As was foretold, we've added advertisements to the forums! If you have questions, or if you encounter any bugs, please visit this thread: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/240191/forum-advertisement-faq-and-reports-thread/

[Surviving Mars] Tropico... in SPAAAAACE!

EvmaAlsarEvmaAlsar Birmingham, EnglandRegistered User regular
edited April 2019 in Games and Technology
Welcome to Surviving Mars!

Surviving-Mars-pc-games.jpg


What is Surviving Mars?

Surviving Mars is a colony building sim where you are tasked with settling the Red Planet and preparing it for future generations of human life. It is brought to us by the developers of Tropico, and the publishers of Cities: Skylines and Stellaris.

The main focus of the game is on attaining self-sufficiency and no longer having to rely on Earth for supplies, research, or even people. It's a balancing act of needing to collect the materials and supplies to build and house domes full of people, and then using those people to advance your economy - scientists to develop your own research points, geologists to extract raw resources, botanists to grow your own food, engineers to craft your own advanced materials, etc. While people have traits, flaws and quirks, the focus isn't really so much on them as they're ultimately just another resource you need to put to the most efficient use possible to keep everything running.

Before you can Survive Mars, you must load up your space caravan

Firstly, you will choose your mission sponsor. These are starting conditions that vary in difficulty, and can have perks or drawbacks. The International Mars Mission sponsor will give you an abundance of rockets that gradually refuel themselves, while Russia's rockets take longer to travel between planets.

After you have picked your sponsor, you then decide on what trait you as the leader will have. This determines what starting bonus you get, be it a seeded technology that would otherwise be hard to come by in the early game, or a means to exploit a certain resource right away without leaving it to chance.

As you pick from these choices, you will notice that a difficulty percentage changes. This is the game's determination of how difficult your scenario is going to be to succeed in. It also acts as a score modifier for points you earn by achieving milestone events on your colony. There is no set goal in Surviving Mars but the ones you make for yourself.

I lied. Kind of. During a playthrough you will be given a 'mission evaluation objective' that is a randomised bonus goal for your colony to achieve. This can be to research x number of technologies, or to export x amount of rare metals to Earth before Sol 100. Again, it is purely for scoring points so if it's not what you want to focus on, you can safely ignore it.

Mysteries are special events that can trigger during your playthrough. They each have a hint as to what they may be as well as a difficulty level. These can be selected directly, set to random, or disabled entirely if you just want to focus on colony development with no additional challenge.

Next up is what your first rocket's payload will consist of. When new to the game you should leave these as is, since they tend to be geared towards the sponsor you have picked for an optimal start.
- You have a selection of prefabs, which are packed up templates of more complex buildings you will not have the technology or resources to build for yourself on Mars right away.
- The Drone Hub is the control center for your drones. It has a large zone of control that shows you the area where drones under its control can reach. Drones do all of your logistic work on Mars, so these are crucial to your development.
- The Moisture Vaporator is a small building that will produce a unit of water for 5 units of power. Not very efficient, but if the area you land in has little to no water deposits, these will be your only choice for survival.
- The Fuel Refinery converts water into fuel. If you are not using the International Mars Mission sponsor, you will need to produce fuel to get your rockets back to Earth. Some other buildings will require fuel to function, so you will want at least one to begin with.
- Stirling Generators are pretty fancy power generators that you will not be able to build on your own for quite some time. What's special about them is they have a base output of 10 - twice that of a large solar panel or wind turbine - but they do not require maintenance if their shell is closed. You can open their shell to double their power output at the cost of requiring maintenance, and they are maintained with polymers which are hard to come by in the early game.
- The last 3 prefabs are the factories that will allow you to build your own advanced materials on Mars - machine parts, polymers and electronics. Each of these factories require a human workforce and are quite labour intensive, but they are vital to achieve self-sufficiency from Earth.
- The RC Rover is a mobile drone hub. It operates the drones assigned to it within its relatively small zone of control. Drones can also use it to recharge their batteries, but keep in mind that the rover's battery supply is finite and will need a top up at some point, so leaving it out in the open forever isn't feasible. It can also be used to rescue other rovers that have run out of power outside of your drone's area of coverage by recharging its battery from its own power supply.
- The RC Explorer is a vehicle that can analyse anomalies that your scans will detect on the planet's surface. These can boost your research progress, reveal new technologies in your research tree, unlock special breakthrough technologies, or reveal mysteries.
- The RC Transport is basically a big flatbed truck you can move larger amounts of materials with instead of straining your drone network when they need to be worrying about maintenance and construction. Initially it can carry up to 30 units of materials - not necessarily all one type - and can be ordered to run a supply route, where it will automatically pick up resources from one location and drop them off at a designated point until there are either no supplies left to collect, or the depot it's delivering to is full. Like the rover and explorer, the transport has a limited battery life, so keep an eye on it if you've set it to ferry goods back and forth.
- You can also choose to bring along more supplies. Food can be useful to give yourself a bit of breathing space for when your colonists first arrive until you have some kind of food supply operational, but metals and rare metals are a terrible waste of precious cargo space due to how little you can bring on board because of their weight. You should only really be bringing advanced materials that you can't replicate for yourself yet. You can also pack more drones as while your drone hub has a small supply of its own, you will not initially be able to build more drones, which can bottleneck your development. They are also lost forever if hit by meteors, so be careful.
- Finally there are orbital probes. These are really important for helping you find a good initial landing site, as they instantly reveal all resources on 1 grid block of the map. They are single use only, though, so use them wisely.

