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Colonizing regolith asteroid


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Hi guys.

I am starting a threat about conquering the regolith asteroid and the associated challenges.

I see multiple issues:

  • landing - the surface is covered in unevenly distributed regolith making it hard to find a flat, landing surface
  • item delivery - shooting resources to asteroid surface is luck based as they may land very far away and get covered in regolith. Building a rocket landing pad will also present problems as it will probably get destroyed by meteor shower.
  • oxygen production - there is a lot of water in the lower part of the asteroid for early use and steam geysers for future use. I have not seen any material to build pipes yet.
  • food production - there can be a shove vole farm set but this is for late game as it requires a lot of time and recourses to set up. I am not sure how to handle early colonization though - there is some shove vole meet hidden in regolith but it's hard to get. There is water but mush bar production is impossible due to lack of sand.
  • power - solar panels will not work due to meteor showers. There is no coal, wood or any other source of power available. One could use the regolith temperature to build a steam turbine but this will require a lot of automation and recourses, not available at the start of asteroid colonization. 
  • duplicant skills - a rancher, digger and cooker will be needed. Any automation will also require a mechatronic engineer. That is a lot of skills for a harsh new planetoid.
  • temperature management - this asteroid id hot!
  • regolith falling down - drilling is hard as most of the asteroid is made from regolith that falls down when mined. Drilling a tunnel in the middle of the asteroid equals removing all regolith above that tunnel.
  • post landing survival - It will be extremely hard to keep your dupe alive for the first few cycles after landing.

 

Has anyone managed to colonize this asteroid?

I will keep the post updated

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I have not tried this one, but I made good experiences with shooting tons of material to a colonization target using the Interplanetary Launcher for other targets. I would think the meteor showers can be dealt with the same as in the base game. I used auto-miners and bunker-doors there. That eliminates most problems. As to post-landing survival, dig down fast and then land the rocket. I use a diver + deep diver dupe for that which can stay alive for about 4 cycles with no additional oxygen. That should be plenty. Alternatively, use one or several rovers to prepare a landing pad location and only use a dupe at the end to build the pad.

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12 hours ago, crbd115 said:

I've been avoiding doing this until they add in the space scanner to spaced out again.

Will they? To be honest the rocketry and avoiding meteor showers was the most boring thing in the base game for me. Perhaps it will be replaced with something new?

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36 minutes ago, Sturm58 said:

Will they? To be honest the rocketry and avoiding meteor showers was the most boring thing in the base game for me. Perhaps it will be replaced with something new?

Regolith asteroid along with variable space lux levels to me indicates that they do not intend to add meteor showers to other asteroids in the DLC. 

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3 hours ago, Gurgel said:

Hmm, right. No space scanner. Does the regolith asteroid have meteor showers and if so are they at least timed so you can close doors based on that?

I watched them for a dozen cycles or so on super speed, didn't seem to be consistent but who knows, if people really wanted they could manually do it with a switch that they press themselves to open and close doors but I prefer to automate everything.

14 hours ago, Sturm58 said:

To be honest the rocketry and avoiding meteor showers was the most boring thing in the base game for me. 

The subject was colonizing the regolith asteroid which the entire point is the resources created by meteor showers so I don't get the purpose of this statement. Preferably there would be a way in the game to automate bunker doors as there was in the base game whether that be the same building or a different one.

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I am trying right now to drop a rocket platform and a printing pod.

I went there right now I didn't know is such a ..hole. I have 3 rockets in the orbit and I did NOT expect that surface. I have a rocket with two space suits full of oxygen, I am trying to self destruct a few times until my dupes land the way I want, then I am gonna land one of the ships from the space, self destruct the other one, retrieve the materials, drop the printing pod and never come back.

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@Sturm58

So, here's my attempt so far.

First loaded up a rocket with all the steel I had, plastic, 20t of igneous, obsidian, gold almagam, gold, 2t of glass, and some other random stuff like seeds and spare atmo suits.

Sent a first rocket with 2 trailblazers and 2 dupes. Had another rocket on stand by for long term colonization.

