Playing Through Splitsie's "Survival... Impossible" Scenario

(Sorry ahead of time for the lengthy explanation. It's taken me two weeks and many hours to get to this point...)

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1913859973

I started with a damaged respawn pod on a modified alien planet with 1.9g gravity, a massively increased rate of oxygen consumption, and a nerfed jetpack. What wasn't clear from the onset was how "survival" was defined, i.e., the goal or objective of the scenario. One possible interpretation was to build only enough components to generate power, food and water, and oxygen, then just "survive" on those basic necessities. I asked and another player gave the goal as getting to the earthlike planet where you're no longer a slave to the oxygen supply. OK, that became my goal.

The only good part of this scenario was watching the enemy NPCs auger into the ground because of their inability to function in a high-gravity environment. Not worrying about NPCs made my initial work much more manageable.

My initial goal was to build a solar panel for the respawn pod, a Band-Aid approach at best simply because a single solar panel generates about as much power as a bug zapper. (Eventually I built a second battery and attached it to the respawn pod, but only because I didn't want to accidently lose power and have no way to heal myself.)

I bounced constantly between hand-mining and processing stone in the survival kit and refilling ice in the O2/H2 generator so I didn't die. At a snail's pace I made progress building components necessary to erect a high scaffolding for wind turbines. Back-and-forth, ad infinitum, stone-ice-stone-ice, a never-ending process that was necessary to get basic power online. Sometime thereafter I built a basic refinery and basic assembler, and continued to mine stone and ice, digging massive holes just to get a trickle of ingots and components out of the refinery and assembler, respectively.

Sometime along the way I noticed a shortage of water and food, so I build an emergency food processor thingy to attach to the respawn pod. That took care of my immediate needs, but a more extensive food processing network became my priority after the refinery and assembler were built.

With the advent of the refinery also came the capability to process ore directly. However, one problem: I simply did not have the endurance to travel on foot any great distance to find, extract, and return with ore. Furthermore, hand-drilling for stone was tedious and time-consuming. Thus, my next priority was to build a small, very basic mining rover that would allow me to gather large quantities of stone and/or ore, relatively speaking, for larger-scale refinement. My little beastie had a cockpit, O2/H2 generator, two batteries, two medium cargo containers, a gyro, an antenna, an ore detector, a drill, and four wheels. I used a handful of light armor blocks to tie it all together. (Later I added a large cargo container to the back with a connector for direct off-loading and recharging the batteries.) We're talking "budget" here, so it had terrible ground clearance and was absolutely unstable and didn't even get named, but carefully operated it worked fine.

I gotta tell you that I drove all over hell's half-acre (you couldn't go more than a few kilometers before falling off the edge of the world) looking for ore. I found an iron boulder, silicon boulder, cobalt boulder, and finally an underground vein of nickel. I processed ores for slightly less than forever trying to get enough to build an economy ship. I chose one of my more recent budget small-grid ship designs, Dart Light Freighter, as my get-to-space ship:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1912842926

I built that puppy stripped of all its extra non-essential blocks to reduce components costs and increase lift capacity. I loaded up the cockpit, connector, and large and cargo container with my refined ingots, enough components to build a large-grid battery for initial power, small cargo container, and a basic assembler so, once at my destination, I could use the ingots to jump-start the processing for building a refinery complex. All the remaining extra space, including my suit, were loaded with ice.

But "where was I going?" you ask? Anywhere but there. Sure, I could have probably used Dart to relocate to a more hospitable location on the starter planet, but, no, I wanted to be so outta there! I considered this decision a step of faith.

I successfully made it to space and made the snap decision to motor on over to Europa in hopes of getting additional resources, mostly because of its relative closeness, abundant ice supply, and low gravity. But, no. I immediately discovered that the 50-km ascent to space consumed every bit of ice for oxygen and ice for hydrogen fuel. Nothing I tried worked; I just could not seem to carry enough ice aloft to survive the trip to Europa (~230 km). Desperate, I modified the settings to allow 3X cargo and successfully moved on.

Once at Europa, I set up an underground facility that eventually grew to a couple advanced refineries with yield modules and a single advanced assembler with speed modules. I also added a couple hydrogen engines for power and recharging batteries. I found lots of gold and all other ores except cobalt and platinum; believe it or not, I found a small quantity of uranium ore, but not before searching just about the entire moon. (By the way, asteroids have iron and sometimes other ores such as carbon or phosphorus, both of which I had no idea how to use, so I ignored those ores.)

I mined a massive quantity of iron ore from a nearby asteroid, which helped immensely with the facility’s construction. As I mentioned earlier, I found plenty of nickel and other ores on Europa, but I couldn’t find cobalt, so I had to make do with the limited quantity in my possession. The gold was necessary for a jump drive since my destination appeared as a very small green sphere far off in space. But I also needed every bit of the cobalt I had to build the requisite gravity components for the jump drive. I almost didn’t have enough.

At only 100 blocks to build, I chose my resource-stingy Brightstar Explorer as my get-my-ass home ship:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1873421986

I added some ladders over the jump drive on one side to allow me access to the ship’s top, because that’s where I determine the best location to store the Dart while jumping to and fro. In the place of the walkway over the survival kit I placed a small cargo container for yet more storage space and a connector so I could piggy-back Dart on its back for the trip home. I also added, due to what I figured would be excess weight, two additional "UP" thrusters by sticking curved conveyor tubes with small hydrogen thrusters at the basic refinery ports. I loaded up with ice, my leftover components and ingots from building the ship, and the remaining uranium ingots, then shut everything down at my Europa facility.

I took to the stars and made my first 2,000-km jump toward what I thought was the earthlike planet. I noticed, not too far distant, the moon of Titan near Mars. Since low-gravity moons are easy to check out, I made my second, shorter jump to Titan. My landing put me very close to a uranium and platinum deposit. Very cool! I quickly unpacked Dart and punched a large enough tunnel into a nearby hillside to hide Brightstar from prying NPC eyes, then set off to mine both platinum and uranium.

I decided that instead of building an entirely new refining facility, I would load up my ship with all the uranium ore I could find, which wasn’t a whole lot because the quantities I found were small, and a reasonable amount of platinum ore, and headed back to the Europa facility to do the processing.

Finally completed, I again loaded up Brightstar with all the loot and ended up making six jumps to the earthlike planet. Once I landed, I started setting up a major base in the side of a mountain right at the edge of a lake…two bays side-by-side…one for Brightstar and the second for a planetary miner, processing facility, and living quarters. It wasn’t long, however, before I found my uranium supply dwindling. Sure, I could set up wind turbines, which make great targets for NPCs, or I could venture back out and do some serious prospecting. I chose the latter.

I loaded up Brightstar again, piggy-backing Dart on back, and headed first to Mars. Nothing interesting there…meaning…no uranium. Then I jumped over to Mars’ other moon…nothing useful there either. Then I made another four or five jumps to the other alien planet, landed on a lake, and started searching. SCORE!!! I bagged a MAJOR uranium vein and absolutely stuffed several cargo containers full of ore. Sweet!

Now I’m back on the earthlike planet finishing the base. Then I’ll kick back, pop open a Klang Kola, and watch the ice being ice for awhile…

 

Well seems like you beat the scenario since it is titled "Survival... Impossible".

Congrats!

 

Yeah, and I developed and tested a new planetary miner in the process. I'll publish it after I run it completely through its paces and do whatever tweaks need to be done to make it work optimally.

 

What? no campfire pic of victory with a crushed and smoking lander in the background?

Great job tho.

I'm inspired to try this. I think I have several "kit" methods perfect for this.