It's a little unfortunate that some challenges go anywhere from impossible to easy depending on the RNG, because ingredients.
Yeah I feel "reroll starts" gonna be a big thing for the last challenges, at least to get an easy and profitable starting drug (no side effects) and an easy path to the objective. I found out it's not completely random, e.g. it won't make you sell tons of pain medication, but hide the ingredient behind "desert location" at easier levels, there must be some kind of requirements from the senarios to follow.
I've only beaten the first 4 columns of challenge (without even noticing the parcel buy bug, I though 30+k to expand was normal at medium
), and the only one that I finished closer than 75% of the "master" deadline was because the research (started ASAP) in order to get the good machine and unlock the drug finished when there was only 9 months left. I had to prepare sub-optimal lines and convert 'em all while paused to allow me a good safety margin. (btw discovered centrifuge takes 3 turns... had to double some lines)
One easy method for earlier challenges (at least) is to invest heavily in explorers (4-6) and scientists (4-6) to unlock "useful" things, and buy a lot of parcels to have cheap-simple drug lines (take loans in necessary)
A little evaporator/dissolver ---> pill maker x2 time 10 will feed you enough to sustain your heavy crew and it's easy to convert to other cheap drugs in the short time.
I think what I hate the more about the game is lack of
INFORMATION. Can't see what process my final drug took (eg ingredient ---> condenser ---> condenser ---> UV ---> pill maker ---> out) which would be super useful when replicating a line or part of a line in a totally different floor constraint. And even in the same constraints, no copy-pasta?
There's no way to know to concentration values of a tier 2 or more drug before making it, that I can understand the "discovery" aspect, on the other hand the information isn't remembered once you make the molecule. The only ways I've found was to either make a little fake production line, so it would be saved under my corporates drugs, or let the sample sit on a lone belt.
The fact you have to actually WAIT for the drug to be processed to know what would be the result at X point of your production line is also really bad IMHO. Yes you can calculate it in your head or take not if you wanna be efficient (aka not wasting $) but it's tedious, and nil impossible for the 1st batch going through the mixer/centrifuge.
The other big negative point is the lack of
HOTKEYS. Seriously I can't press space to pause? I have to click the menu twice to change from a dissolver to a condenser? They recently added Q and E to rotate stuff (surely after complains from laptop users
), so I hope they hotkey everything soon and that we'll be able to reconfigure it.
Belts are a pain to make work properly, and sometime medication stop moving in the good direction because there's a T junction leading nowhere, and there's a weird sequencer bug that makes the throughput of 2 parallel pill maker 24/month instead of 30/month, which is worse with 3turn machines, but overall very few bugs, just UI concerns and maybe balance issues. I read they will add belt crossing soon, so it should be easier to use a mixer with a good throughput.
There's also a small bug where after an hour or so playing I have to click twice or more instead of once to select things, even the menus. It makes moving stuff near impossible.
But I play on Linux via wine, so it might be only a wine bug.
Overall I'm hooked, but not as much as I was with spacechem, but will finish all scenarios before jumping on TIS-100.
Author
Topic: Big Pharma-Spacechem for Viagra (Read 10456 times)