I appreciate this series, and what a timely one, I just picked the game back up this week to experience the Dark Fog! 1.) How do you gauge about how much production you need when it comes to things outlined below? Do you just over commit, or has your expertise allowed you to know "Oh if I produce X and Y items per minute, I should be good until Z Phase". - Ammo/Military production - Science - Secondary Mall items (Motors, and other specialized niche items) 2.) This kind of goes along with #1... Are there certain benchmarks you try to reach as you move between different phases (Ex, what do you typically want to have set up before you first land on your second planet?) I don't know if you plan on having a video for it, but I know I would love a video that talks about your general thought process and decision making when it comes to your progression. 3.) Do you invest heavily in Stone > Silicon conversion on the home planet at the start? I really believe Fidgets are a great stop gap for planetary logistics but man do they (along with other components) burn through Silicon.

1) A mix of experience and educated guessing to be honest. For most early materials a full MK1 belt is very easy to make and more than enough. For pretty much anything after than, aiming for a production of 1 to 3 per second is initially more than enough. You dont want to overcommit in the early/mid game until you have multiple systems being mined, or you will simply not be able to transport enough raw resources to supply those larger builds 2) I've varied this across the different playthroughs. My main goal is to get about 2 science/s going of each type as early as possible, to ensure you never stop researching. Getting MK2 belts and MK3 sorters early is very useful as well. Beyond that, just adding new items to your supply one by one (keeping the rates I mentioned at 1 in mind) as you need them keeps your progress flowing organically. Ammo you should only produce to the extent you need it, and most of it should be focussed on missiles since all the other ammo is kind of useless when you can simply build laser turrets instead. 3) No, but I do think it is useful to have a few smelters going just to get some early silicon. I mostly temporarily repurpose the glass smelters for this, because you don't need thousands of that early on anyway. @@23Kerber

Thank you for creating a wonderful guide. I have been wantiing to get into this gem of a game but havent been able to find good guides for it.

^ this this &

same.. the game changed for me to another thing

Thank you!

Thank you!

A high power factor makes things a LOT more hectic. Unless you're specifically looking to have a frantic game that revolves around combat in its core, leaving this setting on default (or around that level) is definitely the best experience.

THE FACTORY MUST GROW!

Sounds about right!

thx for the like! if you want to optimise your seed post in the video description leave the space out. it makes the pasting in the game much easy. till now the game keeps the space in and throws the digit out. it is a long way of saving that you have manually put in the last digit. not a big thing but there is room for improvement 😉

Thank you for your support!

Keep in mind you can't make BABs without steady silicon supply, so you'll need at least that much infrastructure first.

Exactly!

Great tip. I'm just getting back to DSP for the first time since combat dropped and I started a 'normal' DF game. It feels like the DF is almost not there. Too much DF could be boring too, though, so this seems like a good middle ground.

Thanks

Yes, side-loading prioritizes the straight belt.

I use proliferators sparingly - mostly for fuel, science, and rockets. I've done an entire playthrough where I literally proliferate everything. It's actually pretty efficient to do that as you heavily reduce the inputs needed, but creates quite a bit of additional work (not to mention you'll burn through massive amounts of graphine and nanotubes, so it's not really adviced until the late game). You won't run out of resources in the galaxy any time soon even without them ;) With enough white science production you can get vein utilization up so high, your veins become infinte. Meta data is something you accumulate while playing. You can basically use this to skip science steps in a new playthrough. But if you want to do that, you might as well start a sandbox game. In short, i've never really used it ;)

I learned something new today! I had no idea it affected crafting speed :O

It is mostly random, although people have been reporting more frequent landings early on now. Keep an eye on it - if you are fast enough, you can take the base out with Icarus before it becomes a problem.

Thermal powerplants are an excellent way to get your factory into a downwards power spiral. Low power = low production = lower power = lower production... etc. This can be triggered by running out of whatever you use to power the thermals, or simply by building more without keeping an eye on your power production. I've been burned by this a few times too many ;) It's not a problem later on in the game with other fuel based productions because the ILS makes it a lot easier to ensure there is always supply coming in.

If you want a close look, another option is to download the blueprint and just stamp it down in a sandbox game!

@@TheDutchActuary Great idea! I tried the blueprints but I'm not yet at red science so tech lvl is limited to x300 units. Didn't think of a sandbox game to view it.

I think the next episode will help with that, as I walk through how I design my own builds

Ideally around 2 episodes per week, my frantic IRL schedule permitting!

Yes I will! There is no ' wrong ' way to do things though, and especially early on you pretty much need to combine different things on planets anyway because you only have a few to work with.

I tend to dedicate planets to a specific purpose. Honestly you only need 3 types of planets like this: - a mall planet - science planet(s) - rocket planets(s) Any other planet you populate just serves as a mining station.

Shortly after posting this a 5th appeared xD

Before the first wave?? Woah that is really unlucky. As far as I know the Dark Fog is not likely to land on your starting planet until you start expanding to other planets (but I have had this happen as well). If you see a base landing on your planet, you might be able to take it out by yourself (or with a few turrets to assist) if you're fast enough. Once they get established, you'll need some missile support on higher difficulties. Weirdly, reloading might help. While recording one of the first episodes I had an additional base landing which I noticed far too late, so I reloaded to prepare for it a bit better - and it never showed up the second time. @@PatrickDJGaming

@@TheDutchActuary I kept playing and following you but I did have make missle turrets WAY earlier xD those waves became impossitble almost

The MKI sorters are transported into the MK2 assembler directly (i.e. they never touch a belt). If you soom in on 34:30 a bit you'll see the inserter between the two buildings.

