When starting colony sim Starmancer, it is essential to know which branch of the research tree colonists should start with. The in-game tutorial suggests that players begin with the Ore Refinery in order to refine ore collected on the first mining expedition; however, there are other, pressing utilities that should be researched first, as in any colony sim.
While the player’s first Starmancer colonist is off mining, the second should be selected, grown, and harvested. This ensures that for the first few minutes of the game, only one colonist is consuming oxygen in the base at a time. It is essential that the ego selected is able to research and build, so the player should make sure that the colonist does not have “refuses research” or “refuses building” in their traits before growing.
In Starmancer, drones are much easier to please than colonists who live to be labeled “autonomous” or “supreme,” as they are unable to perceive beauty and therefore have a lower morale threshold. However, this does not mean that they won’t mind sleeping on the floor or leaving biowaste on the shiny new floors of the space base. Avoid low morale, competency issues, and biowaste messes by researching and building strategically in the early game.
To research in Starmancer, the player must first use the build menu, under the “furniture” tab, to construct a research station. Next, open the research tree in the bottom right-hand corner, represented with a beaker icon.
Starmancer’s in-game tutorial will prompt the player to research the ore refinery after the first colonist has returned from their mining expedition, but time management is the key to colony sims like this one, where the colonists will have urgent needs waste management and power generation that will take time to set up. While one colonist drone is away mining, the player should research several essential utilities. One of these is the toilet stall. This will prevent colonists from leaving a mess, and from being adversely affected from having to leave their biowaste on the floor.
In addition, the ore refinery needs to be powered, as do many other utilities in Starmancer, so it makes much more sense to research and build power generation utilities first. “Basic Power” on the research tree will give the player access to the small battery, the treadmill, and the wall light. It’s a good idea to build the treadmill and the small battery in close proximity, in an are that leaves room for the ore refinery to be close by. This cuts back on wiring costs, and keeps wires contained.
The colonists will also need somewhere to sleep. Fortunately, bedrolls do not need to be researched before being built.
As long as the player also builds a trading pod, they should be able to sell enough raw ore to afford an ore refinery to use after the next mining expedition.
Zipher is the main currency used to build in Starmancer. The player starts with 7.5k Zipher, and should spend it accordingly:
- 1k: Research Station
- 1k: Treadmill
- 1/each: Wires
- 1k: Small Battery
- 2k: Bedrolls (1k/each)
- 1k: Trading Pod
This will leave the player with approximately 1.5k (minus 4 or 5 for wires). As the objective following building the trading pod is to earn 10k Zipher through trading, this puts the player in a good position to sell raw ore to earn the last 1k needed to build the refinery.
Starmancer is available for PC, Macintosh OS, and Linux
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