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[evilnancyreagan]

[evilnancyreagan crashes into the congregation of spoiler discussion]

OY MY GOD, KITTENz!!!

[evilnancyreagan continues though and out of the room spewing mostly incoherent jibberish and something about building more huts and lumber mills]

[beorn080]

What do unicorns do, early on, aside from dumping them into unicorn pastures to get the catnip reduction? I managed to get two from early hunting, so that production has started, but I'm curious if the resource itself is useful aside from buying pastures.

[LordBucket]

don't actively pursue the technology that would allow me to get at the tech for mansions
which are, I would assume, a pretty good building for getting kittens?

At your stage of the game, mansions are "good" for an extra several kittens before you reset to get the extra paragon for your next run. If you're looking to "power up" and be stronger, mansions are not a good way to accomplish that. On a first reset, they're better thought of as a thing you pour your last bit of resources into before you reset.

Also, mansion construction requires titanium. If you don't have trade ships, and therefore haven't unlocked the zebra trade, and therefore don't have titanium, you won't even be able to build them.

Absolutely get a couple steamworks built and leave them running

Overnight, sure. While actively playing, remember that steamworks heavily reduce coal production. Be sure you're ok with that before you simply leave them on all the time.

If you just want the 10 compendiums for architecture, it's probably more time/resource efficient to simply switch your woodcutters to hunting for 20 minutes or so and send them out to gather fur every time. So long as your culture production is at a reasonable level, this is much faster than building up a bunch of steamworks and afking for days.

What do unicorns do

Unicorns do a great many very interesting things, including unlocking entirely new-

early on

...oh. Early on they give you a 10% happiness boost for having at least one and that's it. The unicorn "tech tree" is on the religion tab and is unlocked by building a ziggurat, which you can do any time by building a megalith from your workshop. But to actually benefit from pursuing that tech tree is a fairly long process and it's unlikely something you're going to be able to do on your first run or two.

1) It requires a lot of blueprints to build a useful number of ziggurats
2) Unicorn production benefits from relgion/paragon/faith, and if you haven't developed these to significant levels your production value will be too low to do very much with
3) Even if you're willing to put in the time, some of the things on the unicorn tree, like black pyramids, require paragon purchases. Which requires that you have reset at least once, and realistically a couple times.

So don't even worry about unicorns for your first couple runs. Build a ziggurat, look at it, get a feel for what it does, but unless you've unlocked black pyramids and are willing to spend enough blueprints to build a 25 or so ziggurats and then a bunch of sky palaces and do a fairly long run after having done all that, unicorns are unlikely to benefit you very much.

You can get some extra ivory by getting ivory towers, and that's a thing you can realistically do with unicorns on a first or second run. But I haven't generally found ivory to be in short supply, and there are probably better things to spend your blueprints on.

[LordBucket]

So on my current run I've been pushing trying to build a lunar outpost so I can spend some of my paragon for the first time.

Had ~40,000 steel laying around from all the time spent with most of my kittens working geology to get enough gold to do the thousands of trades needed for all the blueprints. 90+ coal/second with nothing else to spend it on and no particular use for the steel. Burned through all of it and still came up several tens of thousands short for the required number of oil wells to be able to even do the initial moon mission. A day later, and I'm now one oil well away from the 55,000 capacity required for a lunar base.

Anyone considering doing their first space venture, I recommend you wait until you have 200-250 paragon or so, for the storage capacity boost. It will shave a few oil wells off the number required. With 95 paragon, my last required oil well, #34, is going to take 5000 steel, plus 2500 gears. With 55 workshops and a factory, that's a little over 13,000 steel for one oil well. 250 paragon gives a 25% storage capacity increase. Which works out to 4 or 5 fewer oil wells. That's a lot of steel.

Also, remember that you can turn oil wells off. The oil shortage is completely a storage issue, not a generation issue. No need to build a dozen magnetos to keep them running all the time when you're only going to use the oil a couple times, and it will take days to get the capacity high enough for space missions anyway. Half a dozen powered oil wells will fill to capacity faster than you can get the required capacity.

