I now understand why Badlands is supposed to be difficult.

[2tallyGr8]

I spawned with 2 hatches and no plants (including buried seeds) in my starting biome. The hatches I had to eat before I could get a ranch going, and that plus the muckroot in the surrounding area was enough to keep my 3 (then 4, starting at cycle 24) dupes alive until cycle 29, when starvation (effectively) ended my colony. I got a pair of blossom seeds from the pod at cycle 27, though, but it was too late. I know have 3 dead dupes now. Even on any of the other asteroids, my colonies don't collapse that soon. Anyone else have this bad of a start?

I ran the colony to finish off the last 2 dupes. One of them died while using the outhouse, and the other lived, even thought they ran out of calories. (They were carrying the last bit of hatch that I had, and heading to the great hall to eat it, when they ran out of calories on the ladder up). I will keep playing this colony, until the last dupe dies.

[Fyrel]

Yeah badlands is a nasty start.

Got to get on those tasty mushbars right away.

[2tallyGr8]

Yeah, I went to bed right soon after starting this topic, and that was when I realized "Oh hey! The microbe musher is a thing!" I usually don't use it on principal, as my water has to last for a long time, to avoid heating the base with a cool steam vent.

[degr]

At first I can see pretty delicious dirt on screen.

At second try this strat:

first 10 loops dig for muckroots or something like that.

discoveries:

1 electrogrill (to make delicious dirt)

2 stone crusher

3 automation wires (make 250kg refined materials)

4 tier-2 discoveries

5 coal electro generator (attach automation wires and automation switch)

6 smart battery (destroy switch, attach battery)

7 incubator

8 make farm with incubator before 15 cycle

9 have enough omlette or meat from animals on loop 29

10 get achievement - eat 400.000 kkal of meat before 100 loop

If you have problems with food, follow advice of that wise man:

Spoiler

 

[Gurgel]

Badlands needs some care. Stay at 3 dupes and go mushbars. Mushbars are annoying because you basically have to micro-manage them. But they will get the job done. 

[ZombieDupe]

I guarantee you the map isn't supposed to be this strangely tight on all food options. As it is you pretty much have to ranch stone hatches and feed them the kilo tons of granite you dig up for a long term food source. That might be the intended way to progress, but the problem is, you have very little chance of getting the first few stone hatch eggs as there is pretty much no sedimentary rock anywhere. You have the ration box at the beginning, which can be deconstructed for some sedimentary rock, but have an old hatch eat that and you are stuck to RNG regular hatches to lay on average 50 eggs before you can switch to stone hatches (min chance is 2%). Even then I think the max you can really get from that little amount of sedimentary rock is 20%. I'd say for a map at this difficulty it is kind of a ridiculous filter you have to get through to make a reliable food source, but after which you will be set for hundreds if not thousands of cycles on food, if you manage to get through it. Without the sediment problem it's just a case of figuring things out as you go really, the starting temperatures are quite nice around that map.

[2tallyGr8]

Yeah, for the lack of sedimentary rock, I almost always have luck with my hatches and get at least 2 stone hatchling eggs even before I feed them sedimentary rock on the other asteroids. I tried a badlands run before, and I found 2 mealwood seeds in the starting biome, and that was enough. This time, I had literally no seeds to speak of, and that was what killed me.