Survival Guide - Dust Settles: Construction

Table of Contents:

Purpose:

The construction page is where you will construct all of the buildings that you can build in this game. You will assign workers to build these structures, update construction orders, and adjust staffing on this page. Each of the buildings in the game serves a specific purpose and in order to get the benefits that they provide, you will have to construct and staff the buildings on this page.

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Assigning Workers:

In order to construct or demolish anything, you will have to have people assigned as construction workers. You will do this at the top of the Construct screen. The "max" button will automatically enter the max. number of available people into the field while the "0" button will automatically enter 0 into the field. You can use either of these buttons or enter a number of your own choosing in the box and then hit "now" to assign those people as workers. You will have to hit "now" to actually assign the workers, even after using the max. and 0 buttons.

Above the buttons and the text box, the number of workers that you currently have assigned as construction staff is presented for your knowledge. Below the buttons is a bit of information reminding you of the number of people you can assign at maximum and minimum. Beside this is a small, red question mark that you can mouse over to get some quick help tips or click on for more information.

The buildings you send to the queue will be constructed in the order in which you send them. If you cannot build all of the buildings you have entered in one day, you will get whatever buildings your construction workers can build after each day. For example, a single recycling plant will take 8 workers to build in one day. If you have 16 workers assigned and you send orders to construct 5 recycling plants, it will take you 3 days to build all 5, but you will get the first 2 after the first day, the second 2 after the second, and the final one after the third. (Remember each day is a turn.) Now, if you have more than 1 item set in the queue (say 5 recycling plants and 3 shelter 2s) and you assign a worker set that will not finish an even number of items from the first queue (say 20 workers assigned), your workers will finish as much as they can complete of the first queue and the remaining workers will rollover to the next item set in the queue to avoid as many wasted workers as possible (with the example numbers, 2 recycling plants and 1 shelter 2 would be completed with 1 worker left over).

If you unassign all of your construction workers after sending construction orders to the queue, your orders will be updated to show "No workers" in the "Days Left" column of the queue. These buildings will have no work done on them and will not be built until you assign workers.

If you construct buildings that require more people to staff than you have available, your messengers and assigned workers will be unassigned from those posts to help fill the needed positions. You will be alerted about this in the End Turn display.

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The Queue:

The queue is how you will set up the assignments for constructing and demolishing you buildings. It can be found just below the worker assignment box. If you have already set up buildings for construction, you will see a table similar to the one below, underneath the above selection tools showing you the details about what you have set.

In the first selection box, where you will set up your construction orders, you will select whether you want to construct or demolish something. The next box is a text box where you will enter the number of buildings you want constructed. In the third drop-down menu, you will select which building you want to build. Beside the name of the building will be the costs to actually construct the building. These costs are the number of land units needed for the structure, the number of workers needed to build the building in one day, and the number of supplies needed to construct the buildings. Only those buildings that you have opened the ability to build will be displayed in this menu. This may differ from the buildings you can see in the "Your Camp's Buildings" table at the bottom of the page, but the other buildings will be added to the menu when you have opened the ability to construct them. Once all of this information is properly entered, you will click the "Send to Queue" button to submit the order. If this is an important construction order that you want to add to the top of the queue, click the check box just above the "Send to Queue" button to have it automatically added to the top when you click the Send button.

Once you have sent at least one construction order to the queue, you will see the "Construction Queue" table. This table will show you some basic details about the order you sent and will allow you to put those orders on hold, move them up or down, or even cancel them if needed. The table will show you first what building you are constructing/demolishing, then how many of that building have been assigned, and finally how long that will take with your current number of assigned workers. The final column holds the buttons for putting the order on hold, changing the construction order, or canceling it.

As soon as you send a construction order to the queue, the land required to build that building(s) will be subtracted from your available land. If you do not have enough to cover the construction costs, you will be given a warning and the order will not enter the queue.

You can assign buildings to the Construction Queue without the needed buildings supplies or workers needed to build the structure. If you do not have enough when the time for that building's construction comes, it will not be built and will be postponed until you have the people or supplies you need. If you assign a building for construction that requires power, this building will be constructed. If you do not have the power to run this building once it is constructed, it will not turn on. Any time a construction order is finished, your new buildings will be automatically staffed. If you do not have enough available people to cover the staffing needs of these buildings, your construction workers and messengers will be unassigned from their posts to fill these positions. Your recruiters and explorers, if they have returned will also be used if needed, otherwise the buildings will merely remain unstaffed until you can provide the people to staff them.

