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[Surviving Mars] Tropico... in SPAAAAACE!

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  • ArbitraryDescriptorArbitraryDescriptor changed Registered User regular
    Mill wrote: »
    Yeah, universal depos are great as relay depos or to setup next structures to hold resources for maintenance. I know some of the guides advise against universal depos but they are really useful for maintenance and relay points. You only want to use dedicated depos near structures that regularly consume or produce resources on a large scale. example, food depos near domes & outdoor farms. polymer depos near the polymer factory & domes that have tons of art workshops. ect, ect. Storage structure should be used sparingly since it uses machine parts, but those can be useful for tons of storage.

    On resources, the devs might want to revise how things work for them. The two big offenders are that some resources fully deplete without a way to get them outside of things like the Mohole. The other being that there is a point where the player is drowning in certain resources and in some cases that can bone you (worst offender is metal since you have to move it away from the Mohole in order for it to keep working and even an non-upgrade Mohole can result in silly things, like filling up afar away plains with metal depos. Also human resources get wonky, given that a ton of the automated stuff shows up after getting colonists and that extractors do run out.

    -Mohole should be adjust so that either metal production can be turned off completely or so the player has to choose between metals or rare metals.
    -Waste rock needs another sink. Currently the chooses are either grab Brazil to turn it into something useful, research the means to turn it into concrete or turn it into atmospheric gases. Not everyone want to play Brazil every playthrough. We only need so much concrete before that creates issues. Turning it into atmosphere is only worthwhile until you hit a point where the drop outpaces losses and one wants to keep those structures at a minimum since they use machine parts. Maybe a structure that will randomly converts waste rock into metal, rare metals, polymers or fuel, this would keep Brazil's perk being good, but give everyone else an option to burn off waste rock. Make this structure use metal for maintenance.
    -There should be the option to sell off resources that aren't rare metals. I'd be fine if we got paid 1/5 of what those cost to import. Also if it was setup only to unlock after a certain number of techs are researched, so that short sighted players can't easily whine about hosing themselves because they sold off a surplus that should have been kept.
    -We should have threshold that allows us to tell stuff to stop producing once resources hit a certain level, while also having auto exports stop if resources deep below a certain level.
    -metal and rare metal deposits probably shouldn't fully deplete. Upon depletion, they should give a very, very minor amount of resources. Not enough to make someone feel like they need to keep the extractors up, but something to make it worth keeping around.
    -We have a ton of worthless techs that could be replaced with something else. One could be a research option that lets rare metal and metal extractors reclaim lost metals from building wear and tear. If I did this probably have it so that up to 25% of the lost material could be reclaimed and cap each extractor with the upgrade to only being able to produce 10 per sol. So for 40 resources lost to wear & tear, one would need one extractor to get the max benefit. 41-80 resources would need two to get the full benefit.
    -Manned structures that could can either be upgrade to remove the need for workers or wonder moot by a fully automated structure, should either get a researchable upgrade or have a baseline feature, where each worker on it provides a baseline of one research point. The right specialist would double that. Idea being, that there is some value, other than tying up colonists to keep them from being unemployed, in leaving the structure up if the player invests in something that renders it moot.
    -Water isn't really an issue but it's rather odd that water deposits have zero interaction with rainfall and moisture level. I'd probably give each deposit a capacity cap based on grade. Water levels would increase each time it rains and that amount would be based on moisture levels and rainfall duration.

    one thing to note about universal depots: shut off fuel on them. If something strikes your fuel it will explode, and will remove everything on that pad. Make a separate fuel depot to put fuel on so you don't lose everything!

    Make that two fuel depots or you will still be pretty sad.

  • ArbitraryDescriptorArbitraryDescriptor changed Registered User regular
    klemming wrote: »
    I think that so long as you have overlapping depots and drone commanders, they should transport it themselves.
    Like, factory wants metal, so it sends a call out to any depots in range. If they don't have metal, they send out a call to any depots in range of them, and so on.

    But relying on drones is slow work, and I'm not sure what priority it comes under, so if you've got them busy building, it can jam things up.
    Shuttles are way better at it.

    A decent stopgap can be to set up transport routes with the RC Transport. Just setting it to go to your mining operation, pick up everything in the area, then drop it off back at your main base.

    I can't figure out drone priority sometimes. I've watched dozens of drone sit idle as a handful try to load 60 items into a spaceship (from the nearby farms rather than the depots right next to the ship).

    I assume a clogged factory is higher priority, so that makes sense, but what were those other drones waiting for?

  • klemmingklemming Registered User regular
    A job gets given to a certain drone. The resource it's going to use gets marked as in use by that drone before it even picks it up, so if you've got a stash of metal sitting there but the drones aren't picking it up to add to that building, it's probably because a shuttle just launched and has called dibs on them to move them somewhere else. If you click on a drone and hover over a construction job, you might get a message like 'no resources available', even when you can see them. That means that the resources you can see have been marked for other jobs.

    On that, don't be afraid to put depots wherever you want, the more the merrier. Universal ones are good for minor stuff and maintenance, but if you know you've got a lot of a resource running through an area (metals, polymers, whatever), dedicated depots tend to help the logistics. I end up putting universal depots right next to each drone controller, and dedicated depots by any producers to handle the output.

    A basic one I try to resort to is to put one or two food depots outside each dome, with a minimum setting that covers that domes food needs (30 or so, usually). Food can be slow to spread around a colony if you end up growing it all in one place, and it's not uncommon to get starvation warnings when you've got 3k+ food saved up because it's just not reaching one dome.

