Editing Intermediate Midgame Guide

{{Rewrite|reason = Outdated/incorrect in many places. Needs full fact checking, updating, and [[Template: Verified|reverification]]. Also suggest: Replace some sections with links to the more specific guides than rehash existing guide content. E.g. [[Weapon Guide|Weapons]], [[Money making guide|Cash crop]], [[Defence tactics|Combat & defense tactics]] etc.}}

This is the longest phase of a typical playthrough.  Your challenge is to keep all basic needs covered and, most importantly, have everybody in a good [[mood]].  The game tries to put your colonists in a bad mood in many ways.  Counteracting this is how you avoid crises and increase overall productivity.  A lot of the advice in this guide revolves around mood management, either directly or indirectly.

 

Here is a list of facilities in rough order of importance that an established base in midgame should have – all of this ''heavily'' varies by difficulty level and map conditions (but you will know when your defense was too weak for your difficulty level...).

* '''Freezer''': a refrigerated room that is large enough to hold enough fresh food to get you through the winter or special circumstances like a [[Events#Toxic_fallout|toxic fallout]] event. How much food you need to store depends on a lot of other factors.

* '''Kitchen''': a place to prepare food.  This is critical to any colony; the kitchen must be well maintained and in an accessible place.

* All areas should be well lit (no dark places).  

* Frequented areas should have constructed or smoothed floors.

* [[Autodoor]]s should be used in frequently trafficked places (the kitchen, freezer, storage and production room).

Do not strive for perfection in any of these areas yet. It is better to have a makeshift hospital than none at all; so make a room with a few beds that are only used for medical purposes, before thinking about hospital beds and sterile tiles. The important point is to have medical beds on stand-by, in a clean room, at all times – not to have the perfect end-game hospital right from the start. Likewise, keeping a small, ugly, insecure prison barracks is still better than having to re-purpose rooms after every raid in order to even capture somebody (leaving some colonists without bedrooms in the process).

Create the basic facilities first, then improve them afterwards.  Do not take unnecessary shortcuts (for example, do not put the butcher's table in the medical room, because "there just was no better spot at the moment"). By the midgame you should strive to have everything built out of stone.

The kitchen, hospital and laboratory (research benches) can be placed in the same room, which should be sterile.  This is because room cleanliness has a major impact on cooking, medical outcomes and research speed. Moreover, both the kitchen and hospital benefit from being in a central location, and the mood impact from waking up a pawn during treatment is pretty minor compared to the impact of acute pain.

Make all rooms as cozy and beautiful as possible, especially the areas where your colonists spend a lot of time: research desks, workshops, and recreation rooms. A beautiful environment will lift up their mood; build beautiful objects anywhere your colonists spend a lot of time, not simply the recreation area. Putting good chairs in front of all production desks will make your colonists feel comfortable while they are using them.  

Rooms and corridors must be spacious enough to not cause problems and allow your colonists to move around freely. Leaving a little extra room is almost always a good idea. While one-tile corridors to infrequently used locations are fine, you will probably want at least two tiles for the major travel paths.

=== Freezer ===

[[File:Special freezer.png|thumb|right|This freezing room has the coolers placed in the center instead of at the edges.  Only the center tile is unroofed.  The green area shows the roof, this is also the "cold" area of the freezer room.  The center, unroofed, tile is at outdoors temperature.]]

[[File:Freezer example.jpg|thumb|right|A double-walled freezer with a single airlock entrance.]]

Even in the early game, the freezer is an indispensable facility, because meat and prepared meals spoil very quickly, and it is impossible to keep a fresh food stockpile without a controlled freezing area.

In the mid-game, you must make sure that your freezer is large enough to store enough supplies for the entire colony, and possibly many days. The freezer must be close to the room where meals are prepared. Since unbutchered animals are usually stored inside the freezer as well, it is viable to put the butcher's table ''inside'' the freezer.  This also keeps the substantial filth from the butchering in a room where it does not matter. Butchering is a short, intermittent activity for your cook, so the work speed penalty is not very impactful here.

If your freezer opens directly to the kitchen, your kitchen might end up cold. If your freezer opens directly on the outside, it can lose coolness, particularly during heat waves or solar flares. You may consider building a small freezer vestibule / airlock to limit this effect.  

[[File:Kitchen area.png|thumb|right|Kitchen area with short walkways for the colonists and separate meal freezer. This layout tries to minimize foot traffic in the kitchen, but it is difficult to avoid. Haulers need to be able to take leather from the freezer to the warehouse, without walking through the kitchen – this is not shown in this layout.]]

By midgame usually you will have at least one [[electric stove]], and possibly some temporary storage shelves for cooking ingredients.