The last part of setting up the game is picking where exactly your colony will be situated on Mars. There are several highlighted zones which are static 10 x 10 maps (ie, their layouts are always the same, but resource locations will be randomised) that are generally rich in resources and low in threats. You can also pick any location you fancy and throw caution to the wind if you feel like it. If you decide on a custom location, remember the coordinates; if people choose the same ones they'll get a map similar to yours!

When selecting a landing site, consider the following:

Terrain will determine how much building space you'll get, and how varied the elevation will be. The only way to explore areas walled off by steep inclines that are inaccessible by your RC rovers will be to build tunnels. These are quite costly for a young colony, so plan accordingly.
Altitude determines wind strength. The higher up you are, the more of a production bonus your wind turbines will get. They will always have a base power output equivalent to large solar panels, however, so you don't have to worry about them not working at all. But it pays to place them at the highest points of your colony.
Mean Temperature by itself doesn't really affect much, but the lower the temperature, the more likely you are to encounter cold waves in that part of the world.

Metals gives you an estimate of how much metal will be in your region. This counts all metal from surface deposits which are readily accessible by your drones/transports, and underground deposits that must be worked by colonists.
Concrete displays how often you'll find yellow patches of land that can be worked by a concrete extractor.
Water shows the odds of you discovering underground water deposits. These are essential to going the distance with a colony, as water vaporators are not energy-efficient. If you want a hard game, pick an area with little to no water.

Dust Devils are tornadoes. They will blow through the area in random directions and kick up dust wherever they go. Dust accumulation makes your outside buildings require maintenance more often, but things in the direct path of a dust devil can be destroyed.
Dust Storms cover the map for a duration of time. During a dust storm your solar panels will completely cease to function, but your wind turbines will have a boost in output thanks to the strong winds. Your buildings will also require extra maintenance from the dust hitting them.
Meteors threat determines how often meteors can hit random points of the map, as well as a meteor shower disaster event. Meteor showers can last for over an entire Sol period, and will steadily carpet the area with meteor strikes. The silver lining to this dark cloud is that meteors will often leave metals and polymers in their crash sites, and sometimes even give you anomalies to discover with your RC explorer.
Cold Waves are periods of time where the temperatures drastically drop from the already frigid average of -55C. During a cold wave, all buildings will require additional power to function and stored water supplies will completely freeze.

How does one Survive Mars?

The early part of the game is using your drones and starting materials to establish the foundation your colony will be built upon. You'll need metals and concrete for basic building supplies, but ideally you will want to find water to help keep your future colonists alive, and underground metal / rare metals for them to exploit.

While orbital probes scan sectors instantly, it is impractical to buy more from Earth to scan the whole region. You have a slower scan ability that will gradually reveal blocks over time (and can be queued up to 5 in advance) which can be boosted with the construction of sensor towers. These towers will dramatically increase the scan speed of the adjacent sectors (up to ~300% to adjacent tiles) but will also raise the base scan speed for the whole region by 10% each. So if you had ten sensors built on the planet, each tile would be scanned at 100% speed regardless of distance to the nearest tower. Sensor towers can later be upgraded through a tech so that they will no longer require power or maintenance. Scanning is the only way to discover more deposits - even surface metals - and discover anomalies which can be massively helpful to your colony, so placing at least one right away is a sound investment.

Once you've gotten basic construction online and have an oxygen and water supply, it's time to consider building a dome! Domes have a zone of control similar to drone hubs and RC Rovers, but in the dome's case, they determine how far out a colonist will be able to walk on the surface to reach a work site. Not all colonist workplaces are within the relative safety of a dome. Resource extractors are out on the surface, as are some other production buildings.

Your first passenger rocket will be able to carry 12 people. You can select which traits, perks and specialisations you want your colonists to match from the pool of applicants. You can also turn away people so they are automatically removed from the screened applicants by deeming certain traits undesirable. For instance, you can turn away children and seniors as they will not be active members of the workforce, and with a group of 12 people running things, that is dead weight you really cannot afford. If you want to get into greater detail, you can choose 'review' and literally hand pick every single colonist you want from a list generated from applicants that are screened by your preferences.

Once the rocket lands, you enter the Founding period where you will be unable to request more colonists from Earth until you prove that the colony is survivable. This basically means you have to make do with your 12 Founders for a period of 10 Sols. You can shortcut this particular requirement by having a successful birth in your colony, which will impress Earth enough that they will lift the restriction ahead of time.

It also pays to note that Sols are best thought of as years, not days, despite there being just over 24 hours in a Sol. This will make more sense as to why your people seem to grow old and die in the space of a couple of months. Not to mention how a rocket manages to get from Earth to Mars in the space of a day.

After that, you're pretty much free to go about requesting more passengers from your list of applicants, and can get about to developing the colony in earnest!

Feel free to give comments, links to resources or mods that have caught your eye and I'll try to update this OP. It's my first attempt here at thread writing so I'm learning as I go.



PlOCW7c.jpg


Happy surviving!



Edit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-E0w5xL8uA

New DLC announced introducing terraforming technology which will improve various aspects of your infrastructure, before ultimately transforming Mars' environment into one resembling Earth's (provided you don't screw it up)

6YAcQE8.png
Steam profile - Twitch - YouTube
Switch: SM-6352-8553-6516
EvmaAlsar on
«134567

Posts

  • EvmaAlsarEvmaAlsar Birmingham, EnglandRegistered User regular
    edited March 2018
    Evma's thoughts and tips on how to Survive Mars

    There's no planned out structure to this, just things I've learned as I've gone along, plus some things I wish the game would've explicitly told me at some point.

    Overlap drone hub control zones When you place or select a Drone Hub (and RC Rovers) you will see a white hex that's showing you how far its drones will be able to get to.

    If you plan to expand your operation nearby and want another Drone Hub to cover the new area, make sure their hexes overlap at least a little bit, say 2-3 hexes deep. Within those hexes, place either universal depots, or dedicated material depots. If they're within the overlap space, drones from one hub will carry goods to the depot, and the second hub's drones will be able to come along and pick them up to be used in their area. This can be very handy to do if you have resources being produced exclusively within one zone of control, for example you have one dome extracting rare metals, but another dome houses your electronics factory.

    Relocating drones Your Drone Hubs will start with a small amount of drones to begin with. When you first land on Mars, most of your drones will be assigned to the rocket itself. Initially, I thought it was a pain in the ass process where I'd need to individually select and assign each drone to the hub of my choosing. However, the rocket will not leave with the drones under its control when you tell it to launch; they'll automatically find a new commander, be it the nearest hub with space, or your RC rover.

    If the hub they've gone to isn't the one you'd prefer (there's another hub nearby that needs them more, for example) you don't have to reassign them one at a time. Choose the hub and select 'disassemble drones'. It does not break them down for parts, it only packs them up into drone prefabs. Then choose the hub that needs drones and select 'assemble drones'. As long as you have drone prefabs available, it'll assemble a drone and put it to work. No transport necessary, instant teleported drones!

    Strategic cable/pipe placement I don't mean the tip every single Youtuber on the face of the planet has where you can build pipes over the same hex as power cables, though that is handy and can make your colony look tidier. I mean that cable and pipe faults become more frequent the longer your network is. Maybe once you have a dome or two placed down, try to specialise placement of things a little. Put a MOXXIE right outside a pipe hex of your dome, so that 1 piece of pipe and cable connects it, and on the other side, place the oxygen tank. Cables connect their circuit from any hex in contact with a dome, but pipe connections are limited. Try making a small batch of power generators and connect them directly to the dome on one side, then lay a cable on the opposite side of the dome to any out-dome buildings that require power.

    Since pipe connections to domes come in little 3 hex clusters, I use the middle pipe hex as pathways to other domes or out-dome buildings, and the hex on either side as pipe/cable connections to storage. I don't know whether domes themselves generate enough heat to keep the nearby water storage safe from a cold wave, but they're a convenient location to put subsurface heaters.

    Cooperative domes Domes are islands in of themselves, meaning colonists will work and live within the same dome; they will not travel to other domes to satisfy recreational needs. The only exception to this is if they become homeless or unemployed at the dome they're currently living in, and opportunities are available in other domes that are accepting new colonists. They will either go by foot if it's within distance, or summon a shuttle if you have the infrastructure available.

    Domes have area hexes like Drone Hubs, but these are not to show drone coverage - domes do not have control over drones. The dome hex is to show you how much of the surrounding area colonists can reach for work, so make sure that any metal/rare metal deposits you plan to exploit are within reach of your dome. But here's the cool part - you can have more than one dome be within reach of the same resource/work building. If several domes are within reach of an out-dome building, both of its workers will staff it. This is very useful if you have small domes and are having trouble with finding a balance of living space and filling all of your jobs with such limited real estate. Keep in mind that this applies to every out-dome building, like fungal farms, polymer factories, and fusion reactors.

    Extractors are dusty! Try to keep extractors as isolated as you can from other buildings, especially ones that require more advanced materials for maintenance. You do not need to crowd a water extractor with water storage - that can be tucked away wherever you have pipe access. Extractors in close proximity to each other will also shorten periods between maintenance requests, but they are generally simple to maintain with metals or machine parts.

    Quality over quantity Think you hit paydirt with that 2,900 concrete deposit? Think again. The main thing you want to keep in mind when scouting out deposits is its 'grade', not just the amount of resources it holds. The grade determines how many materials an extractor can produce per hour. This is especially important for water extractors and rare metal extractors. A very low grade rare metal deposit would have terribly low yields (1-2 a day!) despite you sending down 2 hard-worked shifts of colonists into the mine, whereas an 'average' water deposit could be netting you a supply of 6 water an hour with just one extractor working it.

    Rapid map scanning If you're playing on an easier setting where you've got the resources to spare, and have access to an RC rover plus shuttles, you might want to consider the Autonomous Sensors technology (unless you're playing as a Futurist, then you started with it)

    Here's what you do: find a spot on the map with 9 tiles surrounding it. Plop down a universal depot there, then send your RC rover to it. Then place a construction order for a sensor. When your RC rover gets to its location and deploys, it'll be looking to the depot to find building materials (1 metal / 1 electronics) to construct the sensor. This in turn will tell the shuttles "Hey, this depot needs supplies" and hey presto, they'll fly the materials out to that remote depot and the sensor will happily scan away without need for power or maintenance. Repeat this until you have a sensor tower in the middle of 9 unscanned tiles across the map, and enjoy your global 300%+ scan speeds. It will also set you up nicely for late-game deep scanning, which is fast already but will practically become instant with this kind of scanning network in place.

    Inflammable means flammable

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8mD2hsxrhQ

    ALWAYS stockpile your fuel depots a safe distance away from everything else. Don't make the same mistake I did and leave it smack dab by a huge solar panel farm. That meteor shower very nearly killed my colony because it struck the fuel tanks and detonated half of my power production.

    Leave a clear LZ near your outpost. It pays to leave a nice clear patch of space near your main domes / supply depots where your rocket(s) can land without covering everything with dust. You'll notice that even with passenger ships, you get a very generous distance from the nearest dome and it'll still tell you how many are within walking distance, but for the sake of your drones, try to keep it within decent reach of the supply depot so they can offload any goods and refuel the rocket quickly. Remember: servicing the rocket becomes a task for every drone within range, and unless you've set rockets to low priority, it will interfere with all of your existing construction, logistics, and maintenance tasks.

    Tunnels are awesome Tunnels aren't just for accessing terrain blocked off by big changes in elevation, though that's their primary purpose. They can help you with that other issue I mentioned above where long cable and pipe networks are susceptible to faults. You really don't want to waste drone hubs by covering long patches of ground just so you can protect against network faults on the way to buildings far away from your initial colony. Cables and pipes connect directly to a tunnel, and the tunnels can be separated by quite a distance. Very very useful to consider if you haven't got the infrastructure in place for large-scale shuttle logistics, or if you concentrate your water and power production in one area and need to extend your network to other locations.

    Stirling generators are maintenance-free!*

    *may require maintenance

    Stirling generators will never require maintenance so long as they remain closed. That's 10 power that will never need to be fixed per generator. While that sounds great, you need polymers and electronics to build each generator that you don't get from a prefab. That really isn't cost-effective to power your whole colony. However once you open them up, they generate twice the output at the cost of requiring 1 polymer per maintenance cycle. Definitely avoid dusty areas with these boys. Tip: later in the game, you can unlock scrubbing towers that keep nearby buildings dust-free in a small radius, so if you are keen on using stirling generators in your base, consider placing them in a circular pattern leaving space in the middle for a scrubber to keep them dust-free while they remain open.

    Watch your production menu like a hawk See that button in the bottom right of your UI? The one that looks like bars? Open it. Now keep it there. Forever. That is the most important menu you are ever going to need in this game. Mousing over it will detail how much of each resource you're producing per Sol, how much you're consuming (ie, using in factories or luxury good shops), and how much is required in maintenance. Take it with a grain of salt as it will only update per Sol period, and you may have made changes in the meantime, but it's a good indicator on how much of everything you're going to need before you need it.

    Mars for Martians! Better red than dead! You may be tempted to just go ham with the applicants raring to get to Mars from Earth. But consider letting your birthrate increase and accommodate more Martianborn citizens, as there are several powerful technologies that apply to every colonist with the Martianborn trait. Ranging from accelerated learning at schools and universities, gaining perks faster, to very powerful traits from breakthrough technologies such as not losing any Sanity when working outside of domes.

    Extractor placement do not think that you need to place your water/metal extractors directly over the icon in order for them to work. Even just a single hex of coverage will give the extractor full access to the underground deposits. Keep this in mind especially with low-grade deposits, so that you can place several extractors over the same site to get a boost out of production. This is also very valuable to know when placing domes and you want to get a few within range of the same deposits.

    Building upgrades some technologies upgrade your colony passively, others give you the ability to upgrade a building for a one-off cost. Once a technology unlocks, double-check it to see if you need to actively upgrade things to gain the benefit from it. One example is the polymer blade upgrade for wind turbines, requiring that you upgrade each turbine to get the 33% output boost. You can also hold down Ctrl to apply the action to every building of its type.

    Dome specialisation your mileage may vary with this one. I've not noticed particularly great success when trying to get one particular demographic of colonists to live in particular domes, but it can't hurt to try! While colonists may have their own unique quirks that can help or hinder their ways of de-stressing from work, specialists always prefer the same method of recreation. Geologists like to drink, botanists like luxury, scientists enjoy gaming, etc. Try to plan your dome around what kinds of workforce you want in there, and you can save on building space when catering to the majority's recreational needs.

