Five Ultimate Challenges, Kids

[EditorRUS]

Pacifism

Difficulty: HARD
Prerequisites: No peaceful mode, Starting Area must be medium or less.
Bans:
1. You may not destroy enemy spawners. To enforce this ban increase enemy spawner destruction evolution increase factor to a really high value so one destroyed spawner sets the evolution factor to 1.

Description:
Have fun cramming your factory in so little space. You can try to painfully expand your base by finding empty space between spawners.
Win the game like that.

Too easy? Try...
Using RSO. This mod loves to put enemy spawners near ore patches.
Using Rampant. It makes biters slightly less dumb.

Anti-consumerism

Difficulty: EXTRA

Prerequisites: Spawn yourself 10 steel chests when the game starts. This is your storage space. If possible, disable recipes for active provider and storage chests.

Bans:
1. You may not willingly destroy anything your factory has ever produced (to "trash" it) or willingly allow it to be destroyed. The only exception are blueprints.
2. You may not create additional storage UNLESS it is to be used as a buffer for production. Only the ten steel chests can be used just to store trash from your inventory. Those 10 chests are allowed to have multiple kinds of things in them.
3. Buffer storage may not be used for long-term storage. Each buffer chest is only allowed to have up to 2 kinds of things in it.
4. Circuit network may not be used to control production!
5. Storage chests are not allowed. Use passive providers only.
6. You may not drop items on the ground with the intention to get rid of them.
7. If anyone dies, they must retrieve their stuff from their corpse. Or use a mod that returns their stuff automatically.

Description:
Overproduction becomes a real issue for once! Here you have to be very cautious so as to not overproduce things. The storage space is limited.

Too easy? Try...
NO STORAGE FOR EXCESS AT ALL! Have fun managing this.

Adecostructiae

Difficulty: EXERCISE OF FRUSTRATION / LUNATIC

Prerequisites: None

Bans:
1. Simple and beautiful: you may not deconstruct buildings. Once they are there, they are there forever unless some enemy destroys them.
2. You may not willingly allow enemies to destroy your buildings.
3. You MAY upgrade your buildings. "Upgrade" is the action you do when you change building without deconstructing it.

Description:
Because there is not enough punishment for errors and it's too easy to rebuild parts of your factory. This challenge will force you to be insanely cautious when building something, or, in simple terms, always be cautious.
If you make a mistake, you have to work around it.

Too easy? Try...
Test building is only allowed within near vicinity of the main factory.
DON'T USE GHOSTS UNLESS YOU ORDER BOTS TO BUILD AN AREA

If you take this challenge and win the game, post the savegame here -- I am sure this factory is going to be beautiful to look at.

Economy savant

Difficulty: RUSSIAN ROULETTE
Unlike previous challenges there is an actual point of no return. You can only mess around for so long. This point of no return is also invisible and you won't be able to find that you are lacking resources until it's too late.

Prerequisites:
1. Create a custom map and add 4 ore patches: iron, copper, uranium, coal with around 1 million of each resource in each patch
OR
1. Create a row of chests and fill them with respective ore so that you have 1M of each kind of ore.

Bans:
1. You are only allowed to use ore from the aforementioned source. You may use any source of crude oil though.

Description:
What is the objective of economics as a scientific study? How to satisfy unlimited needs with only a limited amount of resources.
Here you become a savant of economics -- you must launch a rocket with only a limited amount of resources.

Too easy? Try...
Lower the amount of resources. Try different variations.

Angel of Death

Difficulty: Against the Rules / RAGE AGAINST TIME

Prerequisites: Disable recipes for turrets. No peaceful mode.

Bans:
1. You may not defend your base using turrets. Players must manually defend their base from enemies. Turret creep is not allowed.
2. If you play with mods, you are not allowed to build building that reduce pollution or evolution factor lest it'd be too easy.

Description:
Why would you care about pollution when you can simply slap some more turrets? Well, no more. While you still can use walls to protect your base, it is very difficult to be in few places at once.
Minimize pollution as much as possible so as to not agitate enemies.

