Stacklands 2000 Automation + tips

Spoilers Ahead

This guide will cover several aspects that you will discover by getting the ideas from the boosterpacks, building the cards and processing the resources.

If you wish to discover them by playing, please do so; And don't read this guide, as it will contain spoilers!

First Things First: Food

Make sure your workers have a place to spend the night: in some cozy Shacks.

Then they will need to eat.

In contrast to the mainland, food requirements only scale by the amount of buildings for workers (and military) you create, not by the amount of actual workers in your city.

Every accommodation requires 4 food value (FV).

The Precious Resources pack might contain Grain with a FV of 2.

You could also dig through trash to discover a box of Muesli (FV 4).

But spending money on all those packs isn't ideal as the chance of finding food is low and it is a lot easier to create a Farmland.

In the beginning of the run:

Make sure your first worker continuously occupies the Farmland. It takes 60 sec to harvest 1 Grain, so for your first shack this will be enough as you can harvest 2 Grains (total FV 4) per moon.

Next, if you saved up a little, you can create a Factory. Place a worker inside and power it up!

Outputting the Farmland straight into the Factory will produce Muesli, which will take 60 sec.

In this case your total FV per moon is doubled (2 Grains/moon --processed--> 2 Muesli/moon = 8 FV/moon).

Hurray! you can afford another Shack, and you can recruit 3 more workers.

I would advise to invest a little more in this, to never have to think of it again.

Create another Farmland, a Food Warehouse and a Water Pump (Water Deposit + Factory Parts)

The next 2 workers (so 4 in total) also should work in food production: 1 in another Farmland and 1 at the Water Pump.

Arrange it in a way that both Farmlands output towards the Factory as well as the Water Pump.

This will give you 2 Grains/60 sec and 2 Water/60 sec.

Grain + Water --Factory--> Bread 2000

The Bread 2000 only takes 30 sec to produce, has a FV of 4 and a value of 50 coins per card.

Your FV per moon is doubled again!

With a total production per moon: 4 Grain + 4 Water --processed--> 4 Bread 2000 = 16 FV

And as a bonus, any excess Bread 2000's you can sell

My setup:

I know you can harvest more quickly with the Hydroponic Farm, or get a Ready Meal with a FV of 8. But with the additional steps required, I found this setup a lot easier to use.

Money And Mood

Don't worry too much about money.

The total card value of most boosterpacks is usually similar to or higher than its cost.

Just make sure to empty the deposits before selling them.

Partly emptying a deposit and creating an unlimited extraction point also works.

Don't worry too much about wellbeing either.

The higher the wellbeing the more likely you will get attacked.

Get some military (and a radar) first, before gaining happiness.

Storage And Redirecting

Gathering or creating Storage Containers is always helpfull.

Similar to the Mainland, you can automatically redirect cards into the Storage Container and take cards automatically out of it at a rate of 1 card/10 sec.

Unlike the Mainland, cards held by the Storage Container do not count towards your total amount of cards.

In case you are running out of space (card limit or playfield), place some money on the City Hall to extend both.

The pictures in this guide all contain Storage Containers as main output, but you can also leave them aside in the early game; as well as the Junctions and Filtered Junctions shown.

Keep The Litter! (but Not The Trash)

With digging through trash and unpacking boosterpacks, you will encounter Plastic.

Store as much as you can, as some weatherpacks might contain Sunshine.

Sunshine + Plastic + Worker = Solar Panel, which outputs continuously 2 Low Voltage Connectors (LVC)

Any unsold or "unprocessed" Sunshine will result in +1 hapiness, but loss of an easy way to get energy.

Energy

There are several ways to get Low Voltage Connections (LVC) and High Voltage Connections (HVC).

They differ in the amount of allowed connections, the amount of workers necessary to get it up and running, the duration of the production and produced pollution.

Source Requirements Total workers LVC HVC Duration Pollution per cycle Other Wind Turbine - - 1 - Continuously - Create: Wind + Factory Parts, or get from Black Gold Boosterpack Solar Panel - - 2 - Continuously - Create: Sunshine + Plastic Hamster Wheel - 1 1 - When occupied - Water Wheel Water 1 3 - 30 sec - Water Pump or Water Treatment Plant can be used as Water source Burner Generator Lumber (Tree Plantation) 1 5 - 60 sec 2 Oil Power Plant Oil (Oil Rig) 2 - 3 30 sec 2 Nuclear Power Plant Uranium (Uranium Mine) 5 - 5 30 sec 4 Uranium Mine also produces Gravel

Below are all energy sources except nuclear.

NuclearNuclear Power is a little more complex to deal with.

Basically, get it up and running as soon as possible, as it will provide a lot more flexibility with the connections.

In my first run I made the mistake of going all nuclear, where you'll have to deal with a lot gravel and a lot of pollution. More on that later.

In the second run I only used 1 set of 3 Nuclear Power Plants in this configuration.

Set it up as follows:

1 Uranium Mine --Gravel Junction--> Gravel output (top) goes to a Storage Container elsewhere.

Uranium output (bottom) --Junction--> Nuclear Power Plant.

The Water Wheel, powering up the Mines, is receives its Water from a Water Treatment Plant.

It is easily scalable.

