Sea Ice Community Challenge

[abretten]

Brand new run started tonight.   Trying a chance, building a double walled shack to start using most of Engie's starting silver.
Feels like a good idea so far, its negating the "slept in the cold" modifier.

image host

[CrazyEyes]

Day 639

A bulk goods trader arrived.  They don't have uranium.  The cargo pods they dropped give me an idea, though.

Day 662

A wanderer named Jumper joined.  She can't do much besides cook but we need a cook so she stays.

Day 671

Sara and Norman got plague.  Sara dies.  Norman lives.  No justice.

Day 692

Walked by the corpse pile and saw Wobber.  Not even sure when he died.  Nobody said anything to me.  Odd.

((Author's Note:  Judging by the destroyed torso and Bruise (human fist) wounds, I'd say he died due to some berserk rage or social fight I didn't notice.  I think it says a lot about the state of the in-game alerts that a colonist can die without the player having any idea when or how.  Examining the art on his sarcophagus, which happens to be the scene of his death, indicates he was killed by Loly.  If I had to guess, I'd say he went into a berserk rage because of the death of his wife Sara, and Loly accidentally killed him whe she fought back.))

Day 702

How did... when... we have 240 uranium.  I didn't buy any uranium.  What happened?  Not complaining.  Nearly there.

Day 726

More uranium showed up.  Is it coming from mechanoids?  I didn't think they returned any.  No matter.  We build an engine.

((Author's Note:  I really don't know where the uranium is coming from.  As far as I know mechanoids don't drop it, and nothing I'm melting down should either.  Does it come in ship parts?  I've blown up so many of them I forget what's actually supposed to be in there. ))

Day 734

Cella was surrounding a psychic ship with IEDs and triggered one accidentally.  The whole setup went off.  Nothing left to bury.  Good riddance.

Now there are only six of us.  That means we have enough uranium to build enough cryptosleep pods for all of us.  Tempted to leave Norman behind, but letting him live knowing Cella was mere days away from rescue when she died seems more fun.

We stop all other projects.  Nothing matters except for leaving this place.

Day 741 - Final Entry

Alright.  I've said I don't like writing very much, but Engie would have wanted the last entry in her log to be special.  Here goes.

We finished the ship today.  As I write this we're loading some silver, food, and a couple of basic supplies into each of our pods.  We're each also wearing our best armor and carrying a weapon.  We likely won't need it when we wake up, assuming the AI does its job, but life here has a way of making you paranoid and we all agree it's better to be safe.

I wish Engie could have been alive to see this.  She's the only reason any of us survived.  I have no idea how she managed to carve out a life here.  Crashing here with no shelter, barely any supplies or food... I doubt any of us could have done it.  But she did.  And thanks to her perserverence and her sacrifice, a handful of us have managed to come together and escape this frozen wasteland.

Before we leave, there is one last thing I must do.  We buried Engie in a marble sarcophagus outside the very first hut she built.  It was supposed to be meaningful, and it was the very best we could do with what we had.  But I'm not leaving her here.  Not even in death.  I open the sarcophagus and there she is.  The cold has preserved her well.  I have never hauled anything for this colony before, but now I bear the weight of Engie's body as I carry her to the crematorium.

A few hours later and I am ready to board my pod.  I am the only one who has not already entered cryptosleep.  I dump the weapon I had stored in my pod on the ground.  I will not need it.  Instead, I gently place an ornate wooden box I carved into its place.  Inside lie the ashes of the woman to whom I owe my life.

I read Engie's past entries.  I am not made of stone.  I read the passage about the very first thrumbos she encountered - the ones who seemingly sacrificed themselves so she could live.  I know she wanted to spend the remainder of her life caring for such creatures as a way of repaying her debt.  She can no longer fulfill that wish, but she can at least be among them.  I will travel to one of the worlds she spoke of and spread her ashes there.  It is the very least I can do.

When I am finished writing this entry, I will make a copy of this journal and leave it behind.  To whoever finds this, make of our colony what you will.  Plunder its riches if you wish; we have no more need for them.  Perhaps you will make it your new home.  It served as such for us for over ten years, proving to be a bastion of hope and life against all those that would seeek to take everything from us.  It can be that for you too, if you wish.

It doesn't matter to us anymore.  I activate the AI core and give it its instructions.  The engines hum to life as power is routed to them.  I climb into my pod and begin the sequence that will allow me to sleep in stasis for centuries, taking one last look at our colony before I close my eyes.

I hope I wake up somewhere warm.

