Self Sustainability

[Edixo]

Have anyone managed to make a base where your colonists doesn't have to leave for hunting or defending against raiders and such?

I'm trying to make a fortress that's exactly that, perhaps with the exception of a few turret repairs. I need more chickens, more power production, and plasteel turrets instead of regular steel.

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[Shurp]

Windmills will help you during eclipses.

How do you keep tribals with great bows from plinking out your turrets?

[Superteej1996]

The best way to get meat in my opinion without having to hunt is to tame some chickens. If you want the meat like immediately then tame about 5 females and 1 male, or if you got some time to spare then tame maybe 3 females and 1 male. (Sometimes the game helps you out by giving you the wandering farm animals event) Then create an indoor animal zone called Chicken Coup or something like that so you know where it is. Restrict all your chicken to that area. The male will fertilize the female and lay eggs. After a few days you'll have some chickens and chicks. The chicks will take a while to grow up but it's a good investment. You can kill the male for the meat when you have enough chicks or just allocate him to separate animal zone called Male Chickens or something like that so he stops fertilizing the eggs since the stove is automatically set to not use fertilized eggs. Either change the stove setting or separate them. Also make sure you keep your fertilized eggs in the chicken coup. If they find their way into the fridge they will be ruined by the temperature. So what I did to avoid that was to set up a stockpile in the chicken coup next to a heater to make sure my chickens survive the cold winters and also to make sure my eggs don't die if I need more chicks. Last bit of advice if you set the zones properly you will need to put food for them or they'll starve. I usually use a small stockpile or 3x1 for like 10 chickens and set it up to ONLY accept rice since it takes a long time to spoil and the chickens don't have a problem eating it. Or you could always make kibble but yeah. Rice is just much easier. Just ensure you set the stockpile as Critical important on the stockpile GUI so they always take the rice there. If any other fridges or stockpiles are of higher important they'll take the rice there. Also it helps A LOT to get your communication console so you can request specific traders from other colonies. So if you have a lot of a specific resource request that trader and sell it all then request the trader you need for the resources you need. In my opinion the space traders are somewhat unreliable and drop your good anywhere that isn't under a roof so you may need to run some distance to fetch your goodies if you're in a mountain. Hope this helps a little bit. In my opinion windmills are like one of the worst electricity generators. The fueled generator with a wood farm is WAY more efficient. You just need a big enough tree farm to ensure your wood stockpiles are large enough to last you until your next harvest of wood. But that's just me. I use all of the generator methods so yeah. Use some solar, wind, fueled and steam if you can. That way your aren't stuck in winter without wood, the night without sun or the day without wind. And use LOTS of batteries in a room with a cooler set to keep the room at low temperatures to minimize the number of problems your batteries give you. If they get too hot or wet they explode and cause fires, so rather be safe than sorry.

[AngleWyrm]

If you build near a coast or lake, then Fish Industry can provide piers for a dock

[keylocke]

in vanilla, four 11x11 growing zones in a "greenhouse" (one for each produce : corn, potato, rice, strawberry) + chickens + cows = shingeki no kyojin

[Edixo]

I'd finally gotten around 70 turrets and 50 chickens with a stable power supply, so I tried letting it run by itself on triple speed for 8 hours while I slept.

Toxic fallout had made everyone demented,  and a poison ship had crashed in my garden halving my food supply. But it had survived all raids,  and only two pawns had died.

I consider that a success.

[Boston]

I go the other way: Instead of using electricity and power, I "down-tech" to manual workstations, colonists with firearms, so on and so forth. I can basically ignore 1/2 -3/4 of the events if I have wood, and since I play primarily in boreal forest, I do.

Of course, I modded the shit outta the game, so vanilla might be quite a bit harder.

[Jovus]

How do you keep tribals with great bows from plinking out your turrets?

Keep your turrets turned off until said tribals are in range.

[Shurp]

Clever! Do you use a switch or send a poor pawn to run out and turn it back on?

[Hans Lemurson]

Or do you keep them connected to a dead circuit and then "re-plug" them to the main grid when needed?