20 year of colony FFS 129

[Grapplehoeker]

20 years of colony FFS 129

FFS 129 was started as Tribal/Cassandra extreme (no mods) in the frozen tundra in mountainous terrain with caves, because somebody in the Steam forum told me to try it as they believed it was impossible due to the infestations. I accepted the challenge.
I not only handled the critters successfully, I prospered.
It was during the construction of the spaceship that I discovered B18 brought a few changes to the game I hadn't expected. The spaceship now requires 3 engines and so I foolishly scrapped my work in order to redesign. This meant I lost the AI Persona core I had used in the construction. Doh! I was not perturbed, as previously, they were easy to come by.
Ah but B18 changed all that! I waited for a retrieval quest for another AI persona core. I waited for, as well as summoned, trader after trader, but nobody had one for trade.
I waited 12 long years!
Refusing to be beaten, I packed up and sent the colony on the long trek towards the landed spaceship on the other side of the world. We had many adventures along the way and eventually, while we were stopping over at a temporary camp, we received news of a retrievable AI persona core nearby!

We're still in tundra, but it's flat, and with just one small hill, it was an ideal location to settle.
And so, the long and arduous construction of the spaceship is now complete!
I started in early December and had promised myself to finish this before the end of the year.
I played for at least 140 hours on this and I gotta say, FFS 129 was a blast.
I discovered that the AI persona core is obtainable through trade too via the Exotic space trader if you're lucky and through sheer rare RNG luck for the retrieval quest. This scarcity plus the huge amount of investment required in manufacturing the components (read advanced components!) has certainly made what was once an easy task (spaceship victory) a real challenge.

Farewell FFS 129... 12th of Septober 5520


Happy New Year everyone!

[Shurp]

Images didn't load?

Hmmm, that's odd -- the link is there ("http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1251748047") but somehow isn't flowing through to the forum correctly... oh, right, you have a link to a web page, not the image itself, that's why.

Also, how do you bait raids into your monster killbox?  From what I see you have all those undefended solar panels and windmills outside, don't they go after those first?

And how do you handle sappers?

[Grapplehoeker]

All raids including manhunter packs, with the exception of sappers, will seek the easiest route to their objective.
So, by leaving three open corridors lined with plasteel deadfall traps, I give them three options to do so. The traps will always thin out a large portion of the hostile force. For example, Mechanoid scythers will die trying to pass those and the centipedes will have to come into turret firing range of the spider. Humanoid raiders will die in droves on the traps and the remainder will be taken out by the turrets and my defenders.
Depending on the type of raid, I will usually restrict all of my pawns to the spider body. My shooters will be positioned at the doors. This means that I always support my killbox with pawn defenders. Although it has to be said that the spider is an awesome tried and trusted killbox design that I have successfully used in many of my 100+ colonies Most manhunter packs don't need much defender support at all as the 24 plasteel turrets will take down 40+ creatures with ease.
The only exception to this would be sieges, which I handle a little differently. I will always go out to skirmish those during their setting up phase. The aim is to either preoccupy them for long enough or trigger an assault on the colony. The objective being if I cannot reduce their numbers to a flee point, then at least I can prevent them using their mortar and force them to assault. Once they assault, they can be treated as a regular raid, meaning I will simply fall back to the spider and let them come.

Sappers. I like these. They can be annoying, but they're really no threat and easy to deal with. While they are outside and trying to bomb their way in, you may have time to mortar them. If they do break into a bedroom or two, sometimes I'll send in a strike force to draw them out, sometimes I won't. Quite often, they'll run out of vandalism things to do and then they'll enter the killbox area and that will be that. Sometimes though they'll be smart enough to try to steal valuables. I lost 2 sets of good hospital beds that way when they went for the hospital. I took that as a forewarning and in future if they appeared to be targeting that, I sent the troops in. Everything else that's of high value is in the spider body for the trading beacon. Let them come and steal that
One particularly fun tactic I like to save for sappers is activating the insanity lance on their grenadier. Usually, there is just the one and once they're gone, the whole force gets a little confused when they find they can't bomb their way in and resort to a regular assault... and then they die just like all regular assaults
I did occasionally lose a solar panel or two, but that's only cause for concern when setting up in the early game. By the time I have a fully powered spider built and activated, I have many more power sources scattered around the map. I don't use switches, so everything is always powered and always on. That requires a great deal of power and so I had 5 geothermal power plants ringed with walls. The solar panels and wind turbines become supplementary sources by that point and are very quick and easy to replace if necessary.

[Hans Lemurson]

Where did the name FFS 129 come from?

Also, I missed a passage in your summary, and became increasingly concerned as time went on:

...centipedes will have to come into turret firing range of the spider.
...I will simply fall back to the spider and let them come.
...Everything else that's of high value is in the spider body
...By the time I have a fully powered spider built and activated, I have many more power sources scattered around the map.

I...I was not aware that giant mechanical spider robots were a thing in the game.



Oh wait...

Although it has to be said that the spider is an awesome tried and trusted killbox design that I have successfully used in many of my 100+ colonies

Ok, yeah, that makes more sense.

[Shurp]

"All raids including manhunter packs, with the exception of sappers, will seek the easiest route to their objective."

But... what ensures the objective will be inside the killbox?  All those windmills and solar cells look like good objectives for pirates to attack, no?

Manhunter packs and scythers will of course hunt pawns instead.  Hmmm.  Maybe pawns outside with guns always take precedence over other goodies they could attack?

[Grapplehoeker]

Where did the name FFS 129 come from?

Please Google 'FFS meaning'
It's the name I gave to every one off my colonies due to the learning curve and experiences I had when starting out
I did play a few series of colonies with the prefix THC when the drugs crafting was implemented. It of course, stood for 'Timeless Herbal Corp' in honour of Timeless Herbal Care Ltd, which is the Jamaican company that gained a marijuana cultivation license and won a huge trade deal to ship their produce to Colorado.
You may Google 'THC meaning' too for the more commonly known usage of the acronym

[Grapplehoeker]

"All raids including manhunter packs, with the exception of sappers, will seek the easiest route to their objective."

But... what ensures the objective will be inside the killbox?  All those windmills and solar cells look like good objectives for pirates to attack, no?
Manhunter packs and scythers will of course hunt pawns instead.  Hmmm.  Maybe pawns outside with guns always take precedence over other goodies they could attack?

During most raid events, I send my pawns to the 'body' of the spider, from where they will defend. It's also where the orbital beacon is located and therefore most of my valuable stockpiles will be found there. Therefore, since most raids will be seeking out my pawns and failing that will seek to steal valuables, they will invariably attempt to get to the spider.
Of course, there are the occasional couple of hostiles that might fancy a bit of sabotage and they might busy themselves with dismantling a solar panel or a wind turbine, however, the bulk of the raid party will focus on the priorities. In any case, the loss of a solar panel or a wind turbine is inconsequential and easily remedied once the raiders are dead and looted.