    EvmaAlsar on
    6YAcQE8.png
    Steam profile - Twitch - YouTube
    Switch: SM-6352-8553-6516
  • ZavianZavian universal peace sounds better than forever war Registered User regular
    Finally had some time last night to devote to Surviving Mars. I got my first colonists! I love the way they hop and skip off the rocket
    https://youtu.be/69_DZorZbuU

  • EvmaAlsarEvmaAlsar Birmingham, EnglandRegistered User regular
    You've built stirling generators INSIDE a dome!? :O

    6YAcQE8.png
    Steam profile - Twitch - YouTube
    Switch: SM-6352-8553-6516
  • ZavianZavian universal peace sounds better than forever war Registered User regular
    edited March 2018
    it seemed a good idea at the time!
    (There wasn't enough power and colonists were freezing to death from hypothermia)

    Oops!

    Zavian on
  • EvmaAlsarEvmaAlsar Birmingham, EnglandRegistered User regular
    edited March 2018
    I didn't even realise that you could place stirling generators inside of a dome.

    The thing about stirling generators is that they do not degrade - require maintenance - if their shells remain closed. So they're super useful for early game power generation, and later on they can be opened up to double their output when you've got a polymer supply to keep them in good condition.

    EvmaAlsar on
    6YAcQE8.png
    Steam profile - Twitch - YouTube
    Switch: SM-6352-8553-6516
  • DaimarDaimar A Million Feet Tall of Awesome Registered User regular
    I'm really enjoying my playthrough so far, but I'm not sure how much replayability there is. It looks like there are different mysteries to discover that you can select when starting a new game and there are achievements for fulfilling different conditions as different starting countries, but I don't know if that's enough since the core gameplay will be pretty much the same.

    I'm going to try and do everything on the first game and see how I feel after that, but I think it is worth the money so far.

    steam_sig.png
  • ZavianZavian universal peace sounds better than forever war Registered User regular
    One thing I started having problems with was buildings breaking down and needing repairs. I kept trying to send drones to fix them without realizing I needed Machine Parts. I finally built a factory for them in my dome, but yeah definitely something for me to keep in mind for future bases.

    I'm also having a problem with "too far from drones" not letting me build mines even though I land a rocket with drones and build one of those drone hubs right next to it, it only lets me build mines around my very first drone hub and rocket. Not sure what I'm doing wrong?

  • EvmaAlsarEvmaAlsar Birmingham, EnglandRegistered User regular
    I think breakthrough technologies can shake up how you play as well.

    I started my latest run with the intention of making nothing but solar power generators, but discovered a breakthrough fairly early on that boosted power output of wind turbines by 100%. Together with the polymer blade tech that improves them by 33%, that was too powerful to pass up.

    As a result, I only have 25 turbines and nothing else generating power, and I have a surplus of about 125 right now. That's with 2 medium domes, factories, extractors, etc.

    6YAcQE8.png
    Steam profile - Twitch - YouTube
    Switch: SM-6352-8553-6516
  • EvmaAlsarEvmaAlsar Birmingham, EnglandRegistered User regular
    Zavian wrote: »
    One thing I started having problems with was buildings breaking down and needing repairs. I kept trying to send drones to fix them without realizing I needed Machine Parts. I finally built a factory for them in my dome, but yeah definitely something for me to keep in mind for future bases.

    I'm also having a problem with "too far from drones" not letting me build mines even though I land a rocket with drones and build one of those drone hubs right next to it, it only lets me build mines around my very first drone hub and rocket. Not sure what I'm doing wrong?

    It says 'too far from domes'. Buildings that require workers can only be manned if they are within zone of control of the dome, not the drone hubs.

    If it's too far away from a drone hub, it'll say something like 'too far from drone commander'.

    6YAcQE8.png
    Steam profile - Twitch - YouTube
    Switch: SM-6352-8553-6516
  • ZavianZavian universal peace sounds better than forever war Registered User regular
    edited March 2018
    EvmaAlsar wrote: »
    Zavian wrote: »
    One thing I started having problems with was buildings breaking down and needing repairs. I kept trying to send drones to fix them without realizing I needed Machine Parts. I finally built a factory for them in my dome, but yeah definitely something for me to keep in mind for future bases.

    I'm also having a problem with "too far from drones" not letting me build mines even though I land a rocket with drones and build one of those drone hubs right next to it, it only lets me build mines around my very first drone hub and rocket. Not sure what I'm doing wrong?

    It says 'too far from domes'. Buildings that require workers can only be manned if they are within zone of control of the dome, not the drone hubs.

    If it's too far away from a drone hub, it'll say something like 'too far from drone commander'.

    I am the stupids! I forgot the mines besides the concrete ones require humans. (I kind of just want a colony full of drones, so much easier without pesky hu-mans)

    Also like the way dust accumulates on malfunctioning buildings over time
    H7Xgccx.jpg

    Zavian on
  • DaimarDaimar A Million Feet Tall of Awesome Registered User regular
    Zavian wrote: »
    EvmaAlsar wrote: »
    Zavian wrote: »
    One thing I started having problems with was buildings breaking down and needing repairs. I kept trying to send drones to fix them without realizing I needed Machine Parts. I finally built a factory for them in my dome, but yeah definitely something for me to keep in mind for future bases.

    I'm also having a problem with "too far from drones" not letting me build mines even though I land a rocket with drones and build one of those drone hubs right next to it, it only lets me build mines around my very first drone hub and rocket. Not sure what I'm doing wrong?