So only one more oil well left, but now I'm looking at the uranium requirement. I'd thought it would only take 250 uranium to be converted into unobtainian for the metaphysics upgrae (the reason I'm trying to build the base in the first place) but apparently I missed the 500 required for the lunar outpost itself.

I presently have 118. With 25 tradeposts, each dragon trade gives me 1.203 uranium at a cost of 250 titanium. With 73 kitten geologists, I can get enough gold every year to trade for roughly 1600 titanium per winter.

So roughly 7.7 uranium per year. 65 years to get 500 uranium. Think I need more tradeposts.

If I were to do it again, I'd have reset another 1 or 2 times and had about 200-250 paragon before trying a space run. It would have doubled my gold generation, maybe even more depending on how faith worked out. It would reduce the steel requirement by tens of thousands because of need for fewer oil wells. And as it is, even once I have metaphysics, I'm only going to have enough paragon to be able to afford the first, maybe second upgrade anyway. Having more to spend after the difficult unlock would have been nice.

Also, in the time I've spent typing this I've build 6 new tradeposts, and they're only taking 2-3 minutes worth of gold each. If I spend another half hour doing that, it will probably shave thirty years off my uranium collection time.

So, yeah. Don't skimp on tradeposts when you go to space.

EDIT:
No, don't bother trading for all your uranium. Build accelerators. Totally worth the costs. But those also benefit from paragon, so waiting for 200-250 before your first space run is still probably not a bad idea.

[Empty]

So on my current run I've been pushing trying to build a lunar outpost so I can spend some of my paragon for the first time.

Had ~40,000 steel laying around from all the time spent with most of my kittens working geology to get enough gold to do the thousands of trades needed for all the blueprints. 90+ coal/second with nothing else to spend it on and no particular use for the steel. Burned through all of it and still came up several tens of thousands short for the required number of oil wells to be able to even do the initial moon mission. A day later, and I'm now one oil well away from the 55,000 capacity required for a lunar base.

Anyone considering doing their first space venture, I recommend you wait until you have 200-250 paragon or so, for the storage capacity boost. It will shave a few oil wells off the number required. With 95 paragon, my last required oil well, #34, is going to take 5000 steel, plus 2500 gears. With 55 workshops and a factory, that's a little over 13,000 steel for one oil well. 250 paragon gives a 25% storage capacity increase. Which works out to 4 or 5 fewer oil wells. That's a lot of steel.

Also, remember that you can turn oil wells off. The oil shortage is completely a storage issue, not a generation issue. No need to build a dozen magnetos to keep them running all the time when you're only going to use the oil a couple times, and it will take days to get the capacity high enough for space missions anyway. Half a dozen powered oil wells will fill to capacity faster than you can get the required capacity.

So only one more oil well left, but now I'm looking at the uranium requirement. I'd thought it would only take 250 uranium to be converted into unobtainian for the metaphysics upgrae (the reason I'm trying to build the base in the first place) but apparently I missed the 500 required for the lunar outpost itself.

I presently have 118. With 25 tradeposts, each dragon trade gives me 1.203 uranium at a cost of 250 titanium. With 73 kitten geologists, I can get enough gold every year to trade for roughly 1600 titanium per winter.

So roughly 7.7 uranium per year. 65 years to get 500 uranium. Think I need more tradeposts.

If I were to do it again, I'd have reset another 1 or 2 times and had about 200-250 paragon before trying a space run. It would have doubled my gold generation, maybe even more depending on how faith worked out. It would reduce the steel requirement by tens of thousands because of need for fewer oil wells. And as it is, even once I have metaphysics, I'm only going to have enough paragon to be able to afford the first, maybe second upgrade anyway. Having more to spend after the difficult unlock would have been nice.