 

Prepared food has to be delivered to your dining area, and often also to prisoners and hospital patients.  Position the kitchen so that this is easily possible.  The kitchen door should probably be an [[autodoor]].  When the colony grows larger, you should create a secondary, small freezer room close to where prepared meals are consumed. Then do not store meals any longer in the freezer.  This will reduce foot traffic in the freezer, and make it a lot easier to have colonists eat at a table. The popular ''Rim Fridge'' mod helps with this approach.

=== Bedrooms ===

Bedrooms have a high impact on the overall mood of your colonists, so it is worth investing in them.  Higher quality beds make your colonists rest more quickly during sleep, increasing their productivity (work hours per day).

A good midgame bedroom needs to be ''impressive'' and provide a ''comfortable'' bed.

* To increase comfort, give the bed an [[end table]], and put a [[dresser]] in the room. Higher quality furniture provides better comfort, while higher quality beds increase the ''rest effectiveness''. Have your most capable builder furnish the bedrooms.

* Overall [[Room stats|impressiveness]] of the room is a complex [[Room stats|combination]] of several factors: ''wealth'', ''room size'', ''beauty'' and ''cleanliness''. Provide a good balance of all these qualities.

* A good midgame bedroom has all of the following:

** 25 tiles of floor space; bigger is not good, because it increases cleaning effort and cost of flooring. This leaves enough room to put temporary production buildings in the bedroom, useful during base expansion.

** Beauty items, such as flower pot or sculpture; more is better, but do not go overboard.

** High quality flooring, such as carpets. This increases beauty. If you can smooth the floors (and walls), usually in a mountain base, this is always preferable to carpet flooring: it gives the same beauty value, but is not flammable and much cheaper to build. You need a good constructor, because smoothing floors takes a lot of work.

** Heating and/or cooling; it is far easier to heat or cool the hallways instead, and use [[vent]]s to equalize the temperature with the bedrooms.

Keep the bedrooms clean, because dirt quickly lowers "impressiveness".

It is ''not'' recommended to have a table and chair in the room for colonists to eat at, because other colonists will use it as well, and possibly disturb the sleep of the owner. Put the eating tables in the hallway in front of the bedrooms if you have to.

Bedrooms should only have a single door, so they will not be used as a thoroughfare, disturbing the sleep of their owners.

[[File:Compact hospital layout.png|thumb|right|A highly efficient hospital layout.  Dresser and end tables provide maximum comfort.  Two vitals monitors cover all 8 beds.  Flatscreen TVs provide extra recreation for the patients.  Medical supplies are close by, the room is well lit and accessible from all sides.  The vents equalize room temperature with the hallway (climatize as needed).  Up to six more beds could be installed here rather easily: four in place of the end tables, and one each to the left and right of the vitals monitors; all beds will have dresser, TV and monitor coverage.]]

A hospital room should have [[sterile tile]] flooring; they provide a cleanliness buff that increases surgery success rate and lowers wound infection chance. [[Hospital bed]]s and [[vitals monitor]]s boost treatment quality and immunity gain.  One vitals monitor can cover up to 8 hospital beds in the most effective layout.

Bedridden colonists have no access to recreation outside of "solitary relaxation" and "social interaction" with other colonists. This can be alleviated by placing TV sets in range of the hospital beds.  Colonists sleep facing to the right, so in order for a TV to be usable by the patient, it has be either "south" or "east" of the bed (with the head rest being "north").

The quality of the hospital bed increases both rest quality and treatment quality.  It is advised to have only your most capable construction workers make hospital beds.

 

 

 

 

==== Using hospital beds as sleeping spots ====

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

=== Power ===

Make sure your generators and their connecting conduits are well-protected as they often have to be placed far from base. Take care, however, not to enclose your generator within a room without supplying ventilation to the outside.

[[Boomalope|Boomalopes]] can provide tremendous amounts of [[Chemfuel|chemfuel]] power with a large enough herd, as well as being more labor-efficient than burning wood or plant-based biofuel. However, this requires a biome that supports easy grazing space, so it will not be possible everywhere. It also takes some work to milk and haul the fuel. Most seriously, fuel stockpiles should be placed and fireproofed carefully, unless you want to detonate your entire power station at once.

You may want to have a room dedicated to research, with [[hi-tech research bench]]es, [[multi-analyzer]]s to increase research speed and unlock new research, as well as sterile tiles to keep the room clean, increasing research speed. This room should generally only have one door, lest pawns path through it and leave behind unnecessary dirt.

 

Like colonists, [[prisoner]]s will also suffer from the mood penalties associated with being kept together in a prison barracks. In addition, prison breaks are also more serious should they happen, for every prisoner locked up in the same room will simultaneously break out, while prisoners in different cells may choose not to join. Thus, keeping them separated improves safety.

