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Grab your steam engines and get ready to trek into the wild unknown.Steamworld Buildhas you operating a new colony of Steambots that have relocated in search of a new home. The end goal: build a rocket to space.
Sending a bunch of rootin', shootin' howdy hollerin' country robots to space isn’t easy. You’ll need to not only dig deep below the earth to uncover the rocket parts but also balance the economics and resources of above-ground living. Here are some of the best tips for ensuring that your settlement not only survives, but that it thrives in the wild west.
Select The Metal Tumbleweeds
Throughout the overworld, you’ll seetumbleweeds made of scrap iron. Select them to make them explode,granting you a small bonus.
In the early game, they’ll most likely give you a small money boost. But as you progress and gain access to moretypes of resources, you’ll also be granted a small number of those instead.
If you haven’t seen any in a while, tryskimming the mapandchecking the edges. The tumbleweeds will sometimes get stuck on a ledge or wall.
Almost Everything Is “Set And Forget”
One way that Steamworld Build differentiates itself from other city builders is how self-sustaining everything is.Resource structures like Foresters and Ironium Deposits will never run out, resource deliveries are automatic, and the population will rise to fit the residential limit.
Almost all buildings will only havetwo recurring costs: citizens and money. Citizens are taken from the available workforce, whether they’re Workers, Engineers, or so on. And while there is a recurring money cost to keep the building,the taxes gained from the workers needed to run the building will more than cover the cost.
One of the few ways to ‘lose’ steambot citizens is tobuild too many houses, to the point where a single resource isn’t enough to sustain all of them.
This can be resolved byincreasing production of the lacking item, but each residential requires so little of each resource thatit won’t be until mid to late game before you encounter this problem.
This remains true forunderground facilitiesas well. Lost a miner in battle?They’ll automatically be replaced, sustaining the total recruitment number that your quarter supports.
New Milestones Never Hurt
When youreach a new milestone, your steambots get pickier. Residential buildings will often require more to be considered 100 percent happy. Since setting up a new resource pipeline can be complicated,it’s easy to think you should hold off on reaching the next Milestone.
While residentials will require more resources to be happy,their total resident count and potential taxes gained will also rise accordingly. So, while they may no longer be at 100 percent, youwon’t actually experience a reduction in population or incomepurely by hitting a new milestone.
Sell Extra Materials, Don’t Pause Production
The buildings in Steamworld Build tend toproduce far more than you actually need.With each resource having its own inventory limit,any collected beyond that is essentially wasted. Sure, you could pause that building, coasting off your supply until you need to turn it back on again. But there’s a better option:sell it.
Once you unlock the train station, you cantrade your own resources for others at a set rate. With money always being an in-demand resource, you can set up recurring trades for materials you constantly find yourself full of.
The further into the game you get,lower-tier resources like Ironium and Scrap will become less in demand. Consider reevaluating which resources you could sell when you hit a new milestone.
Why You Shouldn’t Pause Buildings
Pausing a production or service building can be one way to stop the recurring cost and free up the bots that work it. This cancreate the illusion that you have more available bots than you have. When that resource runs out and you need more, activating it again might cause you toexceed your total population needs. That can slow down other, more important buildings.
Keeping it working.Selling the excess creates consistency in your population and puts extra coins in your pocket.
Buy The Resources You Lack
The train station is good for more than just selling extra dirty water. You canselect any resource you know about as the payment. Use this tosupplement resources you simply cannot get more of, like Plastishrooms.
You can spend thousands of dollars, commit more workers, and drop valuable resources on developing a new item pipeline to support being short one single moonshine, or you can have one or two imported via train. Itmight be more expensive in the long run, but it’ll keep your town running and happy while youwork out the details at your own pace.
If you’re already selling resources, you may simplify the process bytrading that resource directly for the one you need.
Build Another Warehouse To Fix Slow Delivery Times
The name Warehouse is slightly misleading. These buildings are where your bots will deliver resources to and from when keeping a production building running, but they don’t actually increase storage capacity.They just work as shortcuts to the Global Storage. It also providesa single steambot to make the deliveries.
Items are the only way toincrease your Global Storageor how many Steambots are on delivery duty for a single warehouse.
If you ever notice a production building has the “waiting for delivery” indicator,place another warehouse nearby. This will provide more delivery bots from a closer location.
Moving And Removing Buildings Is Free
Maybe you don’t want to build another warehouse. Then bring the production building closer to one you already have!
With a few exceptions, the move tool will let yourelocate any construction you’ve made. Best of all,it doesn’t cost anything. The only limitation is underground, where you will need amechanic to perform the construction action. Otherwise, it doesn’t cost a thing.
Sinceyou can move a residential building after upgrading it, you’re able to separate the worker, engineer, aristobot, and scientist service buildings into separate areas and just move their homes accordingly.
This is a great way toreorganize your entire townto suit your needs.
Refunding Instead
Anything to build can also berefunded using the Removal tool. Doing so will destroy the selected construction andissue a full refund of the resources and money spent making it. This provides the following potential options:
