Consciousness Shards confusion?

[ShinseiTom]

Since I'm not exactly sure whether this is a bug or not, I'll ask here first. 

There's not a difference between the consciousness shards you pick up and those used in the macro-game, correct?  I have 1567 in my inventory (and have picked some up since I first noticed it), but when I go to strategic view it says I only have 1.  There's not supposed to be something I do to transfer them to be used in the macro, right?

[Magos Mechanicus]

You have to donate the shards to the settlement before you can use them in the macrogame. Go into settlement management and right click the Consciousness Shards counter, and you can choose how many to donate.

[ShinseiTom]

Ah, thank you.  I figured I must have missed it somewhere.

Edit: Other than giving them to communities when I feel like it and transferring them between future multiple communities, is there a reason to keep them in your inventory?  Any other use than in the macro game?

I swear I've tried to read everything about the game, but I guess I missed a little bit.

[tigersfan]

At the moment, they are only used in the macrogame. I'm not sure that's mentioned anywhere yet (until now). :-) When I have time, I'll have to add that to the FAQ/wiki.

[ShinseiTom]

Alright thanks!

As for another question relating to the shards, are their amount found supposed to go up with level of the area?
Right now, I have found 3 settlements.  I have all of them running and with people.  However, now instead of 10 shards being used per macro-turn, I'm using 30!  I can imagine once you've run around all over the world and are LV 80 and stuff, you might have come across dozens more settlements.  That's an insane amount of shards per macro turn !

Is that intended?

[tigersfan]

I'm not sure actually. Let me try to find out.

[x4000]

The amount of shards you'll find as you adventure around doesn't actually increase, no.  However, your main source of shards will switch to being direct production by settlement buildings, as you go.

[ShinseiTom]

Ahhh, so there is a shard-producing building and I just haven't leveled up enough to get it yet?
With the chunk-level generation issue it has been taking a little while to level up above 16.  Traveling down far enough below ground from a level 10 chunk takes a long time, and trying to take on level 21+ bosses is a little difficult for my skill level in the game.

When does this building appear, level wise?

[x4000]

Unfortunately it's not added yet.  But definitely something to do sooner than later.  You might ping that into mantis, as a reminder to Keith.  That's more his area of the game (all the settlement management and strategic stuff), and I know he's been planning it.  But I'm not sure he knows that anyone is running into the situation of definitely needing them yet.

[ShinseiTom]

Well, I haven't run out quite yet, but I sure will in about 20 more turns.  And I've already done 40 easy, so...

Alright, I'll go and do that then!  Thanks for the help!  Though it's definitely a little sparse and rough, when I put in 9 straight hours into a game and not really tell that much time passed I know I like a game.  I didn't even hesitate once I hit level 6 hours ago in the demo.  I just quit, paid, and popped right back in.  Definitely looking forward to putting even more time into the game 

[x4000]

Thanks a ton!  There's a reason it's still early beta, but I'm really happy to be sharing this with folks now and am excited to be developing this out with community involvement from now on.  Developing on your own in isolation (even with a cool team) really sucks by comparison, and I've always thought so.  Nine months with this one was long enough!