Playing in the Arctic (freezing all year round areas)

[Barley]

Don't forget other animals on the map are hungry, too. Try leaving a corpse out in the open, then shooting any animals that come to eat it.

[alexrou]

wow I just noticed this ... thicker walls = longer time for the temperature to change

[Mr.Cross]

-Mrofa's issued challenge-

Just started something close to this, however i made a custom scenario (not released to steam), am doing it on a mountainous boreal forest, the average temp for summer is 58.5 F and the average temp for winter is -5.3, and the growing period is from the 1st of summer to the 11th of summer. it is On Randy and Extreme

One colonist start with 10 packaged survival meals, no pet, 150 steel and wood, 9 components, no weapon, no starting tech and 5 meds. the only saving grace for this is that the colonist is always going to be between 21-25 years old.

Edit: Forgot to mention the story teller and the difficulty.

[John_Bigless]

I'm assuming not many people play in these kinds of areas cause if there were, the balance wouldn't be so bad. I'm playing in these areas exclusively for fun but the removal of the sun light (without research) has made it now seemingly impossible.

If you don't build a room and put up a fire place in the first few minutes everyone will die from hypothermia. If you're too slow and someone got hypothermia before its done, they still may die from a infection.
Since there are no trees around, you must build a sola/wind generator asap and then build heaters or you die from hypothermia.
You then cannot grow food as it is perma freezing so you have to make a room and use heaters and a grow light (which now you have to research for, so now you can't grow food for a long time and have a high chance of starving to death). It might have been better if there were anything to hunt but nope there is almost nothing to hunt 99% of the time. Also trying to go anywhere far from home or for a extended period of time is a suicide mission cause you don't have warm clothing and to get those you need to grow cotton or hunt the almost non-existent animals and then spend a long time to make it.

Now add to that fending raiders, eclipses, solar flares that shut down every single thing keeping you alive and kill all your plants (it gets easier late game where you can have a huge supply of food and warm clothing, but early game its brutal).

I'm not asking for it to be easy or even close to what having a colony in a normal area is like but at least make it more doable. I really do not see it being possible without the sun light or some way to get a constant supply of food early game. Though I will still try so we shall see.

Trivial hypothermia doesnt cause infections, but the late-stage "Frostbite" does.

[alexrou]

Trivial hypothermia doesnt cause infections, but the late-stage "Frostbite" does.

Being outdoors in -80C gives you frostbite pretty quickly, making it hard to do anything outdoors without micromanaging everyone's health. Also thats far from the only problem ... the main one is not being able to grow food without the sunlamp.

[Serenity]

I'm currently trying to get an ice sheet game started and in 15c I can build sun lamps right away.

The lone explorer scenario works very well for an ice sheet. A small gravel patch can feed a single guy together with some hunting. And you start with a charge rifle. It lacks range, but can easily take down a polar bear. They give lots of meat.

A geyser can be used for heating by the way if you start near one close to a wall.

The game will bombard you with escape pods so you can freely pick who you like and let the rest die and take their stuff. That's a bit gamey, but works well. I also run the Hospitality mod, so I can now decline the random wanderers. This allows you to grow your colony exactly as fast as you want.

The big issue is getting a character that is a jack of all trades. In my first attempt I did pretty well, then someone crashed with awesome across the board skills. I rushed a prison hole and rescued her with her losing two fingers. Patched her up, but then I notice that I only have 1 Social, which meant a recruitment chance of less than 2% :s

Also, visitors eating all your food is even more annoying now :/

[ThiIsMe007]

Also thats far from the only problem ... the main one is not being able to grow food without the sunlamp.

That's the main reason I don't play arctic biomes. Even eskimos (or any other population of humans in equivalent environments) have way more options at their disposal to survive and strive than what the game is currently able to simulate.

I get it that it's more or less a playground for people to have fun with cannibalism, but everything seems so extremely contrieved and limited to me that even that doesn't make it an appealing/original concept enough.

[BlueWinds]

I haven't given it a shot in a15 yet, but back in a14 I managed ice sheet colonies without cannibalism quite regularly, even on higher difficulty levels. I didn't go for the insane freezing ice sheets that some people do, and usually prepared-carefully decent pawns (nothing crazy, but just having all my bases covered). The formula was pretty simple, basically what other people have said:
-- Build some steel walls next to a mountain, a solar panel, a battery, a heater.
-- Simple research bench, 100% dedicated pawn who can give up their clothes to help others who need to go outside.
-- Dig dig dig a base.
-- Hunt any animal that comes nearby.
-- Start hydroponics ASAP. You don't actually need a sunlamp - you can do it by regular lamp-light, plants just grow slower.

Never needed to even use campfires, though as mentioned, this is on "normal" ice sheets rather than the insane-hell-frost-frozen variety.

[ThiIsMe007]

That actually makes me want to change my mind again.

It all sounded just so "dry" and boring for me to play through, to only ever have ONE option (because no animals, no wood, no traders, etc.), but I may be wrong about it. I'll have to give it a try.

Thank you for that, BlueWinds.

[alexrou]

So I got this seed .... who wants to try -91C lol

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[makkenhoff]

So I got this seed .... who wants to try -91C lol

Doing that map now, got a small colony going. Locationlocationlocation.jpg is where I ended up picking. Very high elevation, very cold year round, though not the -91C average that you found. Upper left corner of the map if you have trouble finding it.

Right now, the colony is very small, and getting low on food. I'll post a picture of the colony if I manage to survive past the 15th of summer.

*edit* Made it to fall, I did a risky thing in trying to take down a thrumbo. It died, but not before tearing a hole in my colonist that wasn't going to heal on its own.



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[Britnoth]

~ a whole lot of complaining about ice sheets being 'unbalanced' ~

Ice sheets have been dumbed down into easy mode enough already.

Before they did not have any animals on the map outside of thrumbos or manhunter packs, making it an actual challenge to get either a good grow room or hydroponics up in time before everyone started to starve.

They are not supposed to be balanced. They are supposed to be a challenge. 

[alexrou]

~ a whole lot of complaining about ice sheets being 'unbalanced' ~

Ice sheets have been dumbed down into easy mode enough already.

Before they did not have any animals on the map outside of thrumbos or manhunter packs, making it an actual challenge to get either a good grow room or hydroponics up in time before everyone started to starve.

They are not supposed to be balanced. They are supposed to be a challenge. 

Would I be playing in -91C if I didn't want a challenge? I was just ranting when 15C made sunlamps a research item. Like it just feels so impossible early game without it.

[Serenity]

Before they did not have any animals on the map

Yeah, the animals make it somewhat easy. Polar bears often starve (though they can eat foxes and hares), which makes them come to you where they can  be killed.

Or what just happened to me:
"Mhhh, running a bit low on meat" - *a few seconds later* - man hunter pack alert! - "Cool, three muffalos! Let's turn on the turret."

[Britnoth]

Would I be playing in -91C if I didn't want a challenge? I was just ranting when 15C made sunlamps a research item. Like it just feels so impossible early game without it.

Sunlamps do not need research unless you are playing the tribal start.

Before you could build sunlamps as tribals before you could generate any power to use them. Having them require electricity technology just helps to avoid confusion. Well, not always it seems.

Regardless, it is entirely possible as crash landing or rich man start to get to hydroponics and get your first crop in before you run out of food. The new animals on the map are just an unwelcome crutch to help get there.