Also, in the time I've spent typing this I've build 6 new tradeposts, and they're only taking 2-3 minutes worth of gold each. If I spend another half hour doing that, it will probably shave thirty years off my uranium collection time.

So, yeah. Don't skimp on tradeposts when you go to space.

EDIT:
No, don't bother trading for all your uranium. Build accelerators. Totally worth the costs. But those also benefit from paragon, so waiting for 200-250 before your first space run is still probably not a bad idea.

Tradeships affect trade titanium amount and chance. I don't know how many you have.

[LordBucket]

Tradeships affect trade titanium amount and chance. I don't know how many you have.

I have 398. 243 is the point at which you have 100% chance of titanium. Vastly diminished return after that.

[Toaster]

Huh.  I had ~500 when I reset shortly after Concrete Huts; I didn't have anything else to spend the star charts on and 50+ Workshops made them cheap.


81 paragon now after gaining 66 from said second reset; would it be terrible to reset again around the same point to just get a quick paragon boost?

[LordBucket]

Huh.  I had ~500 when I reset shortly after Concrete Huts; I didn't have anything else to spend the star charts on

You're probably doing more overnight afking than I am. I've never had that many trade ships, let alone as early as concrete huts. I usually stop at 243. Star charts have consistently been a bottleneck for me. Not only is it the trade ships, there are a couple other things that use large numbers of them. Geodesy, for example, requires 500.

81 paragon now after gaining 66 from said second reset; would it be terrible to reset again around the same point to just get a quick paragon boost?

I doubt you'd regret it. I'm only about one reset ahead of you, but having just pushed through to a lunar base with 95 paragon on this most recent run, if I were to do it over I think I'd have done an extra reset or two first. Just to give one example, my next oil well needs 2150 gears and 4300 steel. For one building. Needing 6.6% fewer of them and generating steel 66% faster would make a big difference.

[Toaster]

Yeah, I always have it on; coming back to a pile of beams and slabs helps push a few extra buildings and ships.  Similarly, 40 Observatories makes star charts a lot easier to grind.


Probably will go for the quick fix again; it'll charge up Apocrypha some more as well.

[sneakey pete]

I'm at a bit of a crossroads with my first run throuhg. at 50 kittens and just researched navigation, but now finding i have very little wood and i'm unsure what direction to push now. More observatories, harbours (storage) houses or push to build trade ships. Issue i have is that I can't let the game idle the game much at all, only really have it open for about 4hours a day, so not sure which to push first over the next few weeks.

[Sappho]

Well, I'm trying to get away from idle games, but I have to say I like that I can have this open at work and no one notices it's not work. Seems to help keep my brain balanced so I don't get overloaded or burnt out doing my job, since I can interrupt my work every few minutes, just for a few seconds, to check on my little stoned kitties and maybe build them a new mine or something.

However, I don't think I'll be following this thread. After a cursory glance through some of the pages, I've realized that for me, looking at how other people have maximized efficiency and broken the system to make progress the fastest just absolutely ruins it for me. The whole point is to play around, find out what will happen, try to figure it out myself... When I see these pages full of math and everything broken down the way you guys have it, it sucks all the pleasure out of it for me. If there's a single "right" way to get to the "end", and I can read it off a web page and just go clicky-click and make it happen, then... what's the point? There's no skill or intelligence involved, and therefore no psychological reward whatsoever from progress. It just becomes another "watch the numbers go up as fast as possible" simulator. At least when I don't know what's going to happen or what the most efficient way to go is, I can get the joy of discovery and figuring things out. I can see how the people who are actually doing the math and figuring this stuff out might get enjoyment and a sense of accomplishment from that, but people who are just reading the "best way" and implementing it... Is that actually fun for anyone?

I'm genuinely curious about whether other people actually get any enjoyment out of something like this when the already know the most efficient way to progress, or if it's just more of a skinner-box-style psychological compulsion to keep making the numbers go up regardless of whether anything positive comes out of it.

