suicide commando

I always go for multi interest dupes. First off my digger/builder who Must have digging and either operating or decorating as second interest. Building interest is optional actually, as the actual building skill while useful for it's stat bonus to building speed, is mostly a nice to have. Whereas interest in operating gives you easier access to rail constructions, and decorating is a required one ( preferably at level 3 ) for making décor items. Having easier access to these earlier in the game can be very useful. Digging interest is the baseline for obvious reasons. Second dupe is my cook/researcher. Preferably with supply or operating as additional third interest. Research is 'finite' so once it's done, it's done. And unless my colony grows to a huge number of dupes, cooking is only a part of what this guy will be doing. Hence operating as third skill. Having interest in these makes it easier to get these skills up in early game. Final dupe is my rancher. Farming is optional on them, supply is definitely a yes-please. I've still not quite decided on what my third dupe on my 'dream team' should be. I've considered making him my research dupe so my cook doesn't need to interrupt research to make food for everyone. But depending on the map, having a rancher can be very beneficial. On some maps having a farmer can also be good, but I prefer having a rancher as this means easier/quicker access to moar coal, reed fiber and plastic. Especially for my dream team, these traits are always rerolled: Anemic, noodle arms, mouthbreather, bottomless stomach, biohazardous ( except on rime ), flatulent, narcoleptic. interior decorator, gourmet.

Sol, the main purpose of the wood burner isn't really power ( although it provides a bit of that ), the main purpose of the wood burner is to generate CO2 in a quick and easy manner. There are several reasons why you'd want to make CO2 ( Slicksters, CO2 scrubbing to generate pH2O ), the wood burner can supply you with this without much additional setup and for small scale.

I don't think we need more zombies.

Gobo, the living planet does have lumber. it has arbor acorns, which grow into trees As for the oxydized planet.. well, since all of the iron is oxydized ( hence oxydized planet ), there's none left.

Pyrite is a 'variation' on gold amalgam. You can refine it to gold. IRL it's also called fools' gold, and is made of iron and sulphur I believe.

Right... I'm sure this can be datamined, but I've been looking at the various planets that can spawn up in the sky and what kind of useful things we can get from them now. So far, these are the ones I've found: Oily Asteroid: Petroleum, CO2, Crude oil, Methane. ( I think this one should also have slicksters ) Living Planet: Oxygen, Aluminum Ore, Pips, Arbor Acorns Chlorine Asteroid: Chlorine, Bleach Stone ( Maybe add Squeaky Pufts to this one ) Oxydized Planetoid: Rust, CO2. Gilded Asteroid: Gold, Fullerene, Pyrite Helium Giant: Hydrogen, Water, Niobium Red Dwarf: Aluminum, Methane, Fossil Anyone found any others? So far, it seems while not guaranteed, the oily one is pretty common. While the chlorine, oxydized and gilded seem rather rare. I think we could do with a higher density of planets up there now as there's more planets that can spawn. I've quite often seen large gaps of nothingness there.

These new planets should have slicksters on them. Metalic planets have smooth hatches, rock planets have stone hatches, ice have ice stuffs, living planets and organic mass have pips/arbor acorns and moos + grass respectively, but the oily planet has no critters on it. I would guess it's an oversight or something, but I thought I'd point it out.

A good way to deal with this problem is to change the metallic asteroid that always spawns at 20km IMHO. That one has obsidian as one of the elements it contains. If they were to change that to gold amalgam, the problem would be solved for the most part. You'd still need to have care packages on, so you can ranch pufts for a few flights, but then you can send a petrol rocket with a cargo pod to that asteroid and get a pile of gold. Then it's just a matter of keeping yourself stocked.

Personally, the only use I can see for the wood burner is to supply slicksters with CO2. As a power source it's less effective than a manual generator in terms of power output, and in the early game where the reduction in labor from using a wood burner vs manual generator would come in handy, the CO2 production is just too much to properly deal with. And any automation and machinery used to deal with something like that would require more power than the measily 300W those things put out.

