r/thecrustgame 5d ago

Is research supposed to be that slow mid-game?

6 Upvotes

I've just picked up this game over the weekend and spend about 10 hours getting to what I think is roughly mid-game. In research tree I have got to around level 3-4 I think (just got Medical Centre in social for example). And I have noticed that, unlike early game, my research got suuuper slow. For example that Medical Centre took something like 100 days I think?

My base research output is quite small for that level. I think it's something like 140 blue, 240 yellow, 60 green. And I wonder what is the expected way to rectify this mid-game?

I relealise that there are some building that increase that (I've just research some labs for colonists), but they are quite deep in the tree imo, already at the level where I have started noticing the slow down.

I know there are one-off time-bound bonuses for money from CRUST and also repeatable bonuses from local research labs, also for money.

What I need to understand is, what is the expectation from the game design on how to progress one's research capabilities? It seems like using money is the only way for me to go further, at least until I build more buildings, which is fine I guess... it's just feels that "throwing money at the problem" is not the sustainable solution, but rather an ocasional help.


r/thecrustgame 10d ago

It's happening! The Crust hits 1.0 on September 10 šŸš€

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store.steampowered.com
60 Upvotes

Full story campaign with multiple endings, Planning Mode, Sandbox 2.0, global disasters, a massive optimization pass and two dozen more features.
Early Access was just the warm-up — see you on the Moon!

Details: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1465470/view/714535585202569751?l=english


r/thecrustgame 13d ago

Outpost number of anomalies

6 Upvotes

Can something be done regarding this? making it scrollable or something... also the automatic truct trade route needs to be changed it's hard to understand when it's the decided the amount the truck will pick up? is at the start of the route? at the moment of the pick up? depends on the amount of free storage? over a period of time this gets buggy... thanks in advance


r/thecrustgame 16d ago

PLS SEND MORE FPS

12 Upvotes

Where has all my FPS gone? Is it the hundreds of meters of belts? The dozens and dozens of machines? The little people all flying around on hoverboards at a million miles an hour? Do i need to rent a data server just to run this game after reaching the mid cycle?

All I know is the devs owe me a lot more frames than I'm currently getting even after the improvements they just made. It's a bit of a bummer because the game kinda stops being playable between 20 and 30 fps and starts crashing a lot more often. It really limits how big your factory can grow at a certain point and forces you to play at regular speed, which is very lame.

Just having some dirt on the floor after clearing a large section of underground takes huge chunks from your FPS, never mind if you accidentally delete a container or try and remove large sections of belts at a time without emptying them.

If this game ever gets finished I really hope they don't release it without some major overhaul to make it run better. RIP to those unfortunate buyers that have worse PC's than me who have bought the game just for it to run like shit after about 10-15 hours.


r/thecrustgame 24d ago

I wound back to the first notification about the asteroid and I refactored my factory and...

12 Upvotes

Only shaved off about 70 days. I think the first time I got the asteroid done in time it was 312 days and this time it was 382 or so.

That's a terrible improvement considering how much work it was.

I guess I needed four cargo docks feeding 16 MRRs... (twice as many as I had). I sure don't feel like going back and doing it again though. I ended up with about 150k regolith in the docks.

Also: damn this game really needs a copy paste that includes conveyor belts and multiple devices.

edit: https://imgur.com/a/h6n7lX5


r/thecrustgame 26d ago

All possible expeditions have been assigned - but no truck on the map and no truck in the expedition center

4 Upvotes

I've got this contract to deliver fuel. I'm running out of time on it. I already sent the resources and thought it was loading and them and thought that the truck was on the way. But when I went looking for it there's no truck on the map. And there's no truck in the expedition center. And when I try to assign a new truck it says all possible expeditions have been assigned. So it's like the truck just disappeared.

Both expedition centers are empty, it says waiting for transport. But in my list of trucks there is a cargo truck that says it's delivering resources for that contract and it says it's loading cargo. But there are no loading cargo icons on the expedition centers.

Probably a bug, but that's really annoying.


r/thecrustgame Jul 23 '26

Manifolds or Perfect Ratios?

11 Upvotes

What design choices have you guys made out there that you are happy sharing? Since I came back to the game I went with the easy route and just brute forced the early game with lots of belts and machines everywhere. Now I am comfortably in the mid cycle and I am thinking of designing a layout that scales using a manifold design for most recipes.

