Looking for tips for space travel

[evenflow58]

I feel like colonization of other planets is my goal here but I'm not sure how to start that. Right now I'm sending a rover to dig out some room and construct a landing pad but it feels like I'm destined for failure because everything a dupe needs is hard to come by and my rover has only so much battery life to build this stuff out for a dupe. So I'm looking for some help. Anybody have some good ideas on what my initial goal(s) should be for space travel?

[asurendra]

Well, if we speak about habitable asteroid there are not much you need for rover to do: 

1) dig closed room

2) build oxygen production (diffusor or rust lyzer)

3) build running wheel, battery and wires

Thats all. Now you could send dupe, it will have oxygen and could build rocket platform. Habitable asteroids provide some food so you could build stable colony from materials you will find here

 

But if this is distant asteroid like superconductive ones, things become harder. You have to bring materials for life support with you. I usually use interplanetary launcher for that, but Orbital Cargo Module should work too. Also your dupes have to be equipped in exosuits as there are no place for digging and you have to build closed base in space. On your rocket you have to have: 

1) oxygen supply or materials for its producing

2) food supply

3) materials for building things

All that should be at least for 3-5 cycles, enough to build stable base. After you could get supplies with interplanetary launcher or with another rocket...

[blakemw]

Portable Base

For colonization it is really helpful to make a Spacefarer "portable base", a module that allows two or more duplicants to live for a very long time. Like I throw in about 3 t of Oxylite and 20 kg of Berry Sludge (alternatively you can use a Gas Cargo Module and spiced food). With a Great Hall and the Berry Sludge they have a generous amount of morale.

Portable base for 2 Duplicants. I have 3 Atmosuit Docks to have a spare.

The Small Petroleum Engine is a very good workhorse for more demanding trips than the CO2 engine can manage. Using the Small Petroleum Engine you can fit two Trailblazer Modules on the same rocket as the portable base. Then you can land two Duplicants at once, deconstruct both Trialblazer modules, build a Landing Pad, land the rocket, and you now have a portable base on the surface. Instead of using two Trialblazers, you can use 1 Rover and 1 Trialblazer, both made of Steel, a Steel Rover is quite good at working in magma, but usually I prefer having two Duplicants.

A well executed portable base makes it very easy to exploit even the harshest asteroids. In this configuration my small petroleum engine rockets typically have 10 range, so I fire off 200 or 400 kg of Petroleum using the Interplanetary Payload Launcher to bring the rocket home.


Deep Space Exploration:

You are allowed to put an Enclosed Telescope in a Spacefarer. It has more range than the small telescope.

The Small Petroleum Engine can carry a Spacefarer and with a Large Liquid Fuel Tank can easily have 20 or 30 range, I often use a 30 range configuration so the rocket can fly around a lot without really worrying about range.

Orbital Sweatshop

You can practically fit up to 6 Orbital Science Labs in a Spacefarer, and send a bunch of dupes up to orbit for about a cycle to crank out data banks. It doesn't take many trips to clean out the tech tree and is a useful way of occupying idlers when you are preoccupied with another planetoid. You can use suffocation or starvation warnings as a reminder to land it again.

[pether]

19 minutes ago, evenflow58 said:

Right now I'm sending a rover to dig out some room and construct a landing pad

Tip #1: Only dupes may build landing pad. There are two ways of doing it: 1) Land with 2 dupes in 2 trailblazer modules made out of the same metal and deconstruct them to get resources for the pad, or 2) Drop refined metal to the ground using eg. Rail Gun building. I prefer the 2nd option. In some cases you might be able to find resurces on the planet (eg. if it has metal volcanos) but this is not always the case.

Tip #2: As you noticed, using rovers to pre-build the base is a good idea. You can send multiple rovers for that or send another if the battery of the first one depletes too soon. Build as much as possible with them, so the dupe can focus on surviving during first cycles in his new base. You can also use rovers to scout new asteroid (best to do it before you build the base). Overall do as much tasks with rovers before moving in with the dupe

Tip #3: Stress can kill as sure as famine or suffocation. Scrub your dupe from all skils before colonizing. Make sure you have all morale-granting rooms. Build massage room in advance. Mop all areas. Have more than one dupe in new base, so they were not lonely.

Tip #4: Do not hesitate to bring more resources from your main colony. Or to ship them. It's good to have self-sufficient colonies, but it's even better to not die.

Tip #5: Use the advantage of having new techs unlocked. Setup automation and more efficient builds, you don't need to have all tier-0 once again, it is not cycle0.

Tip #6: It's not a shame to abandon the colony for a moment if things go badly, only to return later. Make sure your rocket can evacuate your dupes at any moment

[evenflow58]

Thanks for the tips. I ended up landing a rover and a bunch of refined metal to build out the skeleton of a new base but, unfortunately, I can't send any dupes there because my game crashes whenever I try and change my rocket nose.

[blakemw]

7 minutes ago, evenflow58 said:

Thanks for the tips. I ended up landing a rover and a bunch of refined metal to build out the skeleton of a new base but, unfortunately, I can't send any dupes there because my game crashes whenever I try and change my rocket nose.

Unfortunately the game tends to crash a lot if you deconstruct rockets, especially spacefarers. The devs DO fix these crashes as a priority if you make a bug report (most issues are ignored forever, but reproducible crashes get fixed often in the next patch), but there are clearly many ways that the game can crash in this scenario, and I believe that deconstructing spacefarers can also cause future stability problems with that save even if it doesn't cause an immediate crash. Try to plan on never deconstructing a solo spacefarer or spacefarer, you can generally replace the rest of the rocket around it. And you can always just make more rockets.