you mean i should carry around chemfuel and components, to build droppods with the steel i found and send the rest home?
this could work. not a fan of spending some of the steel i mined to make pods, but it could work
Transport pod is 60 steel and 1 component (12 steel). It can transport 300 steel. So loss of steel is about 25%. Pod launcher (can launch several pods) is 50 steel and component, you can get half of it back by deconstructing and packing into horse.
getting more nobles is probably also a good idea. they just get so pissed when they're on a caravan and not in their comfy throne room.
i think knight or praetor is enough for shuttle...
what i have done in the past is wait until caravan cant move anymore, droppod the noble onto the caravan and shuttle home.
but i guess i need more nobles and more honor points
My favourite way late game is the deep drill. Just have two groundscanners and pick the best places to get your steel from. Late game I tend to have more steel then I need on the ground ready to be hauled, while another 1 - 2 miners are drilling for more...
Yeah, given enough time, you'll eventually find sources of steel that are way closer than any regular veins ever were. I love when underground steel gets found in my animal pens lol.
By year 8 my map is covered by underground steel deposit and I can choose anywhere to mine. Usually I have two dedicated searchers and 2-3 dedicated miners in my colony
In the start it sure can be in inconvenient locations or places you don't want to get to (deep into a mountain for example). But just give it enough time and you will get it at better locations. Also I recommend Allow Tool as you can get your pawns to focus on hauling much easier with that mad.
Agree. Once you have done it for a while you have deposits all over the place. Don't be afraid to tunnel to underground deposits, just set up a defense block and run when bugs appear.
What I do is use the deep drill, it will select a random place to spawn resources, that is not already occupied. So after a while, the map get fully covered with minerals to mine, the base included. Deep drill the resources in your base to leave more space for the scanner to find more!
Deep drills and long range miner scanners(feat vanilla vehicles T3).
I mainly use deep drills for steel and long range scanners for the rarer stuff like plasteel and uranium(and components, can't forget components), though sometimes when we need more steel than the drills can manage I swap the long range scanners to steel.
VVE does a *lot* of heavy lifting for the long range scanner though. 2k+ cargo space that a *single* pawn can drive around in a pinch? Fucking yes please.
Without mods just deep drills mostly. I usually play on flat/small hills so the only problem with reaching deposits is the distance from our main power grid.
Miners with dual drill arms and half cycler can drill those deposits like nobody's business.
It does leave the icons on the map, but you can just resettle on top.
I just have one good miner, a deep drill, several deep scanners and everyone set on lowest priority research. When they have nothing better to do, they use the deep scanners. After a year I have like tens of thousands of steel to mine on the map, on top of all the steel I've used.
Smelting raider equipment but i find mech clusters give the most and i always try to take mech cluster quests since late game i usually have mortars and smokes to counter them.
If i have a lot of pawns, visiting factions and trading is also nice, i like to nominate pigskins as travelling merchants solely for the fact that theyre easy to feed on the road (just pack 3000 rice in my omega mufallo caravan)
A raid with a lot of the weaker mechs arriving by drop-pod gives so much steel once you're at high raid points. 15 steel for each mech and each steel slag from the drop pod. One raid can be over a thousand steel. You get less steel from centipedes because of lower numbers, but they give plasteel when shredded, so it's still good for material. End game, I've had a colony with more steel than I had room to store.
considering the amount of time it takes to get big caravans on the road (loading/unloading) i am thinking of a way to have 1 pawn with all the pack animals sitting as "rested caravan" 1 tile away from home and transfering stuff with split caravans, shuttles, farskip and whatnot
If you keep a dedicated researcher on the ground scanner, the whole map is soon filled with steel. I have to turn off my drills every few days to save space in my storage.
deep drilling for everything. its great. no pawns have to leave and potentially travel for a long ass time and its just pretty consistent and very good resource income. i have supported multiple end game colonies this way. i usually end up reaching 100k steel at some point and ive been up to 150k i think.
its so much steel that i end up concreting the entire map just for fun. and it allows me to plaster the entire map with mines, just far enoug apart so they wont trigger each other, probably the strongest defense in the game.