Prisons should have doors facing towards your base, so that escaping prisoners will go towards your base instead of away, giving your wardens time to deal with the break. A small vestibule with an extra door will also slow them down.

* Power can be stored in disconnected batteries.  They will discharge at 5W, which will deplete a full battery over 120 days.  Either put the reserve batteries behind a switch, or keep them disconnected in a stockpile.  Their main use comes immediately after a short ("[[Events#Zzztt...|Zzztt...]]"), when all main batteries will be completely empty, often leading to a brown out if you depend on wind or solar energy.

* Strategically placed stockpiles of wood can provide backup heating during a solar flare or cold snap.  Mark these wood stacks "forbidden", so your colonists will not use them during regular operation.

* Since electric stoves do not work at all during a power failure, it can be useful to have a fueled stove as backup.  If some of the food in your freezer is about to go bad during a solar flare, this will allow you to quickly cook some meals and extend the shelf life of the ingredients.

* Critical power lines should be run twice, so in case of damage (or accidental deconstruction) there is no complete power failure.  This is especially important around power sensitive areas like the freezer, a hydroponics bay and the power generators themselves.

* Nutrient paste dispensers are very useful if you unexpectedly run short of cooked meals.  This can happen for a variety of reasons, such as a sudden influx of prisoners, or your cooks becoming incapacitated.

* There should be a spare room in your base with a couple of beds.  This can be used as an overflow bedroom or makeshift prison.  At the bare minimum you should have a couple of bedrolls in storage.  They are very quick to craft, the leather quality does not matter, and they are useful for caravans as well.

 

[[File:Sterile room compact.png|thumb|right|Space efficient clean room with kitchen stove, 8 hospital beds with vitals monitor and TVs, and two hi-tech research benches with multi-analyzer.  The room is (rated) beautiful and well lit.  Note that two TV sets are needed to cover all beds.  The freezer is accessible while minimizing foot traffic in the clean room.  This structure should be at the edge of the base.]]

 

There are three structures that benefit from room cleanliness: the kitchen stove, the research bench and hospital beds.  It is therefore economical to place these buildings into a room with [[sterile tile]]s.  The research benches can be torn down for the end-game and replaced with more hospital beds.

 

 

The "clean room design" is also efficient logistically, because both the hospital and the kitchen (with adjacent freezer) are well placed near your base's front door, easily accessible from both the inside and the outside. Food supplies need to be carried in, and injured colonists require good access to the hospital when returning from the field.  Having the kitchen inside the hospital makes feeding patients quick and easy.

 

 

(It is, of course, perfectly acceptable to separating out the kitchen, labs or hospital into their own rooms, if you have secured the space and resources.)

Psychoid can he harvested and made into drugs, which can sell for a lot. Be careful with drugs as colonists with the [[chemical interest]] or [[chemical fascination|fascination]] traits will binge on drugs if given access to them.

The best way to obtain components is by trading. Call friendly factions to send bulk goods traders, which always sell components. As well, they can buy a lot of your raw materials. Other traders can also sell components at an increased price.

Even after you've researched it, making them at the [[fabrication bench]] is not a good source as it is cost and labor intensive (25 steel and 134 work required for just 1 component). It does train your craftsmen very fast, however, you can consider making some for practice while solving your shortage at the same time.

Be careful with drugs, especially when you have colonists with the [[chemical interest]] or [[chemical fascination|fascination]] traits; you will have to keep drugs away from them, or they will binge on them and get addicted or die from [[overdose]].

 

[[Neutroamine]] can only be purchased from traders, and is needed to make [[medicine]], [[penoxycyline]] and [[wake-up]]. Consider carefully how much of each drug you will need when deciding how to use this resource.

Due to the minimum tolerance to addict, beer can be safely consumed once every 1 day without risking addiction, so long as the pawn has a body size of 1 or higher and their tolerance is not already elevated before starting the schedule. Alternatively if more is drastic intervention is required, a body size 1 human starting from 0% tolerance can drink 15 beers over any time period without risk of addiction. Note however that at least one day without beer is required before the 1/day schedule can be restarted and 15 full days of abstinence is required to reset to 0% tolerance and allow this strategy to be used again.

A type of drug made from the leaves of the [[psychoid plant]].  

Crashlanded starts can research psychoid brewing to make [[psychite tea]]. Tribal colonies start the game with this research. Psychite tea has the same addiction chance as beer and smokeleaf but does not slow movement or reduce consciousness.

Refined psychoid comes in 2 variants: [[flake]] and [[yayo]]. While they provide a good buff to both mood and stats, they are extremely addictive. Besides this, they are highly profitable. Being very light, you can carry lots on a single caravan trip, and net you a ton of silver in return.