--END TRANSMISSION--




I did it!    Here's an imgur album detailing my base, just before takeoff:

http://imgur.com/a/Lik4y

That took way longer and was way harder than I thought it was going to be.  Seeing other people completing the challenge made me think that once you got past the cold it wasn't too different from the regular game.  Boy was I wrong.  Half the game was me trying to prevent everyone from going into a tantrum spiral.  Before I realized I needed to disable Hospitality, half the Escape Pod, Wanderer or Refugee events involved someone's relative, who would inevitably die and give one of my colonists a huge mood debuff.  And there was SO MUCH HAULING.  There are resources from siege camps or cargo pods in the corners of the map that have been there for years, because things keep dropping closer to the colony and my haulers just never get there.  I forgot how slow colonists moved through snow and ice.  Every raid lasted a couple of hours, but then we'd spend a week hauling corpses and weapons across the ice.  Every time mechanoids or a ship attacked we'd lose days of productivity to healing injuries and babysitting infections.

Also, I think I set some kind of record for time spent relying on cannabalism.  I had only gotten two bulk goods traders, and I spent that steel making things like my kitchen, beds, the high-tech research bench, and other things I considered more vital.  After all, it wasn't like I was going to starve.  It took a while to gather enough excess steel just from melting slag and disassembling mechanoids to be able to build and power a hydroponics setup for the whole colony.  I think I went about nine or ten years before I was able to reliably produce enough rice meals to feed everyone.

I think the worst part has to be the Zzzt! event, though. Not just because one of them killed Engie, but because it just randomply punishes the player for no reason other than to create difficulty.  Once your base is larger than a single room there's no real way to mitigate and plan for it.  Just sometime, somewhere, one of your conduits is going to explode and start a fire.  That's it, nothing you can do, enjoy your game.

What I did like about this challenge is how natural the difficulty curve felt after you get over the whole colder-than-the-polar-ice-caps-of-Mars thing.  You can't dig up resources or grow anything initally, so there's no way to create wealth from nothing like in most colonies.  100% of your wealth is coming from random cargo pod drops or slain enemies.  And since you can't get your own building materials you have to actually spend the money you get on vital supplies.  Because your economy is gradually growing rather than making leaps and bounds, raids follow the same pattern, often staying the same strength for a while or gradually getting bigger rather than going from 10 men to 30 because you dug up a plasteel vein.

It's much more of a give-and-take economy, whereas in most of my other games I'm making money off of every single trader regardless of how much I buy from them.  Interestingly, this feels closest to the way the trade system was probably intended to be used.

Despite annoyances with the random events and the stress of micromanaging moods, this was a fun challenge!  I'm looking forawrd to playing a normal game again, though.  I'm betting that's going to feel like a cakewalk after this.

[Texaskimo]

I'm guessing your randomly appearing uranium was from smelting raider weapons, they sometimes carry shivs, clubs etc. made of exotic material.

Much less likely a cargo drop had uranium and you weren't paying attention when you removed the "forbid" restriction on the dropped materials.

[CrazyEyes]

It could very well have been raider weapons; the dumping pile in the workshop was set up incorrectly for a long time (melee and some weapons were enabled, but I forgot to also allow smeltable weapons in general) so once I fixed that a whole lot of weapons started to get melted down at once. If a handful of them happened to be uranium that would explain why I suddenly started getting more in the late game.

Also, it couldn't have been a cargo pod because I was checking every single one religiously in case they contained uranium.

[abretten]

Lost count of which run this is, but finally something good happened.

"A chunk of spacecraft has fallen from space and landed nearby"

It damn near landed on my base !

[CrazyEyes]

Oh nice, four ship chunks close by is pretty lucky.  What's your plan for the steel?

[abretten]

Oh nice, four ship chunks close by is pretty lucky.  What's your plan for the steel?

I went with a turbine....i've had a couple of runs through winter now and solar just doesn't cut it.

If I have to start over again, I'll probably build a turbine up front, and then go for a second turbine.

The other thing I decided as a strategy was to build more batteries where possible to have the energy storage to live through periods of low wind or low solar.

[Jimyoda]

I think the worst part has to be the Zzzt! event, though. Not just because one of them killed Engie, but because it just randomply punishes the player for no reason other than to create difficulty.  Once your base is larger than a single room there's no real way to mitigate and plan for it.  Just sometime, somewhere, one of your conduits is going to explode and start a fire.  That's it, nothing you can do, enjoy your game.

Actually you can mitigate - or even virtually eliminate - the Zzzt event.
The short circuit goes off only if you have conduit connected to a battery (Duh!, but it must be said). It still tries to fire for batteries NOT connected to conduit, but it will fizzle and you'll never even notice. So, say you have two banks of batteries, one bank connected to the grid and the other not connected to any conduit. You'll get about half the short circuits, because sometimes the event will choose the isolated battery. Obviously batteries not connected to the grid can't charge or provide power, sooo.... use a switch. Connect a switch so that no conduit touches any battery. The risk of a zzzt still exists while the switch is on to charge the batteries. But once, charged, turn the switch off and enjoy no more short circuit explosions. Turn the switch on (again at the risk of a short circuit) only when you need backup power.

[abretten]

Update:  I have plenty of turbines/battery storage now and 6 hydro tables.
Machining is being researched to allow us to make use of all the sycther corpses.