Too easy? Try...
Playing this with Pacifism challenge.
Using Rampant.
Using Natural Evolution.

[ledow]

Well,

Just about every game I've ever played has been compliant with Adecostructiae - once something is in, I rarely move it except to upgrade (that's half the fun of a constricted base, to work out how to place things and work around obstacles), I do Economy savant by walling off a small area at the start of the game (default settings, then have to walk to a decent place - i.e. you can't go wandering looking for the biggest place because of the aliens - and then wall off enough resources to last until rocket without needing anything outside), and since 0.15 I've been Pacifism too because there's no need to kill the bases at all. I think the storage-box-one would be pretty easy too, I rarely have a ton of gear sitting around.

Mega-bases are boring to me, and all these massive belt-runs with perfect positioning. I wall off, passively defend (i.e. don't attack - under 0.14 you had to for purple science), and get to the rocket every time without wall-breaches. I could probably do the no-turret bit too but it would require a lot of stone to make thicker walls (I do two-thick but they can breach those quickly if you're not careful).

Once did it without solar, laser or logistics as well, and got all three achievements in the same game from the same mini-base.

It's a LOT harder on 0.15 to get all the sciences but I can get to the rocket and/or get to Kovarex without issue from such bases. And I'm currently on a mini-base (less than one radar screen in size) that has a 15-block-wide blueprinted wall of turrets / panels / roboports that reaches out in one direction to see how far I can get. So far it's about a ten-minute train journey to get to the end even with rocket fuel and no other trains on the line. I think, pretty much, it's so self-sustaining in fact that the only issue is how long it takes a robot to repair things at the other end of it, because it looks like it can just go on forever and defends itself. And all fed from a mini-base with whatever-resources happen to land on the line of the wall outside being brought back.

[EditorRUS]

(that's half the fun of a constricted base, to work out how to place things and work around obstacles)

So you have never misplaced an inserter or a belt then? Because this challenge prohibits any kind of deconstruction. There is a reason why it is an "exercise in frustration". This also makes walling off the base a risky endeavour since you cannot remove your wall.

I do Economy savant by walling off a small area at the start of the game (default settings, then have to walk to a decent place - i.e. you can't go wandering looking for the biggest place because of the aliens - and then wall off enough resources to last until rocket without needing anything outside)

Economy Savant is not exactly for players who already know the exact path to rocket and can win the game blindfolded, i.e. speedrunners and such. This one is oriented towards more average players.

I think the storage-box-one would be pretty easy too, I rarely have a ton of gear sitting around.

Good for you, but most bases I've seen nearly always have a main bus that is filled completely. Now this is not good, is it?

Since 0.15 I've been Pacifism too because there's no need to kill the bases at all

It's usually easier and cheaper to kill some nearby bases than keep gun turrets fed at all times.
Laser turrets are painful to create at first and they suck.

[Muche]

I think the storage-box-one would be pretty easy too, I rarely have a ton of gear sitting around.

Good for you, but most bases I've seen nearly always have a main bus that is filled completely. Now this is not good, is it?

Yeah, I have problem understanding what the challenge of Anti-consumerism scenario is as well. Is the intent that overproduction is bad (i.e. there is no free space to store it), or good (i.e. I don't need any storage, because production is greater than demand).
So far, the only items I discarded are pistol and lower armors. When I upgrade yellow belts to red ones and end up with surplus of yellow belts that I no longer need, I put them into production, which is deemed (allowed) buffer chest, not a long term storage chest. Stuff on the main bus is not in a chest as well. When I upgrade the defense to laser turrets, I can designate gun turrets as backup, not trash.

Also, Adecostructiae seems hard only in the very early game. After the transition to electricity, I can just use my prepared blueprints and build them manually. Or is the scenario meant to allow blueprints only after construction robotics is researched?

[ledow]

So you have never misplaced an inserter or a belt then? Because this challenge prohibits any kind of deconstruction. There is a reason why it is an "exercise in frustration". This also makes walling off the base a risky endeavour since you cannot remove your wall.

