Quick Start

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This guide attempts to describe the steps to take to get a quick start in Dyson Sphere Program.

Currently, all new games will start you on a Mediterranean Planet, which are fairly "Earth-like" and have a good range of resources that can get you all the way up to mid-game without ever leaving the planet. This guide should work for all new game starts, unless and until they make it possible to change your starting system.

If you wish to follow along more precisely, this guide and its accompanying screenshots were written with the following World Generation settings:

• Seed: 00000000
• Systems: 64
• Resource Multiplier: Infinite

With these settings, you should start at a G-Type star named "Iota Sagittae"

Before We Start

Before we start, we'll go over a few tips.

Conserving Energy

In the early game, your mecha has very little in the way of energy storage and power generation. You also don't have access to the some of the better fuel sources that increase the power regeneration rate. For these reasons it is important to conserve energy as much as possible. In a fresh game, these things consume energy for your mecha:

• Movement -- 600 kW while moving. Alleviate by planning your path in advance to minimize distance
• Hovering -- variable, but in the 1-1.2 MW range while hovering over water. Alleviate by walking around water and being sure not to "idle" while hovering above any.
• Drones -- Each drone consumes 288 kW from your mecha while flying to/from a construction. Starting the game with 3 drones, this can get as high as 864 kW. Alleviate by minimizing the distance drones have to fly, and only building one thing at a time.
• Gathering -- when mining a vein manually, it consumes 640 kW. Alleviate by automating mining. This guide's approach requires no hand-gathering aside from 60 Logs for an Upgrade.
• Replicator -- Hand-crafting items, as well as smelting ingots by hand, consume 240 kW. Alleviate by automating everything you can, as early as possible.
• Researching -- Researching technologies using materials from your mecha's inventory means your mecha is doing the research and using 360 kW. Alleviate by setting Matrix Labs to do the research.

Without any fuel source at all, your mecha only generates 80 kW of power to recharge itself. Fuel sources change this amount by varying amounts. In this guide, we will aim to keep mecha energy consumption at a minimum, but if you find yourself getting low, you can either just hang back and let the 80kW recharge itself over time, or find some fuel. You will have 5 Hydrogen Fuel Rods at the start of the game, but using them this early is a bit of a waste. This guide recommends that you use nearby natural fuel sources in the early game, such as trees and plants, organic crystal, or Coal Ore if you are lucky enough to have some nearby.

Trees, Rocks, and Soil Pile

You have probably heard the adage "waste not, want not" -- or, do not let things go to waste simply because you do not want them. In DSP, every resource has a use, although you may not know the uses until you research a particular technology. Trees and Rocks that are scattered around are no exception to this rule.

When placing a Building, if a tree or rock is in the way when the drone places the building, then that tree or rock is simply deleted, and you do not get the resources from it. For this reason, it is advised that before placing any buildings, you should first manually remove any trees or stones that are near that location. This can grant you many different materials, most of which have early-game uses such as for a fuel source.

Of the resources that you can get in this manner, it's OK to use these for fuel, for now:

• Log - come from trees, usually 8-12 for each tree cut down. Decent early-game fuel source, but Be sure to keep 60 on hand until told otherwise
• Plant Fuel - come from trees, as well as small bush-like plants.
• Coal Ore - can sometimes come from rocks.

Try not to use Organic Crystal for fuel. You will find yourself wanting some later, since they are very tedious to make via recipe. If you feel that you must burn some, try to keep at least 120 of them set aside.

Order of Operations

There is no "one right way" to play a sandbox game like Dyson Sphere Program. The order of operations for getting started that is laid out by this guide is intended to follow the following precepts:

• Briefly introduce core game concepts in a logical order
• Minimize mecha power consumption by:
  • Minimizing movement
  • Minimizing Drone distances traveled
  • Automate things as early as possible, especially mining and research.
• Show the benefits of setting up automation early
• Show that it's ok to tear down and rebuild an assembly line when needed.

The order this guide introduces things in is not set in stone, and can easily be done out of sequence if the player wishes to do so.

Settings

This guide assumes that you are playing on default settings. There is one setting, however, that the guide will ask you to enable (and it will be repeated in the guide itself below): Once you have landed on your home planet and have control, Look to the bottom right corner of the screen for an icon that has a 2x2 grid of squares, one of which is a checkmark. This is your UI Settings. Click it, and ensure that all available options are turned ON (orange background). Particularly important is the Lightning Bolt icon, the rest don't quite come into play just yet.