    (also, there's a mega waste storage mod I highly recommend, as storing that stuff gets tedious fast.)

    Nobody remembers the singer. The song remains.
  • MillMill Registered User regular
    Yeah, I make it a point to shut off supplies that I don't need at universal depos; especially, when I have shuttles up and running. No point in having machine parts, electronics, fuel, rare metals, cement & food at my outpost forestation plant, while having the inventor profile. That stuff will just sit there forever unused and I'll have to manually tell a transport to remove it. I'd suggest anytime one is about to put down a universal depo, that they pause the game and turn off unwanted resources; especially, when you have shuttles because those seem really quick about picking up resources and tagging them for a universal depo the moment that depo is available.

  • klemmingklemming Registered User regular
    I'd also suggest setting the desired resources to 0 in most cases. It just adds more tasks to the queue for your drones and shuttles, and most of the time it isn't needed and the game works out what needs to go where.
    The exception is when there's a dust storm coming. Those love to cause leaks and mess up distribution (especially when you start relying on shuttles), so when there's one coming, I set all the universal depots to have a stock of materials for repairs so cable and pipe leaks can't cripple me.

    Nobody remembers the singer. The song remains.
  • MillMill Registered User regular
    Curious to hear what others think in regards to the difference between big solar panels vs little and big wind turbines vs little turbines. As far as I can tell, the big solar panels are all around worse than the little ones. They take three times the materials & space, double the maintenance, but only give 2.5 times the power. I guess if metals were much harder to get maybe the maintenance would make them the winner here, but I'm using creative ways to bleed off metals and there is always double scrubbers. Seems like it would be more efficient to just run with small solar panels (possible try to have as many as possible without scrubber coverage to bleed off more unwanted metals). At some point they're not even worth keeping, unless you want to run a bunch around the micro fusion wonder. Also at one hex, they are the easiest thing to maximize space on. Similar deal with the turbines, only the big ones are just double of everything, but are IMO worse once you get into placement because you can't rotate them to maximize space use like the little turbines. Maybe I'm missing someting, but it seems like the smaller ones for both are the better choice.

    Double scruber is kind of broken, but the game is kind of a pain in the ass without using it because the lower maintenance costs mean needing less colonists. I actually grabbed mods that let me start with all the automated stuff and good do I wish some of it was baseline. So much easier to manage things when you have the breakthrough that lets you upgrade all the basic service buildings to be auto. Freeing up more time to deal with areas where the game just isn't cutting it, one big one is that the game is awful about specialst variety training out of the university on auto. I'd be fine with the lack of geologists and officers, if I didn't need a bunch of some expeditions. I mean I have the security center, but that was just quickly put in to deal with some unemployment as cheaply as possible. With auto extractors and food prices letting me hold off on growing food until the outdoor farms are up and running, I don't really have a use for geologists or botanists outside of expeditions. They really should consider letting their structures provide some research or other business, so that I have an incentive to have those structures.

    On another note, suggestions for effectively bleeding off metals. Possibly in conjunction with concrete because I'll have the concrete extractor up at some point in my current game and will also end up swamped in more concrete than what i know to do with. I mean I could turn it off, but with that not really being an option with the Mohole (assuming I want a decent rare metal income), might as well know what my options are for "I'm building this structure, than demolishing it so I can make half the resources spend on it go away." I think next time I play with mods, seeing how they prevent achievements, I might as well also look into one that does something about the superflous metal issue.

  • klemmingklemming Registered User regular
    Solar panels are early game stuff for the most part, so the maintenance saving is the reason to go with larger ones, since you have plenty of space available. That they use metals is the key point, as early game your processed resources are limited, so going with wind from the start can mess you up when you run out of polymers to keep them running. By the time you get scrubbers, resources shouldn't be a problem, so you can build huge wind farms or dozens of fusion plants or a miniature sun.

    Oh, and mods don't disable achievements.

    Nobody remembers the singer. The song remains.
  • MillMill Registered User regular
    The bigger wind turbines are just double the little ones, minus the ability to rotate them for space saving. Even in the post scrubber point, electronics are expensive, so one wants to huddle as much around the two scrubbers as possible.

    Metal really does become rather obnoxious. Not much uses it past a certain point, but the devs insisted on the Mohole spewing out a ton of the shit, even on the base level. They really should have had an option that unlocks after research X number of techs or hitting Y milestone or Z mission goal, that lets the player start selling some of these resources. I'd be fine if the prices were crap, but the current setup pretty much means the player is going to be swamped with more model than they know what to do with. It's feasible to stop making everything else, outside of waste rock. I can get not selling waste rock, but everyone that isn't brazil needs some sort of sink for that stuff once they are pumping out a enough smog to hit 100% atmosphere and stay well ahead of at atmospheric losses. It just shouldn't be as good as Brazil's option. Heck, I'd be fine if the Mohole didn't spew out metals and was rebalanced to only spew out rare metals, but chuck up enough that it's feasible to buy any metal that is needed. I mean, at 80% atmosphere one needs to purposely trigger a meteor storm and those aren't super common, even on Armageddon settings. One can only purposely trigger so many and even then, one should be investing in anti-meteor structures if they are going to trigger meteor storms, so there is a point where expansion might make it pointless.

