Tips on Surviving on Savage + with Mostly Vanilla settings

[mooguy]

This is a discussion on surviving on savage story teller settings with just vanilla defenses and without over the top manipulation of the environment (huge bases out in the sea, long winding corridors with traps, ect). Key findings for what works best for me.

Pawn skills: The tough trait is an almost-must have. Right now 7/9 of my colonists have it over an almost 10 years playthrough. Every pawn should have passions in shooting or melee, only exception is if they have the tough trait.

1) Minimizing space is critical.
The distance between the kitchen, dinning room, rec rooms, workshops and bedrooms need to be tight and close, otherwise you''ll end up being wiped from pawns just being too far away from where they need to be. Set up the kitchen by the store room entrance, build two shelves, with one shelf restricted to vegetables, another to meat and animal products, and your cooking instructions to 'drop on floor NOT take to nearest stockpile. A kitchen right by here is also important. Put the butcher room in the freezer, the convenience of it right there is worth the bad temp penalty.   

2) Drugs:

• Psychite tea is crucial. Set it on all your colonists at once every 3 days, only if mood below 50%. They won't get addicted and it's a mental break saver.


• Reinforce this by setting Beer at once every 3 days - only if mood below 30% to avoid major mental breaks.


• Wake up is also the only other drug that can be mostly safely taken - but just use it manually when you need it.

3) Shelves are critically important: Keeping guns on hand such as EMP launchers, sniper rifles and machine guns for more unique situations close by the entrance to your defenses is a huge boon.

Also, you can set them outside on mass and create a barn with only hay being allowed. When Winter comes, then set animals in the zones, all other times they can wonder the area freely.

4) Animals:
Bears are the best animals in the game. Their hunger rate is only around 0.5, they can be trained easier than other stronger animals, they can also eat vegetables. But don't let them wonder indoors otherwise they will create filth in the house.
Dogs: Around 3 Dogs are great for hauling and providing a nuzzle mood bonus for colonists.
You don't really need more than 3 hauling animals and 3 wool animals, and 2-3 milk animals. Milk is great because colonists with imperial titles can still drink it.

5) Default weapon: One of the best default weapons to have your colonists equipped with is the heavy SMG. It's great at close/short range, easy on your wealth value, while also not being so limited and random in range as the pump shotgun. Great for last moment defenses against infestions and drop pod raids.

6) 'Killbox." If you want to not cheese it but have a chance of surviving, a wall around your base is still helpful, but with an area where there is no wall, but a corridor, around 3 tiles wide and 40+ long. Then at the entrance to your base, form a deference in the shape of a half-square, mixing in sandbags and walls like in my screenshot. Put concrete on the ground where your pawns will be drafted/positioned in so fires can't start behind them. Don't let them be standing shoulder to shoulder. (look at screenshots).

• Pawn equipment/locations

Have around three colonists with miniguns-assault rifles behind the tiles that can see all the way down the 40+ tile corridor you;ve built. They are you crowd control to slow enemy swarms down, because getting the damage on enemy pawns as early as possible is crucial - they will be shooting you less accurately and moving towards you less slowly. On the wings of your box, heavy SMgs are best, because they still have some long range support yet being very accurate at short ranges for enemy pawns that are running at you. 

• Mines:
       -

Build EMP mines and install them close to the entrance of your killbox, and when a mech attack happens rush to reinstall it in an area
      where the mechs will come through - but slightly to the side so you can trigger it when they are clustered by shooting at it, NOT in the
      hallway entrance, it might only trigger on one single mech that walks over it.[/li][/list]

7) Melee pawn training: you want 2-3 for every 10 pawns you have. Uranium mace or plasteel longsword is great at the start. Train their melee by having them kill wild weak animals everyday, but only 1-4 a day as they'll always get a little hurt in the process.

8 ) Best bionics, installments.
Install Psychic Harmonizers on (happy) pawns that are in a relationship and with love enchancers, as well as burning passions for inside work such as cooking to make the most use of them, as they recieve a mood bonus for doing work they have a passion for.One bionic eye on each colonist is enough, along with reprocessor stomach - it least on your royal pawn to keep high level meal demand low. Leg bionics are decent, but beware of your colony wealth. Couagulator is also great for battle pawns.

9) Higher quality furniture: wooden begs, rec structures (pool table ), hospital beds, chairs ect will also have improved effectiveness. Rebuild them untill you have it least excellent.

10) Threats: Inferno cannon centipedes mixed with blaster centipedes are the biggest threat to a base.  This is because their shots are very accurate, and even the best armor can't prevent a pawn from panicking when on fire. You can set up firefoam devices behind your killbox, but it still deosnt prevent your pawns from burning on a direct hit...

11) Quests to beware of accepting. Accepting quests involving defending against mech attacks should only be accepted if the reward is amazing. Even if just active for two days,you can experience up to 5 quest related raids and another random one in the meantime. See screenshots.

12) Making allies Training the Social skill: This is important as you'll want to be making allies asap so you can call for help when needed, and donating gifts to allies keeps your colony wealth down (therefore raids), but the social skill is hard to train. It can be trained best by having prisoners and setting prisoner interaction to just 'reduce resistance." You can keep relations up easily through gifts but also through healing the downed allied pawns after they've helped reinforce you.

[mooguy]

More screenshots for information.