    It says 'too far from domes'. Buildings that require workers can only be manned if they are within zone of control of the dome, not the drone hubs.

    If it's too far away from a drone hub, it'll say something like 'too far from drone commander'.

    I am the stupids! I forgot the mines besides the concrete ones require humans. (I kind of just want a colony full of drones, so much easier without pesky hu-mans)

    Also like the way dust accumulates on malfunctioning buildings over time
    H7Xgccx.jpg

    Agreed the dust is a nice touch. I like when I see a drone heading out to a dome or any other building to clean it up. I just imagine it with a little squeegee whistling a happy tune and then all of a sudden the dome/building is like new.

    steam_sig.png
  • EvmaAlsarEvmaAlsar Birmingham, EnglandRegistered User regular
    Updated my post below OP on tips and guidance. Will be updating more in the future, but if you have anything you care to add or if you think there's anything I've missed, I'll add to the pile!

    6YAcQE8.png
    Steam profile - Twitch - YouTube
    Switch: SM-6352-8553-6516
  • MuddBuddMuddBudd Registered User regular
    So something that nearly destroyed my game this weekend... water shortages. Turns out there are no heads-ups for when your water node is about to expire. It doesn't even tell you when it does. You find out after you've burned through your reserve water. Then crops start failing...

    I lost about a third of my colony before I got a tunnel built and new wells dug. Thankfully I just unlocked some massive deep water deposits that I should be able to tap into before my current water supply expires.

    Other things driving me nuts... The amount of people it takes to make machine parts and electronics, and the remarkably small amount those people make, and how slow they are at it. Same with mining.

    Why can I mine water and concrete with machines but not metal? That seems odd. What sort of bizarre robot apocalypse has occurred in which humans do all the mining and manufacturing and the robots play on the surface? We have like, 99% automated factories NOW, on Earth.

    Also, I want a way better interface for assigning people to jobs/domes. Do people need to live in the dome they work in? Will they commute via shuttle?

    There's no plan, there's no race to be run
    The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
  • EvmaAlsarEvmaAlsar Birmingham, EnglandRegistered User regular
    People will not commute to other domes for work. If they are unemployed in the dome they live in, they will eventually travel to an open dome that has vacancies, but they might become homeless instead if you don't have any more residential space there. It can become a cycle.

    You can set preferences for each dome in a similar way to how you did for selecting who gets to board rockets to Mars. For example you can set a dome with factories to prefer colonists with the Engineer specialisation, or you can flat out refuse certain types of people.

    I haven't had the best of success with this, personally. In my first game I thought I'd make a kid-centric small dome with an abundance of nurseries and schools, set age group to prefer children, while setting my other domes to not even accept kids. However they did not migrate when growing up into children.

    Another issue I had was setting one dome to prefer botanists as I wanted it to become my agri-dome, but since it was already kind of full up of other people, whenever a botanist moved out to another dome, saw that the full dome was begging for botanists, they'd fly back to that dome then realise "oh it's full" and leave again. In a permanent cycle.

    May be bugged, may just be my awkward way of using the preference system. YMMV.

    6YAcQE8.png
    Steam profile - Twitch - YouTube
    Switch: SM-6352-8553-6516
  • DaimarDaimar A Million Feet Tall of Awesome Registered User regular
    EvmaAlsar wrote: »
    Updated my post below OP on tips and guidance. Will be updating more in the future, but if you have anything you care to add or if you think there's anything I've missed, I'll add to the pile!

    One thing I noticed yesterday, a shuttle bay is awesome for balancing materials across storage pads and domes. I hadn't bothered constructing one until I had 3 domes up with a 4th being built and was having to micromanage my little transport cars to move concrete around but once I built the shuttle bay they started moving product to finish construction a lot faster than I was doing. The shuttles only take 3 pieces at a time instead of 30/45 that a transport car can, but I don't have to think about them so they save a pile of time.

    steam_sig.png
  • Lord_AsmodeusLord_Asmodeus goeticSobriquet: Here is your magical cryptic riddle-tumour: I AM A TIME MACHINERegistered User regular
    Can you destroy pipes and cables? When I started playing I didn't know what was what and thought the concrete symbol meant an underground deposit like it does for every other resource symbol, and I didn't immediately notice the difference between concrete ground and all other ground (since I started next to a big patch of concrete) and now I'd like to tear up some of my cables and to free up space to get more concrete.

    Also, I wish you could build a direct link-up between domes, especially nearby ones. Would love to get more people through my university but since all domes are self contained and people would have to move to the ones with the university I've got a lot of people with no speciality who I could be turning into engineers and geologists (I also wish the non-specialization penalty was lessened for people in similar fields, like engineering and geologists, medics and scientists, etc.)

    Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. - Lincoln
  • MuddBuddMuddBudd Registered User regular
    edited March 2018
    Can you destroy pipes and cables? When I started playing I didn't know what was what and thought the concrete symbol meant an underground deposit like it does for every other resource symbol, and I didn't immediately notice the difference between concrete ground and all other ground (since I started next to a big patch of concrete) and now I'd like to tear up some of my cables and to free up space to get more concrete.

