The Tutorial

The Tutorial is set up to lead you through the first steps of developing your Moonbase, while along the way, learning what you need to have a successful colony! Bulleted points are the actual items that must be done to move on to the next level.

Translations of the Tutorial:

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0. Welcome To The Moon!


Welcome to the Moon! You've spent years getting this project set up, and now it's really coming true.

Of course, this "magnificent desolation" (in the words of Buzz Aldrin) needs a few things to help keep you alive.

Your first objective is to build:


 * An Ice Processing Plant beside an Ice Crater to get water.
 * A Regolith Separator to obtain Oxygen and Metal.
 * Enough Hydroponics Gardens to feed everybody.



Along the way, you will run into a few problems - your new buildings will need power available before they can be built, and you'll need people to man the equipment, and you'll probably need to build more roads to be able to hook everything up. (The roads hide various infrastructure connections, such as power, water, and air transfer lines).

Of particular interest - notice the LEM module. Tapping it will bring up a screen with some useful statistics regarding the production and status of your colony.

1. Buy low, Sell high, or something like that
Now, you need to learn about the Market. It will let you get rid of excess materials, make money, and bring in supplies in an emergency.


 * You must build a Small Landing Pad to bring in some more revenue.

Market prices change approximately every 20 minutes. So you must 'buy low and sell high' to profit from it. Water is a really good resource to learn the Market.
 * You must take a ship from inventory and put it on your Small Landing Pad.  Tap the Small Landing Pad building and then tap the SHIP button.  Select the Small Lander from the selection list.  It will then appear on the Landing Pad.Small_Lander.png
 * Purchase 1 Moonshine.  You will need to use the Market to obtain it. The Market is available in the Landing Pad because you need ships to transport the goods.

2.  Step 1: Steal Underpants.  Step 2: ???  Step 3: Profit!
Now we learn about tourism.

You can build a new landing pad or wait for the current ship to return. Tap the 'Small Landing Pad' building and then tap the 'Market' button. Tap 'Tourists' and proceed to charter a flight.
 * Bring 5 tourists to your base.

On top of the immediate flight ticket revenue, each tourist will spends an average $100/day on your base before leaving. 5% of tourists leave the base each day so your tourism numbers go down if you do not constantly bring in more tourists. Tourism is the most lucrative activity at this stage of the game. Your progress will be much slower if you do not use it.

Various facilities, such as the Pisa Hotel and the Crater Park, add to the number of tourists you can host at any one time.

3. Make Room!  Make Room!
Different buildings are different sizes. So far, all of the buildings have been 1x1, but now it's time to expand a bit. When you tap the ground to start a building, you'll see a highlight to indicate where the building will go. This highlight may be 1x1, 2x2, or 3x3, depending on how much room is available. The building will be built in the lower corner, going up. This lets you easily determine if there's enough room for the building you want, and if it will touch a road (if it needs to).
 * Mooncrete_Block_Factory.png a Mooncrete Block Factory in order to ensure a steady supply of mooncrete blocks for construction.

INFO: All humans on your base exhale 1kg of CO2/day, so as population increases, so does CO2 production. MeatVats yield 50kg CO2 every 2 days.

4. Bring Forth the The Mad Scientists!
Now, it's time to start accumulating Research Points. You can't use them yet, but they'll be very important in the near future.

You will learn to use those Research Points later in the tutorial. Use the market to make cash and obtain the required materials.
 * Build 1 Observatory.

Build more Landing Pads if needed. You can build extra ships in the Construction Yard 0.

INFO: you can turn off buildings by tapping them and then tapping the 'ON/OFF' button. The building will then be inactive. It will require no resources and will not yield any resources. This is very useful when you find yourself in the red and need to buy some time.

5. Get your Junk Off my Base !!!
Now let's learn about Solid Waste...

Each resident and tourist on your base generates 2 kg/day of solid waste. It is an inventory item.

It accumulates and you need to learn to deal with it before you run out of space. Bring your Solid Waste inventory to less than 200 kg.  To accelerate waste disposal you can use the market to export waste off-base but it costs money to do so.\n\n"
 * Build a Garbage Compactor to help reduce solid waste.Compactor_.png

Once completed you will be eliminating more waste than you generate, your Compactor will eventually shutdown. This means you will be able to import waste and eliminate it for profit. It's pretty lucrative.\n\n"

INFO: Most buildings yield over multiple days. You can see their yield characteristics in the Build list or when you tap an existing building

6. Nothing comes for free on the moon
Now let's learn about Storage Limits. On the moon, storage is limited. At the beginning you are given basic storage capacity. You must build storage structures if you want to increase storage limits.\n\n" Goods are divided into different categories: Bulk, Volatiles, UnitSmall, UnitLarge, Ships, Vehicles, etc... You can see the category an item belongs in the Inventory or Market Lists. Each category has one or more buildings that increase its limit.  For example, Bulk goods are stored in Hoppers, Volatiles use Tanks.  Storage structures are in the 'Feeding & Storage' part of the Build List and have an item stating increased storage values. INFO: On the moon, a complete day/night cycle lasts 29.5 days. Humans live on a 24 hours daily cycle and that's the convention adopted for this game.  In MoonBase Inc, an hour lasts 1 second and a day lasts 24 seconds.
 * Build a Small Hopper and have more than 10,000 kg of metal in inventory.  You can buy your metal in the Market if you want.

