There were days I had to turn it off to conserve power, and I still got more than 10 colonists just from the landing pad. I built a starport and a landing pad and tried to keep both of them running at all times, but I'm not sure the starport was necessary. Don't worry about prestige and certainly don't waste resources on signposts and pyramids.

Keep it green - good or excellent - as much as you can. The key to attracting more colonists is WELFARE. When I was able to start making bots, I made an even number of carrier and driller bots until I was up to 9 (3 per mine), and only then did I stop making driller bots. I also built all 3 mines as close to each other as I could, because I noticed that workers and bots both have a tendency to switch which mine they want to work in, and they didn't mind walking all the way across the base to do it. Each mine was directly off of an airlock that was directly off of a processing plant that had 3 metal processors in it. I built 3 mines for this challenge, when I normally only build 2. For this, you will need lots and lots and lots of workers. By the time it was all done, I had 13 very large panels and 13 large collectors.īecause of all the solar panels and collectors you'll have to make, after power, metal is king. I also didn't use anything except large power collectors. Whatever your power load is, multiply that by 450 and that's the total power capacity you'll need to keep your base up and running all night.Ībsolutely don't build anything except very large solar panels, even for your very first one.

In a way, though, managing power is easy, because you know exactly what to expect (since there's no wind, sandstorms, or other variables). The nights are twice as long as the days in this challenge, so power is king. I was on 45-25-20-5-5 for most of the midgame, when I was adding 2-3 colonists per day, and made the final adjustment to 40-30-20-5-5 once I started the push to get 5-10 new arrivals per day. As you progress, you will adjust your ratios to get fewer workers and more specialists. I went super-heavy on workers at first, just getting 1 extra biologist, and everyone else was workers. Make as many practice runs as you need to start your base and get it right.īuild your landing pad immediately, so you can get some help for your first 5 colonists. In my playthrough, I recycled one water collector and a few airlocks, and that was it. Every time you recycle a facility, you lose the resources for the connection, and even though it's only 1 metal and 1 plastic, you can't afford that kind of waste. Lay out the rest of your facilities in such a way so that you won't need to recycle and rebuild them somewhere else later. You need to get a solar panel and power collector built ASAP so that you will have some power for your first night. I got to 300 colonists in 54 days, so getting there in 70 days is very doable. This achievement is not as imposing as it sounds, so if you're worried about whether you can do it or not, let me assure you, you can.

Dark Colony