Is life support useful at any point?

[jsc29]

I am in Mars, but still somewhat new and working on the last couple of techs in the research tree.

So far, I have not found any utility to life support. The problem is that it appears the life support only discounts coins and production, not mars ore. I have plenty of coins and production. The bottle neck is mars ore. If I were to put in a lot of life support, then I would have to significantly cut my goods production. Since I would much rather have the goods than the coins or production, it makes no sense for me to build life support at this time.

My question is whether life support gets useful at some point. I suppose if I didn't need Mars goods and I did need more production and coins, then life support could be useful, but when would this be? In late Venus or something?

 

[Sharmon the Impaler]

Life support cuts the cost of producing goods in the colony. The Mars colony will disappear as soon as you age up and no longer be accessible. This is the same for all of the space age colonies so far.

 

[Tytan the Great]

Some people do have goods buildings on the colony, and the saving in coin and supply do add up in the long term. If you have other means to obtain SAM goods, like GBG, event buildings, RQ, etc, and don’t need goods buildings, then life support is useless. Just have houses to get enough credit to mine the ore daily, and that’s all you need. My life support is in the red since I got to SAM. Just gather enough Mars ores to last through Venus plus some extra for Jupiter, cuz your SAM colony will be gone one you age up to SAAB.

 

[matr]

I haven't been able to get enough life support to change anything other than to use up space in the colony. It takes 100% of the required life support to get a 50% reduction in coin and supply cost. It is my understanding there are only 3 levels, red, yellow and green. Red is 0% reduction, yellow 50% reduction, green 75% reduction. To get green requires 125% of the needed life support. I think it is best to only plant goods buildings, pop buildings and credit/pop bldgs. Modular home gives most pop and little credits. Simple Shelter lots of credit and little pop. I leave most of the Mod Homes disconnected from roads and pack them for max pop. Only need road connection for construction, then can disconnect and you still get the pop. Only takes a few Simple shelter to provide all the credits needed for maximum mining of mars ore (Unless you spend diamonds to finish early). I calculated the max ore I could get per day at 618 and the needed credits at 34,250. This is a 3 day average cost and average ore production. 5 mod homes will create 30,000 credits per day if you collect them every 4 hours. They make 1000 each x 5 houses x 6 productions per day = 30,000. The balance of what I need comes from remaining connected Mod homes. Wasted a bunch of construct and delete to discover this. Poor planning from the start was my fault..

 

[Jackshat]

I am in Mars, but still somewhat new and working on the last couple of techs in the research tree.

So far, I have not found any utility to life support. The problem is that it appears the life support only discounts coins and production, not mars ore. I have plenty of coins and production. The bottle neck is mars ore. If I were to put in a lot of life support, then I would have to significantly cut my goods production. Since I would much rather have the goods than the coins or production, it makes no sense for me to build life support at this time.

My question is whether life support gets useful at some point. I suppose if I didn't need Mars goods and I did need more production and coins, then life support could be useful, but when would this be? In late Venus or something?

If saving supplies at the cost of reduced production becomes more valuable to you, then more life support, at that time, would seem the necessary course. From my experience, but based on what I value more, I embrace no life support for costlier, but greater production.

In SAV, that's 780k supplies each building, times 12 buildings in 8-hr production runs. It's a hefty price to pay, but well worth it since volume is critical to me. I don't have the time to raise a CF and do that crazy grind!

 

[Ebeondi Asi]

I have run full life support in all Space Colonies. Every Space Era needs at least a half billion or more supplies. You may think you have a lot... Until you don't. Coins are usually not a problem.
The most i can run are seven or if lucky eight Goods buildings with full life support in SAAB, SAV SAJM More than enough.

 

[Sharmon the Impaler]

I have 7 Topological in SAJM and it ballances out well . The special goods and supplies is exactly where it was when I finished the SAJM tree so it works for me.

 

[Pericles the Lion]

For me, the bottleneck in getting thru SAM and SAAB (I just aged up to SAV) was the special goods production being +/- 600/day. Aside from that, there were no other obstacles. My L98 CF takes care of coins/supplies/goods. I've not built any life support or goods buildings on the colonies, only dwellings to provide credits.