Dealing with meteors

[Lali-Lop]

Do meteors start at cycle 1?  If not, how close to the surface do you need to be for them to activate?

I ask, because in my current game (the first one I've ever reached the surface with), I heard the meteors while there was still an entire layer of biomes undiscovered above me.  I hadn't found any "exposed to space" tiles yet.  When I dug up, I discovered the biome was almost completely destroyed!  As they finished off that layer, I tried to start sending people out to construct a wall of bunker tiles, but I don't have enough steel for the whole thing, and the meteors are starting to break through the abyssalite and into the next layer...

At this point, I'm considering starting a new game, because I'm not sure I can protect myself in time for it to be worth it.  I am currently at cycle 686.  I think I discovered the destroyed biomes sometime after cycle 600.

With that in mind, if meteors need to be "activated", how do you prepare for that?  How much steel do you need to make a barrier across the surface?  Or do you deal with them in a different manner?

Or do they start from the beginning, and you just gotta deal with the metaphorical "ticking clock to destruction" as best you can?  Because rushing steel production doesn't sound like fun to me, but I'll do it if I have to.

[Sevio]

@Lali-Lop I remember a similar thread and different people have had different experiences. Some found destroyed surfaces and wrecked biomes like you did, in my case I found the surface mostly intact by cycle 500, although now that I'm reaching cycle 900 I've noticed the meteors breached an ice biome on the left side of the asteroid.

Before I made enough bunker tiles to protect the center of the asteroid I built multiple layers of igneous rock walls to protect it, with staggered ladders going between the different levels. It's a lot of duplicant work to keep it clear and requires occasional rebuilding of broken tiles but even if you do that only occasionally it does help a lot while you get around to farming more egg shells.

[tzionut]

First research all as fast as you can.

Don't go to the surface until you have some steel

Explore the bottom ponds for free egg shell for boosting steel production

Make an automatic Fish farm, or many.

if you don't have enough steel make bunker tiles like this until you cover the entire surface, you will have 1/2 chances that the meteorites hit the bunker tiles.

Make another 1 or 2 rows of igneous rock for catching the derbies.

Good luck

 

[Sasza22]

It seems to be inconsistent what is happening. Generally at cycle 600 there seems to be a lot of bimes heavily damaged but at cycle 100 it seems like the damage is minimal.

The problem is that when the meteors breach into an ice biome it`s a chain reaction where the hot regolith vaporizes the ice destroying the biome really fast. If you need to decide what biomes to save first go for the ice ones for sure.

[Whispershade]

2 hours ago, Sasza22 said:

It seems to be inconsistent what is happening. Generally at cycle 600 there seems to be a lot of bimes heavily damaged but at cycle 100 it seems like the damage is minimal.

The problem is that when the meteors breach into an ice biome it`s a chain reaction where the hot regolith vaporizes the ice destroying the biome really fast. If you need to decide what biomes to save first go for the ice ones for sure.

Caustic with a lot of phospherite fall part really quick too.

[Gurgel]

As far as I can see, it starts at cycle 1 since EU, but it probably needs until cycle 400...500 or so to start damaging biomes. I do hope they go back to the old approach where it only stated when you dug up, the current time frame does not really allow you to take things slow, with a small number of dupes.

[Lali-Lop]

3 hours ago, Sasza22 said:

The problem is that when the meteors breach into an ice biome it`s a chain reaction where the hot regolith vaporizes the ice destroying the biome really fast. If you need to decide what biomes to save first go for the ice ones for sure.

Half my ice biomes were at the top of the map, so it was pretty disheartening to discover them vaporized already.

1 hour ago, Gurgel said:

As far as I can see, it starts at cycle 1 since EU, but it probably needs until cycle 400...500 or so to start damaging biomes. I do hope they go back to the old approach where it only stated when you dug up, the current time frame does not really allow you to take things slow, with a small number of dupes.

Knowing that, I am almost inclined to just turn sandbox on and make a barricade at the start.  The current system doesn't seem very fair.  I personally like to progress gradually with only a handful of dupes.  But maybe Klei put it this way, so small colonies are no longer as effective a strategy?

[Whispershade]

It isn't really about small colonies. It is about lime production. You can have a tiny dupe population and exploit schemes to pump out lime and you'll be able to shield yourself. Or a giant dupe population that can do things very quick and still get lime bottlenecked.

There is an inherent problem with things as they stand. People are strongly encouraged down a particular path in order to rescue the asteroid from obliteration by extreme fish farming or some other high output ranching in order to generate the lime necessary to build a steel dome in time.

Not all seeds suffer the problem as grievously, though.

[Oozinator]

8 hours ago, Sasza22 said:

It seems to be inconsistent what is happening.

 

This..
 

[he77789]

If all buildings will be reconstructed when deconstructed except set by the player, would that add an option to cool a lot of igneous rock?

[SamLogan]

What I've discovered cycle 700. Yes shower rain can begin at cycle 1 and I don't understand why Klei didn't fix it...

[Djoums]

In my experience the inconsistencies mostly come from whether there are ruins/geysers near the abyssalite roof, as those will remove the abyssalite when spawned and shorten the lifetime of the biome. The gravitas structure also kinda protects what is underneath, but you don't have control over any of those factors so it all comes down to the map generator.

My rule of thumb is that you need to start bunkering the weakest spots around turn 300 if you want a good shot at saving everything, the rest can wait for cycle ~500. That's a decent amount of leeway imo, but as pointed out by Whispershade the major problem is the lime bottleneck for steel production.

[he77789]

Limestone biomes?

[Gurgel]

Since I had low lime production, I did meteorite blocking mostly using regular tiles for around 1000 cycles. Works, but is really boring. And that is the main problem I see with starting this at cycle 0. I mean, if they, say , started at cycle 700...1000 or when you reach the surface or when you reach a certain number of dupes (whatever comes first), that would be fine. But hundreds and hundreds of cycles where you need to do repairs and get lime production up, yet it is actually no problem blocking meteorites even with a small number of dupes, but takes a lot of tedious manual work? That is bad game design. I do expect they will fix this though, as it is obviously bad design.