Survival Guide - Dust Settles: Basic Resources

Table of Contents:

Purpose:

Your basic resources are the main resources that you will produce, find, trade with, and use throughout the game. These are your food, disposables, building supplies, and gasoline. These are also the only resources that you must keep specific storage for.

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Food:

Food serves one purpose in this game, feeding your population. This is the category that includes the water, soda, grains, meats, vegetables, and anything else that your people can eat. You will use the Peoples page to see a comparison of how much food your population is using as compared to how much you are producing. You will be able to watch your food storage space at the top of the screen and on the Infrastructure page.

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Uses:

You need food only to feed your people. Your people will eat as many meals (units of food) per day per person as you allow them according to the number of rations you set. (Ex. If you set rations at 4, your people will eat 4 units of food apiece each day). Base rations are 1. You can increase this through the Peoples page to improve your morale.

Your militia and trained military will eat more food than your normal population. Militia will eat one more meal per day than your assigned rations. Army and special forces will each eat two meals per day. Officers will eat three meals. Changing your rations will change how much your militia eat, but not how much your trained military will eat. You will want to keep this in mind as you play so that you don't assign more civilians for training than you can handle or reset rations and find an unexpected increase.

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Production:

You will get food by three different means. The first way you will get more food in the game is exploration. You will get some food with every exploration mission that you send out, but you will get more if you search specifically for food. Beyond this you will be able to produce your own food through three different buildings. You will start with fire pits and gardens. Each will produce food and each costs a specific resource to produce that food. Later in the game you will open the ability to build farms. These will give you more food with no resource cost. The output of each of these buildings can be increased through research. Finally, you will get food through the Neutral Exchange Camp's markets and exchanges.

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Trade:

The basic exchange rate for food is 100 food for 1 CEP or 1 CEP for 20 food, through the AutoExchange and CEP Exchange. If you put up food on the trade market, you will be able to sell it for less than the standard price in order to encourage other camps to buy it. This is the rate of exchange for all non camp-to-camp exchanges in the game.

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Storage:

You can store a minimum of 200 units of food before building a storage hut. After this you will need one storage hut for every 200 units of food you wish to keep in storage. You can increase the amount of food you can store in each storage hut by researching Spatial Logic.

One of the important differences about food storage is that food will rot. Every 7 days or so someone from your camp will clean out the rotten food from your storage huts and you will receive a notice in your end turn report. You will only ever lose a portion of the food you have in storage and you will not begin losing food until you have a decent amount stored. You can decrease the amount of food lost due to rotting by researching Food Preservation.

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Deficits:

If you do not have enough food to feed your population through production, exploration, and storage, your people will go without for 3 days. After the 3rd day, you will begin to lose people. If you have only a few people going without food each turn, all of those people will leave. On the other hand, if a large portion or all of your people are going without food for more than 3 turns, you will lose a portion of your population until you are left with 1 person or until you can actually feed your people.

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Disposables:

Disposables are those items that wear out or are used up within a short period of time. These are the rolls of toilet paper, the writing paper, the batteries, the glassware, the soaps, and the multitude of other items that we use on a daily basis and generally take for granted. In the beginning of the game especially these will be your most important and necessary item since some of your most important buildings will take disposables. You will use the Peoples page to see a comparison of disposable production vs. use each day. The top bar and the Infrastructure page will show you details about your disposable storage.

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Uses:

You will use disposables for many things. Your people will use disposables at a rate of 1 disposable for every 4 people before research. Buildings on the other hand will take more on a daily basis. At first, you will have gardens, labs, and maybe shelter level 3s demanding your camp's disposables. Later you will have fuel refineries, incinerators, medical facilities, and advanced labs demanding disposables as well. Disposables will be one of the first resources that you will want to produce that you are unable to produce from the beginning.

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Production:

You will produce your own disposables through recycling plants. These are the first buildings that you should open with research. You will open these by researching both Architecture and Recycling to at least 10. Until you are able to build recycling plants, you should send as many people as possible exploring for disposables to keep your labs and any gardens running. You can also trade other resources that you have in excess for CEPs which you can use to buy disposables.

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Trade:

The basic exchange rate for disposables is 100 disposables for 1 CEP or 1 CEP for 20 disposables through the Neutral Exchange Camp's exchanges. If you put up your excess disposables on the trade market, you will want to sell it for less than the standard price in order to encourage other camps to buy it. This is the rate of exchange for all non camp-to-camp exchanges in the game.

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Storage:

You can store a minimum of 200 disposables before building a storage hut. After this you will need one storage hut for every 200 disposables you wish to keep in storage. You can increase the amount of disposables you can store in each storage hut by researching Spatial Logic.