A performance-enhancing mechanite concoction. It provides good functional buffs, and given enough time can heal old scars (including dreaded brain injuries) but doesn't help at mood at all. It cannot be made and must be bought at traders or found occasionally.

While in early game you may need to scavenge what equipment you could, or craft some very rudimentary equipment such as [[tribalwear]] or [[knife|knives]]. Now that you're in midgame, however, you should have the ability to manufacture your own equipment. Good equipment means that you stand a chance against raiders, even when outnumbered.

You should have a [[fueled smithy]] or an [[electric smithy]] to craft melee weapons, [[electric tailor bench]] for sewing clothes (faster than a [[hand tailor bench]]), and a [[machining table]] for armor and guns.

For your soldiers, you should always have [[flak vest]]s and [[flak helmet]]s. Just this can protect against a large part of the damage taken. If you're short on materials you can always use the [[simple helmet]], which is significantly cheaper though providing less protection.<br>

**By default, jackets and dusters aren't allowed; you should allow them as they can provide extra protection on top of your flak vests.

*[[Bolt-action rifle]]s are good for long-ranged combat in midgame. [[Sniper rifle]]s are more niche due to their low DPS but longer range.

*[[LMG]]s can mow down clustered targets at medium range. Best served in the hands of mid-skilled colonists.

*[[Chain shotgun]]s are not an effective weapon choice on its own due to their horribly short range. However, their high damage output makes them excellent against grouped targets. If you do not have many guns, you can use them to fend off melee warriors who come uncomfortably close to your defenses, but you will have more operational flexibility with other weapons.

*[[Minigun]]s excel at point-blank destruction or crowd control.

*[[Machine pistol]]s are quite common and an excellent choice for training poorly skilled shooters; while their range is poor, they are more accurate, and any friendly fire will be less damaging.

*[[Mace]]s are cheaper and deal blunt damage. It's also more effective at fighting armored enemies as most armor protect poorly against blunt trauma.

All bionics have 125% efficiency, making them superior to normal parts.

[[Bionic leg]]s give +12.5% moving; two of them means a total of 125% moving. Good for caravaneers, kiters, first respondents or anyone who needs to move fast.<br>

[[Bionic arm]]s give +12.5% bonus to manipulation; they are good at a large variety of tasks, from shooting to mining to crafting. If you are relying on your colonists to produce components and advanced components, give these crafters bionic arms to speed up their work so that you can produce more bionics.<br>

[[Bionic eye]]s give +12.5% on average to sight; it's the only eye replacement so far, meaning you will have to depend on it to replace colonists' missing or damaged eyes. Sight isn't very important for most tasks, with bonuses from sight capping at 100% sight for most tasks (except medicinal or combat tasks), meaning that enhanced sight is obsolete in many cases. Shooting however relies greatly on sight, so you may consider giving your gunners (especially snipers or marksmen) bionic eye replacements before they actually need them. Melee also depends on sight but the impact isn't so large.

[[Power claw]]s are a good hand replacement for front-line combatants. It incurs a small manipulation penalty, but greatly increases unarmed damage, to the point where it can even rival a normal or good plasteel [[longsword]].

You can buy natural organ replacements from traders, or brutally harvest them from colonists and prisoners. Harvesting them gives a mood penalty for the whole colony (except your trusty [[psychopath]] colonists), a dire mood debuff of -30 to the victim, and also affects Factions relations between yours and the one the victim belongs to. So think twice before harvesting organs from anyone. Never harvest from colonists unless in the direst of situations.

As of 1.0 the only organ replacements are the [[bionic heart]] and [[bionic stomach]], though mods exist to add more bionic organs in-game.

Kiting is the method of using a colonist as bait for an attacker to run towards, and a second colonist taking shots off while the attacker is focused on the first. It does not work if the raider has a shield belt that protects them from bullets. Note: Colonists incapable of violence can still act as bait.

Caravans are somewhat slow, taking days, or sometimes seasons to reach their destination; remember to pack enough food that does not rot easily. Animals that can eat grass/ other plants do not need food when grazing is available, but all others do. You can speed it up by having faster colonists or animals such as [[horse]]s in the caravan, this brings up the average speed of the caravan allowing it to travel faster.

However, it's also expensive; each pod costs 80 [[steel]] and 1 [[component]], in addition to the [[chemfuel]] required to power it. It also requires research before it becomes buildable. [[Chemfuel]] can be produced by researching Refining, allowing the construction of a Refinery that refines chemfuel using wood or organic matter.

Unfortunately, there's no way to navigate over the deep sea. If you happened to have chosen your starting point on an island (intentionally or not), the only way to get to the mainland is by launching transport pods. You will need to construct additional transport pods in order to return; this can be done with [[steel]] mined on site if you send [[chemfuel]] for the return trip.