    As for achievement, I'll have check. I was playing the paradox sponsor to get the extra breakthroughs. So either I find an add on that does interfere with achievements or things are being wonky. I could have sworn they had a single achievement to develop a certain number of games before Sol 100 (possible I fell short of it).

  • ArbitraryDescriptorArbitraryDescriptor changed Registered User regular
    edited July 2019
    Mill, did you try sinking your metal into machine parts, and consuming them in bio robotics workshops?

    I don't have the Mohole fully upgraded yet, but I'm not having a problem with excess metal.

    Re: Solar panels
    I haven't had an issue with building sizes, in fact I prefer the mega-panels from the SpaceY folks.

    Lifetime maintenance costs outweigh the initial investment quickly enough, and do add up. Plus you can get back a portion of the initial investment, whereas the maintenance is lost forever. This is more of a concern for the Turbines (machine parts) than the Panels (metal), but the principle is the same and, eventually, 1 metal == 1 machine part when you have the pop to convert them.


    I'd also lean toward larger, less space efficient buildings from a drone labor requirement angle, and I believe, improved upgrade cost-efficiency.


    ArbitraryDescriptor on
  • MillMill Registered User regular
    edited July 2019
    I went with chaos theory. So I haven't gotten a chance to research it yet, also doesn't help that I intentionally shot for a small colony until I had a bunch of stuff established, which might have been just as well since I got the mystery where earth is on the verge of a major world war and can't currently import anything, while expecting to get refugees.

    Edit: Going to go out on a limb and say that Last War is probably the worst fucking mystery. Seriously fuck the dev that was like "we need to create tension, so let's force the player to spend tons, tons of time not being able to do a fucking thing. Then as a big fuck you to the player, let's have an event that random fires where missiles rain down on the colony. Only let's make sure this is setup in a way that the player has zero chance to respond to. So they are absolutely fucked if they don't have anti-meteor stuff. Also also because some might actually have decent anti-meteor setups, let's make sure the missiles rain down in a density that damage happens regardless because fuck the player. It'll be great!" I swear, once I get the achievement for this mystery, I'm going to make sure it's banned from every showing up in any future games because it's super shitty already and I don't see it really having a payoff that merits tolerating this shit event in future games.

    I'd also like to see something down with the algorithm for colonist management because it's pretty fucking awful. Shits all over you when you run with the filters to try to make sure it's lets shit. Shits all over you when you minimize them in hopes of it being less shit. Seriously, when I have 20 fucking workshop jobs open, a shuttle bay dedicated to ferrying colonists around. The game shouldn't not wait 3 sols to move start moving people around. Also the housing is the same in all the domes. Colonist management is probably the worst aspect of this game and it's not that it's hard, it's just that the AI for colonists is beyond fucking stupid. Do not whine about lack of employment and housing, when all you fucking have to do is take a shuttle do the dome that has both.

    Mill on
  • ArbitraryDescriptorArbitraryDescriptor changed Registered User regular
    Unemployment and homelessness don't seem to be causing me any problems @ 10-12%, 750 pop.

    I'm not really doing anything fancy to keep them happy; two wedges for bars, food, security tower, shops; mostly Sanitarium or Arcology spires. But I'm super late game here, is it more of an issue earlier in the tech tree, or are you just frustrated that it's hard to eliminate it for good?

  • MillMill Registered User regular
    It's just really obnoxious. The colony isn't burning down, but I really shouldn't see cases where a homeless, no specialist colonist leaves the daycare dome and instead of walking over to the university dome, that has vacant housing and classroom spots, just flags down a shuttle to go to another dome to continue being unemployed and possible homeless. . . It also makes the workshop milestone a bigger pain in the ass than it needs to be, since unemployed colonists that refuse to go to places that can provide them with jobs and housing, are part of the percent not in workshops. Workshop milestone is already bad for not giving the player any means to track progress on it, you have to eyeball it.

    Anyways, just about done with my current game. Just need to get 100% vegetation, which is still painfully slow, even with the mode that lets forestation plants continue contributing to the progress past 40%. Off the top of my head, if I were paradox the big things I'd work on.

    -Colonist AI, I don't expect them to do things perfectly, but there clearly is something where they get hell bent on sticking to a dome, whining about no jobs and homes, while there are nearly empty domes. Filtering is a crap shoot. Dedicated passage shuttles don't help. I had a megadome, that was put up to house olds and tourist. I had to ban middle aged adults to get all the unemployed out of it and into domes that had tons of housing and jobs. On this vein, the university AI needs a look in regards to auto because it's really bad about training specialists in chunks, so you'll go from not being able to do an expedition since there aren't enough of the required specialist, to having more of those specialist than you need. Specialists, should also do a better job going to places where there is an opening in their specialization, possibly even kicking incorrect people out of occupied job slots.

    -Not having luxury shops seems to ding you a bit too much and I don't think it did a ton for you if you had them. Colonists also reproduce too quickly IMO, which pretty much necessitates throttle birth control on and off at some points in the game and adds a little to much to the micro.

    -Take a look at mysteries. Beyond Earth is probably over tuned on some parts for costs. The Last War is just fucking awful and probably should be removed, given there is no achievement. Last War is also bad because it makes tourists a detriment, they won't leave, suck up food and housing and contribute nothing, while the shit is hitting the fan. If it's kept, lessen the time it takes. Probably have benchmark goals, so the player can get some sort of reward for doing shit right because chances are you'll have uncovered all tech and be sufficient by the time it ends. The breakthrough could be good or crap. I got cryostasis which wasn't great, since I didn't really need colonists. The reduced imports is so so because you'll be essentially self-sufficient by then and it's only a marginal benefit for rushing resources to rush out the last few wonders and maybe another dome if you don't get ahead of refugees.

