Summary
- Start with solar panels and batteries in The Crust for power.
- Charing stations are crucial to keep construction drones active.
- Construct an elevator to move between surface and subterranean modes.
The Crust is a colony-building game, with certain aspects of factory simulation and management games added. Set on the moon, the player must start with just a handful of construction drones, and then mine and harvest the raw resources they need to set up a full moon base.
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When starting a new game of The Crust in sandbox mode, there are certain structures that a player needs to build first. The general progression starts with power generation and storage, before moving on to setting up the infrastructure needed to mine ore. Finally, basic factories need to be built to process the raw ore into materials such as steel and smart concrete.
7 Solar Panels
Basic Power Generation
- They only work at night.
- Better options later in the game.
Power is a natural bottleneck in The Crust. Everything requires electricity to run, including mining and construction drones. At the start of the game, the only power generation option that a player has, is the small solar panel.
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It is a good idea to start off by building around 5 of these small solar panels. Once they are constructed, they need to be connected in series, and then connected to a battery bank. As in the real world, solar panels only produce power at night, so the batteries are a crucial aspect of a moon base.
6 Batteries
Charged In The Day Expended At Night
- Used to store electricity.
- Don’t forget to wire them up.
Starting a new game of The Crust means only having access to small batteries, with large ones being unlocked later in the game via research. As the player can only construct small solar panels at this stage, they need a decently sized battery bank to see them through the night on the moon.
A good rule of thumb in the early game, is one small battery for each small solar panel. The battery bank should be connected in series, and then the solar panels wired into the first battery in the series. Power is taken out of the opposite end of the battery bank in this simulation game.
5 Charging Station
For Recharging Construction And Mining Drones
- Don’t let drones run empty.
- Should be linked to batteries.
Everything needs electricity in The Crust. Even construction drones. When the drones are initially deployed, they have a full charge. This first charge is enough to build some small solar panels and a few batteries. However, if the player forgets that drones need recharging, they might go empty.
What this would mean, is that the player is then stuck, as their construction drones don’t have enough power left to build the charging station needed to recharge them. It is a good idea to prioritize constructing the charging stations as soon as a few small solar panels and batteries have been set up. Don’t forget to connect it to the battery bank.
4 Elevator
Required For Moving Between Surface And Subterranean Mode
- Must be Powered
- Acts as a power conduit
The Crust operates across two different sci-fi maps. Firstly, the surface map, where the player will build their power generators, batteries, etc. Secondly, the subterranean map, where the player will excavate raw resources and process them.
In order to be able to switch between these two different maps, the player needs to construct an elevator. It then needs to be connected up to the electricity supply. The elevator also acts as a power conduit to route power down to the subterranean map. The elevator should be built once the player has set up a basic power system and the charging station for drones.
3 Drone Reconfiguration Module
Needed For Mining Drones
- Can convert up to 5 drones.
- Only works in subterranean mode.
Once a player has set up their power generation and storage system, and then constructed a charging station and an elevator, it is time to shift focus to the subterranean map, as this is where the player procures all of the raw resources they will need to progress in The Crust.
The first order of business, is to construct a drone reconfiguration module. This is a critical structure, that enables the player to convert 5 of their construction drones into mining drones. Once this has been done, they can assign these new drone mining tasks in excavation mode.
2 Smelting Furnace x 2
For Smelting Raw Ore
- 1 For Steel Production
- 1 For Silicon Production
Now that the player has moved over to begin constructing the underground part of their base, it is time to start moon mining. The raw ore needs to be turned into two basic resources that the player will need to progress in The Crust.
Iron and silicon ore need to be excavated, and then smelted in a furnace. A smelting furnace can only produce one of these two resources, so it makes good sense to construct two of them at this stage, one for producing steel, the other for silicon. Depending on how comprehensive the player’s power system is, they may need to expand it before building the smelting furnaces.
1 Pressing Module
For Pressing Smart Concrete
- Early game building material.
- Takes basic regolith as input.
The main construction material that is needed in the first part of The Crust, is smart concrete. This is produced in the pressing module. It is very simple to make smart concrete. The player just needs to instruct some mining drones in excavation mode, to start digging up regolith. This is then turned into smart concrete in the pressing module.
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Later in the game, a player will need more advanced construction materials, but a pressing module is required as a stepping stone to these more advanced technologies.
- Platforms: Microsoft Windows, macOS
- Released: 15 July, 2024
- Developer: VEOM Studio
- Genre: Strategy, Colony Builder
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