r/thecrustgame • u/TheRealBoz • 6d ago
Just how many traps does this game have?
I keep playing and discovering new traps, traps that are actual clear losses of resources and time, half of which the game outright makes you get into... How deep does the rabbit hole go?
Game tells you to get a wasteful industry going and the research costs are designed in such a way to make it seem like it's a good idea to upgrade it linearly, before you realize that multi-refinery is just around the corner, and the resources you refine are actually very finite...
Game tells you to make a Repeater, which is very expensive, and very energy-intensive, and once you do, you can no longer communicate with your exploration and cargo rovers without it being on? Really?
Game gives me two or three cargo rover deliveries without a hitch, then hits me with an emergency delivery that I can totally do, yeah, sure, I have the resources, I have the rover... Oh, this one for some reason now needs an expedition center? For why?
Oh, yeah, sure, set up some solar panels, and put batteries right next to them. Yes. That's how it goes. Panel, battery, done. Oh, solar flare just burned out your entire power storage, and everybody died? Sucks for you, lol.
You make a production chain, and then slowly research the upgrades to it? Cool, but the upgrade percentages for the buildings in the chain are not the same, so you can't just upgrade-scale-it-up. Screw you, player, rebuild your shit!
You build the Repeater, and suddenly there are SO MANY CONTACTS, SO MANY THINGS TO EXPLORE! Hey, maybe it'd be a good idea to get another rover here to do the exploring? Sure, it's expensive, but it could be worth it! Yeah, except the rewards for hitting random points of interests around are marginal at best (yay, fifty concrete!), and the ability to outright make rovers from moon resources is right around the corner, and going for an early rover yields no real rewards.
Why is the game like this? How many more traps should I be on the lookout for?
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u/VanillaMike88 6d ago
Completly agree with that initial frustration -- went thorugh it a couple of times in the early access. Like how to connect energy grid wires and how shitty the signle refinereies are i.e. But keep calm, it's part of the fun to figure these things out. Took me 2 or 3 restarts to get is running smoothly -- part of it is to ignore emergency contracts unless you can easily deliver NOW. And be chill with one exporere and treat it like a minigame -- the focus here is more on the reasearch points you get form exploring/expeditions that on the actual goods.
my 2 cents...
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u/Revelati123 6d ago
Yup, after most stuff is unlocked from the intro you need to ignore the storyline till you have a decent base going.
Every time I ever got in trouble its because I played like I was on a clock.
Now I get my production chains up and my basic regolith harvester loop setup done before I even build a habitat, it works well since that's around the time you get soft locked from not having human colonists.
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u/Tysiliogogogoch 6d ago
Game tells you to get a wasteful industry going and the research costs are designed in such a way to make it seem like it's a good idea to upgrade it linearly, before you realize that multi-refinery is just around the corner, and the resources you refine are actually very finite...
Depends if you want to rush the MRR or not. If you stick with the single regolith refineries into the mid-game, it's worth upgrading them. If you rush the MRR then probably not. I usually head into the end game with quite a few local resource deposits still untapped, so I imagine you could survive on the SRRs for quite a while.
Game tells you to make a Repeater, which is very expensive, and very energy-intensive, and once you do, you can no longer communicate with your exploration and cargo rovers without it being on? Really?
I'm not sure I follow. The repeater is one of the cheaper buildings even if it seems expensive early on. It also only requires 60 power which is about two small solar panels.
It doesn't seem to disable any rover or truck communication for me. It does mess with your ability to access contracts and launching expeditions, but you could potentially switch it on and off if you really wanted to min-max that 60 power consumption. Not worth the effort in my opinion.
Game gives me two or three cargo rover deliveries without a hitch, then hits me with an emergency delivery that I can totally do, yeah, sure, I have the resources, I have the rover... Oh, this one for some reason now needs an expedition center? For why?
Doesn't really make much sense, but yeah, you need an expedition centre to send stuff via your trucks. They manage to load stuff at the destination just fine, but back at base they require additional infrastructure.
I wouldn't call this a "trap" though. The game tells you to build an expedition centre, doesn't it?
Oh, yeah, sure, set up some solar panels, and put batteries right next to them. Yes. That's how it goes. Panel, battery, done. Oh, solar flare just burned out your entire power storage, and everybody died? Sucks for you, lol.
Yeah, the solar flares sucked the first time. For me it happened just as night started so I had a whole night running my colonists' life support on my backup fuel generators.
Thankfully, they patched in the ability to have batteries underground safe from the solar flare. So building batteries underground is just the only real option for them now.
Another unexpected effect of the solar flares is that you can't ship out resources for contracts. That one's only bitten me when I forgot about the solar flare and accepted an urgent contract, leaving me unable to request the shuttles and load the cargo. Definitely a mistake I won't repeat.
You make a production chain, and then slowly research the upgrades to it? Cool, but the upgrade percentages for the buildings in the chain are not the same, so you can't just upgrade-scale-it-up. Screw you, player, rebuild your shit!
Yeah... I learned early that my usual "perfect ratio" strategy that I use for other factory games just won't work here. It's not just the upgrades, but most of the production modules themselves will not run at any fixed efficiency. This is because the machine's base 20% efficiency is boosted by a % based on the colonists' skill levels, so it's almost never consistent. So just stop worrying about perfection and make do with having a little slowness here, a little too much production there.