    -A relook at the tech tree. A ton of the automated stuff should be baseline. Given what a pain colonists are and that we're colonizing a red hellscape of a world. Discovering tech that lowers the needed number of workers feels crappy, since that just creates new problems or requires the player juggling things. The automated tech should either boost production, add research gained from structures (anything that needs botanists and geologists really needs this because they become worthless, but you have to have some on hand for expeditions) or other benefits (maybe service bots is changed, so that the now automated bars, stores and diners have increases comfort or help to recover sanity). There are some techs, where they probably should be baseline at the start instead of research options, worst offender is the fungus farm, make it baseline and replace the tech that unlock it with something that let's it start improving soil quality around it (maybe the breakthrough tech for it, also creates a chance for mushrooms to grow around the farm if mars is terraformed enough, that can be harvested for more food).

    -Landscaping. It's fun, but it's a bit glitchy, where waste rocks can drag things to a stop if it's in the wrong place. Having resources made inaccessible if you don't remove them. Landscaping nanites just isn't worth it because it'll pretty much hose your ability to do further landscaping with out it works, ends up needing drones despite that being the thing it shouldn't need. Also would be great to choose the elevation of terrain. Oh, and the tool tweaked to be less awful on the eyes and maybe even have the option to select squares or circle because you just want to flatten a ton of space.

    -Vegetation. I see tons of complaints about terraforming being boring and I suspect a ton of it comes down to this aspect. Not getting enough atmosphere, just spam carbonate processors, you can't have to for keeping waste rock in check. Taking too long to warm up, spam core heat convectors and/or GHG factories. Still not getting humid fast enough, build tons of lakes (this one is a bit problematic because it really shows how almost mandatory self filling lakes. Vegetation, too fucking bad, forestation plants only get you 0.01% per plant and each plant is actually a bit expensive to make since they use electronics. I currently have 56 and that is getting me a total of .56% a sol. Also god help you if you don't have the mode because forestation stations stop mattering beyond making your area lock nicer at 40% for some reason. Then it's waiting for the expeditions. Forestation plants should probably provide .1% per station IMO and continue providing progress. The vegetation blooms should also actually do something, maybe add passive progress to vegetation gains. (30% results in wild grass growing and that adds a .2% passive boost to vegetation. 60% results wild bushes and the passive gain increases to .5%. 90% results in wild trees and that boosts the passive progress to 2%.

    -Checking the coding for some expeditions. Either they forget to add possible bad consequences to the mission profile or something has bugged. Worst offender is nuking the caps. As far as I can tell the first one never triggers dust storms, but all others do; however, the only negative thing you're told that can happen is that the rocket is lost. I know there is a special event that pops, which will create a dust storm and involved blowing shit up, so I'm wondering if the game is incorrectly flagging the 2nd and later polar nukings as that event. On the topic of disasters, upon hitting a terraforming threshold, that should clear stuff on the horizon that sensor towers spot. If I clear the stuff to make toxic rain go ahead, the toxic rainstorm 2.5 sols out should go away, not arrive regardless (it actually punishes the player essentially for having sensor towers up).

    -Resource. I've covered this, but they really should re-evaluate generation and spending of resources. Waste rock and metal are probably the two worst offenders because both can interfere with generation other needed resources. It's pretty bad design if I'm building enough carbonate processors to boost the atmosphere by nearly 9% per sol, but most of them were build after hitting 70% atmosphere (I also had three waste rock processors), not to speed things up, but to make waste rock go away, so that it doesn't impede my ability to get water or rare metals. Granted, some of this comes back to vegetation taking too long because most would probably nuke a game upon hitting all the milestone, unless an interesting event starts before the last milestone gets ticked.

  • klemmingklemming Registered User regular
    Have you considered playing something else? I mean, you're clearly not enjoying this game, and the problems you have with it aren't going to be fixed in a patch more than a year after release. They're part of the game, it just might not be your thing.

    Nobody remembers the singer. The song remains.
  • MuddBuddMuddBudd Registered User regular
    At the very least the complaint about vegetation is spot-on.

    It takes forever doing the forestation missions via rocket to finish that. I was done with the rest long before that. Next time I do a terraforming playthrough I am modding it in some way to make that less tedious.

    There's no plan, there's no race to be run
    The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
  • CaptainPeacockCaptainPeacock Board Game Hoarder Top o' the LakeRegistered User regular
    There should be an advanced building that drives forestation after 40% and consumes masses of seeds. Relegating that to missions is terrible.

    Cluck cluck, gibber gibber, my old man's a mushroom, etc.
  • ArbitraryDescriptorArbitraryDescriptor changed Registered User regular
    edited July 2019
    There should be an advanced building that drives forestation after 40% and consumes masses of seeds. Relegating that to missions is terrible.

    The seeds aren't even an issue by that point, it would be fine if you weren't limited to just one launch every X days.

    If I've got the resources, why can't I send out a fleet of seeders?

    There should just be a third "seeder" toggle on the Export button for rockets so they just automatically do that. It would also give you a reason to acquire more rockets.