Need for more power? Hook on another Uranium Mine to the Gravel Junction, and another Nuclear Power Plant to the regular Junction. The game will sort itself out. Just don't change it <30 sec before moon-end on Robot Stations as loss of power = no shelter = not good for the wellbeing.

But before expanding Nuclear Power, make sure to also have a sufficient amount of buildings to deal with the pollution.

Where Did All My Workers Go?

I dunno.

Better get some more.

As meantioned earlier, get the shacks, get some more shack, and (if your food allowes it) even more.

But stacking 3 of those will create the Slums (which I couldn't find in my first run).

Benefits: only costing 4 FV/moon for a max of 9 Workers, no need for power or sewage.

Drawback: losing 1 wellbeing at the end of every moon when it still in your city.

Counter the loss with +1 wellbeing every moon, or upgrade your Workers to an Apartment or (better) Luxury Apartment.

The latter doesn't require more power, sewage or food than the Apartment. So it's kind of a now-brainer when gathering

Pollution And Sewage

The Industrial Smelters, Uranium Mines, Burner Generators and the Oil and Nuclear Power Plants produce pollution.

In the early game you could get away with a little bit of pollution in your city. But when it adds up to 10 or more, it will have a negative effect on the wellbeing.

A Landfill will get the job done, taking care of a maximum of 5 pollution every 60 sec.

A Recycling Center is 4 times faster, taking care of a maximum of 10 pollution every 30 sec.

The Recycling Center has an added bonus that it produces Metal Scraps when the progress bar resets.

However, you will need 1 HVC and 2 workers to operate the center.

Buildings can continue to store pollution in any Landfill or Recycling Center, even when the progress bar is running.

The game usually choses to put the pollution in the one which holds the least.

Any Landfill or Recycling Center that holds more than 10 pollution at the end of the moon, will result in loss of wellbeing.

Both the Landfill and the Recycling Center, as well as other buildings, need sewage. Any loose connections result in creating Poop in the city, which will cost you 1 wellbeing per card.

Output all of those in either:

A Septic Tank, which can hold up to 3 sewage connections

Or a Water Treatment Plant, which can hold up to 5 sewage connections.

The Water Treatment Plant has an added bonus of producing Water every 30 sec when all connections are occupied, but 1 worker needs to operate the plant.

During the mid game, it might be beneficial to get such an arrangement:

A Nuclear Power Plant, or Oil Power Plant is advised for the required power. This will produce +/- 5 Metal Scraps every 30 sec. Those are in the picture redirected towards the other side of town.

In the first run, I went all in on Recycling Centers, resulting in an overload of Metal Scraps and a huge requirement for both power and workers. The second run, I only had the above picture up for a few moons, when switching towards an all Landfill + Water Treatment Plant setup as shown left.

Maybe overkill, but gets the job done. And, all the Water Treatment Plants have the sewage connections occupied, resulting in the production of Water that powers all the Water Wheels elsewhere.

Heavy Metal

The basics:

Every mine requires 1 Worker and 1 LVC to operate.

It takes an Iron or Copper Mine 60 sec to mine 1 ore.

An Industrial Smelter needs 2 Workers and 2 LVC's.

It takes the Industrial Smelter 30 sec to smelt 1 ore, and produces 2 pollution when succesfully smelting 1 ore.

IronThis is probably the first metal you want to automate.

Below is my mid game setup.

This setup generates 4 Iron Ore every cycle of 60 sec --Smelting--> into 2 Iron Bars every cycle of 30 sec.

I redirected the output of the Smelters into a junction, mainly pointing towards the Iron Bar Container. But you could output it as well to the factory, creating 3 Metal Scraps from every Iron Bar in 10 sec.

In the picture above, the smelters output to the junction, which redirects the Iron Bar's into the Storage Containers. The Metal Scraps I receive from another source (see production).

CopperThis isn't as useful in the beginning, but it couldn't hurt to already setup and run a Copper Mine and a Smelter.

Stacking up some Copper Bar's will kickstart the growth of your city later on, as the Factory needs 2 Copper Bars to produce every 1 Electric Motor's every cycle of 20 sec.

Don't takeout Copper Bar's manually from the Storage Container, drag the output from storage to the input of the Factory, so you can focus on other tasks.

I only hooked up 3 Copper Mines in this example, as Boosterpacks grant you with some ores from time to time. You can place them on the bottom smelter, without the risk of buildup.

Also, 3 Mines produce 3 Copper Ore every 60 sec --Smelting--> giving in total 3 Copper Ore every 60 sec.

The junction outputs 2 into the Factory (creating 1 Electric Motor) and 1 into the Copper Storage.

This means that this setup will evenly generate 1 Copper bar and 1 Electric Motor every 60 sec.

Is the balance off? You can easily restore it by rebalancing the in/outputs.

Cement & Factory Parts

With metals out of the way, you might want to automate some more!

First, Metal Scraps, Gravel, Factory Parts and Cement.

Stack 'm

It is not Stacklands if you don't stack the cards.

A lot of cards aren't meant to be stacked, but some you can.

The Mines for example.

Make sure workers occupy the mine, disconnect the power, stack the cards and reconnect.

They output the usual amount of expected resources.

The output is manageable by connecting/disconnecting the power.

It works the same way for other Mines, Oil Rigs and Labs

Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3371272393

2000 Automation + tips