All time high: Our best colonies after finished milestones

[mizushimo]

I'm not great at this game but I love playing:
This is India/Psychologist/no food shipments/Power of Three. Not sure the coordinates (the map has a lot of meteor showers but no other disasters.)

 

[Jean le Chauve]

In progress : 815%
Paradox Interactive, Futurist, 44N 112W, Wildfire
Rules : Hunger, inflation, The Last Ark, Amateurs, Winter is coming, Armageddon
Hardest moment at sol 12 : 3 meteor hits on the dome, and others on buildings. This is why I only launched passengers at sol 39.
All time :Hit by 4 of 5 meteor strikes

Spoiler

A view of sol 117 : 83 colonists, 12 drones, 0 drone hub.

Spoiler

2 best breakthroughs : superior pipes at position 4 and frictionless composites postion 6.
Let's Play (French) in progress :

 

[mizushimo]

I chose Europe/Futurist/St Elmo's fire. It always takes me forever to get 40% of my workers into workshops and still produce enough resources for the colony.
7s 87e

 

[Tyrberg]

I must admit I in many ways have given up on updating here.
Even if it´s interesting to see that none of the new entries are close to the scores before the first dlc. Evaluation does really matter a lot!
I have my own theory on how to break a new score (that does in no way include maximum difficulty)- even if it will be very hard to take the record.

Either way - do not give up on the high scores. I´m looking to make a more automatic system to update the ATH - and ad another page to www.survivingmarsmaps.com

That way it will be possible to keep the scores there.
The big hindrance is the heat here in Sweden -not much time to do anything else than sweat right now.
Promise to announce it when it arrives (and to update all scores with you who have posted games, later this week)

edit: And mizushimo - that was a rather good score with europe - there evaluation is really hard to make anything serious with.

 

[xMer]

I have also idea how to go for top score. Have anyone found higher difficulty location than 44N112W with custom rules for max disasters?

 

[Tyrberg]

I have also idea how to go for top score. Have anyone found higher difficulty location than 44N112W with custom rules for max disasters?

It is the only mountainous map with 4 resources, so it probably is the hardest one. There are some more at 5 resources. But to get more of the thing that matters - metal (rare metals) - you need to have 8 resources in total. 17 maps with 3 metal and max 8 resoures total on mountainous maps. May be better in the end - depending on how the maps look. I think I will choose one of them.

Now I do become interested in starting a game - but I need to do some work first (and taking care of kids)

 

[xMer]

yeah. with new difficulty options map is not primary source of score.
for population evaluation i consider looking into flat area
for exports evaluation 44N 112W is fine

 

[Jean le Chauve]

The difficulty percentage doesn't match the real difficulty especially the new rule chaos theory.
And what can be said of a score of 22,000,000 for the evaluation of rare metals compared to other milestones?
And nothing that rewards the fact of not having renegades, accidental deaths, buying the least resources on Earth, never having a breakdown that impact the colonists.
Not rewarding being a good administrator concerned with material and human resources, but rewarding overproduction and looting of resources makes me think of real life on Earth ;-)

 

[xMer]

Yeah Chaos Theory is rather making pursueing for top scores much easier rather than harder. As top score is not average situation, but rather very favourable one. I'd say that most of top score games would have space elevator as one of first techs.

However games that occupy top of score list also had very high score from non-evaluation sources so even if management was rewarded instead then that games still would be on top of score list

 

[Jean le Chauve]

Ho, have you seen that the game rule "endless supply" cost only 25% difficulty!!! Great balance lol.

 

[xMer]

definitely way that modifiers are counted is wrong.
maybe if they were multiplicative it would be better and endless supply should be -90% score. i wonder how fast i manage to build space elevator (or other wonder)

 

[Marcky]

147,042 on my first completed run @ 440% difficulty, at 5S 111E - good cluster of resources together and many anomalies tightly grouped as well. Maxed out all disasters (boy was that a pain in the ass) but I figured that was the most manageable way to boost difficulty. As a European Futurist, my early strategy was to spend 4 mil on research boosts right from the start, and bring only a fuel pre-fab, and go straight for a water extractor. At no point did I ever have a water vaporator.

Didn't get any really useful tech at the right time (service bots came after I built my Omega Telescope, by when I had more than enough workers in the colony); though that core water came in handy, helped me sustain all those domes just on one deep water node (500k water) with 3 extractors working on it simultaneously. 2 science institutes up before I went for all the factories. I cherry-picked my colonists to ensure that they all had the same traits and as few as possible interests that I couldn't fulfill early on. I was hoping to rush to a medium dome but it didn't turn up early enough on the tech tree so I went for a barrel dome. The lack of a spire was a good price to pay for the amount of real estate that I needed to get things sustainable on just single "Low" quality water node (didn't wanna drain it too quickly anyway, the next water node required me to expand).