    ArbitraryDescriptor on
  • MillMill Registered User regular
    klemming wrote: »
    Have you considered playing something else? I mean, you're clearly not enjoying this game, and the problems you have with it aren't going to be fixed in a patch more than a year after release. They're part of the game, it just might not be your thing.

    If I didn't enjoy the game, I wouldn't waste my time considering how to fix the issues it does have. You don't have to agree with me or even respond, but it would be nice if you didn't respond with something that boils down to "don't complain or go elsewhere."

  • ArbitraryDescriptorArbitraryDescriptor changed Registered User regular
    edited July 2019
    Ran into an odd bug near the end of my run (thankfully), where drones just stopped collecting food from outdoor farms. I would have to put drone commanders on them (overlapping a nearby food depot), then issue an arbitrary move command to kind of jolt them into action.

    The oddest part was doing so caused the relevant drone control stations to snap into action as well. Is there a known cause / better workaround for that?

    Fortunately I was 10 VR workshops from hitting the workshop milestone, so I didn't have to deal with that very long.

    Edit: and I guess you never "resolve" the wildfire mystery? I've been shipping curetatos back to Earth for a few centuries now.

    ArbitraryDescriptor on
  • MillMill Registered User regular
    I'm wondering if at some point they'll tweak drone command hubs and the relevant RVs (I think there are three different ones that can control drones, but two are sponsor specific) so that the player can designated and disable certain tasks. I've seen cases where drones will just flat out stop doing something that is on a higher priority and dick around doing less important things. Of the top of my head, there is just a shit ton that drones do, so I wouldn't be surprised if there are times where something just borks and a task gets completely buried by everything else, even if it's a high priority task.

    If they do, I hope that also comes with a command to ensure that a hub is left with a bare minimum of drones because I've noticed drones will be pulled off of hubs that are in an area that is relatively dead compared to what other hubs are doing. At times, it's perfectly fine if a busier hub is pulling off idle drones, but a bit of problem when that hub pulls all the drones off a hub that has little going on around it, but has something where you want at least a drone or two ready to go (usually, this deals with domes that aren't producing resources). Also happens to drone command dozers, but don't think there is a way to fix that since that could create wonky issues, when you need your sole drone command rover for an expedition. I could see that creating an issue where either the rover doesn't get on the shuttle and the expedition can't proceed or the drones just go hire on pathing as they try to get to their parent rover.

  • ArbitraryDescriptorArbitraryDescriptor changed Registered User regular
    Mill wrote: »
    I've seen cases where drones will just flat out stop doing something that is on a higher priority and dick around doing less important things.

    In the scenario I posted about, there was only one possible task for the drones to perform (only in range of a farm with 1000+ food and a food depot with 0), and they still didn't do it; so I think there's also bug in there affecting prioritization.

  • MillMill Registered User regular
    So after playing around with some stuff.

    Mods, that IMO don't count as cheating, if one wants to get achievements without cheesing them through mods. Can't remember the names, but they are easy enough to find.
    -Mod that let's you queue up all sectors for scans. The 10 sector limit just makes things tedious because you get stuck having to zone out to queue up more. Better to just queue them all up until, you have to reselect stuff after getting deep scanning.
    -Forestation Plants go up to 11, pretty much removes the 40% restriction. This structure is still fairly unnoticeable and still the weakest terraforming structure in the game, so getting another 5-10% vegetation growth before you finish up the last expedition isn't rally cheating IMO.
    -Children can play in hanging gardens. Another design decision I don't understand, I think it's probably more oversight, but the hanging gardens is the only spire you rally need in a nursery dome. Ideally, you get the service bots breakthrough and don't need any adults in your nursery domes at all.
    -Mod that removes landscaping limits, this one needs an additional mod to work. Landscaping get's easier when you don't have to try to piecemeal things together for areas where you want elevation differences, but end up being larger than what the default allows. Also lets you better deal with cases where placing building on previously landscaped terrain results in either the structure creating a depression around itself or raising the ground, thus running into issues of uneven terrain.

    Honorable mentions, that I'll concede not everyone is likely to agree on.
    -Mod that ensure you get the breakthrough to use metals for drone printing and surprisingly biorobot printing. IMO probably should be a regular end game research because we really need more than just machine parts for biorobotics workshops eating up metals. it makes for a great short term sink. I'd agree that if biorobots continue to be immortal, that maybe we shouldn't get to use 10 metals to makes more (imo just have it change the cost to 3 metals and 2 electronics). Though if they made it so biorobots had a finite lifespan (Outside of dying to low health and other circumstances), 10 metals would be reasonable IMO because the game really needs another metal sink or Mohole metal production needs a nerf.
    -Mod that ensures automation upgrades are available. From an immersion point of view, a Mars colony wouldn't want unskilled labor and would want to minimize how many meatbags the colony has to keep alive. It's kind of weird that Service Bots, eternal fusion, factory automation and farm automation are either midgame upgrades or on chance to discover breakthrough. Usually, as population get bigger, you don't want to drastically reduce your slots and find ways to keep everyone employed.

    As far as best stuff goes.

