Miscellaneous Tools

Market

When a map has the market available you have access to an additional building, the Space Port. Space Ports allow a trading spaceship to land every 3.0 days, with which you can buy and/or sell certain resources for dollars.

Purchasing incurs a mark up % (normally 50%) on the base Sell price.

For every $4 dollars spent or earned you increase your trader reputation points. In the Market Overview panel you can view your current points, current money, progress toward the next reputation level, as well as market prices. The Market Overview panel is accessed using the ($) "Money" menu in the top center panel or using the Market button in the top left menu. Once you reach the next reputation level you will unlock another Space Port.

Example: If you sold 24 Steel for $16 each, you would earn 96 points ($384). If you then purchased 12 Stone for $1 each with the 50% mark up it would cost you $16. That would earn you 4 additional points to reach the first trader reputation level of 100. This would enable an additional Space Port that you could then place on your map.

Selling resources allows you to create end points for your economies and lets your colony run forever. See how many dollars you can rack up!

Market Default Reputation Levels

#	Reputation Name	Next Level Points	Total Points Needed
0	Unknown	100	100
1	Local Trader	1,000	1,100
2	Master Merchant	10,000	11,400
3	Planetary Dealer	100,000	111,400
4	Galactic Trader	1,000,000	1,111,400

Notification Area

(good image coming soon) Look at your notifications. They will indicate when a building is complete, occupied (such as Watchtowers), or ready (such as boats), or, or... etc. You should really pay attention to them.

Building Upgrades

Buildings that have additional levels can be upgraded. Select any building in-game to open the building panel. Choose the upgrade tab. This will indicated the resources that are needed to upgrade. Upgrading takes upgrade-construction time.

There are a couple advantages to upgrading over building a new building: 1) the building will continue to produce the current level of resources until the upgrade-construction is complete; and 2) in many cases, it will not require the full amount of construction resources as a new build. For example: a Residence L3 new build requires 8 stone, 8 planks, and 8 bricks to be built. The upgrade from a Residence L2 to a Residence L3 will use the previous 4 stone and 4 planks required to originally build it and then only need 4 stone, 4 planks, and 8 bricks to be upgraded.

A disadvantage of upgrading over a building a new building is that the resources that are not needed are lost. Also the upgraded building might not be in the best location. For example: a Residence L1 requires 2 logs to be built. To upgrade to a Residence L2, 4 Stone and 4 Planks are required. The logs will be lost.

Monuments

Monuments are often a Victory Condition for a game. They also can play a key role in boosting production.

Select any Monument in-game to open the building panel. Here you can review the buildings and roads boosted. Note: you will need to provide additional resources to keep up the boosted production.

Go here to learn more about the various Monuments and the boost-levels. Each Monument page lists its boost range.

DCL New Lands adds additional monument buildings: the Church and Missionary Outpost.

Destroy Tool

There are two Destroy modes: "Destroy" and "Dismantle".

Destroying a building will remove the building and any resources within the building's Local Storage Buffers. The advantage of destroying over dismantling is that the space becomes immediately available to build on.

Dismantle provides an advantage over destroying because you can recover the original resources used to construct the building. These will be recovered over a period of dismantling time. Another advantage of dismantling over destroying is the ability to recover the resources in the Local Storage Buffers.

Destroying or dismantling a Watchtower may impact your territory coverage.

TIP: Deciding when to begin dismantling can be important for recovery of a production [Resource|resource]. For example, if a residence is in the process of creating an energy but has not yet completed it when the dismantle action starts, it will not complete it and it will not be available.

Sculpt Tool

Sculpting, or landscaping, is not a major part of the gameplay as when you place a building the land will auto-adjust to allow your building to be placed. Occasionally though, the land may be adjusted in a way that may prevent you from placing roads and paths where you'd like to, or you may just want to visually tidy up after you've destroyed some buildings.

To sculpt the land, use the sculpt tool in the bottom right of the screen.

Modes include "Side Snap", Adjust "Full" Tile , and Adjust Tile "Corner".

Tile Marker Tool

The Tile Marker is a tool to help you plan. It can be used to mark where roads, buildings, farms, trees, plots, etc. are to go in the future.

The Tile Marker allows you to mark a tile with the tile's coordinates, numbers 1-9, and 7 colors (the colors are shaded based on the underlaying terrain).

To mark tiles: press and hold "," (comma) + click the tile or drag across multiple tiles you want to mark.

Once a tile has been marked then you can:

Press "." (period) to cycle between coordinates or numbers 1-9
Press "/" (slash) to cycle colors

To unmark tiles: press and hold <shift> + "," (comma) + click the tile or drag across multiple tiles you want to unmark.

Screenshot Mode can capture the marked tiles, however, "Postcard" and "Plain" will only capture the colors, while "Interface" will capture the colors, coordinates and/or numbers.

TIP: The tool will store your last tile marking choice (e.g. number/coordinate option plus color), so if you establish what marking method you want on just 1 tile, then when you drag across multiple tiles they will all be the same marking.

Custom Building Names

Select any building in-game to open the building panel. Then click on the write-icon to the left of the building name and type in a new name.

Giving buildings certain names can be entertaining but it can also help aid in knowing the location or the purpose of the building in your colony. For example: renaming a Small Storage Yard from "Alejandro's Small Storage Yard" to "Apples and Cider Storage Yard" might help you when planning Transport Rules or Building Rules. Or renaming a Train Station from "Bertha's Train Station" to "Coal Mine Train Station" might remind you where it is.

Custom Bot Names

There are two different ways you can customise the bot names that get printed in your game:

Manually

Select any bot in-game which opens the bot panel. Then click on the write-icon to the left of their name and type in a new name.

Pre-populated list

Create a text file called **bot_names.txt** containing a separate name on each line.
Place this file in the following folder: %userprofile%\appdata\LocalLow\Codebyfire Ltd\The Colonists