Topped up with 2 full rockets of advanced materials before I started producing my own, with another couple of top-offs after because production wasn't meeting demand just yet. Better breakthroughs would've helped the score, but I guess this'll do for my first completed run.

 

[Tyrberg]

Ho, have you seen that the game rule "endless supply" cost only 25% difficulty!!! Great balance lol.

Oh yes, adding to that you "get" more difficulty by both "no food import" and "inflation" separately.

I had 1,3 k rare saved when my space elevator was finished ~sol 52 yesterday.
And this is my first game in two months, so I'm a bit rusty. Next gamf I will save more and make better placements of depots making saving more possible.

I have a high chance on a new record - if I don't I do really bad as I have so much easier conditions AND higher difficulty now.

Edit: read the old record again, 22000 rares is much.. With my higher difficulty I need around 13000. I ain't sure it exists so much without deep core metals. ~3000 from unlimited and then I can see around 6000, which make me to number more 2.

Oh well, will run to the end and then make a new round to get correct deep core metals

 

[JugglerX]

I've been following this thread for awhile, and after several attempts have a great high score.

High Score: 2,948,751
Sponsor: Blue Sun
Commander Profile: Custom (so I could select breakthroughs, more on this below)
Map: 44N112W
Mystery: Dredger
Rules: Hunger, Rebel Yell, Chaos Theory, Winter is coming, Armageddon, Dust in the wind, Twister
Difficulty: 545%
Martian Copyrights: researched 1 time only
Endless Supply: no
Chaos Theory: yes

On Custom Commander Profile
Now as you can see I used a custom commander profile. Let me explain. If you actually want to compete for against the existing high score you need to export minerals and you need to roll certain breakthroughs. I spent many hours (and days) re-rolling for the perfect sequence of breakthroughs but it did not happen and I eventually realized how silly it was to spend all this time re-rolling. So I made the custom profile and got on with the game. My profile simply made the breakthroughs available in an order of my choosing. They still needed to be researched. The first breakthrough starts at 1000, and they double in cost each time, quickly becoming 80,000 research points.

So you can dismiss this high score submission if you like, or maybe classify it under "custom command profile" but I actually think allowing players to choose the type and order of their breakthroughs could be quite invigorating for the challenge. I've already thought of quite a few new strategies that could top this score if I change my initial breakthrough order.

On Chaos Theory
I haven't seen anyone say it's illegal to use, but it's pretty broken. I'd suggest marking any score submissions that use it. And ultimately all it does is introduce a new re-roll vector to be competitive, so now you gotta re-roll breakthroughs and your chaos tech tree

Playthrough
I rolled early space elevator and trilobite scrubbers on chaos theory. Combined with the 1,2 slot Extractor AI & Core rare minerals I was able to setup efficient rare earth production extremely early. This setup an early space elevator which was complete around Sol 25. After this I expanded and mined all the rare core earth deposits (3) on the map. Most difficult problem was exporting all the rare earth, even with space elevator. The dredgers mystery was probably a bad choice as it shuts down the space elevator (disables the resupply tab) for about 10 sols, which really creates a backlog of rare earths that you can never ship.

 

[mizushimo]

I know this is supposed to be a high score thread, but I think it's fun to read about people's games and how they arrived at their final score. This is the only game sharing thread I've seen.

Last Playthrough:
Russia/Oligarch/Dredgers
Map: 22N 170W

This map kicked my ass, much more difficult then my Europe playthrough. Duststorms and Coldwaves were constant, I kept having to chase metals and water all around the map to keep up with demand and I spent way too much money on moisture vaporators making up the difference. It was a real struggle. I failed this map once before with the same setup, except I had 'Rebel Yell' invoked and never managed to overcome that resource drain.

edit: And mizushimo - that was a rather good score with europe - there evaluation is really hard to make anything serious with.

Thanks! I rolled the Superconducting Computing as my first breakthrough, I think that had something to do with it .

 

[Tyrberg]

I know this is supposed to be a high score thread, but I think it's fun to read about people's games and how they arrived at their final score. This is the only game sharing thread I've seen.