    Top best 4 breakthrough in no particular order. Not going to include the ones, I think should be baseline.
    -Forever Young, you worker work till the day they die, as the oligarchs intended. It's a huge boon, to not have to bother with senior warehousing domes. All you pretty much have to bother with is nursery domes, university campuses and if you want to bother with tourism, a tourism trap dome.
    -Lake Vaporators, not only does this turn lake construction into a great sink for unneeded concrete and indirectly getting rid of unwanted metal for a finite amount of time, but you don't need water for your lakes. So you don't need to way time running pipes everywhere, just need to figure out how to get supplies out to build them. Also means you can generate more water from your water vaporators for free.
    -Nano Refinement, this only makes the list because of how easily metal can shutdown rare metal production. Technically probably should be baseline, but Mohole exists, so I could see the argument for not doing so both on immersion and need. Anyways, if you get this you can pretty much dump a rare metal extractor on all the deposits, ideally your extractors won't need peeps and you can pretty much ensure that you have enough rare metal income to keep the electronics plants going (assuming you don't do a massive population that outpaces normal means to sustain).
    -Superconducting computing, turn all that excess energy into research. Micro Fusion will probably put you over your needs by a far bit, given how things can go wrong, you'll have redundancy to that puts you over. You can also just plop down a fusion reactor; especially, if you can keep them unmanned just to generate research. Also has amazing synergy with the best rover; especially, if you have the micro sun wonder.

    Best Rover, RC generator. When you don't need to roam around and have something that feed into your grid and sunlight, it's 30 power that require no maintenance. You can pretty much park this by the micro sun wonder when you don't need to have a mobile drown commander out in the field. Honorable mentions, the harvester & driller, essentially maintenance free resource gather on nodes where a 50% loss probably isn't that huge.

    Best service building, I'd say this comes down to a 2 way tie. First there is the megamall, I only say it ties because the game intends for service bots to be an on chance thing. If service bots were guaranteed, it would be the best service structure since it services 30 people at a time and cover everything, but only needs food for consumables and has polymer upkeep, which is that bad. It's pretty much a good way to make your gamers happy without having to sink electronics into them, make your drinkers happy without have to waste space on a bar for them. A service bot Megamall means you don't need to allow adults in your nursery domes, they little cretins don't give a shit about there being a medical clinic present and don't die from what being absent in most case. Also makes university domes, senior domes and tourist trap domes easier to manage. university domes only have to focus on educating unspecialized workers and can kick them out when they graduate, it's another dome that doesn't need doctors. Tourist and senior domes still need workers for the medical facility, but a service bot megamall removes the need for a ton of workers and frees up more space to house all the pops that don't work. Even in domes where the pops work, it frees up bodies for more useful things. Tai-Chi Garden is tied because it doesn't need a breakthrough to really shine and is pretty good since it gives 75 comfort, takes up 3 squares, doesn't need workers, serves up to 10 and has no maintenance cost. Only reason Tai-Chi Garden doesn't take top spot handily is that it's only good for addressing exercise and social needs. I'd say worst is probably a tie between spacebar and casino, both take up a ton of real estate for very little return, the electronics upkeep on the casino might make it worse and frankly, I've found it's really easy to run colonies without either one. Spacebar probably dies because the small spacebar really makes it pointless. I'll include workshops in their own group, since they are technically service buildings.

    Best workshop, biorobotics workshop. Currently, the best option for trying to bleed off unneeded metal. If it wasn't so easy to end up swimming in unneeded metal, I'd say all three workshops would tie with one another. VR provides more jobs, but has the demerit in that it uses electronics.

    Best décor building, the two wisp lamps. Free to build, 100 comfort, no maintenance, can service three colonists and only needs one space to build. You'll get tons of one space areas in your dome. Sure only covers exercise, play and relaxation, but again, you get tons of spots where you need a one hex structure. Only downside is if you play as intended, it's locked behind a mystery. If you run with a mod that opens all buildings, totally worth spamming these; especially, since they do seem to alternate the color of light they emit if near other wisp lamps.

    Best spire, hanging gardens. High comfort and satisfies a decent number of needs. Sure specialized domes need the other spires, but ideally, you get a dome that allows for two spires.

    Best dome, diamond, it has far more space than oval, but oval is a good contender. Both allow for double spires, which means getting the best spire hanging garden and then getting either the spire needed for specialization or covering medical or sanity needs. If you have either one, not a huge need to build any of the other domes outside of milestones (the megadome milestone should really count any of the mega dome, oval, diamond or geoscape domes) and for niche things because neither university domes or nursery domes need two spires. Sure capital city is the best, given that let's you have three spires, but that isn't a dome.

    Best housing, it's a toss up between living complex and apartment. Living complex is cheaper; especially, on energy and starts out with better comfort, but houses far less. Apartments become competitive after you get the right research and are a space saver. The other choice is to essential grab a cheat mod the ups arcology residence numbers and let's you build it as a non-spire. :P I'd say either non-moded arcology is probably the worst housing choice because all the other spires are better options.

  • Gennenalyse RuebenGennenalyse Rueben The Prettiest Boy is Ridiculously Pretty Registered User regular
    Hey, I figured I'd bump this thread because Surviving Mars has recently received a free update overhauling how Tourists (something I never messed with and forgot even existed) work as well as a $5 DLC pack of buildings. And supposedly there's more coming this year.

    The free update lets you now build hotels and amusement parks in your domes! Also buy/build rovers that take tourists around to observe the scenery.

    The paid DLC contains a bunch of buildings that fill in weirdly-empty niches, like a School spire, retirement homes, a larger hospital, stuff like that.

  • Mr RayMr Ray Sarcasm sphereRegistered User regular
    I got this as part of a humble bundle and immediately clicked with it, probably because as the post title suggests it is literally Tropico in space and I love both Tropico and space.

