Surviving Mars
80 Achievements
0-1h
GOG
Will they hold?
Prevent 100 Cave-ins in total from Underground Marsquakes
0.2%
How to unlock the Will they hold? achievement in Surviving Mars - Definitive Guide
Lt Davo
TrueAchievements
TrueAchievements
If there's a mod that helps with this achievement, then that's great. This is a no-mod solution.
This achievement will take a long time. It took me 174 sols, and that was with a new colony set up purely for the purpose of unlocking this achievement and nothing else.
I strongly recommend selecting the "Active plate tectonics" game rule at startup. With that, my colony had a Marsquake reliably every 4 to 6 sols.
When you're in the surface view and there's a Marsquake, the screen will shake for a while. It won't shake the same way from an asteroid view, but you'll still notice the screen jumping a bit, like it's lagging. If you switch to underground view quickly enough, you'll see dust clouds where the cave-ins occurred. The
menu will then let you cycle through the places where cave-ins occurred. There is sometimes only one place, but often there are two or three. Usually, each place where there's a cave in actually consists of two or three separate cave-ins. (You know this because you have to command your drones to clean up each one separately.) So, each Marsquake might produce something like 4 to 10 cave-ins. If you have support struts built AND in working condition (i.e., not in need of repair) where those cave-ins would have occurred, then every separate cave-in that they stopped counts toward the achievement. This is why I had Marsquakes roughly every 5 sols and got the achievement in Sol 174 instead of after Sol 500.
By the time I unlocked the achievement, I had about 60 support struts built. I had about 85 to 90 percent of the underground covered. Cover as much as you can as quickly as you can, because if the cave-ins occur where you haven't built any supports, that's a wasted Marsquake. What with building the elevator, doing all the researches, clearing the passages, and bringing back exotic minerals from an asteroid, it took me to Sol 60 to prevent my first cave-in. Of course, that was a bit of a lucky shot, because I was just getting started. The more support struts I put out, the more "hits" I got and the fewer wasted Marsquakes I had. The Marsquake that unlocked the achievement for me was the 13th one where I had a hit. That means I got hits about every second Marsquake and prevented an average of 6.5 cave-ins per Marsquake hit.
Support struts require maintenance, not only from damage caused by Marsquakes, but just from the passage of time. You could use RC commanders to build them, but you're going to need drone hubs for mainentance anyway, so you might as well plan on blanketing your underground in drone hubs also. I had 44 drone hubs built, which, again, covered about 85 to 90 percent of the underground. If you get the Autonomous Hubs breakthrough, definitely research it. Perhaps even consider selecting the Inventor commander profile at game setup, because it has Autonomous Hubs as a perk. Place an exotic minerals depot next to each drone hub and set it to accept 5 exotic minerals. Also place a universal depot and set it to accept metal, electronics, and polymers (for your light poles) only.
Each support strut costs 15 metal and 5 exotic minerals to build, and more exotic minerals for maintenance. Each drone hub costs 12 metal and 8 electronics and requires electronics for maintenance. So, not even including maintenance costs, you're looking at around 1,500 metal, 350 electronics, and 300 exotic minerals if you follow my example. I built an underground dome and a metal extractor to help with the metal, and sent the other items down on the elevator. You do occasionally find some materials, including exotic minerals, from examining anomalies underground, so definitely have at least one RC explorer, commander, and transport to find and harvest those caches.
You're obviously going to be making many trips to asteroids to get exotic minerals. I don't want this solution to be an asteroid mining tutorial, but I'll just say Prefab-refab is your friend. Extractor amplification (physics) is also good, because it gets the minerals out of the ground faster. Deep asteroid mining will increase the number of exotic mineral deposits per asteroid, so that's a winner, too. I also ended up building a second fully staffed recon center because my scientists kept discovering gas clouds or dust bunnies or whatever instead of asteroids. You can save scum right before they're about to announce their research and sometimes get an asteroid after a reload or two.
This achievement will take a long time. It took me 174 sols, and that was with a new colony set up purely for the purpose of unlocking this achievement and nothing else.
I strongly recommend selecting the "Active plate tectonics" game rule at startup. With that, my colony had a Marsquake reliably every 4 to 6 sols.
When you're in the surface view and there's a Marsquake, the screen will shake for a while. It won't shake the same way from an asteroid view, but you'll still notice the screen jumping a bit, like it's lagging. If you switch to underground view quickly enough, you'll see dust clouds where the cave-ins occurred. The
menu will then let you cycle through the places where cave-ins occurred. There is sometimes only one place, but often there are two or three. Usually, each place where there's a cave in actually consists of two or three separate cave-ins. (You know this because you have to command your drones to clean up each one separately.) So, each Marsquake might produce something like 4 to 10 cave-ins. If you have support struts built AND in working condition (i.e., not in need of repair) where those cave-ins would have occurred, then every separate cave-in that they stopped counts toward the achievement. This is why I had Marsquakes roughly every 5 sols and got the achievement in Sol 174 instead of after Sol 500.By the time I unlocked the achievement, I had about 60 support struts built. I had about 85 to 90 percent of the underground covered. Cover as much as you can as quickly as you can, because if the cave-ins occur where you haven't built any supports, that's a wasted Marsquake. What with building the elevator, doing all the researches, clearing the passages, and bringing back exotic minerals from an asteroid, it took me to Sol 60 to prevent my first cave-in. Of course, that was a bit of a lucky shot, because I was just getting started. The more support struts I put out, the more "hits" I got and the fewer wasted Marsquakes I had. The Marsquake that unlocked the achievement for me was the 13th one where I had a hit. That means I got hits about every second Marsquake and prevented an average of 6.5 cave-ins per Marsquake hit.
Support struts require maintenance, not only from damage caused by Marsquakes, but just from the passage of time. You could use RC commanders to build them, but you're going to need drone hubs for mainentance anyway, so you might as well plan on blanketing your underground in drone hubs also. I had 44 drone hubs built, which, again, covered about 85 to 90 percent of the underground. If you get the Autonomous Hubs breakthrough, definitely research it. Perhaps even consider selecting the Inventor commander profile at game setup, because it has Autonomous Hubs as a perk. Place an exotic minerals depot next to each drone hub and set it to accept 5 exotic minerals. Also place a universal depot and set it to accept metal, electronics, and polymers (for your light poles) only.
Each support strut costs 15 metal and 5 exotic minerals to build, and more exotic minerals for maintenance. Each drone hub costs 12 metal and 8 electronics and requires electronics for maintenance. So, not even including maintenance costs, you're looking at around 1,500 metal, 350 electronics, and 300 exotic minerals if you follow my example. I built an underground dome and a metal extractor to help with the metal, and sent the other items down on the elevator. You do occasionally find some materials, including exotic minerals, from examining anomalies underground, so definitely have at least one RC explorer, commander, and transport to find and harvest those caches.
You're obviously going to be making many trips to asteroids to get exotic minerals. I don't want this solution to be an asteroid mining tutorial, but I'll just say Prefab-refab is your friend. Extractor amplification (physics) is also good, because it gets the minerals out of the ground faster. Deep asteroid mining will increase the number of exotic mineral deposits per asteroid, so that's a winner, too. I also ended up building a second fully staffed recon center because my scientists kept discovering gas clouds or dust bunnies or whatever instead of asteroids. You can save scum right before they're about to announce their research and sometimes get an asteroid after a reload or two.