    Also, I wish you could build a direct link-up between domes, especially nearby ones. Would love to get more people through my university but since all domes are self contained and people would have to move to the ones with the university I've got a lot of people with no speciality who I could be turning into engineers and geologists (I also wish the non-specialization penalty was lessened for people in similar fields, like engineering and geologists, medics and scientists, etc.)

    Yes you can. Open up the left-most building menu, and on the far right of it is a 'Salvage' option that you can use to remove cables and pipes.

    Also, agreed on the specialization penalty. It's too big. There's a tech for it but it still only cuts it by like 20 or something.

    MuddBudd on
    There's no plan, there's no race to be run
    The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
  • EvmaAlsarEvmaAlsar Birmingham, EnglandRegistered User regular
    I'm going to try and set a University dome that prefers non-specialised people in the hopes that they will come to that specific dome and git gud at life.

    It shouldn't affect my service buildings since I have the service bots breakthrough that lets you make service buildings completely unmanned at the upgrade cost of 10 electronics. Massively worth it for the freed up manpower IMO.

    6YAcQE8.png
    Steam profile - Twitch - YouTube
    Switch: SM-6352-8553-6516
  • LeumasWhiteLeumasWhite New ZealandRegistered User regular
    So far I've found it to sit awkwardly between a pure builder like Skylines and a resource game like Anno; not enough creative options for the former, management tools that aren't robust enough for the latter. Some neat concepts, but I already felt it getting a bit stale after a few hours.

    QPPHj1J.jpg
  • firewaterwordfirewaterword Satchitananda Pais Vasco to San FranciscoRegistered User regular
    Oh boy this is totally my kind of game, looks like. A more complex Planetbase would you say? Loved me some Planetbase, but that well wasn't exactly super deep.

    Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu
  • BobbleBobble Registered User regular
    This is fun, and I suspect it's going to be great after a few patches to introduce some quality of life things (ie, menus with more information for city management, better colonist management, etc). Already got my money's worth this weekend, I'll throw out a few things I picked up that were useful:


    1) Domes have filters for things like Specialization and Age Group. Once your initial wave of colonists start getting older, think about building a Florida dome for your senior citizens. No need for them to occupy half the housing in your primary food-producing dome and leave you short of people to work the farms. You can also eventually do a nursery dome for all the kids (the service bots breakthru makes these especially effective, as you really only need a medic for the infirmary in the non-workforce domes)

    2) Specialize your domes! My general strategy now is to spend the first dome primarily on food/science (as Europe, that science rush provided me with a decent trickle of funding to supplement my advanced resources from Earth until later). People's relaxation/comfort preferences align with their specializations, allowing you to be efficient with things like the spacebar/electronics store/etc.

    3) Initial map conditions make an enormous difference, and they don't seem to change if you hit 'restart map.' So maybe fire off those probes before touching down, and restart and check a different spot if you don't like what you see.

    4) If you get the AI extractors upgrade (extractors can work without workers at 50 performance), you don't need a dome near the deposit to place an extractor (but don't forget maintenance!)

    5) Upgrade your buildings! Just because you researched a tech to improve your wind generator's output doesn't mean you're done. You have to apply that upgrade to each wind generator! Select the building to upgrade and look in the very upper right-hand part of the screen.

  • MuddBuddMuddBudd Registered User regular
    Yeah the specializing of domes is going to have to be a thing for me going forward.

    There's no plan, there's no race to be run
    The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
  • DaimarDaimar A Million Feet Tall of Awesome Registered User regular
    edited March 2018
    I think I'll need to look at setting up a retirement home dome since a few of my colonists have started to get old. I got one message that a colonist had died so I clicked the ok button and it zoomed into the guy laying down on the pavement. I stayed there for a little bit but he didn't disappear and no drones came by to carry him away. It was kinda dark.

    Edit: oh, it also told me that for every colonist who dies of non-natural causes, you also lose 2 people out of the Earth queue who want to come to Mars. Nice tip.

    Daimar on
    steam_sig.png
  • MuddBuddMuddBudd Registered User regular
    With my starting bonuses this play I start with medium domes and the residence spire, which is GREAT. It's 32 housing slots with comfort bonuses. That helps with a lot of early stuff.

    There's no plan, there's no race to be run
    The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
  • webguy20webguy20 I spend too much time on the Internet Registered User regular
    There is already a busy mod scene going on as well. They built the game to be easy to do. Theres a bunch of small 3 hex buildings that grant gambling and drinking and other stuff. Also one that brings down cable repair time down to 30 seconds, not 180.

    Steam ID: Webguy20
    Origin ID: Discgolfer27
    Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
  • MuddBuddMuddBudd Registered User regular
    Honestly I am confused as to what is damaging the cables in the first place. It's a cable.

    There's no plan, there's no race to be run
    The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
  • ZavianZavian universal peace sounds better than forever war Registered User regular
    MuddBudd wrote: »
    Honestly I am confused as to what is damaging the cables in the first place. It's a cable.
    71uWScjcm1L._SY445_.jpg

  • DaimarDaimar A Million Feet Tall of Awesome Registered User regular
    Figures it would be Ice Cube doing it.

    Also, does using mods disable achievements?

    steam_sig.png
  • EvmaAlsarEvmaAlsar Birmingham, EnglandRegistered User regular
    Mods do not disable achievements.