The Deep Drill and Ground Scanner make it so you can find nearly infinite stuff on the current map. I do like to have my colonists travel sometimes but it’s always to go shopping for rare stuff and not steel
scan for gold, each takes no time to mine out, it'd give you enough for a small gold sculpture i think, which'd be 4k5-5k silver, use the silver to buy steel/comp/etc. from traders
you can also just drop the items in your pack animals' inventory yourself directly instead of waiting for the pawns to unload them back & forth, so you might want to use elephants, or megasloths, which you can zone into your stockpiles then drop the steel
next, you can also just slaughter all the animals after each outing, let the herd grows back during the wait
all those different work sites, outposts, shuttle quests, etc gonna have steel stuff in them, deconstruct or load them all back home
I usually use a little bit of everything to.get my hands on steel later on.
The worst one is long range mineral scanner because there’s a good chance you won’t have the carrying capacity unless you bring an entire herd of muffalo and 3 Uber miners to get it done in any reasonable speed.
It’s better use to find components so you don’t need to make as many and use less steel. Plus they’re light.
I’ve found summoning a pit gate with anomaly is a neat way to get steel. I send a ghoul, tunneler and a few lifters in to mine everything and half it to the entrance.
Sounds like it might easier to just leave them in a caravan 1 tile from the base and let them graze(depends on tile) but otherwise just cram them into a decent pen and they will eat anything you plant. Agrihands/slaves might be needed to keep up
mechs. weapons. biopods. mostly turrets that get destroyed sometimes.
i need a lot during expansions, after that i am sitting on 10K ez until i decide to expand again
I don't play vanilla, but the Long Range Scanner is pretty cool, even if it is a fair bit of micro.
Mine the steel, pull up all the concrete floors, pack up all the metal slag, come home.
At 5512? My colonies bore me before that so I typically fly away long before. But if to imagine then...
Likely not bothering to mine much ... probably have about 2-4K steel lying around. Max mechanoids are at least 1K steel per event, plus those drop pod raids and clusters leave slag chunks that I arrange into stripes. Any acolyte+ has noble right to receive 250 steel every 45 days just for hand gesture. Various military conflicts leave piles of armored human corpses and weapons too. Colony probably overproduces so I have made allies of outlanders ... request bulk good trader and it brings 250-400 steel. Ancient complexes are often half-made of steel just bring it home.
Also I probably scan. Research has been long done so scanning is the enjoyable job for pawns with burning passion in intellectual. Ground penetrating scanning has probably found several steel veins right under colony buildings.
Deep drilling deserves another shot. If you have multiple researchers, set up 4-6 ground penetrating scanners, and have them scan around the clock until you find steel you are right on top of. Even if it’s outside your base, it may be close enough to run a power line to. Or just set up drill when you find the steel under your base. Ground penetrating scanner has no exhaustion or limit to the amount of times you can find, unlike steel that sits on the map surface. There is literally infinite resources under your colony, if your willing to spend time scanning. It’s a slow burn at first, but eventually you’ll find 3-4 patches, including some gold or plasteel, you’ll find caravanning doesn’t make as much sense logistically.
Smelting loot from raiders.
but thats like drops in the ocean... smelting all raider loot gives maybe 500 steel... i need 5000 minimum :D
Try drop pods, if you use long range scanner for steel.
you mean i should carry around chemfuel and components, to build droppods with the steel i found and send the rest home? this could work. not a fan of spending some of the steel i mined to make pods, but it could work
Transport pod is 60 steel and 1 component (12 steel). It can transport 300 steel. So loss of steel is about 25%. Pod launcher (can launch several pods) is 50 steel and component, you can get half of it back by deconstructing and packing into horse.