Spoiler

Regolith1.thumb.png.d52e91812ff0611be839236c8cde005c.png457140_20210919143718_1.thumb.png.2ef27859aaaad5feb20f33218bb1cce4.png457140_20210919143753_1.thumb.png.be23000974d035e4d104257e7099f03a.png

 

Then, I've met the horror of the regolith asteroid's surface:

Spoiler

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Yeah... Fortunately, there were a few spots for a trailblazer module. So I proceeded with sending my 1st dupe, deconstructing its lander, and landing the second dupe in the same spot. Priority: build a platform, land the rocket, and start building obsidian ladder up and bunker doors. BUT, I hadn't sent any supply before, so I found myself in trouble, I needed something to build ladders to get IN my rocket once it had landed. So I dug towards the nearest mafic rock I could see... while being bombarded by meteor showers of course.

Spoiler

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While my dupes were working on that, I launched the back up rocket with 2 other dupes with the larger oxygen tank for a longer stay (similar interior design as the 1st one). I deconstructed the trailblazer modules from my rocket, added a battery, and hooked up the rocket power with some manual automation to the bunker doors above for taking off and landing. Also added some piping to dump polluted water in space:

Spoiler

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So yeah, that is pretty much where my dupes are at. Each rocket brought 400,000kcal of berry sludge. The long term colonization rocket has 11000kg of O2, and 2 duplicants with deep diver's lungs (30kg/cycle O2 each), thats 183 cycles of O2 (91 cycles if two normal dupes). Basically, where I stand at right now, the worst part is done. The 1st crew will stay a little bit and help with digging and building up some infrastructure then eventually will leave because they have less O2 than the 2nd crew. Those will stay a bit longer and start setting power and O2 probably from the steam vents, catch some shove voles, etc. I don't know how much I will build in that time, but I think my dupes should be okay to colonize the asteroid properly from now on. Re-supply missions are definitely an option in the mean time (I am trying to use rockets only, no interplanatery launcher and also no teleporters in that specific playthrough.

Edit: In retrospect, the most problematic thing that I can see when colonizing that asteroid is finding a spot to land on initially. The other challenges are pretty nice, but that landing spot is somewhat luck based and could be quite annoying to "work around" - and by that I mean waiting in orbit for a suitable spot to arise after a meteor shower. Crash landing and losing a large amount of materials is not something I consider viable personally, but rather desperate.

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13 minutes ago, Gurgel said:

My first attempt is a fail: There is no space to get the lander down. It looks like I will have to destroy a rocket...

Trying to abandon ship in order to see whether that works results in a crash...

 

Is there enough life support to wait until a shove vole or a meteor reshapes the landscape to give you a landing spot? It is by far the most inhospitable asteroid to colonize so far. I somehow like it.

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3 minutes ago, NeoDeusMachina said:

Is there enough life support to wait until a shove vole or a meteor reshapes the landscape to give you a landing spot? It is by far the most inhospitable asteroid to colonize so far. I somehow like it.

Maybe. I do not see any voles though. They may all be eggs under Regolith at this time. And it would mean to re-check often, which I am not going to do.

I have filed a bug instead as this is clearly not right:

 

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I easily colonized all but regolith one with CO2 rocket.

I used Radbolt rocket to colonize the regolith one as it was far away.

First trip with a telescope on board just to discover the planet.

As soon as the planet was discovered I bombarded it with refined metal (gold) and oxygen and some igneous rock to build stairs. 

Also I filled up with oxygen two atmosuits (took from the filling station) and sent them also by the launcher. And then I send the rocket with one trailblazer and the best digger (plus pilot and filled atmosuit.).

I deployed the trailblazer (the digger got dressed with the atmosuit before it) and then I could see that the uneven surface covered with payloads. I managed to find three flat tiles to land the trailblazer. If you do not see any, you can wait for a while as meteorites and shove vols change the landscape frequently (obviously you should have enough food and oxygen in the rocket). 

First I found payloads with two extra atmosuits. I built the payload opener and opened these payloads first (you can set priorities to collect the specific ones). Then collected 800kg of refined metal and then deconstructed the payload opener and started digging right under that. So all the "opened" materials were falling down every time I dug a pit. Once I had the pit deep enough I changed the atmosuit and the digger built the rocket platform. I did not even use the 3rd suit. 

Then the rocket landed and I build another payload opener and connected a pipe to supply the rocket gas tank with oxygen. 

