Summary
- Efficient resource management is crucial in The Crust to avoid getting stuck without progress.
- Optimize solar panel placement for easy upgrades and to save building space on the moon.
- Standardize wiring and minimize power poles to save resources and reduce power drain.
The Crust is a real-time strategy game set on the moon. It forgoes combat for complex resource gathering and automated manufacturing-style gameplay, much like other titles such as Factorio. Gameplay takes place both on the surface of the moon, and beneath the surface on a subterranean map.
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Planning and using resources efficiently are key skills that all players of The Crust will need to master to get the best from their playing time in this strategy game. A poor base design could eventually see the player stuck, and with no way to progress. Therefore, getting the design of the colony right is crucial.
7 Plan The Power Footprint
Consider Leaving Space For Upgrades
- Surface building space is limited.
- Plan the most efficient footprint for solar panels.
The build space on the surface map is quite large, but it is surprising how quickly this space fills up when playing The Crust. So it is important not to waste space, and reuse space when infrastructure is upgraded. This is especially true for solar panels used to generate electricity.
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Small solar panels take up a tiny amount of space on the moon to build. However, switching over to the medium solar panel takes quite a bit more space. Therefore, it is quite useful to leave a gap between the small solar panels when placing them. This means that when it comes time to upgrade to medium solar panels, the small ones can be recycled and the medium ones dropped into the old space.
6 Standardize Batteries
Use The Same Wiring Strategy
- Adding additional batteries is common.
- Use a standardized way of connecting them to save effort.
At the start of a playthrough of The Crust, it can be tempting to simply wire up infrastructure such as battery banks in the simplest way possible. However, further down the line, when additional capacity needs to be added, this could mean having to completely redo the wiring.
Therefore, it pays to come up with a standard strategy for wiring battery banks and sticking to it. For example, power always goes into a bank on the battery furthest to the right, and is taken out at the left-hand end of the battery bank, with the batteries connected in series from right to left. This means every battery bank is wired up the same way, and can easily be extended by simply switching one wire.
5 Optimize All Wiring
To Minimize Power Leakage
- Wiring causes a minor power drain.
- Shorter wiring drains less power.
This tip is a logical expansion of the previous one. It really pays off to make sure that the wiring has been connected up in the most efficient manner. This means making sure that there are no redundant connections, or connections that could be combined into a single wire.
Every length of wire and connection has an electricity drain, due to resistance. It could be possible to save several percent of power use simply by logically optimizing all of the power connections in a sci-fi moon base.
4 Centralize Around The Elevator
To Efficiently Switch Map Modes
- Pressing TAB centers on the map when shifting.
- Build key facilities close to the elevator to streamline gameplay.
When playing The Crust, a player can quickly switch between the surface and subterranean maps by pressing the TAB key. When this is done, the map view changes, and it is centered on the elevator structure. Therefore, the area around the elevator is prime real estate, and should be used for structures the player needs to interact with regularly, such as factories that process moon mining materials.
Other structures, such as batteries and power generators are build-and-forget infrastructure, and can safely be constructed towards the edges of the playable map, leaving the central portion of the map for important, interactive structures.
3 Minimize Power Poles
Don’t Use More Than Needed
- Each power pole drains some electricity.
- Only use just enough power poles to link up all structures.
Each power pole the player builds whilst playing The Crust takes a certain amount of resources, and also adds to the power drain on the electricity supply. Therefore, it makes sense to minimize the number of power poles that are used to the bare minimum.
This will need some advanced planning, and the player may find there are times when they might benefit from building a pole in one place, but not tapping it fully until later in the game. This also ensures that the player is making the best use of building space on the subterranean map.
2 Excavate Gradually
To Optimize Subterranean Space
- Create a growing area of empty floor space around the elevator.
- Do excavate out towards resource nodes though.
It can be tempting to set all 5 mining drones to excavate a massive cavern on the subterranean map. However, this isn’t the most efficient way to start off in The Crust. Instead, it is better to clear an area around the elevator, that can be used for the initial placement of key structures.
The drone reconfiguration module, concrete pressing factory, and a couple of smelters can fit into this space. Once the player has access to the ore node scanner, they can then decide in which directions it would be best to excavate more.
1 Plan The Subterranean Map In Advance
To Save Excavating Unnecessary Areas
- A complicated map means drones have to go further.
- Consider setting up traffic lanes.
Usable map space on the subterranean map is at a premium. This isn’t such a problem in the early stages of the game, but as the player progresses and begins to build a colony, this space can get used up pretty fast.
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Therefore, it can pay to plan a basic layout for the subterranean map before starting to build any structures. Of course, the overall shape of the excavated area available to build on is going to depend on the random spawn locations of resource nodes. But with a little visualization, it should be possible to keep a basic layout in mind that will use the space efficiently.
The Crust
- Released
- July 15, 2024
WHERE TO PLAY
- Developer(s)
- VEOM Studio
- Platform(s)
- PC
- Genre(s)
- Strategy, Simulation, Base Building
