Selling power is great and all, but let's branch out a bit more. For this guide we are getting into the business of gas, and for that we've purchased a Gen II C.A.D. for our common land plot. The C.A.D. has a few tasks, but for this strategy we are selling Carbon Dioxide.

You might be wondering why the values for the power cells are included in the chart. For this strategy, we'll be buying Full Power Cells and then selling the Empty Power Cells. This means every power cell will cost us roughly 2 Dusk.

Capture CO2 takes sixty power to do, which is equivalent to three power cells. Each power cell can hold twenty power. So our dusk costs for each task is 6 Dusk. Our C.A.D. at level one can do two of these tasks at a time. So each cycle will cost 12 Dusk. (That's more than the C.A.D. itself costs!)

Alright, that's enough about the costs, how much Dusk can we make back from the C.A.D?

Currently a single resource of Carbon Dioxide goes for 1 Dusk. If we look over at the C.A.D. page in the Player Guide we can see how much Carbon Dioxide we get per task.

From this, if we ignore the rare chance of receiving the 1-10 extra Carbon Dioxide, we see a mean of 3.5 Carbon Dioxide, we'll round that to 4 to compensate for ignoring the rare chance.

This means we see a return of 4 Dusk for every 6 Dusk we spend on the C.A.D. I know, it isn't positive, but that's okay. Here's why:

This currently means that the CO2 market is over-saturated, meaning there's more in circulation than is currently being used. This could be due to a myriad of reasons, but it can change on a whim. Depending on any upcoming updates, CO2 could gain a new important usage or could be harder to obtain. So right now, it seems to be better to buy the CO2 you need for your more advanced products, but keep an eye out for it to be ROI-positive again.

Also keep in mind that this strategy guide assumes you're buying the power cells, you could instead power the building yourself using your own solar panels.

And, if you're wondering what Carbon Dioxide is even used for:

For the simple strategy of selling Full Power Cells, what if we want to use Jobs?

For this example, we're going to assume we have a single Gen 2 Rare Solar Panel (Level 1) and a 2021 Common Land Plot. We are also only going to use Jobs instead of our own Stamina. This leaves us with 80 space left over for other buildings out of 100.

Jobs allow us to use our Dusk instead of Stamina. (Minimum wage is 1 dusk per stamina)

These are the important values:

Each Full Power Cell yields 2.2 Dusk in profit. (Full Power Cell value - Empty Power Cell Value). To charge a Power Cell it takes 1 Stamina and 20 Hours. However, due to us having a Rare Solar Panel, we can also use the Charge Power Cell II recipe instead. Making the recipe instead take 2 Stamina and 20 Hours and charge 2 Power Cells at once.

However, because the Charge Power Cell II recipe takes 2 Stamina which translates 1:1 to 2 Dusk, we make 1 Dusk less for every power cell we sell. This leaves us at only 1.2 Dusk of profit per Power Cell.

To make our Dusk back on the Rare Solar Panel using Charge Power Cell II it will take 325 Power Cells sold, that will take us 1083 hours (45 Days). (325 Power Cells * 20 Hours / 3 Task Slots) / 2 for Charge Power Cell II

The math is the same for making back your Dusk on the land deed:

Now let's see the math with a Gen 2 Common Solar Panel fully upgraded to Level 10 (X) This leaves us with 90 space left over for other buildings out of 100. With that number of space, you could place 9 more Gen 1 Common Solar Panels.

To upgrade a Common Solar Panel all the way to ten we'll need 177 Common Solar Panel Shards and 270 Dusk

The total cost for a Common Solar Panel Level X is 2045.7 Dusk

At this level, the Common Solar Panel can charge three power cells at the same time using Charge Power Cell III, this recipe takes 13.3 Hours at level 10. Since using Jobs makes us profit 1 Dusk less per Power Cell, this is how long it takes for us to pay back our costs:

To make our Dusk back on the Common Solar Panel X using Charge Power Cell III it will take 1,705 Power Cells sold, that will take us 2,519 hours (105 Days). (1,705 Power Cells * 13.3 Hours / 3 Task Slots) / 3 for Charge Power Cell II

Since we have a bunch of excess space, what if we had our entire plot filled with these solar panels? We could fit 9 more onto this plot, so we would have 10x our current revenue.

With 9 more solar panels, our time to recoup the Dusk on our solar panels remain the same but we make back our Dusk on our land within 6 Days. After all our costs have been regained how much Dusk would we make per day?

Each Max Level Common Solar Panel has three task slots for three Charge Power Cell III every 13.3 hours. So every 13.3 hours we would charge 90 Power Cells. We would then make 90 * 1.2 = 108 Dusk per 13.3 hours or 195 Dusk per day of free flow profit.

Strategy Summary:

• Acquire a Common Land Plot

• Install 10 Common Solar Panels

• Upgrade the 10 Solar Panels to level X

• Total investment: 21,557 Dusk.

• ROI in 70.6 days

• Free Dusk flow of 357 Dusk a day ongoing.

Full Strategy Discussion:

This is one of the simplest strategies for land owners: Charging Power Cells!

Everybody on Mars needs power, even the scavengers!

For this example, we're going to assume we have a single Rare Solar Panel (Level 1) and a Common Land Plot.