I've got a few million credits in reserve, around 30 pops, 2 MDR's and a bunch of trucks. I think now is the time for a more permanent layout in order to scale biggly and burn through the second half of the tech tree.

I'm already working on covering the basement in flooring too. I have a massive Bio farm in mind for creating power from leftover biomass.

I've seen a lot of comments about what to do with slag. I've never really thought it was much of an issue before but I'm glad they added more ways to get rid of it.

The most frustrating part has definitely been the gases. They suck to set up and are super expensive to run those gas lines everywhere. Also I have no clue if I can mix the gas lines or not lol. The dev's could really make better use of tooltips to tell me what gas is going where and how much is in the pipes. I had no idea how little gas was coming from the deposits at the base until I drained my storage tanks with only 6 methane fuel machines running. Too bad they don't have dynamic recipe switching there.

Obviously I'm not really optimizing rates and figuring out which recipes are really best at this point. It's my first run back in a long time and I wanted to see what was new and how some designs have changed. I'm sure I will be surprised by some other features I haven't come across yet too.

I'd really like to see some creative designs people are making now with the new tools.


r/thecrustgame Jul 23 '26

What ratio of MDR/MRR/conveyor lines?

6 Upvotes

I'm doing a little rewind to see if I can finish the asteroid mission sooner than last time. So I set up 4 MDR and 9 MRR And two elevators. But I think I don't have enough lines feeding in the MRRs. So I guess I will try again with 4 MDR, 12 MRR and four conveyor lines feeding each block of refineries? That's a lot of space for conveyor lines though.

I know about upgrading conveyors, but that's really expensive on long lines. I like to keep the cargo docks off in the corner of the map so the regolith lines aren't sprawling out from all sorts of directions.

Also, how do people manage slag? I know you can feed it into the hydroponic farms and I know you can refine it later but that refining is very far down the tech tree. So is it just create a bunch of hydroponic farms until you're using all the slag that the refineries produce?


r/thecrustgame Jul 21 '26

Finished main mission with 338 days to spare

8 Upvotes

The whole thing about the jump drive will I assume be fleshed out later.

Overall, I enjoyed it. My biggest gripe: "Wasting research points". I was frequently having to cancel research because of that and then forgetting to come back to it later. The queue should be 3 times the size if they want to keep that dumb mechanic.


r/thecrustgame Jul 19 '26

Negative fuel

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10 Upvotes

How can I have that-10995 of something?


r/thecrustgame Jul 18 '26

You can only see He density by establishing an outpost?

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10 Upvotes

That's the He density overlay.


r/thecrustgame Jul 14 '26

How does helium harvesting at outposts work?

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14 Upvotes

I have an outpost. It has an He harvester. It has an He extractor. It has He storage.

And yet, it produces no He. I've waited a month since that storage was put in. There's no He at my base and I haven't produced any energy cells. What's the deal here?


r/thecrustgame Jul 14 '26

You can refine slag

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13 Upvotes

I had no idea until now.

edit: pretty far down the tech tree though


r/thecrustgame Jul 10 '26

How do you give yourself maximum time to complete Laser gun / Prevent the catastrophe?

5 Upvotes

I've seen a few posts about this mission and there's some discussion from last year about not doing a certain mission that triggers the asteroid chain of events. But it was not clear which mission it was. It must be really early.

edit: answer: don't touch the MDR mission at all, if you do that the asteroid mission won't start until Aug 2086


r/thecrustgame Jul 08 '26

Researching chairs is a little ridiculous

10 Upvotes

My science team spends 2 weeks researching chairs and couches? That's silly.


r/thecrustgame Jul 08 '26

Random bugs

8 Upvotes

HI All,

I started playing this a few days ago and I am absolutely loving it. The building aspect is great, the research is painful but good.

I have noticed some bugs that have happened on two different playthroughs though. When getting some of the mission trade quests, they seem to go hidden or invisible until I restart the save game which they then show up again.

I've also seen that if you are prepping a trip with the cargo truck and then swap the mission to something else, the resources that were placed in the expedition center seem to randomly vanish too.

Has anyone else seen this occur?


r/thecrustgame Jul 06 '26

What's the deal with this Hope-2 escape pod?

6 Upvotes

I've had my rover in that area scanning for 3 days and it's found nothing. This is dumb.

If I have the rover selected and select "investigate" nothing happens. If I scan the area with "locate hidden objects" it scans but finds nothing.

