This post will give some advice on how you can complete the achievement of activating cores on every planet based on my own experience. It can be quite a difficult and time-consuming task if you don’t take an efficient approach so I’ll do my best to make this entry short and informative. I’m going to assume you’ve at least got some sort of base up and running already, but if not, I’ll make another post describing a quick and easy way to get there.

So, to start, I’d say you’re definitely going to want to complete as many of the challenges as possible (found on the launch pad computer). These missions not only get you a hefty amount of bytes to spend at the research store, but they can also unlock technologies that can help you reach this endgame goal of activating cores. A few things that will come in handy will be the soil centrifuge, the large shuttle, the VTOL ship (unlocked by completing challenges), a medium fluid canister, the winch, a couple of 24-slot silos, and the ability to make Hydrazine from ammonium and hydrogen using the atmospheric condenser and the chemistry lab. Other than those, which I know is quite a bit of stuff, you should have what you need to do this. Oh, and PACKAGERS. You’re going to need a fair amount of these if you want to avoid having to print out most of this equipment all over again each time you activate a core.

So far, my strategy has been effective even on the most power-hungry gateway chambers like Atrox and Glacio. Each planets’ gateways require different amounts of energy to turn on. I won’t include a list here in case you want to be surprised and figure it out on your own, but I will leave this link that includes a chart of the units of power necessary to activate the gateways. To provide this power, we’ll be using 30 small generators.

Build yourself the medium fluid canister and fill it to the brim with hydrazine. This is the fuel that will be used not only for your shuttle but the VTOL as well. When you go to leave Sylva and head for another planet, here’s what you’ll need on your large shuttle:

1. Your full canister of hydrazine in the first medium slot
2. The packaged VTOL in the second slot
3. A 24-slot silo filled with small generators, each with a full block of organic material ready (don’t forget to turn them off for now)
4. A seconday 24-slot silo with the remaining 6 small generators and organic blocks, as well as 2 packaged winches and as many packagers as you can carry for now

For the secondary silo’s packagers, assuming you have to unlock cores on every planet besides Sylva, you’ll need a total of 7 packagers to get the VTOL to every planet and back and 14 more for the winches. I haven’t tried conserving space by attaching the winches to the VTOL and then hooking onto the large shuttle, but I just thought of that now and I wouldn’t try it unless you’ve got an extra VTOL to spare. Though I am curious… Anyway, it’s most definitely going to take you multiple trips to activate all of the cores but we’re taking one step at a time here and just starting by providing power to the gateways on the surface of our first planet.

Once all of your equipment is loaded, head to the first planet you need to unlock. Personally, I went straight for the most power-consuming planet and worked my way down to easier ones afterward. When you arrive, try to land as close to a gateway as you can, just to save time really. Once landed, unpack your VTOL, and then the winches. Add the winches onto each medium slot of the VTOL (located on the sides). Make sure your winches are facing downward with the hooks toward the ground. Next, set your hydrazine tank to output mode and grab a few hydrazine canisters. The VTOL will take one for its current fuel and the other 2 will be backups in case we’re out there too long. Those 2 extras can be placed in the slot under the winches. Lastly, take the silos off of the ship and place them on the ground on both sides of the VTOL. Grab a hook from each winch and attach them to the tops of your silos. Now use the compass to find the nearest undiscovered gateway (purple icon with a white dot in the center) and start flying there. It looks pretty ridiculous with the silos violently flailing around your ship, and they will be smashing into you, but you’ll be okay. I haven’t had a problem with losing a silo yet. When flying between gateways, always make sure you have enough fuel between your 3 hydrazine canisters to get back to your shuttle. If it took you half of a tank to get somewhere, it’ll at least take that to get back!

After you’ve arrived at the gateway, land in a safe spot. Start grabbing all of your generators and set them up at the gateway power terminal. Once everything is connected, turn them on one by one until you’ve acquired enough power to start the gateway. The most annoying thing about this is clearly the amount of time it takes to set up and break down all of your equipment, but this was never meant to be a quick and easy task. I’m currently considering making myself a couple of medium tables out of resin for each silo to stand on so I don’t have to hook up every generator, but with the time it’ll take to do that it might be more efficient to just hook them all up anyway. Another tricky thing to keep in mind is how long each organic block will last. You don’t want to run out of fuel on a handful of generators halfway through and have to replace all of them so keep an eye on that. If worse comes to worst, let the ones that are about to run out burn up their fuel, turn them off, then replace the fuel with new organic blocks.

This is going to take you lots of time, but this is the best way I’ve found to do it. Another possible method is bringing a whole bunch of RTG’s and either leaving them at each gateway or repackaging them and moving to the next. Unfortunately, that’s a very costly method and will take up a lot of time as well. I’ve also tried to make do with just a handful of RTG’s and running them back and forth to each gateway using the VTOL (which only carries two at a time), but this method I’ve explained seems to be the most tolerable.

When you’re done powering every gateway on every planet, now you can focus on activating the cores by digging down to the center and providing the gateway engines with their corresponding required elements. This final step is actually the easiest part of the process, all things considered. To safely reach the center of a planet, I like to shuttle over a tractor, one trailer for power, a tier 3 drill for the tractor, and whatever elements I need. The tractor should just dig straight down once you get the drill running. From there you can just activate the engine and warp back to the surface. I don’t mind leaving behind the tractor or other components I brought down other than the drill, but you can easily package that up and take it back with you.

Good luck out there.