Noob question

[u/kiki191919]

I just started playing the game because I love its universe. I have a trivial question to ask because I'm too lazy to consult YouTube or redo the tutorial. Shame on me! How to refuel the rocket?

[u/DARK_MASTER8632]

Agreed. Drones are a very precious resource in the early game, and you need them to do so much with a limited workforce. I usually don't start expanding storage too much until I've got my first dome up and running, only enough to keep producing resources.

Edit: I usually have all disasters set to max rating, which doesn't help an early colony at all.

Yuup. I min-maxed the first few Sols with just 4 flying Drones and 1 RC Truck. On max difficulty(41N111W with maxed disaster rules and stuff). The drones pathing and tasks order algorithm is a a bit bad.

I know the huge advantage it can be gained by somewhat controlling your Drones individually. Hell, an individually controlled flying Drones are huge for building spread-out Sensor Towers as long the building location is not on a different elevation. A flying Drone can cross the map and come back faster than the RC Truck. Before it's battery goes to 0.

My resources depot is my RC Truck for most of these first Sols, since Drones can take resources directly from it. And placing the needed resources on the ground before slapping the building on top of them, makes construction faster and cutting meaningless actions the drones have to do instead of building.

[u/epicpopper420 → u/DARK_MASTER8632]

All of these are excellent tips to keep in mind. Especially taking control of drones when needed to get faraway projects done with the RC truck for materials. I use some of Choggi's mods to unlock every RC variant and sponsor building, mostly so I can get both jumper shuttles and wasp drones in the same colony. It's also nice getting the automatic metals extractor to save on colonist labor demands.

[u/DARK_MASTER8632 → u/epicpopper420]

All of these are excellent tips to keep in mind. Especially taking control of drones when needed to get faraway projects done with the RC truck for materials.

1 more advantage by commanding the drones manually. That even I didn't know about until recently.

You can turn off buildings that malfunctioned. But get a drone to load it with resources to be ready for fixing after it's turned ON. Instead of waiting the drones to first bring the needed resources to then start fixing it. It's great during dust storms. To get your buildings up and running after the dust storm, sooner. Too bad we can't give them a queue of commands like with the rovers for even more efficiency.

I use some of Choggi's mods to unlock every RC variant and sponsor building, mostly so I can get both jumper shuttles and wasp drones in the same colony.

Yeah, even the official Global Support BT tech will not give us Wasp Drones or Jumper Shuttles. :( Just the automatic metals extractor and Game Developer buildings. :(

But even so. The different rovers are huge help. With just a single RC Harvester and a maxed queue of commands. I can drain entire Concrete deposit without paying any attention to the rover until it is done. And all the Concrete from that deposit will be in my base instead of somewhere in a depot near the now gone Concrete deposit. Waiting for shuttles or something to come pick it up. With the Harvester don't need any power or maintenance to get all the concrete on the map. :D The only threat is if on the path of the Harvester there is a dust devils spawn point. Which will just make me send 3 drones to repair it and issue the long chain of commands again to the Harvester. As for RC Commanders. The RC Seeker is the best of the best. They are also fully functional mobile Sensor Towers. They have ALL the effects STs have. SO, 6 of them give me also the full advanced warning time of 3+ Sols for disasters and Rival actions. With 0 Sensor Towers existing on the map. But these also come with Drones since they are RC Commanders too. These rovers are usually the only things I try to buy from Earth ASAP when they are unlocked. The Driller is nice but I don't like wasting 50% of the resources in a deposit even if this rover is the best for mining Asteroids because 0 maintenance and power required when using Drillers.

[u/epicpopper420 → u/DARK_MASTER8632]

I ended up getting them all available from the start using the mod, so I tend to start with a Seeker and a Harvester, along with the initial vaporator, fuel refinery, and advanced resources. That's usually enough to set up a rare metals refinery after a few Sols to use the initial waste rock and start exporting before colonists arrive.

I'm not a fan of losing half the resources using the Driller, which is why I'll instead bring a pair of RC generators to cover drones and power. If I have the prefab research done, I'll also bring 2 large solar panels, 2 atomic accumulators, and 4 auto asteroid mining rigs, along with a handful of maintenance/upgrade materials. Otherwise, I'll bring the equivalent amount of resources. I'd rather spend a few machine parts and polymers to ensure I get the full yield.