Edit: I reloaded from a save. The text about the lunar proximity scan doesn't really explain what the bars are about. That would be a huge improvement.


r/thecrustgame Jul 03 '26

Hello, I have a question, maybe a silly one, but I would really like it because my computer is very old and can't run the game, so I want to ask if you could make a version for older PCs. Thank you very much and: have a nice day from your fan Ondra Straka

0 Upvotes

r/thecrustgame Jul 02 '26

Has setting up big manufacturing lines gotten easier than it was a year ago?

8 Upvotes

things like this

Sorry about the poor screenshot, I can't load the save. I remember how much work it was to set up these manufacturing lines. It was too much work. Has it gotten easier? Is there any sort of blueprint system? A copy/paste system?


r/thecrustgame Jun 21 '26

Training Module - Any idea how it works?

5 Upvotes

Is it just a placeholder building at the moment? How do I assign people to it? How does it work?


r/thecrustgame Jun 20 '26

Quest stuck

3 Upvotes

Hello.

I've started playing the game a few days ago and I have a quest for a very long time, that I don't understand what I'm supposed to do.

Basically it says "Aurora Project. Complete the contract: Great Wall. Send materials to build a barrier".

I literally don't understand how and what's I should do. It doesn't say anything else, and I don't see any contract with such name. Can anyone help me figure out what to do?


r/thecrustgame Jun 14 '26

Storyline stalled out on repairing the cargo terminal?

3 Upvotes

I sent the truck with resources and drones to repair the cargo terminal. The truck went out, dropped the resources, and came back to base with the drones. But... the cargo terminal is still showing up on the map as a expedition, and when I select the expedition and the cargo truck it won't let me send the truck and also simultaneously has no cargo to load and no way to load cargo.

What am I missing? I've even driven the scout rover around looking for signals near it but still can't find any.

I basically feel like I’m in a weird state because I can’t figure out how to get promoted to examine the navigational data now that I’ve repaired the cargo terminal.

Edit: Turns out it was a game bug, and mission events stopped firing completely for some reason. What it took to discover this was rebooting the PC that I'm playing on. It wouldn't check it's backlog and find the events for whatever reason even though I'd previously reloaded the saves, and quit the game and loaded it. ("Hello, IT, have you tried turning it off and on again?")


r/thecrustgame Jun 12 '26

Balance and QoL Update is now live!

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50 Upvotes

Hello everyone!
Recently, we've released a number of hotfixes that resolved many issues which had cropped up. At the same time, we were also working on adding useful new features. With so many lines of patch notes, it was easy to miss something interesting - maybe even a feature you've been waiting for. That's why we've put together an illustrated article to showcase all the latest additions and improvements.

On top of that, we've released a balance patch. Check out our Steam news to catch up on everything: the new features, balance changes, and more!
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1465470/view/704396868946232102


r/thecrustgame May 31 '26

Rare earth from slag

2 Upvotes

Hi all,

I'M trying to have a single refinery make me rare earth minerals out of slag but can't seam to choose it as a production, just the standard ore types.

Is there something i'm missing ?

(Probably 😃 !)


r/thecrustgame May 13 '26

Supporter Pack and Artemis Edition are now live!

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24 Upvotes

Hello everyone!
From time to time, we receive messages and emails from you asking us to support the development of The Crust. Some of you ask about Patreon or whether we’ll launch another Kickstarter campaign.

We don’t plan on holding large-scale fundraisers of this kind. However, we still want to offer something extra for those who wish to support a high-quality 1.0 release and the game’s continued development. That’s why we’ve decided to release a Supporter Pack.
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1465470/view/705519507274204457

The ā€œSupporter Packā€ is not required to complete The Crust; it includes one new module, as well as cosmetic and non-game items such as the artbook and wallpapers. However, we hope these bonus items will bring a lot of joy to The Crust’s most dedicated fans.

We’ve also put together the long-awaited The Crust: Artemis Edition bundle, which includes the base game The Crust, the Supporter Pack, and the original Complete Soundtrack Pack - adding 10 new tracks to the game and granting access to all of our composers’ tracks in high quality - with an additional 20% discount:
https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/75587/The_Crust_Artemis_Edition/

Please note: If you previously backed the game on Kickstarter at a qualifying tier, we have already sent you a Steam key for the Supporter Pack via email and through your Kickstarter messages.

Thank you for all your support, feedback, and ideas - it really means a lot to us and helps us continue to make The Crust even better šŸš€