Stories have been allowed during the entire thread.
2 of the 6 things in about how to participate that I posted are about stories =)
(but maybe not a full AAR, link thoose)

How to participate
You do post in this thread and I will add your colony to the ATH as soon as possible.
In your post you include the following:

• preferably a nice screenshot of your colony
• I you like - a short story of your colony
• Screenshot of your Milestones
• Missioninformation, as in Difficulty, Sponsor, Commander, Location and mystery
  
• Used mods
• Which patch you have played on (not very interesting now, but maybe in the future)

So you can dismiss this high score submission if you like, or maybe classify it under "custom command profile" but I actually think allowing players to choose the type and order of their breakthroughs could be quite invigorating for the challenge. I've already thought of quite a few new strategies that could top this score if I change my initial breakthrough order.

Even if a fully understand why you made a new sponsor I think we have to dismiss the score as a ATH-score. But nice to see it.
After having spent 1-2 h (at least) myself to hunt for a game including "deep rare metals" I´m a bit positive to include "official ATH-sponsors".
Without "Deep rare metals" it´s impossible to hunt for a (extremly) high Russia score.
So maybe a Russia + "randomly placed deep rare breakthrough"?
Should be something similary important to The Ark also, but haven´t those on my mind now.

We can think about how to continue.

 

[xMer]

yeah there are some breakthroughs that are very important for Ark:
Top tier:
-Dome Streamlining/neo-concrete - cost of domes is majority of your construction costs(both resource and required drone workforce)
-superior cables - you need pre-expand your colony and gather resource in distant deposits to prepare foundation for domes. also miles of cables consume a lot of metal

Second tier:
- Forever Young - eliminate issue of non-productive/non-breeding seniors
- autonomous hubs/wireless power - needed to handle your huge army of drones. auto-hubs are much better early and wireless power is much better late game
- Safe Mode - it is very likely that part of your evergrowing population would suffer lack of services, starvation, disasters or just extended heavy workload.
- Hull Polarization - as your colony grow maintenence will become major sink of resources.
- Cloning - very good early source of extra population

 

[Tyrberg]

To me actually only three of your techs get into my list for the Ark.

Everything that is about maintenance and construction do I sort as "solved" when I use the unlimited depot, something that I think is mandatory in a ATH-run.
Space elevator and Mohole should be possible to have in sol 50-70 depending on priorities. Mohole is probably more important than space elevator, in my Russia-runs metal have been the low point right before Mohole at sol 50-60.

I also think the game will end at sol 100 as all goals should be reached by then, as population is the only thing you need.
If I was to make a "the Ark - ATH version" I probably would like to put in tier 1 and 2. If I would choose three techs I would put in Cloning.

That does for me give:
Top tier
Forever young - breeding seniors. If I choose one tech it´s this one as it gives so much more growth potential from the early arrivals.

Tier two
Project Phoenix - make old colonists become rebirthed fuelling even more growth.

Tier 3 - producing your own colonists
Cloning - extra good as clones may breed on themselves
Positronic man (even better combined with printed electronics - if that tech works for everything in drone assembler, haven´t tested).

Tier 4 - everything raising sanity and morale and therefore comfort
Safe mode - Sanity
inspiring architecture - morale
Neural Empathy - morale
Good Vibrations - sanity
Interplanetary Learning - learning out Hippie may give children higher comfort via parks which gives more children
Rapid sleep - sanity and more awake time to full fill needs.

 

[Tyrberg]

Score 4,778,088
Russia, 680%
Rocket scientist as comander
Game rules: Endless supply, All harder threats, Inflation,Amateurs, Rebell Yell
Coordinates: 40N, 114W
mods: cemtary - forgot to take it away. It ain´t used and haven´t effected the game in any way.

My big goal was getting at least 26k exported rare metals - to beat the old record and to that adding the rearre metal from the endless supply. I happily I can say I succeded

If you like to read my ~40 picture long AAR -go here
Savegames are attached, both the finished at sol 103 and one for sol 100 - if you like to land 80 rockets by yourself.

 

[mizushimo]

Tyberg, I think we were using the same map
13S 60W, India/Doctor/Hunger/Spheres mystery

It's the first game I've played in a long time without the better migration mod, it was ok until late game when there were a bunch of unemployed unskilled workers taking up all the space in several domes and they just wouldn't move into the new dome I'd built for them with workshops. It could be that I didn't have enough shuttles, and I suppose it didn't help that one school dome was out in the middle of nowhere. I had about 600 colonists on evaluation day. The Spheres mystery was the biggest challenge in this playthrough, it's definitely an actual threat to colony, there's a very real chance that people will die and also colony-wide blackouts.

I wish there were scenarios or extra rules that were available to use. Like, if you lost points for every colonist who died unnaturally or went home. Or say, get a certain percentage of your colonists at 80% comfort by x number of sols (it would begin when you reached a certain population benchmark).