[LordBucket]

i have very little wood

For context, I routinely have half my kittens on woodcutting. It's just a thing you need a lot of and the numbers are weighted against it. Don't be afraid to invest heavily on wood. You won't regret it later as an obsolete resource.

observatories

harbours (storage) houses or push to build trade ships. Issue i have is that I can't let the game idle the game much

Each observatory gives a 1% chance to auto-collect a starchart from events when they happen, as well as a .2% increases to the chance for the events to happen at all. More will improve your odds. They are however, kind of expensive to be buying solely for that 1% and .2%. I'd recommend against trying to overcome fewer idling hours solely by building more observatories. It won't be enough. Again, an observatory is only 1% to autocollect, so if you have 20 observatories and let the game idle for 24 hours, you'll have the same number of starcharts as someone who only played 4.8 hours, but clicked every event that popped up. So idling is not essential for building sufficiently large trade ship fleets.

A reasonably usable number of star charts for tradeships can be procured through manual play simply by clicking on astronomical events when they happen. I played that way for my first two runs. It will be more effort than buying observatories and letting the game idle for days, but it can be done. Alternately you might consider setting up a macro program to auto-click the events for you so none are lost.

50 kittens and just researched navigation

So you're close to the point where you could consider a first reset.

I'd say you have some options. It wouldn't be the end of the world if you decided to simply put all your kittens on lumber/mining, and buy up all the huts and log cabins you reasonably can then reset. If you reset right now, that's 2 karma, worth an 11% happiness boost. Push to 60-61 or so, and 3 karma gives you a 12% happiness boost. The difference between where you are are 10-15 more kittens isn't very much. Punishing yourself to get that extra little bit might not be worth the effort.

If you continue much beyond where you are, you have to get to at least 71 kittens for it to make any sense. That's when you start earning paragon, and every single kitten above 70 will give you a meaningful power boost on your next run. You shouldn't need to invest deeply into harbors or trade ships to do that. If you can get to 80 kittens, that's 10 paragon and 6 karma, which gives you roughly +26% to kitten production, +1% storage capacity, and +2.5% to smelter/calciner output. That's a decent boost for your next run. Just get architecture, trade with zebras, build whatever harbors/trade ships you can, and mostly depend on warehouses for storage. Put most of your kittens onto lumber and mining, keep your smelters running to fuel trade, and aim for ballpark 80 kittens, more or less whatever is reasonably practical. Then reset.

The third option is to turn it into a deep run. Grind out the starcharts manually. If you go this route, it will probably take another week, but you should be able to get up into low 90s kittens with reasonable investment. 90 kittens gives you 7 karma and 20 paragon, worth ballpark +37% to kitten production, +2% storage capacity bonus and +5% to smelter/calciner output.

I'd suggest aiming for option 3, and if after a couple days it's too much effort, settle for option 2. If you get to the point where you're sitting around waiting for astronomical events for starcharts in order to progress...just reset. There's no point suffering through that. Sooner or later you'll want to reset either way. If it takes you one week to get your first 10 points of paragon in a run, and two weeks to get the next 10 paragon, it's better to reset after the first week and end up with 20 paragon in two week over two runs than to have 20 paragon after three weeks having done only one.

[FearfulJesuit]

Woops. Three of my kittens didn't survive the first winter...can one kitten alone reproduce by budding?

EDIT: Thankfully it looks like the answer is yes...it's Spring now- I only kept that kitten alive through Winter by fanatical clicking...

[a1s]

Woops. Three of my kittens didn't survive the first winter...can one kitten alone reproduce by budding?

"Kittens" are actually an all-male population of immortal furries. They reproduce by being expelled from not completely sick communities. Even people consplaying as zebras (50% of them are butts!) look down on you.

[LordBucket]

can one kitten alone reproduce by budding?

Kitten growth is exclusively migratory, not reproductive. Even if all your kittens die, migrants will be attracted to your village.