Adventures with No Teleporters

[blakemw]

I decided to try a No Teleporters game.

I started on the Terra cluster to see what it's like in the latest patch. Immediately tapped the Natural Gas Geyser and made 3 Generators with no storage, since solar will be available by the time the vent goes dormant. Increased my population to 8 dupes and stockpiled Berry Sludge, forbidden my dupes from eating it, but they still got fried mushroom, pepper bread and mixed berry pie.

The main stumbling block with no Teleporters is of course getting oil, though I did start on a Glossy Drecko program, I still wanted my first plastic to come from Polymer Presses. First I made a minimal CO2 rocket with a Telescope in it, and sent it into orbit to scan the first ring of sectors outside the range of a grounded telescope, then I sent it one tile into empty space to expose the Oil asteroid.

The setup was pretty weird. I was doing this before having unlocked rocket solar panels/batteries for no particular reason, so I made this hair-brained scheme with the Control thingy on a mechanical airlock to free up space for more junk. When the dupe absolutely had to pilot, which is mainly for takeoff, I microd the dupe up there and closed the airlock. It worked well enough, but was pretty pointless since due to a bug the Telescope doesn't consume energy atm so I didn't really need the hamster wheel. And yet, forbidden the dupe from accessing the control panel might have merit over just disabling it, I dunno. Incidentally, having the Dupe wear an Atmo Suit turned out to be a really good plan: for these little flights it provides enough air (in fact with proper timing of the schedule, it could be basically done as a day-trip for a Dupe). The module had air anyway, of course and some large bottles of pwater just in case.

With the mapping done, I started my plan to get to the Oil Asteroid. It could be done with a Sugar Rocket and 2 Trial Blazer modules, but instead I decided to use two CO2 Rockets with 1 Trial Blazer each, because CO2 is pretty easy to make at both asteroids being waste from nat gas and petroleum generators respectively. Each rocket was loaded with 1t of Algae and 40,000kcal of Berry Sludge and also a Solar Panel module, more so I could tear it down for glass at the destination. Once my rockets were ready I decided to send my best Researcher and my best Digger/Builder, this is from previous games where I've found sending the heroes rather than the redshirts is far more productive, and either of them could be retrained to Mechatronics. Morale doesn't tend to be a serious issue because it's pretty easy to get the Great Hall, Nature Reserve, Bathroom, Barracks bonuses and some rec buildings, plus Berry Sludge of course.

On Cycle 75 it was off to the races. Btw am I stupid or can rockets not be renamed?

Once the two rockets arrived I deployed the Trialblazer modules, deconstructed them and built a Landing Pad. I even remembered to put one of the dupes back in the Atmo Suit but I forgot to with the other dupe so they had to take turns.

Ashkan completed the pad because Ashkan can do anything, Marie agrees though Ashkan thinks it's no big deal.

I decided to land both rockets and deconstruct one, so I landed the first one and immediately tore it down then the game crashed. Of course because the game has about a 50% chance of crashing when landing a rocket (maybe slight exaggeration) I'd saved the game beforehand and will continue tommorow. But overall, mission success in getting a landing pad constructed on the oil asteroid.
 

[zach123b]

there is only 2 terra starts, dlc (with 2csv + 3mv) and the classic which gets a ton of stuff including an open natural gas vent.  no other start can get a natural gas vent, afaik.  the classic terra start gets a combined oil and nuclear asteroids into a single one.  but they changed how the main and second asteroid start

the oil is on the main asteroid in classic terra which you're on.  the second asteroid only difference is it gets plug slugs and beetas, everything else can be found on the main asteroid short of pips/arbor acorns which are not on any map in the current classic terra start

tldr: oil is on starting asteroid in classic terra

[sakura_sk]

14 minutes ago, zach123b said:

there is only 2 terra starts, dlc

You are behind one testing update  
Well... They are still 2 but SO Terra got some upgrades on geysers

[zach123b]

6 minutes ago, sakura_sk said:

You are behind one testing update 

for once, i'm glad to be wrong.  i'm glad they finally update that start.  i always wanted to play it for the oily asteroid that didn't get a magma biome but the two csv and hot map was always tough/slow to start

[blakemw]

I am hoping they'll add some hard Aridio/Oassise style starts to the "spaced out" mode. The cool slush geysers make life very easy, it's totally trivial to farm Sleetwheat and Bristle Blossom and heat never becomes a problem. I'd like a start that instead has a 95 C geyser, it's still easy enough to use 95 C water for research, electrolysis and most other things because lots of heat gets deleted in water consumption, it just adds a bit of heat instead of taking a bit of heat away.

[blakemw]

So after 15 more cycles, during which not once I visited Asteroid Prime because I hadn't got any warning klaxons about the extras dying, the main characters of this story had successfully converted a strange room with just a Conveyor Loader into a Great Hall (with an Ice Block for the decor item because it's freezing cold), took over an abandoned barracks and built a Latrine because plumbing is work and a Rusty Oxygen Machine to get the Atmo Suits operational again.

They then set about resupplying the CO2 rocket with a Petroleum Generator so one of them could return to Asteroid Prime and bring back more labor.



The main point of regret/hindsight is not throwing an extra Atmo Suit or at least some Reed Fiber in the rocket, as one Atmo Suit was 5% durability on arrival and was quickly broken, and the other 55%. In fact the Reed Fiber crisis is actually the main incentive to return to Asteroid Prime.

Those little CO2 Rockets are zippy when they carry naught but a Solo Spacefacer, so I put Marie in there to return to Asteroid Prime with no food because her calories bank would easily last the trip.

Unfortunately when she arrived, she found the base in disarray, really it was a surprise they even had oxygen to breath and Berry Sludge production had entirely halted which gave Marie the uncomfortable feeling that maybe the side characters didn't know the entire point of their existence.

After whipping the base back into shape she loaded the rocket up with 4 Atmo Suits, 10 Reed Fiber, 500 kg of Gold Amalgam, all the Berry Sludge and a Joshua, who was the Dupe who had the most experience.

Joshua immediately had his doubts about Marie's earlier sale's pitch about joining the A Team, but Marie reassured him that even though they had to travel there in a literal flying cesspit, the destination is overjoy central. And they got there just in time because Ashkan had broken the last Atmo Suit and was alternating between hanging out in the vacuum of space and in the PO2 pocket under the CO2 pit.