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Deficits:

If you are unable to produce, find, or pull enough disposables from storage to meet you camp's demands, then your buildings will begin to shut down. The first buildings that will be shut down are your labs. If the deficit is steep enough, any and all buildings that you have that use disposables will shut down. When your buildings are shut down, you will not get any of their normal production, whether this is research or food. You will also not be able to reactivate these buildings and get the products they are supposed to produce until you have enough disposables to cover their costs.

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Building Supplies:

These are the hammers, nails, studs, tarps, etc. that you need to construct all of the buildings in your camp. Building supplies are primarily used for construction, but these resources are also used in other areas. You will be able to keep track of your camp's daily supply use (not including construction) and production on the Peoples page. Your supply storage will be displayed on the top bar and the Infrastructure page.

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Uses:

You will use building supplies primarily for constructing the buildings you will need around camp. Only a few buildings will actually use building supplies. These buildings are fire pits, small generators, and large generators. Building supplies are also used to construct weapons. In the winter, you will need 1 building supply per shelter and barracks for warmth. The final use for this resource are weather defenses. 1 building supply will be used for every building you have constructed except wall and light posts. These will help protect your buildings from dangerous storms that can destroy some of your most precious buildings.

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Production:

You will be able to make your own building supplies once you have opened factories. Until then you will have to rely on trade and exploration to get what you need. Generally, you will be covered with the ones you find through exploration missions until you actually need to start building generators. At this point you will be able to build factories as well, so you will be fine. You can also get building supplies through the Trade Market or AutoExchange.

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Trade:

The basic exchange rate for building supplies is 67 building supplies for 1 CEP or 1 CEP for 14 supplies, through the exchanges. If you put up your excess building supplies on the trade market, you will want to sell it for less than the standard price in order to encourage other camps to buy it. This is the rate of exchange for all non camp-to-camp exchanges in the game.

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Storage:

You can store a minimum of 100 building supplies before you build a storage hut. After this you will need one storage hut for every 100 building supplies you wish to keep in storage. You can increase the amount of supplies you can store in each storage hut by researching Spatial Logic.

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Deficits:

If you cannot produce enough supplies to cover your camp, primarily, your weapons production will be cancelled. If the deficit is high enough that halting weapons production does not allow you enough to cover everything else, your generators will be cut off. This means that your power dependent buildings will begin to shut down according to the amount of power you have left. If the deficit is high enough, any fire pits you have will be shut down and of course you will not be able to construct anything since construction relies on building supplies in storage.

If you do not have enough building supplies in storage when a storm hits, none of your buildings will be boarded up, leaving all of them vulnerable to destruction.

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Gasoline:

Gasoline is a resource that you will first begin using later in the game. You will not be able to find gasoline by exploring. You will only ever be able to buy or produce your own. Fortunately, gas is easy to produce and is used by only a very few things in the game. Your gas usage can be checked on the Construct screen for your generators. Your gas use by busses will be displayed on the Recruit and Explore pages where you will set the number of busses to accompany your groups. You will be able to check your gas storage on the left infrastructure bar and the infrastructure page.

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Uses:

Gasoline will be used to run your buses, military vehicles, aircraft, and your gas generators. Until you get Vehicle Transport mastery you will be using a good deal of gas to power your buses and any vehicles that you want to send into battle. At the beginning, this can be fairly cheap, but later on, with alliance aid, large search parties, and vehicle heavy battles, you can often need hundreds of thousands of gallons of gasoline or more.

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Production:

You will produce your own gas through fuel refineries. You will open this building through research.

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Trade:

Unlike the other resources listed here, you will not be able to trade gasoline for CEPs or CEPs for gasoline anywhere but the trade market. Gas will be sold by the Neutral Exchange Camp on the trade market at a rate of .01 CEP for 1 gallon of gasoline. If you decide to sell gas on the market, you will probably want to sell your gas for less to get more camps to buy from you.

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Storage:

You can store at minimum 100 gallons of gasoline in each storage hut. This amount can be increased by researching Spatial Logic.

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Deficits:

If you do not have enough gas to run your generators, they will be automatically shut down. This can lead to power dependent buildings being shut down as well. Your buses will use the gas that you have in storage, so if you do not have enough to fuel the number of buses that you are sending out for the number of days that you are sending them, the buses will not be sent and you will instead be given a notice of this deficit. Also you will not be able to send aid, set up a battle, or donate troops with vehicles if you do not have enough gas in storage to meet the requirements.

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