Tips

## Malnutrition / Food Recipes

* Always have mixed meals to prevent malnutrition, pasta is a good, easy starter (tomatoes and wheat is a simple pasta recipe).
* Tomatoes and wheat should be planted in a 1:2 ratio, ie one tomato for every two wheat. When GM Tomatoes are available, the ratio becomes 1:2.667, ie roughly three gm tomatoes for every eight wheat.
* If you would like to see a list of recipes that result in a Complex Meal, please see the Meals page.
* Plant pads must be maintained by a Biologist. Maintaining a pad does not require any other resources. If a pad's condition gets to very poor, the pad will stop producing food until it gets repaired. One Biologist can maintain about 2 - 3 pads.

## Early Game

* Get the Control Center as soon as possible. Without it, you cannot force your colonists indoors during Sandstorms or Solar Flares. (Except if you are playing on the Storm Planet, because there is no natural disaster except lightning in that Planet and lightning is not associated with the Control Center)
* The best area to start is N/S 0 - W/E - 175 Each gives you a vast plain to build (While using this area, divide your area as 1/4 Exterior 3/4 Interior or 1/2 Exterior & Interior.
* The Control Center and Telescopes MAY allow for early detection of weather events. The Telescope Console must be manned by an Engineer in order to work. The in-game warnings are:
	+ Sandstorm approaching / Solar Flare detected: 10 hours out
	+ Sandstorm approaching soon / Solar Flare hitting soon: 5 hours out
	+ Sandstorm imminent / Solar Flare imminent: NOW
* Get the Landing Pad as soon as possible. New Colonists are the only way to increase the size of your colony. Furthermore, you do not start out with any Medics on the Class M/S planet.
* Get the Telescope and Anti-Meteor Laser as soon as possible, Sandstorms, Solar Flares, and Meteors can decimate the Colonist population. They can only be built after the Control Center is built.
* Intruders will only come when you have a certain amount of prestige(75), hold off on Guards in the early game.
* Build Logistic lines such as:
	+ Mine - Airlock - Processing Plant.
	+ Biodome or lab - Canteen.
	+ Biodome - lab or Canteen or Processing Plant.
	+ Storage - airlock - Landing Pad or Starport.
	+ Solar Panel or Wind Turbine - Solar Panel or Wind Turbine - Power Collector - Water Extractor - Water Tank.
* A drafted example of a base build logistic lines:
	+ \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ Airlock (1)
	+ Dorm (T) -- Oxygen -- Sick Bay (T)
	+ i \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ | \_\_\_\_\_\_ i
	+ (open slot) -- Canteen -- Bar
	+ (open slot) -- Bio-Dome -- Lab
	+ i \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ | \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ i
	+ Airlock (2) -- Storage -- Airlock (3)
	+ i \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ | \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ i
	+ Robotics -- Proc. Plant -- Factory
		- Airlocks (1,2,3): external maintenance (1), ships (2,3), mines (2,3), as (2,3) are closer to the Storage
		- | : connection medium (with oxygen); i : connection small (power lines only)
		- Open Slots: for future expansion, like Control Center, other Storage etc.
	+ Use caching. As you scale and start to specialize regions of your base in the mid-game, give each specialized region it's own storage space. Doing this effectively will shorten the total distance resources need to travel.
		- Workers and Carrier Bots will always favor nearby storage locations when taking a resource to storage, you can exploit this to:
			* provide local storage close to where the resource is likely to be consumed
			* organize the flow of resources through your base
			* manage resource surpluses (my goal for a stable base is a manageable surplus of all resource types)
		- Storage can provide many corridor connections, so it is useful as a hub for multiple airlocks or situations where you want a room to be near several other rooms. They make decent rooms for high traffic areas.
		- Example 1: Ore

In the mid-game, I have seen lots of players build separate facilities for processing ore, and place it near the mines. This is smart and improves efficiency because it decreases travel time as long as a metal processor can accept an ore resource. However, if your processing facilities are full, your ore will get carried past this to the nearest storage, only to be taken back the other direction later if no new ore is available from the mines (radiation storm/yellow or red alert/etc).

Building a small/medium storage facility between the mines and the ore processing saves both directions of the trip to the interior storage facility. This shortens the trip for the Worker/Carrier bot delivering ore, and also keeps ore close to where it is consumed.

* + - Example 2: Ports

For ports I connect all the airlocks directly to the storage, typically I make this storage the largest available. I connect this storage terminal to the base with an O2 generator, which provides a cross junction with access to a Control Center on one side, and visitor facilities (canteen, sickbay, bar, etc) on the other. This effectively eliminates much of the trade traffic in the main base and contains security threats to a wing of my base that is effectively all carrier bots and visitors.

This giant storage facility has the added advantage of being able to make lots of connecting airlocks (7+) for quickly importing/exporting large volumes of goods. A single massive storage dome can handle trade traffic from at least 3-4 separate Starports/landing pads simultaneously, allowing you to accumulate wealth for techs quickly.

It functions by collecting overflow resources that cannot fit in local storage elsewhere in the base (exports). I try to maintain a trading volume capable of reducing my resources to about 80% of local storage. This also keeps resources from spilling into the wrong storage area. Because of this, even though the trip to the storage is long and costly for most types of export resources, it is only done once, and only done between when local storage becomes unavailable and a trade ship arrives.

## Base-Building Efficiency

* Two nearby (or adjacent) airlocks can help reduce wait times to high traffic areas outside your base.
* Rooms with many more colonists such as bunks and huge bio-domes will deplete their oxygen much faster. Building an oxygen generator nearby will help restore oxygen levels.
* Turbines and solar panels need to be accessed by Engineers/bots for repairs, while the other outdoor buildings do not. Keep those (and pads and mines) closer to your airlocks, and the water and storage buildings further out.
* The Lab and Control Center build components only on the walls; you can fit more components in if there are fewer connections. Furthermore, building a connection will turn a console back into its components. For the same reason, avoid having too many connections on a Canteen, Multi-Dome or Bar since their walls fit video screens for an additional morale boost.
* A Control Center with only security consoles near the airlocks to the Landing Pad(s) and/or Starport(s) will ensure that your Guards are near the entrance to your base. They will dog-pile intruders upon their detection.

## Mid/Late Game

* Guards are much more effective at repelling Intruders if they have Guns; build them/trade for them as soon as possible. You can also arm ordinary colonists with guns by putting an Armory in a Control Center.
* It is important to note that you can always deconstruct parts of your base in order to rebuild a larger version. However, you need to be careful because larger versions of Structures may not fit where you wanted to place them.
* After deconstructing a structure, allow for the Resources to be moved away from the site. You may be able to fit a larger version of the structure you want to place there.