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I bought this game recently when it went on sale, and I’ve been addicted! It’s a cross between The Sims and a survival /colony game – both categories I really enjoy! I haven’t played The Sims in a really long time, but I have tons of colony building games on Steam. Whenever I start a new game, I tend to have lots of little questions (or issues) that I search online for answers. So thought I would post with some of my findings and outstanding questions.

The Good and the Bad

First of all, here are a few things I’ve enjoyed, and a few frustrations I’ve had with the game.

The Good

1. It has the right amount of challenge (I play normal setting) that keeps you coming back for more even if you have setbacks. Goblins attack and knock out a bunch of colonists? Well, need to do some more combat training. Pirates asking for a large tribute of food or beer? Well, need to stock up more!
2. Hobbies make money! Colonists can paint, write books, or create sculptures that you can sell to the trader for money. Money is used to buy scrolls (necessary for research) or other items you need from the trader.
3. Combat is lucrative! Don’t worry if you have a bad relationship with a goblin tribe or pirates. Just make sure you have medium combat skills, weapons, and armor. With enough colonists you should be victorious in battle then can take your foe’s equipment and sell it. (or keep high-stat items if you can use them)

The Bad

1. Everything takes a lot of resources to build. Can be annoying in early game. The large bookshelf costs 60 wood; this is great to build skills without actually performing the skill. Comes in handy for Scholar (if you’re out of crystals) and Doctor.
2. Watch out for aging populations! I can see the writing on the wall if I don’t train up the young folks before the elders pass away. Pair up the colonists and start working towards kids early on!
3. Mining resources deplete, and the deep mines can only be used by highly experienced colonists. So either prepare to walk far to the mining nodes, or skill up those folks with the bookshelf until they can use the mine.
4. Everyone needs a tool rack, armor stand, and clothes rack, and it is annoying to keep switching their tool when you want them to change occupation. The large tool rack is the solution to the tools, but takes up more space and costs a lot of resources to build. This still doesn’t switch out their robes. I tend to do a lot of micromanaging around switching professions, mainly because of the aging population issue.

Questions and Lessons learned

• Do multiple bonfires attract more colonists (assuming their expectations are all met?) Is there a maximum number of colonists?
• Why can’t the kids do some of the hobby activities? Painting and playing the piano? They CAN clean up skeletons, which is pretty interesting.
• What do you get with “Inspiration for masterpiece”? I’ve only done this twice, and both times it was a dreamcatcher. It’s a pretty nice item to prevent nightmares, which can cause pretty bad debuffs.
• What happens if you neglect your livestock? They will revert back to untamed.
• When one of my kids grew up he was going to get “vegetarian”, “allergic to apples”, and “allergic to potatoes”! I reloaded the game to try again. Otherwise you’d need to use the reward points for fullfilling wishes to remove some of those.

Happy gaming!

I found this a while ago, and it took me a little while to find it again. When you have a telescope and a telescope console in your control panel, you can get advanced warnings for disasters. I haven’t found them very useful because I want my colonists to keep working for as long as they can.

Here are the warning levels I found. I have yet to verify these:

detected	10 hours out
hitting soon	5 hours out
imminent	NOW

Keep in mind that solar flares will only happen during daylight hours. If you get a warning at night, it won’t happen until daytime. Perhaps this can result in extra time.

Disaster Preparedness Tips

As soon as the warning of “imminent” happens (which you don’t need a telescope or console for), I immediately enter Security controls (F6) and enable the Yellow Alert Mode, and disable all mines. Once everyone is in, you can disable all Airlocks and turn off the Yellow Alert if the sound is annoying. Disable any Starports or Landing Pads to save power, since no ships will be landing during this time.

When is it Over?

I think the easiest way to know when the disaster is over is to listen for the tense music to stop. For sandstorms the strong winds will stop. During solar flares the brightness of all the buildings is increased, and it will go back to normal once it’s over. But this can be hard to tell.

How do you prepare for disasters?

The current limited-time event in Astroneer is called the EXO F.A.R.M Event, and we see SturdySquash (like SpookySquash last year). It’s been a little while since I’ve played a limited-time event, so I couldn’t remember how you exchange the biofuel for rewards. You can easily find how many points each biofuel is worth, and how many points are required for which rewards, but it doesn’t explain how to turn these points into the rewards. Does it happen automatically, so as soon as you make enough biofuel, the rewards unlock? No!

Exchange BioFuel for Rewards

First you need to print the EXO Request Platform:

Second, you need to activate the quest by the control panel on the platform.

Then you can place a Medium Gas Canister filled with your produced biofuel on the top of the rocket module. In the control panel again, you’ll see how much your payload will be worth in points and your current progress. You’ll have to pay bytes to send the rocket off — 500 bytes for each payload. You’ll also get some goodies for the payload, I got a proximity repeater, and a research sample. Maybe graphite and aluminum, although those might have been in my backpack already. My second payload, which got me past 2400 points, got me 2 leveling blocks, EXO chip, narrow mod, alignment mod, solid-fuel jump jet, 2 small canisters. So very random stuff.

BTW Does anyone know how to use the leveling block? It only seems to modify a very small radius and seems very unuseful. I probably will just shred them.

For quite a while I was addicted to Railway Empire by Kalypso Media. It is fun yet the scenarios are quite challenging. This only makes me more determined to work harder and try something different in order to complete the tasks. It has many game elements that I look for: strategy, entrepreneurship, a bit of exploration, and unlocking new tech. Also, trains are cool!

Cattle Drive Scenario

One of the tasks in the Cattle Drive scenario seems impossible. How are you supposed to buy out the AI competitor??

Rail Network setting: Regular track network

One of the settings before starting a campaign or scenario is “Rail Network” and option of Realistic, Normal, and Normal (AI). Does anyone know what the Normal (AI) means? That AI’s trains get to pass through each other but yours don’t?

Ok I’ve heard that there’s a lot of glitches in the new SimCity. For instance, I really wish their algorithms for ambulance, garbage truck, and fire truck routes were better. I think related to those routes is a bug where the vehicles just seem to stop doing their routes at all. I just noticed my garbage was not being picked up. I only have 4 trucks and over 5000 cans of garbage, so I need to add more. BUT after doing some road remodeling I had noticed a truck stuck off road. I thought it would be removed automatically, but it hasn’t in a long time. I just demolished the garbage truck garages but it’s still there 🙁 I guess I’ll just add the garages back and hope this one is just an extra (and I don’t have to pay for it!).

I just added my blog to Blubrry today. Maybe this will help increase traffic. Let me know if you have any ideas, questions, or problems you’d like to see addressed here. And feel free to add your comments!