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How To Play

Alex Reeser edited this page Aug 7, 2018 · 7 revisions

Use F1 to bring up the Help menu at any time.

See here for the keyboard/mouse bindings.

Tutorials

Red Homestead has a number of tutorials to teach the basics. These tutorials are accessible from the main menu and cover basic construction and survival.

Image Gallery Tutorial

This Imgur gallery walks through basic gameplay of a number of systems.

Starting a New Game

Red Homestead has a Customizable colony start, where the player may select perks and starter equipment, but first time players are advised to use Quickstart to start learning how to survive on Mars.

After starting a new game, the player's new Martian colonist is started on Mars with a habitat, starter solar farm and hydrogen tank, and a rover.

Playing the Game

Red Homestead is a base-building game with survival elements, so players must construct the basics for their homestead, but after your base is well-established you are free to expand the base as you wish.

Survival Goals

  • Connect the power cables between your habitat, RTG, and solar panels
  • Construct your airlock
  • Build more solar panels
  • Survive your first bitter cold Martian night on your batteries
  • Hook up the EVA station so you can refill your pack while on the Martian surface
  • Blow off dust from your solar panels after a strom

Base-building Goals

  • Order equipment from a Drop Pod, Lander, and Rover
  • Build a Workshop and craft advanced suit components
  • Build a Science Lab and run biology experiments and collect geology samples
  • Build a Small or Large Greenhouse and start growing crops
  • Build a Weather Station to get weather reports
  • Mine iron and smelt it into powder
  • Build a Market and start selling components

Survival Concepts

Red Homestead is a survival base-building game set on the hostile surface of Mars. The five basic needs are, in decreasing order of importance:

  1. Oxygen

  2. Power

  3. Water

  4. Food

  5. Shelter

Generally speaking, the strategy in Red Homestead is to build up the home base with the industrial capacity to produce enough oxygen, power, water, and food to be self-sufficient.

Industry

Colonists may build exterior buildings by going outside, opening the tool menu (Tab), and using the Blueprint gadget to select and plan an industrial component on the surface.

Basic Industrial Chain

Sabatier Reactor =>CH4=> Methane Storage
                 =>H2O=> Splitter => Water Storage => Habitat 
                                  => Electrolyzer  =>O2=> Habitat
                                                   =>H2=> Hydrogen Storage

Regolith Miner =>Regolith=> Water Extractor =>H2O=> Water Storage
                            
Water Storage =>H20=> Algae Farm =>O2=> Habitat
                                 =>Biomass=> Storage

Advanced Industrial Chain

Regolith Miner =>Silica=> Glass Furnace =>Glass=> Storage

Economy

Income

Building a colony on Mars takes a lot of money. Each week, a lump sum of cash will be deposited in your colony's bank account. Players are free to decide what to spend the money on, but should be very careful! If the colony runs out of money, emergency purchases of materials cannot happen!

Market

In the habitat, colonists may purchase resources to be delivered to the colony from the large Terminal. There are several suppliers on Mars, and each has a different location, resource price and resource stock-on-hand.

Shipping

Resources bought must be shipped to the colony. Three methods are available, with costs and delivery times varying wildly between them:

  1. Rover: costs per mile, with a slow delivery time

  2. Aerospace Lander: costs a fraction per mile and a fraction per kilogram, with a medium delivery time

  3. Drop Pod: costs per kilogram, with a very fast delivery time

Resource prices are subject to market forces, but shipping methods are subject to the laws of physics. Each shipping method has constraints on weight and volume. Heavier and bulkier items are more expensive to ship. This is very important to note: if the colony's foodstock is getting low, plan ahead and ship it using cheaper methods instead of paying more to have it arrive quickly. Foolish colonists ignore this strategy and may find themselves with enough money to buy life-saving resources, but without enough money to have it shipped in time to their remote outpost!