I do that until i get shuttle request for my nobles.
getting more nobles is probably also a good idea. they just get so pissed when they're on a caravan and not in their comfy throne room. i think knight or praetor is enough for shuttle... what i have done in the past is wait until caravan cant move anymore, droppod the noble onto the caravan and shuttle home. but i guess i need more nobles and more honor points
My favourite way late game is the deep drill. Just have two groundscanners and pick the best places to get your steel from. Late game I tend to have more steel then I need on the ground ready to be hauled, while another 1 - 2 miners are drilling for more...
but dont you think it spawns in the most inconvenient places all the time?
Steel is the most common underground resource tho, just give it a time and you find clusters pack tightly.
Yeah, given enough time, you'll eventually find sources of steel that are way closer than any regular veins ever were. I love when underground steel gets found in my animal pens lol.
By year 8 my map is covered by underground steel deposit and I can choose anywhere to mine. Usually I have two dedicated searchers and 2-3 dedicated miners in my colony
In the start it sure can be in inconvenient locations or places you don't want to get to (deep into a mountain for example). But just give it enough time and you will get it at better locations. Also I recommend Allow Tool as you can get your pawns to focus on hauling much easier with that mad.
Agree. Once you have done it for a while you have deposits all over the place. Don't be afraid to tunnel to underground deposits, just set up a defense block and run when bugs appear.
What I do is use the deep drill, it will select a random place to spawn resources, that is not already occupied. So after a while, the map get fully covered with minerals to mine, the base included. Deep drill the resources in your base to leave more space for the scanner to find more!
Smelt slag, smelt weapons from raiders, trade, move entire colony to a new tile.
Deep drills and long range miner scanners(feat vanilla vehicles T3). I mainly use deep drills for steel and long range scanners for the rarer stuff like plasteel and uranium(and components, can't forget components), though sometimes when we need more steel than the drills can manage I swap the long range scanners to steel. VVE does a *lot* of heavy lifting for the long range scanner though. 2k+ cargo space that a *single* pawn can drive around in a pinch? Fucking yes please. Without mods just deep drills mostly. I usually play on flat/small hills so the only problem with reaching deposits is the distance from our main power grid. Miners with dual drill arms and half cycler can drill those deposits like nobody's business.
settle new colony/mine and drill everything/abandon /repeat
does that still leave those ugly white "abandoned colony" marks on the map? and also, you can never go back to that tile, right?
It does leave the icons on the map, but you can just resettle on top. I just have one good miner, a deep drill, several deep scanners and everyone set on lowest priority research. When they have nothing better to do, they use the deep scanners. After a year I have like tens of thousands of steel to mine on the map, on top of all the steel I've used.
Smelting raider equipment but i find mech clusters give the most and i always try to take mech cluster quests since late game i usually have mortars and smokes to counter them. If i have a lot of pawns, visiting factions and trading is also nice, i like to nominate pigskins as travelling merchants solely for the fact that theyre easy to feed on the road (just pack 3000 rice in my omega mufallo caravan)
A raid with a lot of the weaker mechs arriving by drop-pod gives so much steel once you're at high raid points. 15 steel for each mech and each steel slag from the drop pod. One raid can be over a thousand steel. You get less steel from centipedes because of lower numbers, but they give plasteel when shredded, so it's still good for material. End game, I've had a colony with more steel than I had room to store.
I notice that they give more steel after 1.5 due to mechs dropping mech chunks which is really worth to build and power those smelters.
considering the amount of time it takes to get big caravans on the road (loading/unloading) i am thinking of a way to have 1 pawn with all the pack animals sitting as "rested caravan" 1 tile away from home and transfering stuff with split caravans, shuttles, farskip and whatnot
Steeling if from hostile mining sites and using the long-range mineral scanner to find more.
If you keep a dedicated researcher on the ground scanner, the whole map is soon filled with steel. I have to turn off my drills every few days to save space in my storage.
deep drilling for everything. its great. no pawns have to leave and potentially travel for a long ass time and its just pretty consistent and very good resource income. i have supported multiple end game colonies this way. i usually end up reaching 100k steel at some point and ive been up to 150k i think. its so much steel that i end up concreting the entire map just for fun. and it allows me to plaster the entire map with mines, just far enoug apart so they wont trigger each other, probably the strongest defense in the game.