With this Lightning Bolt setting turned on, we will always see our power grid, even without clicking on a power grid building. More importantly, when the power grid is visible in this manner, the blue circles it projects will turn yellow, then orange and red if the power supply for the grid is not sufficient to supply all of the power being demanded. This is the best way to know when to place more power-generating buildings.

Alright, let's get started!

Prologue

You may choose to listen to and follow along with the Prologue if you wish, or you can skip it by hitting Esc and selecting "Skip Prologue"

After Landing

• Upon landing, immediately dismantle the landing pod using Mouse Right Click. This grants you 5x Hydrogen Fuel Rod, 10x Iron Ingot, 10x Magnet and 10x Copper Ingot
  • Note: There should be no need to use the hydrogen fuel rods just yet. We can find plenty of other fuel around us, and this guide will teach you how to conserve energy.
• Check your start location to determine if there are a Copper and Iron vein near each other. See the image for an example.
  • Mouse over veins to see what they are made of. Copper has a orange tint, Iron has a blue-gray color.
  • If you are using Seed 00000000 as this guide is, then your starting position is perfect.
  • If you cannot find Copper and Iron veins near each other, then it is worth spending some time looking around the planet for the best such location. If you find yourself running low on energy while hunting for a good spot, go ahead and use the Hydrogen Fuel Rods.
• Open your Crafting menu with F and select the Magnetic Coil Recipe (Components tab, 2nd row, 2nd item).
• Change the quantity to be produced to 5, by clicking the + arrow in the bottom right corner 4 times.
  • This sets the number of times to run the recipe. For some recipes (including this one), each time you run the recipe, you make 2 items, so running this recipe 5 times results in 10 Magnetic Coils.
• Click the Hammer icon to start production.
• Once you have the 10 Magnetic Coils, press T to open your Technology Tree. On the left, find and click on Electromagnetism, and then the Activate button for that technology.
  • You can also open the Technology tree by clicking the large Science Beaker icon in the bottom right corner of the main view.
• Research begins as soon as you click on Activate. Once Electromagnetism is complete, you will be given some free items:
  • 1x Wind Turbine
  • 1x Tesla Tower
  • 1x Mining Machine

Automating Mining

Congratulations on your first technology! We'll quickly put those free items to use:

• Move over toward the Iron deposit. You can pick up any Trees or Stones along the way, but try to keep your mecha's power above 50%.
• Open the Gathering items panel (2) at the bottom of the screen, and select the Miner. Use {{|kbd|R}} to rotate the miner so that its output end points at the Copper deposit.
• Holding Shift, move the miner into position so that it covers 6 of the Iron nodes.
  • We will frequently use 6 as the target number of nodes, as it's easy to use for belt math.
• Open the Power items panel (1) at the bottom of the screen, and select the Wind Turbine (F4).
• Power the Miner by placing the free Wind Turbine, but for our purposes, the placement is somewhat important:
  • The blue circle must overlap the very center of the miner, where the "no power" icon is.
  • Place it on the output end, as far towards the copper deposit as you can while maintaining the above requirement.
  • Also keep it 2-3 grid lines to one side of the output. This will prevent it from blocking the output port when we get access to belts.
  • These "rules" will allow us to connect this miner and the Copper miner (we're getting there!) power grids with a minimum of extra components.
  • See the photo for a visualization of the ideal placement.
• After placing the Wind Turbine, if the "No Power" icon did not go away on the Iron Miner, use the Deconstruct icon (large X, right above mecha power, or on keyboard: X) to deconstruct it, and try to place it closer.
• The Iron Miner should now be gathering Iron Ore. Because we have not yet researched belts, it cannot put them anywhere. It can hold a maximum of 50 before it stops working. Note, too, that it uses more energy than the single Wind Turbine can provide. We will correct this soon.

If you enabled the Power display in the UI, then you will see the blue circle flicker to yellow while the miner is active. One Wind Turbine is not sufficient to power a Miner at full speed, but it is fast enough for our purposes. We will add more power later.

• Click on the Iron Miner, and wait until it has 50 Iron Ore gathered in the output circle on the top left of the window.
• Click on the 50 Iron Ore to collect it.
• Press F to open your Crafting screen and switch to the Buildings tab.
• Click to start crafting 1x Miner and 1x Wind Turbine.
• While these are crafting, walk over to the Copper deposit, and clear the trees and stones from around it.
• Place the Miner on 6 nodes, like we did with the Iron miner. Orient it so that its Output end is facing towards the Iron deposit.
• Place the Wind Turbine in the same manner we did with the Iron miner - behind and to one side of the Copper miner, as close to the Iron deposit as possible.
• Click the Copper miner to open it and wait until it has gathered 50 Copper Ore.
• Collect the 50 Copper Ore from the Copper miner and close its window.