But wait...someone wants to take it all away from Engie and Val !

[GiantSpaceHamster]

I finally got around to giving this challenge a try. I've made about a dozen attempts so far, improving on each. It took me 2 failures to learn how much time I could spend building my first structure to get a fire going and prevent hypothermia. After that it was learning how far I could go to haul safely with whatever clothing I was able to scavenge based on the outside temperature. Engie died a few times trying to lug vlauable goods back to base.

My best attempt so far was bitter-sweet. 118 days, but it was a near total disaster almost the entire time. My base burned down nearly completely not once but twice. A muffalo parka is all that saved me and gave me time to rebuild, but I lost a ton of resources to the fires. At one point Engie was injured and slowly dying when a medic joined my colony. Bad traits and almost no skills, but a 13 in medicine and, importantly, juuust warm enough clothing to make it to my base. He saved Engie just barely then promptly started wandering aimlessly after stumbling upon my human corpse parking lot. He died of exposure, but Engie survived. A near miss! Later, someone calls for help. Engie is still recovering from injuries from a raid and just cannot afford combat, but it turns out it's Engie's husband calling for help. Whelp...I can't say no, even though I know he probably won't make it to base before dying of cold (it's the middle of winter and ~-200 outside). Sure enough, he dies on the way. I even tried sending Engie over to meet him to give him her parka in hopes both could make it back, but he didn't even have a jacket and died just feet from Engie.

Eventually three mechanoids did too much damage to my base to recover and Engie died from wounds during the battle.

Getting better though!

[CrazyEyes]

Actually you can mitigate - or even virtually eliminate - the Zzzt event.
The short circuit goes off only if you have conduit connected to a battery (Duh!, but it must be said). It still tries to fire for batteries NOT connected to conduit, but it will fizzle and you'll never even notice. So, say you have two banks of batteries, one bank connected to the grid and the other not connected to any conduit. You'll get about half the short circuits, because sometimes the event will choose the isolated battery. Obviously batteries not connected to the grid can't charge or provide power, sooo.... use a switch. Connect a switch so that no conduit touches any battery. The risk of a zzzt still exists while the switch is on to charge the batteries. But once, charged, turn the switch off and enjoy no more short circuit explosions. Turn the switch on (again at the risk of a short circuit) only when you need backup power.

That's interesting.  I knew batteries not connected to the grid wouldn't trigger a Zzzt! event, but I didn't realize that was because the event was being created and then rendered inert.  Does that mean I could drastically reduce my odds of the event occuring at all by having lots of individual batteries, each seperated from the grid by their own switch?

[GiantSpaceHamster]

Actually you can mitigate - or even virtually eliminate - the Zzzt event.
The short circuit goes off only if you have conduit connected to a battery (Duh!, but it must be said). It still tries to fire for batteries NOT connected to conduit, but it will fizzle and you'll never even notice. So, say you have two banks of batteries, one bank connected to the grid and the other not connected to any conduit. You'll get about half the short circuits, because sometimes the event will choose the isolated battery. Obviously batteries not connected to the grid can't charge or provide power, sooo.... use a switch. Connect a switch so that no conduit touches any battery. The risk of a zzzt still exists while the switch is on to charge the batteries. But once, charged, turn the switch off and enjoy no more short circuit explosions. Turn the switch on (again at the risk of a short circuit) only when you need backup power.

That's interesting.  I knew batteries not connected to the grid wouldn't trigger a Zzzt! event, but I didn't realize that was because the event was being created and then rendered inert.  Does that mean I could drastically reduce my odds of the event occuring at all by having lots of individual batteries, each seperated from the grid by their own switch?

I haven't verified the info provided by Jimyoda but if correct, you wouldn't need a switch per battery (or even multiple switches). All batteries not connected to the grid would generate benign events regardless of how many sets of batteries you put them in. I usually make 1-2 sets of batteries that I leave full and disconnected from the grid with one battery always connected and I move batteries from the disconnected grids to connect them to power them up rather than flipping on the switch, but the switch is there in case I need a massive backup power supply.

In fact, this strategy works without switches at all. Just move the batteries when you need to connect/disconnect them.

[Hans Lemurson]

Batteries (and furniture in general) can be moved pretty quickly.  Flicking a switch requires a colonist walk over anyways, so why not save yourself the component and just have a bank of batteries that you shuffle back and forth?

[porcupine]

I haven't read every post... but after a few miserable starts (stupid pawn kept walking outside to get frostbite, then dying of infection), I finally had a "visitor" who had a decent enough Parka not to freeze in the winter...

I stripped 'em bare, then packed up as much food as I could carry, and went for a hike somewhere *marginally* more hospitable :p.  Seemed like a pretty obvious choice

[Sola]

The starts are a little luck based.
The middles are a little luck based, too.  (read: orbital traders)

If you have a parka strong enough to survive the winter, though, you're all set for the first big difficulty.