See below for how I planned to set it up in the middle of a low-resource wasteland. Blueprint: Colony Layout The little shaded spaces are supposed to be "roads". The colony should make clicking on each necessarily-clickable building relatively easy without needing to rotate constantly. I was bored one day so here you have it, not only is there that one thread on the buildings & modules, I just outright put down a plan* for the colony. It should show every building except the Trade Depot (it is on the wall**) and I think I don't have the Public House since it's broken. *Does not include every module placed. **Colony wall plan sold separately Oh yeah, we still don't have Pumpkins, I am experimenting with using the Empire good drop instead (as it drops 50% Sausages, a Quality Food, and scales with population).
For version 49-A Diplomatic Trading in Hell Diggle Hell? Right now a lot of things can be obtained infinitely. For example Logs: Novorus special trader, Farming Stone blocks: Novorus special trader Lacquer: All traders Sand: Mine Clay: Mine Coal: Mine Various Ores: Stahlmark special trader, Stahlmark ore drop Iron/Copper Ingots & Pipes/Plates: Stahlmark traders Carbines: From Stalhmark special drop (low chance) Blunderbusses: Novorus & Republique supply drops (low chance) Sausages (Quality Food) & Bread: Empire food drop Raw Food: Farming Sadly, the traders are (or have been for me) buggy in the current version, and the special traders are even buggier. But let's pretend that isn't the case... I attempted to simulate the following Start with the usual 1 NCO + 5 overseers + 1 lowerclass NCO has their pistol, nothing else at all Starting area has a little forage, stone and trees. Nothing else. =============================================================================== 1. Very early on, having the following is important: Mine (1 mineshaft module) Ceramics workshop (1 ceramics kiln) Trade Depot Foreign Office (2 or more) Now, the Mine and Ceramics should be ready about the time bunkhouse day (day day 4 or 5). Load up the mine crew and get a little clay for bricks (and sand). Get ready a few Glass Panes (or process up to Glass Bottles). =============================================================================== 2. Assuming you have the usual decent amount of trees, the first chokepoint will be stone. So we start. Prepare the foreign offices and trade depot. As a side note, Lacquer is a good buy from the usual randomly-spawning traders. The diplomatic team (ie: 1 overseer + 3 lowerclass, using 2 or more offices) will focus on: Get the starting hostile faction to neutral Novorus special trader Summon Novorus special trader. Buy stone and logs as needed. =============================================================================== 3. The next main thing is getting metal (for weapons). As in Building Buildings (and Modules) we will want to get some pistols and a musket for the NCO. Now work on Stahlmark, the goal is to use their standard trader. Aims are: Iron ingots: Need 2 to make a smelting forge, and say another 6 for 3 pistols Iron parts: 1 iron plate + 1 iron pipe for a musket (or 2 ingots for each part) The Stahlmark trader may have Stone Smelting Crucibles (2 will be useful) Keeping the mine & ceramics going, by now fire up the Chemistry Workshop. Lacquered Planks are good for trading when you buy expensive things. =============================================================================== 4. Now just a few other options. We probably want to switch to iron ovens (we could keep trying to buy stone to upkeep the ovens...) if so we can: Continue buying iron ingots & parts from Stalhmark Trader Start buying iron ore from Stahlmark Special Trader (I actually think this might be slower... but it is cheaper though that doesn't mean much) Start spamming the Stahlmark Excess Ores to get ores (scales with colony size) =============================================================================== 5. Quality Food. The most efficient way is to set up more Foreign Offices and spam the Empire for their food drops. You get half the number of items as you have colonists, and about half will be Sausages. With 100 colonists (25 overseers) it is perfect, each mission gives you on average 50 Bread and 50 Sausages Rely on Wheat to make more Bread to ensure there's enough Basic Food no matter what, as well as to make Beer (and then distill into Whiskey) =============================================================================== 6. To Infinity You should be able to spam so much stuff that you'll have tons of: Glass Panes/ Glass Bottles/ Lacquered Planks: In excess of whatever you need to trade for. Wheat/Bread: Never run out of Basic Food Sausages: Eventually you'll build up a stock as you keep spamming the Empire (multiple times a day ideally, use many many foreign offices) Logs, Stone etc: Keep summoning the Novorus special trader. Logs will be the most needed in the long run (planks repair beds, you need 3.33 planks a day for 100 people). This colony (yes same one shown in post above) should scale to about 100 people (probably want a third or maybe even 4th Wheat field). It has 48 beds, I would probably also have more than just 4 foreign offices (have 2 diplomat workgroups tend 8 offices or something...)
Do two or more trade offices increase traders? I haven't had time to test it since 49A where I got the idea.
I think traders just check for *if* you have a trade office. Rather, the idea is to have multiple foreign offices (still only need 1 workgroup though, 4 people) which can do missions to spawn traders when you want (and of course at a much higher frequency than the random ones)