That may have been fairly wordy, but you've now learned how to place buildings, how to power them, and how to interact with them. You've also Automated mining of both Iron and Copper ore! You'll have a Dyson Sphere in no time!

Automating Smelting

We're still using our mecha for too many things, eating up precious power. Almost everything we want to make will require the ore that we're gathering to be Smelted into Ingots, Magnets, etc first. So let's get ready to automate smelting!

For the rest of this guide, you will not be told when to gather ore from the miners. If you find that you do not have enough in your inventory to accomplish a task, head to the appropriate miner and pick some up. Don't overfill your inventory, though, you won't need to manually grab ore for long, and your inventory is very limited in space!

• We can't automate smelting until we've learned how! So open your Crafting menu, go to Components, and start 5 runs of Circuit Board (10 Circuit Boards total) and 5 runs of Magnetic Coil (10 Magnetic Coils total).
• Once those are made, open up the Technology tree (T), and find and research Automatic Metallurgy. Don't forget to click Activate!
• While this is researching, you should still have a Tesla Tower in your inventory from our last Technology.
• Place the Tesla Tower approximately halfway between the two Wind Turbines that we have already placed. While moving it into position, you should see a dashed line connecting it to the nearest Wind Turbine. Move it around until you see a dashed line to BOTH Wind Turbines, and then click to place it. This will join the two power grids together, and help alleviate the power-shortage problems for the Miners.
  • Try to center it as best you can - overlapping power supply circles on one side may leave an area unsupplied on the other. See the screenshot for an example.
  • Note: If you stand your mecha at this location, you should be able to reach both miners to collect Ore, without moving the mecha! Yay, power savings!
• Open your Crafting menu, and craft 2x more Wind Turbines. You will probably need to grab some more Copper and/or Iron Ore.
• Place these Wind Turbines near the outer skirts of your power network - such as near one or both of the miners.
  • There are varying methods of efficiently placing Wind Turbines. For now, it is important to increase our total power coverage area, so:
    • Try to minimize overlap of the new turbine's blue circle to existing blue circles, but
    • Try not to leave any small spots of area surrounded by blue circles but not covered by them, and:
    • Make sure that you are still close enough to the existing power network that the Wind Turbine creates a connection (Dashed line while placing)
  • Other considerations in the future will vary this approach. For example, spreading them out means you cannot place as many wind turbines in the same area, so it can be better to place them close together even if it means overlapping circles. Right now we just need the area more than the power.
• By now, the Technology Research is done, and you have 3 free Smelters.
• For now, Place all three smelters side by side in the area covered by the Tesla Tower we placed earlier.
• Click each Smelter, to open their menu and set their recipes:
  • Set one smelter to make Iron Ingots
  • Set one smelter to make Copper Ingots
  • Set one smelter to make Magnets
• Smelters can hold 20 ore in their input. Grab as much ore as necessary (60 iron, 20 copper) to completely fill each Smelter's input. They will immediately begin smelting their chosen recipe.
  • With all three smelters active, 4 wind turbines is not enough to keep them powered. It's OK for the power grid to be yellow for now, we'll wait until we can automate Wind Turbine Manufacturing to improve our grid.

For the rest of this guide, we will stop telling you when to put Ore into the Smelters. If we tell you to grab something from a Smelter and it does not have enough, then go ahead and put another 20 ore in.

Automating Assembly

Alright, we're halfway there! All that's left now is to automate manufactirng/assembly, and then to Automate Research, and we won't have to use our mecha's own power quite so often.

