Captain Of Industrystarts out fairly simple, but gets exponentially more complex with each new technology added to your growing settlement. In no time at all, you’ll find yourself balancing new resource needs, fine-tuning your logistics, and developing new production lines from scratch, all while ensuring that your existing machinery stays well-maintained and your people stay healthy.
It’s a lot to keep track of, and a single thing falling out of place can cause your growth, expansion, and production to come grinding to a halt. Try these tips as you get the hang of the game.
This guide was written for the early access version of Captain Of Industry. The information below is subject to change as the game’s development process continues.
Build Plenty Of Storage
One of the first bottlenecks that you’ll run into isnot having anywhere to put produced resources.Buildings can store a small quantity of the items they produce, but there’s no way that your existing fleet of trucks will be able to transport everything before things start getting backed up.
Construct storage buildings foranything that you need to stockpile, ideally right by the buildings that produce or use them. Wood, Iron Ore, and Construction Parts are the big three, and once you start mining for Coal and producing liquid goods like Diesel and Crude Oil, you’ll want extra storage for them as well.
Build multiple Food Markets attached to your Settlement to increase food storage, especially once you start building multiple Farms to feed your growing population.
Survival First, Efficiency Later
You’re probably going to want to build the most efficient setup possible right from the start of the game, especially if you’ve played other production chain games likeFactorio.That’s commendable, and eventually you’ll want your island to operate as a well-oiled machine, but you’re going to have to work up to that point over the course of several in-game years.
At the start of the game, you won’t have access to key features like Conveyor Belts, so you’ll have to make do with what you have. Focus on building up your necessary infrastructure and keeping your people alive -you can always tear down and rebuild your designs later to make them better.
TheToolsandBlueprintstechnologies let you create multi-building designs, and copy existing layouts from the map.
Go Bigger Than You Need
Industrialization is about production on an enormous scale; keep that idea in mind as you build.If one Oil Pump is good, three are better, so long as you have the storage and pipelines to make use of them.
Don’t just produce enough of something to meet your current needs - always plan to expand and grow, a lot. Start byfocusing heavily on Construction Part productionso that you can quickly build other structures, then use those resources to create new production chains and optimize old ones.
Follow Guide Objectives For Free Resources
Captain Of Industry is a sandbox game, meant to be played your way, but even after you’ve gotten a few starts under your belt it’sworth following the guide objectives. Each one you complete earns you somefree resources, which is especially useful early in the game when you’re still getting all your industries up and running.
You can see your current guide objectives, and claim earned rewards, by clicking thetrophy icon in the upper-left corner of the screen.
Pipes Block Trucks
We learned this one the hard way - be careful not to block your trucks' access to shore facilities like the Trading Dock! Diesel and Rubber production both produce Waste Water, which needs to be run off into the sea, and the Diesel then needs to be piped up to your Shipyard. It’s likely that the necessary pipes will cut off some portion of the shore, soplan ahead, otherwise you’ll have to demolish some pipes, move the Trading Dock, then put the pipes back into place.
Keep Wood Production On Pace
Wood is critical, since it’s used in the production of Construction Parts, but it can be easy to let your starting Tree Harvester get to work and then forget about it. Once you’ve built a Vehicle Depot, it’s a good idea to builda second or even third Harvesterand trucks to support them, to keep up with your increasing demand for Wood.
If you haven’t build a Unit Storage for Wood yet, now is the time.
Having extra Tree Harvesters means you’ll be able toproduce more Construction Parts, as well as burn more Charcoal while you’re setting up your Coal Mines. In the worst-case scenario, you can always trade away the excess Wood.
Start Coal Mining Before You’re Prompted
Speaking of Coal, it’s a good idea tostart mining it as soon as you have the technology to do so, even if the guide objective hasn’t appeared yet. Mines produce Coal much more efficiently than Charcoal facilities, and won’t burn through your Wood supplies, letting you focus more on Construction Parts production.
Lots of industries use Coal, so a large stockpile isn’t a bad thing!
Like the other mineral resources on the map, there’s no icon to indicate where to dig; you need tolook for rocks of the appropriate colornear mountains:
Green
Research Ramps And Terrain Leveling To Stay On Track
As you start digging into your map’s hills, your Excavators and trucks will probably have a hard time with the rough terrain. To deal with this, you shouldresearch Terrain Leveling and Vehicle Rampsas soon as you’re able to.
Designating an area to be leveled allows an Excavator to terraform it, while also mining any minerals there that happen to be in the radius of a Mine Tower. It may still need ramps to reach the areas it’s meant to dig out, so if a project seems to be taking a while, it’s worthpausing the game and coming up with a plan.
