What do you do in the first five minutes?

[undeadnightorc]

Does anyone have a preferred build order they rely on in the first few minutes of a new game?

In my first few games I used to cut down 1-2 trees then lay down the burner drill on a coal deposit right away. But recently I've been experimenting with having the drill placed on iron ore first and a stove next to it to immediately start smelting the ore. This gives me the all important metal needed to build the rest of the equipment faster. I don't worry about coal because I can use wood from the trees until I have coal drills created.

So typically my first minutes of a game go like this:

- create axe
- cut down 1-2 trees.
- lay down drill on iron ore. Use wood to fuel it.
- lay down oven in front of drill. Use wood to fuel it.
- cut down 1-2 trees.
- collect 5 stone
- continue fueling drill and oven with wood.
- build second drill when I have enough metal and stone.
- lay that drill on coal. Create chest with wood and place it in front of drill to collect coal.
- cut trees if necessary to continue fueling iron ore drill and stove. Gather stone while killing time. Need this for next drill and boilers later.
- Once coal drill is producing coal, use the coal to fuel itself, and every other equipment. No longer have to use wood fuel.
- Build copper drill and stove to smelt copper. When enough copper is melted this allows me to build a pump and I can proceed to build boilers and the steam engine and start the move towards electricity.

I never build a drill to mine stone until well after I've moved onto electrical equipment. I found that building one just for stone was a waste of time in the first few minutes. In total I need just 25 stone to build the first two stoves to smelt iron and copper, and to build 3 boilers.

Obviously the map can change each game and I have to make certain adjustments if certain resources are simply positioned strangely or too far. But on average this is the build order I pretty much use now when I start up my games.

I'm actually curious if someone has come up with the optimum build order for this game, one that is tried and tested. I googled around and didn't find anything, which is understandable as the game is fairly young and the player base is still small (but getting bigger!)

[Elfface]

That's pretty much how I work as well. I sometimes re-purpose my old burner-drills to digging up spare stone and getting a nice stash of bricks in preparation for making walls, but otherwise that's about identical.

My reasoning is, it's easy enough to clear a tree for some fuel which gets you metal, but manually digging metal is much slower.

[tralala]

One thing that bothers me is that one can't turn the burner-drills one creates in the beginning into something else and thus have those three stupid burner-drills forever in your inventory.
You can turn stone furnaces into boilers later on but those burner-drills...

I wonder what is more efficient, chopping trees or (manually) mining coal in terms of produced MJ/s.

[Tenebrous]

One thing that bothers me is that one can't turn the burner-drills one creates in the beginning into something else...

Yeah, a dissasembler would be great! Converts the inserted items back to their original iron plates / copper / stone etc.

[FishSandwich]

My first five minutes are filled with my typing into the console so I can skip the tedious start of this game..

[Zourin]

ESC -> Restart
repeat.

I have really bad luck with starting areas.

[Teurlinx]

Place miner on coal
Chop tree
Feed tree to miner
Loot coal 1 by 1
Replace miner on iron ore
Place furnace in front of miner
Collect iron plates

Rinse & repeat with stone & copper until enough has been made for a lab and 20x Science pack 1 to research automation
Then craft by hand an Assembler 1, Steam Engine, 1 set of electric poles and convert the furnace into a boiler.

--> rebind the 'craft x' keys to something I can't press and continue the game from there

[Teurlinx]

One thing that bothers me is that one can't turn the burner-drills one creates in the beginning into something else and thus have those three stupid burner-drills forever in your inventory.
You can turn stone furnaces into boilers later on but those burner-drills...

I wonder what is more efficient, chopping trees or (manually) mining coal in terms of produced MJ/s.

You get 5 wood at a time with chopping instead of 1 coal. And chopping is much faster than mining in the first place. Coal has 8 kJ while wood has 4 kJ. For manual purposes it's much better to stick with wood. The main downside is that it won't burn as long on a full stack though.

[muzzy]

Trees reduce pollution so I'm usually not gonna cut them down unless they're on top of resource patches and need to be eventually removed anyway.

My starting routine is usually:

1. Make axe
2. Place drill on coal and the furnace to act as its chest
3. Mine 2 coal to kickstart the drill
4. Go mine some iron and copper, chopping away dry trees if found (they don't help so much with pollution)
5. Keep bringing ores to the drill, repeat until there's enough coal and move drill+furnace on Iron
6. Mine enough stone to make two more furnaces to act as chests for iron and copper, keep one furnace to mine coal

Yaddayadda... Basically, I don't want any wooden chests ever. As an added bonus, using furnaces as chests forces electric miners to only mine at 50% speed which reduces pollution significantly and there won't be any accidental early biter aggros. Once I got these miners setup I run around in every direction scouting the area until I find all the nearby biter nests in every direction. If there are enough forests to eat pollution and biters aren't too near, I start scaling up, otherwise I keep scouting for remote mining locations where I can set up miner+furnace combos safely.

[GewaltSam]

One thing that bothers me is that one can't turn the burner-drills one creates in the beginning into something else and thus have those three stupid burner-drills forever in your inventory.

I put down a chest somewhere in my starting area where i drop all the old stuff I don't use anymore (small chests, small poles, burners and so on). Later on I add some chests for wood, stones and other leftovers i find in my inventory. The chests doesn't bother me, and the useless stuff is out of the way

[undeadnightorc]

No doubt, coal powered drills are useless after the early game but it's just one of those things that motivates you to advance. Think of the wooden tools in minecraft. I don't know anyone in their right mind who actually keeps those things after five minutes once you've upgraded to stone tools.

[SilverWarior]

First thing I do is go and explre nearby area. Why? First reason is to know the layour of te terrain so I can decide roughly where certain parts of my base will be build. Another reason is the fact that game sometimes generates a map where you are placed on one big island (size is proportional to starting area size setting) which is placed in the middle of the ocean. Not finding this out in the beginin could easily waste you one or two hours.
Later when I decide roughly where my base will be bild I preferably chose nearby iron field and put the burner dril on it and a wooden chest for it to fill. I alsp place stonbe furnace nearby.
Then I slowly start choping donw trees in the area where my base will be built. Of course I use starting reources for creating two pickaxes to speed the chopping down.
Later I use the newly smelted iron for making basic stuff neded for electricity. If needed I temporarily move my burner dril to copper field.
Based on how much wood did I chopped down I eve tend to use it in boilers. So it is quite often that I start mining coal when I already have belt line to drive that mined coal all the way to boilers.
Later I start handcrafting some tech flasks which I will use for early reserch.
The verry first thing I research is Logistics so I get acces to Splitters and Undergound bets. This gives me ability to split hte coal line which goes to my boilers in to two lines where second one will be feding my furnaces.
Next step is researching automation to get acces to Asembly machines.
After that it laregly varies on the current status and planned expansion.