    Was surprised to see this update come out because I figured the game was done at this point, and it seems like it kind of is since this update was basically written by a modder with some support from the devs, although the fact that they'd do this at all makes me wonder whether this means there's a sequel or something in the works and they wanted to keep people interested.

    My main complaint about the game though is the same as Tropico 6; its just too damn easy. Once you know what you're doing there's really zero risk of NOT Surviving Mars, and deliberately embarking on the most difficult terrain you can find for the lols is at worst a slight difficulty increase vs a "normal difficulty" spot. Mostly the higher difficulty spots are just more annoying rather than actually harder.

    That said, with this update I will probably have to check this out again. Once you're gotten over the initial "Oh god how do I do anything? Oh god there's no oxygen everyone is going to die" learning curve its a nice game to chill to, especially given the (excellent) soundtrack. My only concern is that I've seen a lot of people say this update was kind of buggy? Something about colonists never aging and tourists being broken in some way. I can see there's been a hotfix but I might wait a bit to make sure all the issues have been ironed out before I dive back in and finally go for 100% terraforming.

  • EvmaAlsarEvmaAlsar Birmingham, EnglandRegistered User regular
    Mr Ray wrote: »
    Was surprised to see this update come out because I figured the game was done at this point, and it seems like it kind of is since this update was basically written by a modder with some support from the devs, although the fact that they'd do this at all makes me wonder whether this means there's a sequel or something in the works and they wanted to keep people interested.

    This is a staple of the publisher, Paradox. There have been tons and tons of community asset compilations for Cities: Skylines. I like to think it's a more benign take on encouraging the modding communities of their games than, say, Bethesda, where it feels more like "We release it, you finish it for free".

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  • FiatilFiatil Registered User regular
    edited March 2021
    EvmaAlsar wrote: »
    Mr Ray wrote: »
    Was surprised to see this update come out because I figured the game was done at this point, and it seems like it kind of is since this update was basically written by a modder with some support from the devs, although the fact that they'd do this at all makes me wonder whether this means there's a sequel or something in the works and they wanted to keep people interested.

    This is a staple of the publisher, Paradox. There have been tons and tons of community asset compilations for Cities: Skylines. I like to think it's a more benign take on encouraging the modding communities of their games than, say, Bethesda, where it feels more like "We release it, you finish it for free".

    Well this game didn't really have the typical Paradox published game development arc. I assumed it was dead too, and it totally was for awhile. For mysterious reasons, Haemimont Games (the Tropico 3-5 developers that are the reason the thread title is what it is) were kicked off of the project around the time the (amazing) Green Planet DLC was released. If you notice, that round of DLC (the last one until now) was released almost two years ago.

    Sooo yeah, it was a dead game by all appearances for almost 2 years. It was always strange given how much Green Planet improved it, and Paradox's typical DLC policies. Still not sure what happened with Haemimont, but these new updates are pretty much out of the blue with an entirely different development studio. I'm happy that it's getting developed again! I do hope that future DLC is more substantial than this one, because I haven't gotten the urge to buy it at all. Hopefully the new dev team is getting warmed up and can give us something as meaty as Green Planet, or at least vaguely close.

    Fiatil on
  • Jealous DevaJealous Deva Registered User regular
    Haemimont is apparently working with Frontier on something now, they split from Paradox.

  • FiatilFiatil Registered User regular
    edited March 2021
    Haemimont is apparently working with Frontier on something now, they split from Paradox.

    Yeah, they wound up there. Just not totally sure what went down to make Paradox drop them, or make them go separate ways. Clearly Paradox intended to churn out the DLC for this thing, but then something happened with that relationship. Ah well, it happens.

    Fiatil on
  • Mr RayMr Ray Sarcasm sphereRegistered User regular
    edited September 2021
    Well here it is:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMddf7AaYno

    https://www.pcgamer.com/surviving-mars-below-and-beyond/

    https://store.steampowered.com/app/1498760/Surviving_Mars_Below_and_Beyond/
    PC Gamer wrote:
    If Hollywood and Doom games have taught me anything, it's that nothing good lies beneath the surface of Mars. Surviving Mars' latest expansion, Below & Beyond, it's first premium expansion since mid-2019, says otherwise.

    In addition to new buildings and more resources, the big draw for this DLC is the chance to explore the cavernous underground of Mars. You'll create your own network of tunnels, then set up bases deep inside, either with pre-existing building types from the surface or underground-specific building types. Regretfully, I don't think either will survive tunnel cave-ins that can occur.

    The "Beyond" part of the DLC has you creating rocket-propelled buildings that your colonists will ride onto passing asteroids. You'll have a brief window of time to mine the heck out of whatever an asteroid is carrying, but stick around too long and it'll carry your building and your people away with it.

    New progression paths include additions to the Recon and Expansion research trees. These include more buildings, vehicles, upgrades, and locales, in addition to asteroid mining and underground tunneling.

    Surviving Mars last got a free bit of DLC with March 2021's Tourism update, which let players create resort getaways on the alien planet. Abstraction took over for original developer Haemimont Games, saying they have "ambitious" plans for Surviving Mars' future. In our Surviving Mars review, editor Fraser Brown fell in love, saying "nothing else marries survival and city building so deftly. It's a tricky but satisfying space disaster."

    Below & Beyond arrives on September 7 for £15.49 (no USD price yet) on Steam, Epic, GOG, Humble, and Xbox One.