Then I changed the launcher settings to send food, oxygen and required materials to build the base. Mainly steel to build bunker doors to protect from meteorites. 

Spoiler

 and then I discovered two steam geysers there -> power, water, oxygen. The farm of shove vols provided food.

I actually enjoyed this asteroid colonization the most.

There are some problems you may want to avoid.

When your rocket lands, dig deep enough pit underneath the platform to accumulate falling regolith from meteorites.

Once I built the bunker doors and put a basic manual switch to open two doors above the platform I decided to return the crew to add a mechatronic and I almost lost the asteroid for colonization. 

When I opened the bunker doors to land a rocket, the regolith fell down and the platform became inactive!!! I could not land the rocket. 

It could not happen in the vanilla game - the rocket was always landing no minding even closed bunker doors and crashing regolith. But not in the DLC!!!

So I had to return, put a trailblazer and sent the rocket back. I had only two places where I did not install the bunker doors (due to bug which is reported); fortunately I managed to get 3 tile flat spots on one of these places to land a trailblazer again and free up the rocket platform.

 

 

 

 

DLC is missing the satellites to detect the meteor showers. 

The showers damage even the rocket platform. So I did not figure out how to use an automation to send regolith from the asteroid. 

I had to keep a living base with dupes to make necessary repairs all the time (everything possible was made of thermium but meteorites damage launcher which cannot be covered with the bunker doors or they somehow should be automated.

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Does the regolith get destroyed when a rocket is launched like in base game? Also… anyone have any idea why klei made this so difficult for this planet? I mean I think we have infinite sand and food already established right? So what’s the need? 

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48 minutes ago, sakura_sk said:

Meteor showers

That^ And also shove voles, they aren't anywhere else in the Spaced Out start. As opposed to the base game though, meteor showers in the DLC (at least in a SO start, haven't played classic) do not generate metal ores as renewables as they did in the base game. They only drop regolith.

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The key is to send some materials for a few ladders and self destruct your ship with dupes equipped in exo suits.

Then its a game of luck to land with your dupes where your materials are, spam a few while waiting in orbit. I restarted 3 times because one of the dupes can't dig, and I came here totally unprepared I didn't expect this terrain at all and I didn't wanted to turn the ship around. Just gonna drop a printing pod, refill and leave and hopefully that rocket platform won't get burried, either way I don't have steel to waste for bunker doors at the moment.

Farming here regolith is another problem, that I don't wanna do because I was so tired in the base game, I think just digging all the asteroid every other 200 cycles with 4 5 good dupes will give you a nice supply. Ladders if broken they still use them anyways.

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30 minutes ago, misotoma said:

Okay but what is the specific need for meteor showers?

It seems it was missed too greatly by many people while playing the dlc so meteors were brought back...? :rolleyes: 
I didn't really miss the inconveniences meteor showers had in vanilla and really enjoyed Spaced out without them but it was too often requested so I guess it is partly that. What is the "infinite source of sand" we have in dlc? Saltvine? Crashing igneous from volcanos? SO starts and especially swamp start do have the potential for serious sand shortage

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I do like meteor showers coming back and the difficulty the asteroid creates.

It is not vital by any means to colonize the asteroid by people who do not like this type of challenge. 

if only Klei can add the satellite dishes to detect the storm coming like in the vanilla game.

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Well that was a blast! What was initially a true sight of horror and looked completely inhospitable:

Spoiler

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Turned into something quite cozy and functional after a lot of hard work and a few rocket re-supply runs (not using teleporters or interplanetary launcher this run):

Spoiler

457140_20210924211218_1.thumb.png.e5d2f3b6332a45f6f871817a7dc493d8.png457140_20210924211305_1.thumb.png.1b763f53d462d9199fa4b1dadf2d7ab6.png

Hassan is now permanently living there, enjoying the company of many wild shove voles who are in the process of being transferred in the deep freezer/kitchen where they will be turned into barbecue at the end of their long natural lives. Might end up transporting all that meat to the tree for resin at some point, the planet is on the way to my starting planet :-)

That was definitely one of the most fun and also more challenging colonization project I have had the chance to experience so far, and I have learned along the way! Let's just hope they figure out a way to make the initial landing less luck-based in the future (they did mark the issue "known" following a recent bug report from @Gurgel

 

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