Slipways Classic

A couple of other tips:
- Try to use Earth planets to create humans where possible. Although robot -> wheat can be useful, population affects your final score so you want to have a human bias.
- You can also create humans from ocean world, wheet + ore = human, which is useful, and if your human flows to a mining planet then then its a two-way flow immediately.
- The settlements that create happiness, I think for jungle it's humans and goods, for earth its computer chips and goods, these upgrade aren't great because it's hard (maybe not possible?) to upgrade the planet to prosperous or rich, and because the planets don't provide resources it can limit your expansion potential. I would only do this if there is no other option, like you have a jungle at the edge of the map.
- Try to get three resources into every marketplace. Four resources have no effect, so three is the max. If you have two spare resources on their own then it's still worth creating a marketplace for them but you may be able to route a third resource from somewhere using the upgrades.

I finally beat "Tough".

Some upgrades from memory:
- space folding
- geneseeds (allows development of "barren" and "iceworld", quite useful)
- the first extender that can't go under existing slipways. These are cheap and can very useful to unlock some valuable routes.
- marketplace (this seems to be fairly instrumental in getting a high happiness and good cashflow).
- the upgrade that makes settlement faster, I forget what it's called. Try to get this early if possible, the earlier you get it the more time you will save.
- the extender which goes under slipways, may seem redundant to buy this as well as the first one, but I had enough cash flow and there were a few key routes I could create to squeeze more out of the map.
- transcendence (or whatever it's called), which converts humans into happiness. I actually achieved five stars on the third last day, so I already have five stars when I bought this on the last day. I had enough cash flow to build four of these and boost my happiness bonus to 150%.

Tips:
- Don't bother settling on the first day, focus on probing as much area as possible and planning your initial connections. The initial cash balance gives you a couple of days before you need income.
- Yes, you need to restart if you get a bad start, luck is a fairly large part of this game, though there is enough skill to make it fun.
- Don't build the converters that convert the green circles into wheat in the early game. They are expensive and take too much time for the connections. Instead, you can create wheat by using the scavenger planet to create a robot then you can create wheat from either the earth or ocean worlds (and the wheat flows back to the scavenger planet, immediately fulfilling one of its requirements). Only build those greenhouse converters when you have already established plenty of cash flow and have the spare time and you're just trying to squeeze a few extra resources out of the map.
- Try to create structures where you have two of the same resource near a human, so you can create a science lab that produces three research points. It's important to get a couple of these relatively early (doesn't need to be before your first upgrades, but early mid game). The earlier you have science labs, the more research points you will generate over your entire game.
- You can get discounts on upgrades by creating science labs using specific resources (look at the upgrade dialogue to see the resources). This can be helpful to get an upgrade one turn earlier than without the discount, but I found trying to focus on the discounts was unnecessary, it's better to get the good science labs generating three or more resources.
- I used sunburst a lot prior to "Tough", but in "Tough" I changed my strategy so that I no longer used it because it uses up a lot of time, both performing the collapse and connecting planets to the sun. Not only does it use up time but it is expensive too. It may be useful in some circumstances, but I certainly wouldn't rely on it. Try to avoid it if you can.
- The upgrade that makes greenhouses produce two wheat instead of one, I liked this prior to "Tough", but in "Tough",  as I was no longer building many greenhouses this became less useful. It may help in one or two places just to squeeze a bit more out of the map, but I wouldn't rely on it. You can use it to more easily build science labs that have two wheat coming in, generating three research points, but the cost in time and money for the greenhouses makes this prohibitive at the "Tough" level, and there is no upgrade discount for wheat (not that the discounts matter too much).
- The upgrade which makes settlement faster, when you are close to this obtaining this, you might want to leave some planets unsettled and focus on market places for a couple of turns. This will give you more benefit from the upgrade.
- You can leave some planets unhappy as you build out, but, in the end, I had everything happy, using the upgrades to create routes around and under existing slipways helps. Focussing too much on keeping everything happy may reduce your income and growth potential as you may be satisfying planets that have low cash generation. Two planets with one unhappy is worse than five planets with one unhappy, so keep settling and extending and hopefully you'll find a planet that can solve the unhappiness.

This was way too much fun! First off, really love how you worked with the pico-8 limitations, it feels great and looks great even with the 128x128 and limited color palette. 

Making mistakes in this game is punishing, but thanks to the 25 year cycle it's very much contained, so mistakes only matter for a short (well, round an hour) long run. Compare that to stellaris, where if you colonize the wrong planet at the start you really have to go for an uphill battle the rest of the game. Here it's more of a "oh fuck I probably shouldn't have done that, I'll do it differently next run". 

Overall, this is really impressive work, good job!

Finally got 5 stars on Reasonable.  Now to tackle harder difficulties.

my speedrun record is 6 seconds : )

managed to explore an entire system

I would love it if this game had an endless mode that autogenerate new sectors via a struceure and had no time limit

Any chance for an android version?

i dont know what you put in this game but i've spent several hours just doing the same thing over and over and will probably continue to do so. i fear what will happen when i eventually buy the finished version. 

Blown away, didn't even finish a match. Exploring the game without reading the wiki was my best decision in a videogame in a long while. The fact that this is also the <3 Pico-8 is utterly fascinating. :D I am happy.

Great Game!

Can you add an endless mode? I enjoy the game but feel it is too short!

been playing 3 hours still haven't got over 1 star, 10/10

There isn't any sound any more

this game was good

installing with itch.io client doesnt work for me on win 10 :/

Still having fun enjoying this game :D

awesome, game putting the steam release on my wishlist. my best score on challenging so far:

 now it is reasonable to buy the game

i'd pay a lot for the pico-8 version to be made endless. 

Its not that the PC version is bad by any means, but this version's graphics are in my opinion more aesthetic, a good breakoff from traditional 3D graphics.

Reminds me of MOO1 and the barebones simplicity is an aspect which I feel isn't kept 100% in the PC version.

can you please add endless mode to the pico8 version

the star is op

I got a 4 Star run on Forgiving, with 8 or 9 Rich planets, 15 or 16 Prosperous planets and 3 Green planets. My best run by far.

Highest score is 9806 on Forgiving. Not great, but it's the products of a double-digit number of runs, which is a lot for a small free game on Itch. Love this game, I'm glad it got a AAA release

good game

i want a sandbox mode pls