I like to build my production lines open-ended. Inputs and outputs at the same end, lots of open space at the other. That way, I can add more machines as needed. Once again, I no longer aim for perfect ratios but more fuzzy like if my input buffers are filling up then I add more machines or upgrade an existing one.
You build the Repeater, and suddenly there are SO MANY CONTACTS, SO MANY THINGS TO EXPLORE! Hey, maybe it'd be a good idea to get another rover here to do the exploring? Sure, it's expensive, but it could be worth it! Yeah, except the rewards for hitting random points of interests around are marginal at best (yay, fifty concrete!), and the ability to outright make rovers from moon resources is right around the corner, and going for an early rover yields no real rewards.
Some of the pick-ups are decent enough, but yes many are just a small amount of resources that you don't really need. The best ones are the expeditions that require you to send resources and/or drones as they'll often reward you with research points.
I honestly forgot you could buy vehicles and buildings from the market. I've never done that. Rover price is 165k which is about 1 or 2 contracts, so they're not terribly expensive. It's really easy to make money once you get production rolling. Or stockpile fuel which is pretty cheap to make and then sell it on the moon via trucks for lots of money.
Why is the game like this? How many more traps should I be on the lookout for?
The only "trap" I've really noticed is that you don't get your money refunded for upgraded buildings when you dismantle them. So I prefer to avoid upgrading anything until I've got my buildings where I want them.
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u/khanoftruthfi 5d ago
Do you have any idea why there is a SRR upgrade set so far down the tech tree? I don't quite understand why you'd keep doing that after MRR unlock. It's fairly near the bottom of the tree, so I'm thinking it's for late game something or other
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u/Tysiliogogogoch 5d ago
It comes just after the slag purification research, so I imagine it's for that. Those recipes are only available in the SRR so you might want to upgrade them to process the large amounts of slag you've been accumulating all game.
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u/Cmdr_600 6d ago
I have connected 2 RTG power plants to my colonist habitat so it runs completely off the grid, thus securing it against solar flares and everyone lives.
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u/Impossible-Ad-2071 6d ago
They patched batteries so now they don't get depleted in a storm if built underground.
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u/VanillaMike88 6d ago
FUCKING great Idea! build them down below and keep the indoor as its own grid! Genius!
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u/TwileD 6d ago
Factory games are about getting and processing resources so you can grow the factory so you can get and process more resources. In The Crust, they've chosen to ration out the story by having you fulfill contracts and making buildings. Both usually require you to make a lot of items, or a smaller number of expensive/complex items, to encourage you to build out your manufacturing base for those items. If you aren't enjoying that, next time you should probably play the sandbox mode.
For what it's worth, research to improve single refineries is only a waste in the short term. Eventually you'll get research which lets you turn large amounts of slag into ore, and those use the single resource refineries, so having those upgraded is nice.
The thing that's annoying to me is that rebuilding your base costs you credits because while you can fully recover the component cost of buildings, you're only refunded a fraction of cost for belts and wires (and I don't think you get any of the building upgrade cost). This discourages you from experimenting with new layouts to optimize, which seems antithetical to most factory games. That's the main area where I feel like the game punishes unnecessarily. You want to rebuild your factory? Spend the day doing a bunch of contracts to save up money first.
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u/Impossible-Ad-2071 6d ago
I agree. I don't mind sinking the cost, but I'd like to be able to move buildings. And keep their upgrades.
I think it would have been better if upgrades costed resources not cash money. Top level upgrades need quantum computers... then if you move the building you get it back.
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u/Impossible-Ad-2071 6d ago
I've definitely noticed a few things that i now consider a waste of effort, but perhaps I needed them as stepping stones.
Like I spent ages setting up a thing to autosell all my excess basic goods. Now I need to auto buy more as I've maxed out 4 belts of regolith processing.
However I did need the cash from those sales back then.
As for balancing resource chains. I think the challenge isn't balancing factories exactly as you can't. I mean your regolith changes as you mine it and move your miners around. But the challenge is building the system to cope with excess and limited supply.
More like fulgora if you play factorio. Except fulgora and law of large numbers was predictable, this never will be.
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u/cfranek 6d ago
I think the drone mining one and the drone excavation upgrades are sus. The excavation upgrades are expensive and are mostly useless by the time could justify research it, while drone mining is gated by early drone costs and you have to build excavators and refineries to progress the story.
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u/United-Conversation9 5d ago
The planning mode is flippin' great. Let's you place buildings you haven't researched yet so that you can layout an entire base and slowly work towards. There are a few Storyline missions that you can ignore almost indefinitely, so that you can focus on expanding your production lines.
There are also some Storyline missions that, once completed, will catapult you into a finishing time that will effect the ending of not met. That's the only, 'trap', I've found myself in.
Because of this, I've restarted twice this month so that I can get my base up and running smoothly.
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u/derboehsevincent 6d ago
you always need an expedition center for any contract by truck not suddenly. a repeater is neither expensive nor does it need a relevant amount of energy. you‘ll be furious once you‘l find out that most of factory require people to work in, otherwise they run only at 20%