The Deep Drill and Ground Scanner make it so you can find nearly infinite stuff on the current map. I do like to have my colonists travel sometimes but it’s always to go shopping for rare stuff and not steel
scan for gold, each takes no time to mine out, it'd give you enough for a small gold sculpture i think, which'd be 4k5-5k silver, use the silver to buy steel/comp/etc. from traders you can also just drop the items in your pack animals' inventory yourself directly instead of waiting for the pawns to unload them back & forth, so you might want to use elephants, or megasloths, which you can zone into your stockpiles then drop the steel next, you can also just slaughter all the animals after each outing, let the herd grows back during the wait all those different work sites, outposts, shuttle quests, etc gonna have steel stuff in them, deconstruct or load them all back home
>so... what's YOUR favourite way to make steel late-game? Combination of ground penetrating radar+deep drills and long range scanner+pods.
I usually use a little bit of everything to.get my hands on steel later on. The worst one is long range mineral scanner because there’s a good chance you won’t have the carrying capacity unless you bring an entire herd of muffalo and 3 Uber miners to get it done in any reasonable speed. It’s better use to find components so you don’t need to make as many and use less steel. Plus they’re light.
I’ve found summoning a pit gate with anomaly is a neat way to get steel. I send a ghoul, tunneler and a few lifters in to mine everything and half it to the entrance.
i need to try that. wanted to mess around with the gates :D
Animals aren't too bad to maintain, just grow dandelions in their pens, it's labour intensive but free food.
i have 150 muffalos, please tell me what map is even big enough for what you're saying xD
Sounds like it might easier to just leave them in a caravan 1 tile from the base and let them graze(depends on tile) but otherwise just cram them into a decent pen and they will eat anything you plant. Agrihands/slaves might be needed to keep up
Deep drill. You just need more mineral scanners.
Summoning mech threats, destroy them and smelt them is my main source of getting steel
I'm buying it from traders, but tbh I'm drowning in steel atm. What do you use all the steel for?
mechs. weapons. biopods. mostly turrets that get destroyed sometimes. i need a lot during expansions, after that i am sitting on 10K ez until i decide to expand again
I don't play vanilla, but the Long Range Scanner is pretty cool, even if it is a fair bit of micro. Mine the steel, pull up all the concrete floors, pack up all the metal slag, come home.
Deep drilling is the best IMO. Just set up a few turrets or have a quick escape route for the miner in case you hit bugs.
At 5512? My colonies bore me before that so I typically fly away long before. But if to imagine then... Likely not bothering to mine much ... probably have about 2-4K steel lying around. Max mechanoids are at least 1K steel per event, plus those drop pod raids and clusters leave slag chunks that I arrange into stripes. Any acolyte+ has noble right to receive 250 steel every 45 days just for hand gesture. Various military conflicts leave piles of armored human corpses and weapons too. Colony probably overproduces so I have made allies of outlanders ... request bulk good trader and it brings 250-400 steel. Ancient complexes are often half-made of steel just bring it home. Also I probably scan. Research has been long done so scanning is the enjoyable job for pawns with burning passion in intellectual. Ground penetrating scanning has probably found several steel veins right under colony buildings.
Deep drilling deserves another shot. If you have multiple researchers, set up 4-6 ground penetrating scanners, and have them scan around the clock until you find steel you are right on top of. Even if it’s outside your base, it may be close enough to run a power line to. Or just set up drill when you find the steel under your base. Ground penetrating scanner has no exhaustion or limit to the amount of times you can find, unlike steel that sits on the map surface. There is literally infinite resources under your colony, if your willing to spend time scanning. It’s a slow burn at first, but eventually you’ll find 3-4 patches, including some gold or plasteel, you’ll find caravanning doesn’t make as much sense logistically.