• This time, we're going to set the research before we make the items, so that you can see how that looks.
• Open your Technology Tree, find Basic Assembling Process and Activate it.
• Close the Technology tree, and notice that the icon in the top left corner has turned red. Research has stalled, because we don't have enough items!
• Right below that icon, the Manual Research panel shows us that we have 0/10 Gear and 0/10 Circuit Board
• Using the outputs from the Smelters, and refilling the smelters as needed, craft 10 Gears and 10 Circuit Boards
  • Remember, Circuit Boards recipe makes 2, so you only have to craft it 5 times, not 10!
  • If you watch your inventory while these get crafted, you will not see them show up! Why? Well, when an item is needed for the currently active Research, it is pulled into a hidden reserve inventory so that you can't accidentally use it for something else. If you need the item back, Uncheck the "Use Inventory Item" checkbox and they will immediately dump into your inventory. Be wary, though, if you don't have enough inventory space, some items will be lost for good!
• When technology finishes, it gives you 1 free Assembling Machine Mk.I ("Assembler").
• Place the free Assembler in the Tesla Tower's supply area, but a little bit away from the Smelters.
• Click the assembler, then the Gear icon to set its recipe. Choose to make Gears.
• Give the assembler exactly 18 Iron Ingots, to have it make 18 Gears.
  • The assembler can only hold 10 gears in its output at a time. You will have to remove the first 10 for it to continue making the last 8.
• When you have the 18 gears, hover over the output of the assembler to make a red X appear in its top right corner. Click the X to clear the Recipe, then set the Recipe to Circuit Board.
• Provide the Assembler with enough materials to make exactly 14 Circuit boards.
  • Remember, Circuit Boards make 2 per craft, so you only need to craft 7 times.
• Now with 18 Gears and 14 Circuit Boards in your inventory, manually craft 1 additional Assembling Machine Mk.I -- you'll find it on the Buildings tab in your replicator.
• Place the new Assembler right next to the first one, and set its recipe to Gears.
• You should now have two Assemblers - one making Circuit Boards, and one making Gears. Good job!

Before we can fully automate Science, we need to properly automate our Assemblers and our Smelters so we're not doing so much manual labor.

Automation Logistics

• You should still have 10 Gears and 10 Circuit Boards from the end of the last section. If not, use the Assemblers to make enough.
• At the very top of the Technology tree, research Basic Logistics System.
• When this is complete, you are given 5x Sorter Mk.I and 20x Conveyor Belt Mk.I

At this point, things start deviating based on player preference. You can choose to follow the guide closely, or try to build in your own way that follows the intent. The guide's process is chosen to minimize the number of additional components that need to be crafted, at this stage.

20 belts isn't quite enough, with the way our factory is laid out right now. We'll ultimately need to make more. Before we do, we can make some changes that will minimize how many need to be made. In essence, we're going to tear down and rebuild part of our factory. This is perfectly OK! Most players find themselves doing this repeatedly throughout their game...even to the extent of tearing down planet-encompassing factories just to rebuild them in a more efficient manner!

Before we tear anything down, let's get started on what we CAN do:

• Select the Conveyor belt from your inventoeery, and mouse over the Iron Miner.
• Notice that the white circle goes away and the entire miner becomes highlighted. The miner is now the 'starting point' of the conveyor belt we want to place.
• Click on the miner to start defining where the belt will go.
• Move the cursor straight out from the miner until it shows 5 solid circles in a row (not counting the first solid circle with a ring around it)
  • The first segment may skew off at an angle. This is perfectly fine, it's because we placed the miner while holding Shift, so it's not centered on a grid, and conveyors need to be on grids.
• Do the same thing for the Copper miner, but only to 2 solid circles (not counting the first solid circle with a ring around it)

Placing Conveyor belts is when your drones are likely to eat the most of your mecha's energy. This is because you're designating numerous things to be constructed simultaneously, so more drones are active at once. Alleviate this by walking as close to the construction as possible, so they don't have as far to travel - drones consume energy while in flight, so minimizing flight time (by shortening travel distance) minimizes energy cost.

• Make sure you have at least 10 open spots in your inventory.
• Using the deconstruct tool (the red X on the hotbar, or your X key), Deconstruct:
  • All three smelters
  • The first two Wind turbines we placed ('behind' the miners)
  • Any other Wind Turbines positioned between the miners

We had to do this to make room for buildings being close to each other to use Logistics properly.

• Place one Smelter immediately alongside the belt coming out of the Copper Miner. Place it on the side that puts it closest to the imaginary line drawn between both Miners.
  • Make sure that two of the white squares are partially overlapping the conveyor belt. See the image for an idea. This will ensure that we can use Sorters to move goods between them.
• Place the other two smelters side-by-side, immediately alongside the belt coming out of the Iron Miner. Place them on the side that puts them closest to the imaginary line drawn between both Miners.
  • The first smelter will have three white squares over the belt, the second one will have two white squares over the belt.
• Pick the Sorters in your inventory and once per Smelter:
  • Click the conveyor belt next to the Smelter to connect the Sorter to the Belt
  • Click the Smelter to connect the Sorter to the Smelter.
  • It may help you to zoom in on the area to more accurately click things.

The order is important. The Sorter always takes FROM what you first clicked on, and moves it TO the second thing you clicked on.

