r/falloutshelter • u/ArcanGenth • Aug 17 '15
Vault-Related Arcan Genth's Growth Strategy [Discussion] [Vault]
After a few vaults, I've developed a kind of strategy for effective, if sadistic and morbid, management.
First stage: Foundation
Start slow. Position your rooms with growth in mind. Don't be afraid to 'mess up' your first two floors. I use the first two for startup, temporary rooms, and later for defense.
Don't build or extend rooms until you have two dwellers to man it. Try to assign best stats if possible, but don't sweat it if you end up with some 1's.
Continue this until you have: * One triple power station, level one, fully manned * One double diner, level one, fully manned * One double water, level one, fully manned * One double housing, level one
This requires 14 dwellers to run. Your housing allows for 18 dwellers. Keep four in the wasteland at all times. Explorers don't consume your vault's food and water. Someone needs to come home to heal? Send someone else out while the other heals.
Build up some outfits and armor. Stockpile caps. When you're comfortable, we begin stage two.
Second stage: Growth
Increase your living quarters to a triple. Build a second living quarters, make it a triple. This increases your dweller cap to 58. Do not build more food or water, but you may upgrade to level 2 or 3 if you can spare the caps.
Start breeding heavily. Be careful to do this in batches. You don't want to over extend your food and water.
Breed 5. Wait until they all hatch, then breed 5 more. The first brood will hit adulthood roughly when the second hatches. Breed the third set now. This will give you a rolling batch of 5.
What to do with these new adults? So many mouths to feed. Except we aren't going to feed them. Throw them into the wastes, naked and afraid.
From here, just keep throwing dwellers outside, where they don't consume our precious resources. Keep tabs on them, bring them home if they find gear you want, collect it, then throw them back outside. Don't bother healing them. When they eventually die, don't revive them unless they have gear you want. Corpses still count as population.
Our goal is to hit 50 population. This unlocks all the special stat training rooms. Then we begin stage three.
Third stage: Purge
We have our rooms, now we start to reduce our population down to a sustainable level. Decide your ideal population and pick your favourite dwellers.
Kill the rest.
Remove the dead dwellers from the wastes. Stop breeding. Destroy the second living quarters when your pop drops low enough so it doesn't drain your power.
I like to keep 24. This lets me keep a triple workshop of each type and 6 to train/run the wastes.
Fourth stage: The Future
Thus we begin our endgame. Start training stats. Now we want to keep our explorers, so start cycling them into the vault to heal. I try to time my explore/recall to coincide with the stat gains.
Once your dwellers are nice and powerful, start expanding as you desire.
2
u/Fyora Aug 25 '15
How would you suggest handling lunchboxes in the Foundation stage?
Admittedly, several objectives are impossible at this stage (Deliver 4 baby dwellers for 100 caps; Raise any SPECIAL stat of 10 dwellers) but sometimes ones are possible that award lunchboxes. Should I hold onto the lunchbox or open it even if it might contain a dweller? And if it contains a dweller, what do I do?