    I didn't bat an eye to cable faults, but I've played a lot of Rimworld. Blame it on power surges or something.

    As for pipe faults, it's -55C on the surface of Mars. We had a shitload of burst pipes in my town last week when it was hanging around freezing point, and those suckers are underground.

    6YAcQE8.png
    Steam profile - Twitch - YouTube
    Switch: SM-6352-8553-6516
  • taliosfalcontaliosfalcon Registered User regular
    I really liked this at first, but it seems like mid-late game all my time is spent just ferrying resources to places because while I have transport routes setup they stop when the source runs out or the destination is full, and don't restart when that's resolved so..yeah. Dunno if i'm missing something but it's really killing my enjoyment

    steam xbox - adeptpenguin
  • MuddBuddMuddBudd Registered User regular
    I really liked this at first, but it seems like mid-late game all my time is spent just ferrying resources to places because while I have transport routes setup they stop when the source runs out or the destination is full, and don't restart when that's resolved so..yeah. Dunno if i'm missing something but it's really killing my enjoyment

    You should research/build at least one shuttle bay. That will help a lot.

    There's no plan, there's no race to be run
    The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
  • MuddBuddMuddBudd Registered User regular
    EvmaAlsar wrote: »
    Mods do not disable achievements.

    I didn't bat an eye to cable faults, but I've played a lot of Rimworld. Blame it on power surges or something.

    As for pipe faults, it's -55C on the surface of Mars. We had a shitload of burst pipes in my town last week when it was hanging around freezing point, and those suckers are underground.

    I'm just not sure why pipes and cables aren't buried. Even a shallow covering of dirt seems like it would protect them a LITTLE.

    There's no plan, there's no race to be run
    The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
  • taliosfalcontaliosfalcon Registered User regular
    In my current game i got two breakthroughs that seem almost like cheating right near the start, cables never short, cost no resources and build instantly, and dome service buildings are staffed by robots, require no emp loyees & always operate at 100% efficiency, lolgg

    steam xbox - adeptpenguin
  • EvmaAlsarEvmaAlsar Birmingham, EnglandRegistered User regular
    edited March 2018
    I really liked this at first, but it seems like mid-late game all my time is spent just ferrying resources to places because while I have transport routes setup they stop when the source runs out or the destination is full, and don't restart when that's resolved so..yeah. Dunno if i'm missing something but it's really killing my enjoyment

    Shuttle hangars are the way for the future in the colony. I think the transport route mechanic for your RC transports is really there so they can ferry more than one truckload of surface metals to your stockpile without you having to drop what you're doing to get them to bring more. Flying drones are incredible, and makes it possible for you to spread your colony over the whole map.

    Shuttle hangars start with 3 drones that are capable of carrying 3 units of cargo at a time, they can be upgraded to carry 6 and hangars can be upgraded to house more shuttles through technology unlocks.
    In my current game i got two breakthroughs that seem almost like cheating right near the start, cables never short, cost no resources and build instantly, and dome service buildings are staffed by robots, require no emp loyees & always operate at 100% efficiency, lolgg

    Holy crap I keep learning about more breakthrough techs I've never seen, and I get excited at the potential power of each of them.

    There's a special place in my heart for Service Bots, though. All that freed up manpower <3

    EvmaAlsar on
    6YAcQE8.png
    Steam profile - Twitch - YouTube
    Switch: SM-6352-8553-6516
  • MuddBuddMuddBudd Registered User regular
    Oh, my colony has started hallucinating. The entire map turns green for a bit and people have visions of 6-fingered aliens who live in giant trees.

    There's no plan, there's no race to be run
    The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
  • BobbleBobble Registered User regular
    Service Bots are amazing, but 10 electronics per building to install them is no joke.

  • MuddBuddMuddBudd Registered User regular
    I still maintain that this game is set in a dystopian future where robots have taken over and force humans to slave in the mines and factories.

    There's no plan, there's no race to be run
    The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
  • MuddBuddMuddBudd Registered User regular
    I my most recent breakthroughs to research.

    - A tech that lets my colonists thrive on only an hour of sleep
    - Soylent Green

    There's no plan, there's no race to be run
    The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
  • EvmaAlsarEvmaAlsar Birmingham, EnglandRegistered User regular
    Just so people know, there's currently a known issue where having mods loaded in the game can make it so that you do not get sound effects. This has happened to me with purely cosmetic mods like the cel-shaded photo filter and the Weyland-Yutani corporate logo.

    6YAcQE8.png
    Steam profile - Twitch - YouTube
    Switch: SM-6352-8553-6516
  • MuddBuddMuddBudd Registered User regular
    I might still go back to figure out the mystery, but I put my I India sponsored colony on hold for the moment. I had some real bad luck with meteors just as I was finally tapping into a deep water deposit. Plus want to use what I have learned. New colony is a go! This time, USA. I have a small dome of researchers and botanists now.

    First breakthrough tech? Nanites that build stuff without drones. Drones still help out, but things can and will get built without them.

    HbWRLS1.jpg?1

    There's no plan, there's no race to be run
    The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
Sign In or Register to comment.