7. What happens if I mix these two chemicals?
Now it's time to build a Research Center and use your accumulated Research points

INFO: for more realism, the lunar regolith content values used in Moonbase are the same as on the moon: 43% O2, 26% metal, 21% Silicon, 8% Calcium, 3% other.
 * Build a Research Center.  It's a 3x3 structure.

8. Let's discover something.

 * Perform research on 'Improved Solar Cell Efficiency'. Tap the Research Center and then the Research button.

Note that your Tech=POW1 now enables you to build Solar Arrays.

If you do not have enough research points then wait it out or build more Observatories. Your choice.

9. KREEP mining

 * Retro_Rocket.pngrch Mining Technology
 * Build a KreepShaft
 * Collect 300 RareEarths
 * Research 'Upgrade Drill Scan Radius to 2'

KREEP stands for Potassium (K), Rare Earth Elements (REE), and Phosphorous(P). There is a layer of the lunar crust that is filled with KREEP. Your job is to mine the KREEP layer.

Your Drill runs in the background. You can go back to take care of your ships at any time and the drill will keep going. You will even get a message if the drill falls idle.

You plot the Drill's trajectory using waypoints. You initially have a 5-waypoint buffer. When the Drill runs out of power you must return to the charging plate.

10. Bigger and better ships


To help, you have been given a new  Retro Rocket  with more storage space. Build multiple Landing Pads to accelerate your trading and keep you busy. You will definitely need them, as your production levels reach the point to where you are generating more of an item than these early ships can export in one trip.
 * Now build a ShipYard.

The Shipyard will allow you to build bigger and better ships so it is very expensive. Take time to develop your base and improve your production capabilities to reach this goal.

11. Meteorite protection
Now let's protect your base from meteorites since the probability of striking your base increases as it grows. Meteorite strikes occur an average of once every 4 minutes. You can get 3 very quickly and then none for 15 minutes, but the average is 4 minutes.
 * SkyShield_Missiles.png SkyShield Missiles.

To defend your base you need to build SkyShield laser and missile turrets. Each one you build increases the average strike time, 10 seconds for missiles, 3 seconds for lasers. For example 3 SkyShield Missile turrets will raise average strike time to 4 minutes and 30 seconds.

12. Visiting other bases
A lot of research points are needed to study moonhenge. The Binocular Interferometer and Radio-telescope are now available to you. They generate more research points than the Observatory.
 * Teleporter.png a Binocular Interferometer  to get lots of research points.
 * Upgrade Moonhenge to study it.
 * Rechearch the Alien items it yields.
 * Build a Teleporter.

13. Repelling Aliens
The Alien Beacon summons Alien ship waves to be destroyed in a "Tower Defense" sub-game.
 * research HENGE04 repeatedly  to get Alien items.
 * research HENGE08
 * upgrade a large crater to Alien Beacon.

INFO: HENGE04 research identifies Alien items totally randomly. You may get what you need quickly but it could also take a long while. Take this time to improve your base.

14. Central Government
Now that your city has grown some, you're going to need a central seat of power to run everything from, along with minions, also known as paper-pushing bureaucrats, to keep track of it all.
 * Cityhall3.png Hall is now available to you.  Build one.

15. Seaweed. Plankton. Protein from the Sea.

 * Algae0.pngSoylent.png an Soylent Green Factory and the Algae BioReactors needed to support it.

The Algae BioReactor is a new technology that provides absorbs CO2, generates O2 and Green Goo (excess algae). The Green Goo can be transformed into food by a Soylent Green Factory.

Note that you need 4 Algae BioReactors to provide enough Green Goo to feed a Soylent Green Factory. This implies substantial amounts of CO2 being absorbed (4x50/day = 200/day CO2.)

Check the 'ratio' field (in the Inventory list) to make sure you will not run out of CO2 or this could lead to buildings being automatically powered off.

And no, Soylent Green is not people in this game!

16. End of Tutorial

 * You can remove the Tutorial icon from the screen by tapping the Tutor On/Off button in the Game Menu.