Agreed. Especially since you cannot get enough data disks to get liquid tanks. steam rockets can only reach 10km not 20km. So the only way you'd get the data disks is by going on repeated data disk missions even after you have fully surveyed a planet. But the amount you need is vs the amount you get from doing that is insane. Balance wise, I think it can be put under impossible, you'd need to do hundreds of 10km repeat missions, using steam rockets. So some other way of making oxylite is going to have to be added, or some way to get gold.

Point.. but only if care packages are disabled, because you can get pufts in the care packages even if you haven't met any, so with care packages on there is a possibility of getting oxylite.

While lack of clay is annoying, it's not that much the end of the world. Igneous rock can fulfil pretty much the same function in the early game, and in the late game you can produce clay if you just get a big source of pO2, and we have one in the form of lumber. Lumber can be turned to ethanol and the by product is polluted dirt. This can be off gassed to make pO2, which can then lead to clay from sand. If you set this up in the midgame by the time you need ceramics for the LOX factory, you should have plenty. The lack of gold is a bigger problem. In the early/mid game this makes high temperatures difficult to deal with as you can't build equipment that can stand up to them properly until you get steel going, and this will stress your steel production making the later game more difficult. On top of that, no gold means no easy access to oxylite for rockets in the late game unless you go through the pain of ranching dense pufts, which is a challenge all on it's own. They will also not produce enough for more than a few flights by the time you're in need of it. So unless you get some gold from space or something like that, this will become very difficult, as the amount of data disks you need for your research to use LOX tanks will need more than 'a few' flights. The only ways around this are: A) Get a geode with some gold amalgam in it. Which turns on the gold amalgam packages, so you an stockpile some. B) Get lucky with space and find a space rock with gold in it. One of the new ones has it I believe, but I'm not sure how far out those can spawn and how rare they are. I do hope they will do something that will change this so ranching pufts is not a mandatory way of dealing with this. I'm not a big fan of that choice.

Some maps don't have a 'regular' oil biome, but instead have it spread out over the map. It's a trait called 'irregular oil' but you still have oil biomes with fossils and wells etc. So I don't think this adds/changes the difficulty.

I haven't played all the new maps, yet, but these are my experiences: 1) Verdante / Arboria The forest biome start was a bit of a tricky thing, as lack of water made a lot of things harder than normal. The massive amounts of dirt however made pickled mealwood an easy early game foodsource. Once I broke out of the starting biome into the rust biome, my O2 problems were solved, and all the early game troubles were over. Beyond that, it was pretty much my regular game of finding and tapping geysers, building my industry etc. Lack of swamp biome on Arboria meant no gold, which was a serious problem, as well as no reed fibers which meant I had to go for drecko's. These 2 factors delayed me significantly in my midgame. I did not go for any endgame as updates were added and I wanted to test the other asteroids too. 2) Rime This one proved to be quite easy. Early game food was eggs and muckroots. There's a seriously large amount of those on this map. The eggs were from ranching hatches, which provided me with tons of extra coal. Once I had researched the tepidizer and insulating tiles, heating up the base wasn't difficult and the game became quite easy. 3) Aridia. I've only tried the early game on this one. I've found it to be Extremely challenging. The extreme heat meant that farming was out of the question, and starting in the forest biome, the number of hatches for ranching was also very limited. The only viable food source is pips, but getting to a place where you can ranch them is also a challenge, due to the lack of muckroots to help sustain your dupes. I have only played a few hours on this map, so beyond the early game troubles I haven't explored this map. Lack of water is also going to be a problem on this map, as this means you also can't augment your food with mushbars very well.

- No gravity. Instead of the usual gravity, dupes can float around like they are wearing jetsuits, liquids also don't fall down anymore but stay wherever they are, possibly reforming themselves into balls of liquid. This would be great with the debris field modifier.