The reason I chose Vulcanus is simple. Cliff Explosives. Ok, it’s more than that, as the Big Miner (faster, consumes less material), Foundry (50% production bonus), Coal Liquefaction, and Artillery are locked here. There’s certainly more for sure, but those are the ones I absolutely want to unlock before heading to the next planet.

Given it’s the first planet, I have zero optimization and a ton of guess work to have anything work. High level, the planet has:

• Coal, Sulfuric Acid (liquid), Calcite (also found in space), and Tungsten (in Demolisher territory).
• Decent solar coverage.
• Lava all over the place, no trees, and no water.
• Cliffs everywhere.
• Demolishers that protect their territory (denotes by red lines).

The lack of materials is the core issue. Robots can disassemble material on the ground for iron + copper + stone, which clears the ground enough to lay out some substations + roboports to frame future growth. From that…

1. Lay down a Cargo Pad to receive material from the Space Platform
2. Put down a dozen storage chests
3. Put down a storage chest + 2x electric smelters to create iron plates, copper plates, and stone bricks.
4. Put down 50 solar panels + 20 accumulators.
5. Mine calcite + pump sulfuric acid into a chemical plant to build steam. 30 steam generators are enough to power a LOT.
6. Craft 1 Foundry in an assembler (use steam to create water). Craft 20 more foundries in the new foundry.
7. Build a bus that routes lava, water, lubricant (sulfuric acid -> heavy oil -> lubricant), sulfuric acid, calclite, and coal.
8. Place a dozen assemblers + requestors to create intermediate materials like green circuits and electric engines.
9. Use foundries to create all iron, copper, steel items possible. Use foundries to create refined concrete and big miners.
10. Use foundries + assemblers to create tungsten materials based on material on the ground.
11. Use foundries to create orange science (?)
12. Export science to Nauvis.
13. Profit.

It’s actually a rather straightforward process up until #11 as you won’t have enough tungsten and will need to mine it. However, all patches are in Demolisher territory. The only way to take those buggers out is with a dozen turrets & tank with uranium ammo and tier 6 damage research – which you’ll need to ship from home.

Dealing with Demolishers

Demolishers are worm-like creatures, with 30,000HP+, that deal tremendous AE fire damage and have substantial regeneration capabilities. They patrol a given area on the map, denoted by a red outline. Build anything on that area, and it will be destroyed. The only defense is offense.

While there are many strategies possible, I prefer simple brute force. They are immune to explosive, laser, and impact and take 50% from physical and 80% from electrical. Uranium Canon Shells deal 2K per shot as a base, + 100% per upgrade. You’ll likely be at 10k+ per shot by the time you land. Turn off auto-robots (or they will die from the AE attacks) and shoot it from behind. 3 seconds later, dead worm. Repeat for all areas touching the starting area and you’re good.

Next Steps

The start of Vulcanus is primarily about stability and getting the first few Orange Science items unlocked. Of important note is that Vulcanus will generate an overabundance of stone. Way more than you can use. So much more than you can possible imagine. Use what you can for refined concrete, but the rest should create Landfill with the stone, and insert it into the lava to dispose. Failure to manage stone will mean your production lines will be stalled.

Final quick note, science stacks in sets of 1000 per rocket, and you should be able to generate 2k per round trip. An unmodded Rocket Silo requires 100 Blue Circuits, Rocket Fuel, and Low Density Structure to launch. If you return from Nauvis with 200, the cycle will work 100% of the time.

Next part is how to optimize Vulcanus before leaving to the next planet. That means Big Miners, Foundriess, and Mk4 Belts.