You will not be able to demolish shelter, generators, classrooms, or barracks if they are in use. You will only be able to enter 10 different construction orders into the queue at a time. You are also limited in the number of wall units, light posts, communications facilities and relays, and weather stations that you can build. Please see their individual pages for more information on those limits.

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Constructing vs. Demolishing:

You will be able to construct and demolish buildings in your camp. As you progress through the game, you will open the ability to construct new building types, some of which will be better than older versions, such as the large and small generators. When you are sending something to the queue, you will select whether you want to construct or demolish that building(s) from the drop-down menu to the left of the quantity text box. Once those orders have reached the queue, you will be able to tell whether those buildings were set for construction or demolition by looking at the column containing the building name. Buildings set for demolition will have "Demolishing" before the name of the building, as with the building in the second row of the table pictured above. Construction assignments will just list the name of the building without a special delimiter.

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Holding Construction:

At times you may have an occasion where you need to put off the construction of certain buildings until you have more workers or something more vital has been constructed. You will set something as "On Hold" by the orange "Hold" button beside the building you want to hold in the queue table (the image of the orange circle with the slash through it). The update will then set the "Days Left" value to "On Hold" as in the final row of the queue table pictured above. Once you are ready to have that building order completed, you will click the green "UnHold" button (the one that looks like a Play button) beside the order. You can also have all of the buildings in the queue placed on hold if you need to by making sure the "Hold all" selection at the bottom of the "Construction Queue" table is selected and then clicking "Update All." You will undo this action by either setting each construction order to "UnHold" manually beside the building type (ex: if you want to open one, but not the rest) or click the radial button beside "UnHold All" and click "Update All" to have all of the construction orders updated to the appropriate number of days left.

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Changing the Order:

If you are constructing multiple building types, you might decide that you need to rearrange the order of construction since the buildings are constructed in the order they are shown in the queue. You will do this by clicking the appropriate image beside the construction order you want to move. You can move the construction orders up or down by one by selecting move up (the image with the green arrow above a green bar, the second one in the set) or move down (the image with the red arrow below the red bar, the third one in the set) or you can move the orders all the way to the top or bottom of the queue by selecting the appropriate choice (either the first or fourth image in the set). If you are having trouble figuring out which image belongs to the move you want to make, just hold your mouse over the image for a few seconds to see the Alt text for the image.

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Canceling Construction:

If you ever decide that you need to cancel something set to be constructed, you should click the red X at the far right of the "Options" column beside the appropriate building. There is no way to cancel all construction orders at once. If you need to cancel them all you will have to do it manually.

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Staffing Buildings:

Staffing your buildings is very important for your camp. Unstaffed buildings will not produce the resource or other benefits they are supposed to. They will also hurt your camp's morale. There are some buildings that cannot be unstaffed either because they have no staffing requirements, like shelters, or they require 1 person per building and are very important to your camp, like comm facilities. The first column shows you the name of the building. The second column shows you how many of that type of building you have. At the bottom of this column, you will see the total number of buildings that your camp has. The third column shows the number of buildings of that type that are active. If the buildings cannot be unstaffed, the cell will be blank. If the buildings can have their staffing changed, the number of buildings that you currently have staffed is shown in the text box. You can adjust this number as needed to unstaff/restaff your buildings, just be sure to click "Update" at the bottom of the column after you have entered the new numbers. The fourth column will show you the total number of workers staffed in those buildings with the individual building staffing costs beneath in parentheses. At the bottom of this column, you will be able to see how many people total are staffed in your camp's buildings. Production values are next with the total production listed first and the production per building listed after. The daily cost of the building is shown in the sixth row, once again with total cost listed first and individual costs listed below. The next column lists the defense values for the building type and the final column lists shelter space. Both of these columns also follow the total first, individual second format.

There are many times during the game that your buildings may be unstaffed automatically. If severe storms strike your camp and destroy some of your buildings, such as labs, the rest of the buildings you have of that type will be unstaffed. This means if some of your gardens are destroyed by storms, the rest of your gardens will be unstaffed and must be restaffed manually in order to get the food they would produce. If you run into a deficit of a resource and cannot afford the daily costs for some of your buildings, then buildings will begin to be shut off until you have reached an equilibrium point. You will be unable to restaff these buildings and get their benefits until you can afford their daily costs again. Whenever you have a building that is unstaffed or otherwise inactive, the small yellow icon pictured above will appear just above the mid-section of your screen.

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