In addition to harvesting enough food to keep your colonists fed, this means producing concrete, metals, polymers, machine parts, and electronics in sufficient quantities to repair anything that breaks down. The ultimate test of a Martian colony is achieving self-sufficiency before funding runs out. Keep everything running after you run out of money I try to get as many younger, sociable colonists as possible when I’m filtering potential applicants. You’d think being on freaking Mars, millions of miles away from the vast majority of human society, would make them happy. Loners will constantly lose comfort when placed into a population above a certain size, which makes them almost impossible to please, even if everything else in their lives is perfect. Senior citizens won’t get jobs, but still expect a pension so they can play blackjack and buy video games. There are two groups of people who are very likely to ruin everything once they get to Mars: loners and the elderly. For a small, drone-only mining outpost, a single large solar panel connected to the drone hub and a power capacitor with a one-tile cable will suffice. Stretching power cables across your entire colony just means you’ll be constantly draining your metal supply to keep it all working. This means it’s usually better to have a separate power and life support grid for each dome and drone hub. Power lines and the pipes that carry water and oxygen have a higher breakdown chance the more things they’re connected to. Ideally, you want to have at least enough of a reserve to cover the travel time of a cargo rocket from Earth, in case you end up in a situation where you need to import resources to get your infrastructure back online. The greater your reserve of these critical resources, the longer you’ll have to troubleshoot problems before all the lights go out and people have to start drinking their own pee.

Place them close to critical structures and don’t be shy about building too many. Some of the most important buildings in your colony are going to be power capacitors, oxygen tanks, and water towers.

It’s especially worthwhile to wait until you’ve unlocked technologies for better farming and housing before inviting the first wave of warm bodies. Playing a sponsor like the US, which gives you periodic cash injections for doing nothing, or the EU, which pays you for every technology researched, makes this strategy particularly viable. You must continually import electronics, polymers, and machine parts from Earth, however, so keep an eye on your funds. So as long as you’re not in danger of running out of funding, it’s perfectly possible to operate autonomously for as long as you need to in order to prepare a nice environment for your future colonists. The main thing living, breathing humans can produce that can’t be harvested or imported with an entirely robotic colony is Rare Metals, which are sold back to Earth for money. Surviving Mars: Guide to Health and Morale.Surviving Mars: Tips and Tricks for Beginners.

Surviving Mars: A Guide to Your First Domes.

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