@@TheDutchActuary ah I see that now. thanks! I thought I needed a stash of MKI sorters anyway. I figured if I used MKI instead of MKII, it would use less power

@@georgeberesford8408 Technically, yes, they use less power. But unlike some other buildings, the difference won't be noticable *and* by simply using the MK2 versions everywhere, you'll avoid some potential bottlenecks as the MK1's aren't fast enough across larger distances for most recipes.

Today!

Sorters don't use any power, that's mostly it. That said, it is mostly a matter of preference, as the power usage is tiny. I've only started using them a lot in this run, I used to do it the other way for ages.

I haven't been able to consistently reproduce this. From what I can tell it's basically just bad luck if the hive decides to send another base in your direction early. I've had an early base appear in this playthrough as well while recording, I reloaded a few minutes back to prepare accordingly - and it never showed up again.

@@TheDutchActuary ahhh I’ve got two now, and in the video where you go to the next planet I’ve got 5 of the bases 🤣

Just make some cubes with your mech. You don't need matrix labs to make/use science cubes (although obviously you want to do so 99% of the time - the very start of the game is the 1% exception to that rule)

Greetings! There's no blueprints yet, as you start the game without them unlocked. Next episode will include blueprints at the 2nd level (as you should have the blue science version unlocked by then)

Doh NVM ... MMB drag rotates the map.

Was about to say, rotate the map? :D (an easy way is to press M to go the planet view, and then press N to put north facing up)@@williamskiba6786

No blueprints for this first episode as noted in the description (because you start out without them unlocked) but don't worry - there's more to follow ;)

Is the storage full? This thing blasts out deuterium in spades, so it should have no issue keeping up with demand (until late game) The only other thing I can think of is an issue with the angle of the input belts, but I'm pretty sure I fixed that

6 bases sounds like a lot :O Are you running any addons that might be interfering with this? I've never had that many bases land early on (but it's not uncommon for a 4th base to drop fairly eary - just make sure to watch for it and take it out asap)

Good question! You can make the blue science cubes by yourself as well - you don't need the Matrix labs! (although you obviously want to automate this soon after!)

I keep it fed with combustible units all the time. Other than that, the signal towers are super-chargers in a pinch. Unless you're building a major blueprint or flying between planets, your mech shouldn't be running out of power.

Just wait until you put a logistic bot "hat" (if you use them) on top of that splitter/box combo and it does it's thing. Makes proliferation earlier-game a lot easier among other things.

Don't be hard on yourself - I started over AT LEAST 12 times before I ever made it past red science :P Learning as you go is half the fun of these games!

I've gotten more report of this happening. If you notice them landing you have a small window to take out their initial base relatively easily, but I'm not entirely sure what is causing them to land early on (it might just be random). I've had both playthrough where I don't see any new fog landing for a LONG time, and playthroughs where they land very early on. Saving regularly to pre-empt their landings might help in that case (or simply turning down the starting bases, nothing fun in getting rolled unless you're specifically looking for that challenge).

@@TheDutchActuary thnx for the reply. I just lowered the settings a bit to compensate for now.

I believe u copy but pressing shift and left click?

@@bruh-lk8rd Yes!

You'll can just research blue (or whatever color) of science by putting it in your inventory, but that is realllllly slow. The Matrix labs processes the science for you, and since you can build a lot of them this makes the process a LOT faster. You could get away without them for a while, but you'll soon have technologies that need hundreds or even thousands of science - You don't want to do that in your inventory ;)

You can set priorities on splitters, and with a lot of effort you MIGHT make a system that does a few of the things you are describing... but I think the short answer would be ' no ' . The logistic systems with drones/ILS's also make this rather unnecessary. You could simply set up ' city blocks' with in- and output governed by an ILS, and that should never stop functioning unless you either run out of inputs, or your predefined maximum output has been produced and is not needed elsewhere. "infinite scaling" also doesn't really work easily in this game because you'll run out of planet, and the vault line breaks also interfere with such a layout. What some people have done in the endgame, is set up planets with very intentionally designed city blocks like I described before. at that point, you can have a dozen different planet-wide builds that you can simply copy/paste onto a new planet if you need more of whatever that planet design is making. (RIP your FPS when you place such a blueprint though)

@@TheDutchActuary re: logistics with drones: yes, but with the probably very stupid way i play the game, it takes me over a real-world day's worth of game-time before i make my first red matrix, so having a system to do this with just primitive splitters would be useful. it's also, i think, a fun exercise in problem-solving in itself re: infinite scaling: yeah, i meant that more in a theoretical sense. assuming an infinite planet / a plane in pure Euclidean space; assuming a spherical cow 🐄 in a vacuum and all that, you know? between my writing that and your response, i did come up with a design that Works, but is a bit spacious: with N as the higher of the numbers of outputs and inputs, there are ceil log₂ N lines of splitters, each with two inputs and outputs. the first two lines are 2 grid-units apart each by latitude and longitude, and each next line's distance from its predecessor is double that of the previous line. the whole system mixes belts in a sort-of binary method, with each pair of two initial input belts being mixed in the first line, then those output belts being mixed with a belt from the adjacent pair; a pattern that is repeated and doubled in scale until the end of the whole structure is reached. i'd provide my drawing of a diagram for N = 16, but youtube comments simply don't allow that.

Sounds cool! You could upload a blueprint and picture to dysonsphereblueprints.com and i'd love to check it out@@alexolas1246

@@TheDutchActuary sure, i might do that either today / tomorrow / overmorrow. on that website, is it possible to also upload whole folders of blueprints as a single downloadable thing? or, to make downloadable a series of designs together, would i have to mention each other one in the descriptions of each, or something like that?

Uploading is 1 by 1, but you can download entire collections in 1 go.@@alexolas1246