We will be selling all of these resources to the in-game Marketplace, more about that here:

These are the important values:

Each Full Power Cell yields 2.2 Dusk in profit. (Full Power Cell value - Empty Power Cell Value). To charge a Power Cell it takes 1 Stamina and 20 Hours. However, due to us having a Rare Solar Panel, we can also use the Charge Power Cell II recipe instead. Making the recipe instead take 2 Stamina and 20 Hours and charge two Power Cells at once.

To make our Dusk back on the Rare Solar Panel using Charge Power Cell II it will take 177 Power Cells sold, that will take us 590 hours (24 Days). (177 Power Cells * 20 Hours / 3 Task Slots) / 2 for Charge Power Cell II

The math is the same for making back your Dusk on the land deed:

Now let's see the math with a Gen 2 Common Solar Panel fully upgraded to Level 10 (X) This leaves us with 90 space left over for other buildings out of 100. With that number of space, you could place 9 more Gen 2 Common Solar Panels.

To upgrade a Common Solar Panel all the way to ten we'll need 177 Common Solar Panel Shards and 270 Dusk

The total cost for a Common Solar Panel Level X is 2045.7 Dusk

At this level, the Common Solar Panel can charge three power cells at the same time using Charge Power Cell III, this recipe takes 13.3 Hours at level 10, this is how long it takes for us to pay back our costs:

To make our Dusk back on the Common Solar Panel X using Charge Power Cell III it will take 929 Power Cells sold, that will take us 1,692 hours (70 Days). (929 Power Cells * 13.3 Hours / 3 Task Slots) / 3 for Charge Power Cell II

Since we have a bunch of excess space, what if we had our entire plot filled with these solar panels? We could fit 9 more onto this plot, so we would have 10x our current revenue.

With 9 more solar panels, our time to recoup the Dusk on our solar panels remain the same but we make back our Dusk on our land within a little over half a day. After all our costs have been regained how much Dusk would we make per day?

Each Max Level Common Solar Panel has three task slots for three Charge Power Cell III every 13.3 hours. So every 13.3 hours we would charge 90 Power Cells. We would then make 90 * 2.2 = 198 Dusk per 13.3 hours or 357 Dusk per day of free flow profit. This would take 162 Stamina per day which is possible with some new food changes coming soon and coffee.

So, you might've realized that you need more than just food to eat, you also need to supply your martian with water. Thankfully, Mars isn't completely devoid of water on its surface, unlike Phobos.

To gather Water, we will need a Water Filter. We're going to buy an Gen II Uncommon Water Filter, this building turns Ice into Water. Let's look at the Player Guide for the Water Filter to find the loot tables.

Not too bad, the Uncommon Water Filter at level 1 also has 5 Task slots. So we can set up 5 of these tasks at a time. Let's look at the important values.

For this strategy, just like our one about selling gas, we'll be buying Full Power Cells and selling the empty ones after.

How much would it cost to start filtering? Assuming we're filling up all 5 Tasks slots it would cost us 11 Dusk:

Now what do we get back in return? Well, looking back at the first table we'll receive 16 Water and 4 Regolith multiplied by 5 (for the task slots). Which is 16 Dusk worth of Water and 0.4 Dusk worth of Regolith. Not bad! This gives us a profit of 5.4 Dusk.

Now each of these cycles takes 6 hours, how long would it take for us to make back an ROI?

Now, that's just using one Uncommon Water Filter. Let's go ahead and buy five more since our Common Land Plot still has 85 space left. Now how much Dusk do we make?

With six total Uncommon Water Filters on our plot, we'll be making a total of 32.4 Dusk per six hours, or 129.6 Dusk per day. This is just with level 1 Gen II Uncommon Water Filters.

Ah, food. Whatever will we do without it? Not a lot. That's why we'll be growing food, especially since you can't just grow crops out in the open like you can on Earth. Mars growing requires Greenhouses, so let's get ourselves one.

For this strategy, we'll be buying an Epic Gen II Greenhouse and Growing Carrots. Here's our important values for this strategy guide. (Oh boy, it's a big table.)

The first thing you might realize when trying to grow food, is that it has a lot of requirements. So let's break them down into the costs for 1 Grow Carrots.

Okay, a total of 4.74 Dusk per grow, our greenhouse has 12 Task Slots, so let's times that by 12 to get the cost of one cycle. That gets us to 56.88 Dusk, we'll round that to 57 Dusk to make the math a bit easier.

Now how much Dusk do we get back? Well, let's go look at the Greenhouse Player Guide to find out how much food we get for growing carrots.

The chart tells us we can get between 50 and 75 Food for each grow, giving us an average of about 62 Food per Grow.

We get 8 Dusk per food grow, pretty good, that gives us a profit of 3.26 Dusk per grow. If we multiply that by 12 because of our task slots, we profit 39.12 Dusk per cycle, which takes 12 hours.

Of course, our Gen II Epic Greenhouse doesn't take up our entire plot, we still have 70 space left. Let's go ahead and fill the rest of it up with more Gen II Epic Greenhouses, with each of them being 30 space, it gets us two more on our plot. Now what are the ROIs like?

With three Gen II Epic Greenhouses, we make 234.72 Dusk per day!