    Its weird how there's no gameplay videos (that I've been able to find) considering this comes out in *checks watch* six days?!

    Mr Ray on
  • M-VickersM-Vickers Registered User regular
    I had a problem with late game Surviving Mars, in that inevitably, my people would start breeding out of control, and I could barely build new domes to keep them housed.

    Never figured how to slow it down.

  • Mr RayMr Ray Sarcasm sphereRegistered User regular
    edited September 2021
    M-Vickers wrote: »
    I had a problem with late game Surviving Mars, in that inevitably, my people would start breeding out of control, and I could barely build new domes to keep them housed.

    Never figured how to slow it down.

    You can forbid births by dome, beyond a certain point I forbid all new domes by default and allow/forbid domes according to my school/nursery dome's capacity.

    A bigger problem I find is there's just nothing meaningful to do beyond a certain point, once you've beaten whatever story you picked you just build more and more stuff with no real challenges. I want to play more, just give me things to do!

    Mr Ray on
  • That_GuyThat_Guy I don't wanna be that guy Registered User regular
    I got mars totally terraformed in one of my games. It's absolutely essential to ban reproduction everywhere outside of your kid domes. Scattered throughout the colony I had large domes dedicated just to kids. They'd be stuffed with nurseries, schools, parks, and just enough housing to keep everything moving smoothly. I also had retirement domes to keep all the olds from taking up space in the production domes. Once you can take the domes down and build the extra large foundations, you can relax the breeding rules a bit.

  • M-VickersM-Vickers Registered User regular
    That_Guy wrote: »
    I got mars totally terraformed in one of my games. It's absolutely essential to ban reproduction everywhere outside of your kid domes. Scattered throughout the colony I had large domes dedicated just to kids. They'd be stuffed with nurseries, schools, parks, and just enough housing to keep everything moving smoothly. I also had retirement domes to keep all the olds from taking up space in the production domes. Once you can take the domes down and build the extra large foundations, you can relax the breeding rules a bit.

    I'll get back into this at some point, and get all the dlc. I think I only finished half the stories, so will have a lot to do.

    I'm trying to finish off older games at the moment, and avoid getting stuck into replayable games, which is why I had to take a break from Humankind...

  • CaptainPeacockCaptainPeacock Board Game Hoarder Top o' the LakeRegistered User regular
    M-Vickers wrote: »
    I had a problem with late game Surviving Mars, in that inevitably, my people would start breeding out of control, and I could barely build new domes to keep them housed.

    Never figured how to slow it down.

    I'm pretty I remember you can turn off breeding in a setting on each dome.

    Cluck cluck, gibber gibber, my old man's a mushroom, etc.
  • That_GuyThat_Guy I don't wanna be that guy Registered User regular
    M-Vickers wrote: »
    I had a problem with late game Surviving Mars, in that inevitably, my people would start breeding out of control, and I could barely build new domes to keep them housed.

    Never figured how to slow it down.

    I'm pretty I remember you can turn off breeding in a setting on each dome.

    You can control+click the breeding option to turn it off everywhere.

  • M-VickersM-Vickers Registered User regular
    Turns out I needed to be more struck with the breeding.

    I can't help but worry that will affect happiness levels..

  • MillMill Registered User regular
    The other big issue, is that once you let you colony reach a certain size. The pop behavior will bug in weird ways, like pops will just straight up stop moving to domes that accommodate their needs. You'll get retired people that will stay in production domes. You'll get adults that stay in nursery domes. You get people that stay in the overcrowded old dome with zero housing and jobs left, while a brand spanking new dome attached to that dome sits vacant despite have tons of housing and jobs open and being within walking distance.

  • Mr RayMr Ray Sarcasm sphereRegistered User regular
    Hmm, maybe I'll hold off on this one for a bit. Or, like... forever...

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  • -Loki--Loki- Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining. Registered User regular
    edited September 2021
    From what I’ve read it’s not ‘bad’, though it’s incredibly buggy.

    Maybe keep an eye out to see if it gets patched?

    -Loki- on
  • That_GuyThat_Guy I don't wanna be that guy Registered User regular
    Mill wrote: »
    The other big issue, is that once you let you colony reach a certain size. The pop behavior will bug in weird ways, like pops will just straight up stop moving to domes that accommodate their needs. You'll get retired people that will stay in production domes. You'll get adults that stay in nursery domes. You get people that stay in the overcrowded old dome with zero housing and jobs left, while a brand spanking new dome attached to that dome sits vacant despite have tons of housing and jobs open and being within walking distance.

    You can largely work around that by placing age group restrictions on domes. If you're too young or too old to work you have to live in the dome for your age group. I always keep my nursery and retirement domes connected to a production dome so people can work the service building the non-working people want.

  • FiatilFiatil Registered User regular
    edited September 2021
    I'm still puzzled at what happened with Haemimont Games. They made the base game which was solid, the Green Planet DLC which was amazing and turned the game into a gem for me, aaand then for whatever reason that was the end of their involvement in the project and Paradox replaced them with another studio. I know they entered into a publishing deal with Frontier, but it seems weird that Paradox didn't have them under contract for multiple DLCs given Paradox's business model.

    That's why we had such a big gap in DLC releases, and all of the stuff with the new studio hasn't....seemed to be as good at all. I'm left wondering what awesome DLC we would have gotten if the original developers were still around -- this new stuff just doesn't hit the spot at all relative to Green Planet.

    Fiatil on
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