It doesn't say that I can't replace inserters or belts. It says buildings.

Economy Savant is not exactly for players who already know the exact path to rocket and can win the game blindfolded, i.e. speedrunners and such. This one is oriented towards more average players.

I do neither, and have been building mini-bases since I started (0.13 or thereabouts).

Apart from my first save (where I got spawned on a huge island and got to needing alien bases for science before I realised that I'd not seen an alien in the game but needed to have.

It's usually easier and cheaper to kill some nearby bases than keep gun turrets fed at all times.
Laser turrets are painful to create at first and they suck.

I have done mini-base without lasers at all. I generally only use gun turrets that are spaced so they shooting circles JUST overlap (so one turret could shoot at another turret if it was attacked). A single-sided yellow belt of bullets can be circulating around a map-size screen of a base before you've even finished walling off, and will be good enough to keep your turrets supplied right up until the aliens are a serious threat (when you can then dot a laser or two in there if you want, or if you're playing without lasers, you just lay down more gun turrets - I've never even needed a second row).

People go too large, too mad on pollution, rather than wall off, keep it small, and that keeps most aliens apart from the occasional wanderers at bay while you get to rocket without a breach. I'd argue this is probably EASIER than any kind of standard base trying to expand itself at all.

Some of those challenges just aren't difficult at all, so long as you're not rushing for an 8-hour rocket or whatever (I think my quickest is 16 hours or so and I never try to make it any quicker).

[BlakeMW]

At first I thought Angel of Death would be hard.. then I remember most people don't play on Deathworlds and it's already my standard way of playing on non-Deathworld. Starting area nests can usually be wiped out with SMG (or Car) and grenades. Once you have poison capsules and the Tank it's all over for the biters. The most important thing would be beeling construction robots because it's so frustrating to have no ghosts of destroyed buildings - inevitably re-expansions will manage to send the odd attack party, life gets 1000% better with construction robots.

[mrvn]

Anti-consumerism is a joke. That's how you normally play the game.

If you don't go crazy producing soon to be obsolete things then you will never ever fill up 10 steel chests with useless items even if you put them in chests. You get a stupid pistol and maybe some armor that is useless. So that's 3 or 4 stacks taken in one wooden chest. Other than that you have:

Some furnaces - use them to build boilers or just leave them be They might be slower than steel furnaces but so what.
Burner miner and burner inserter - I tend to use them for coal. You don't need that much coal so speed isn't an issue and they work even in a blackout. Mid/late game they can be suplemented with electric drills. But no reason to remove them.

So really, what do you need storage space for?

[PunkSkeleton]

Anti-consumerism is a joke. That's how you normally play the game.

If you don't go crazy producing soon to be obsolete things then you will never ever fill up 10 steel chests with useless items even if you put them in chests. You get a stupid pistol and maybe some armor that is useless. So that's 3 or 4 stacks taken in one wooden chest. Other than that you have:

Some furnaces - use them to build boilers or just leave them be They might be slower than steel furnaces but so what.
Burner miner and burner inserter - I tend to use them for coal. You don't need that much coal so speed isn't an issue and they work even in a blackout. Mid/late game they can be suplemented with electric drills. But no reason to remove them.

So really, what do you need storage space for?

Exactly. I did win a game without using extra storage at all. You don't do such things when you're playing in a speed run fashion. I also have 60+h Death World game and I use storage chests for uranium isotopes and excess wood only. But this is a non-existent problem when you are just trying to win the game - burn wood in furnaces and boilers and don't use nuclear power. It is way faster to do it without electric furnaces and nuclear power.

[Hellatze]

Sounds boring. When i paly a game, i didn't take people suggestion for challanges.


Even if you did that what do you get ?

[Strategic Sage]

You get the satisfaction of having completed the challenge. People play games for different reasons. Some people like 'challenges' or 'house rules' to spice things up and not make every playthrough the same.