• On the Copper Smelter, place a new conveyor on the opposite side from the existing one. For now, make it just 3 segments long, pointing towards the center point between miners.
• Connect a Sorter FROM the Copper Smelter TO this new conveyor belt.
• Click the Copper Smelter to set its recipe to Copper Ingots.
• Place a Wind Turbine in the corner spot between the Copper Smelter and Copper Miner, so that it can power both.
• On the Iron Smelters, Place a new Conveyor similar to the Copper conveyor, but only from the Iron Smelter FURTHEST from the Iron Miner. Make it 3 segments long, pointed toward the center point between miners.
  • The first smelter will be used for Magnets and will need its own output belt so we don't mix things on belts.
• Connect your last Sorter FROM this smelter TO the belt just placed.
• Set the Iron Smelter closest to the Iron Miner to making Magnets, and the other one to making Iron Ingots.
• Place a wind turbine similarly to how we just placed one for the Copper Smelter. It's OK if it does not cover both Smelters.
• Place the remaining two Wind Turbines so that they:
  • Power any currently unpowered buildings
  • Create as much additional new coverage area as possible
  • Collectively one single grid out of all placed power components.

Check out the image for an idea of where you should be at:

Now, we have automated Mining and Smelting, but don't have enough conveyors to automate Assembly. At this stage, the Guide has only 4 conveyors left! How do we do this without making anything else by hand?

• Make at least 30 more Circuit Boards and 16 more Gears with the Assemblers
• Deconstruct both Assemblers
• extend the Iron Ingot conveyor belt as far out as you can with your remaining conveyors. Try to get as much of it into a Powered area as you can.
• Place the Assemblers on either side of the Iron Ingot conveyor belt, so that the white squares overlap it.
  • Be sure that all three white squares on each assembler are in a powered area! You may need to move a Wind Turbine to accomplish this, that's fine!
• Zoom in until you can clearly see the belt and the assemblers. It will help to orient the camera so that the belt is running up/down relative to the camera.
• Craft 9 more Sorters with the components you just made - by hand is OK, or set one of the assemblers to Sorter recipe to do so, for now.
• Then set one Assembler to make Gears and the other to make Conveyor Belts
• Place these sorters:
  • Taking FROM Iron Ingot Belt TO an Assembler
  • Taking FROM Iron Ingot Belt TO other Assembler
  • Taking FROM Gear Assembler TO Belt Assembler (Across the belt)

Sorters cannot collide with each other. This means they must occupy three different slots on/across the belt. Fortunately, we have three slots on each side of the assembler, so this works.

If you've set this up right, Conveyor Belts should begin producing automatically! First, an Iron Ingot is placed in the Gear maker, and one in the Belt maker. Then when a Gear is made, it is placed into the Belt maker, and it can make belts. Later, we'll set up an Output Storage Chest for belts, but for now you can always reach into the Belt Maker for more belts as needed!

• With the remaining gears and circuit boards we made, Hand-craft 2x Assemblers.
• Place one assembler next to the Gear assembler, on the side facing toward the Copper Mine. Set this to making Wind Turbines.
• Place the other Assembler beside that one, towards the copper mine. Set this to making Magnetic Coils.
• Extend the Copper Ingot belt to touch the nearest side of the Magnetic Coil Assembler.
• Extend a belt from the Magnet Smelter to the back side of the Magnetic Coil Assembler.
• Extend the Iron Ingot belt to the front side of the Wind Turbine Assembler.
• Connect the following Sorters:
  • FROM Magnet Belt TO Magnetic Coil Assembler
  • FROM Copper Ingot Belt TO MAgnetic Coil Assembler
  • FROM Gear Assembler TO Wind Turbine Assembler
  • FROM MAgnetic Coil Assembler TO Wind Turbine Assembler
  • FROM Iron Ingot Belt TO Wind Turbine Assembler
  • FROM Magnet Smelter TO Magnet Belt

You'll start to have some serious power problems once this is all running, but it's OK! That's exactly what this setup will solve! You're now making Wind Turbines automatically, and just have to place them!

• As Wind Turbines come off the line, begin placing them all around the area. 10 more should be enough for our purposes, but start placing them as soon as you can to boost the power for the next ones being made.
  • When placing these new turbines, aim for density. Pack them as close to each other as you can, to ensure that there are no uncovered areas for power.

You have set up a fully automated logistics chain! A fairly complicated one, too. There are some drawbacks to using direct-insertion like we did between Assemblers - namely, it is not very easy to scale up to larger production rates. But our goal was to get it going quickly, and demonstrate how to do so. You're on your way to a well-oiled machine!

We have just ONE more task for this Quick Start guide....

Automating Research

We've learned a lot already up to this point. The last thing to do, is to automate Research.