packs a lot more live meat in tundras than before. I've been expanding my primary/secondary freezers constantly to compensate for the manhunting meat bonanzas and my hunting expeditions.

tl;dr: Focus on power, hydro and heaters fast; hunt rabbits and squirrels to survive; don't sweat a few bad moods on the beginning.

My two cents.

narf03

Quote from: rmurdocci on December 27, 2015, 08:43:35 PM
I've been alternating between tundra and icesheet since the latter was introduced (once upon a time, tundra was the coldest biome) and can speak to your question. I play long end-game (no ship) with mountain bases.

For tundra in particular, I start with the usual closed room (usually closing a natural cave) and 3 sleeping spots. Quickly build a research station and focus on geothermal (I don't trust solar) to power your base. Survive by eating the initial stock of meals and hunting rabbits and squirrels (need both a butcher and cook stations). Build 2 wind towers for any initial power needs. Hydroponics is researched next.

If RNG is good to you, you'll be able to have a very rudimentary base with a lot of power (geo), food growing capabilities (hyrdoponics) and climate control (heaters) by Sept/Oct (tundra usually starts in June, with growing season spanning only June and July). From here, is just an issue of adding some security, mining your base out of the mountain, and killing the first few waves of enemies to upgrade your gear and weapons before you can start properly hunting hordes of muffalo(e?)s, elk/deer, and even oliphants depending on your map.

On a side note, I've noticed that A12 packs a lot more live meat in tundras than before. I've been expanding my primary/secondary freezers constantly to compensate for the manhunting meat bonanzas and my hunting expeditions.

tl;dr: Focus on power, hydro and heaters fast; hunt rabbits and squirrels to survive; don't sweat a few bad moods on the beginning.

My two cents.

I dont think geyser positions are part of the seed, seeds just contain the basic information of the world map, those lesser important information like the geyser, hidden treasures and many small details isnt there.