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Terraforming is some endgame stuff, friend and 20% in any of it early is a TON. Short version is you're growing too quickly and also wasting time on terraforming before your colony is online. There's nothing stopping you from doing it, but that's because this game isn't really about restricting your progress beyond what's gated by the tech tree. Throwing down buildings you cannot staff is a waste of power and maintenance cost. I have bitched about this at some length but the gameplay loop is basically: start small in a scalable area, keep things comfortable enough that people will have sex with each other and take solace that every little martian is an earther you won't have to fly into your colony. Then, when you're at capacity, expand into more space while retooling what you've got. You can grow pretty fast, actually! But you grow too fast and things start falling apart. Yes, this means that people who trained for half their lives to go to Mars will get to Mars and not start families because they're sad about not having gardens to sit in and having to eat their food at the MarsFarm its grown on instead of shipped to the grocery store, which they cannot buy because nobody's working at the grocer during the shift they aren't working so they get sad and develop alcoholism out of nowhere which is weird because nobody's working the third shift at the spacebar--which exists also--either and you cannot just take booze from the unattended bar. The bartender needs to be on duty or else it doesn't count and NOBODY WORKS MORE THAN EIGHT HOURS A DAY FOR ANY REASON INCLUDING THE THREAT OF DEATH BY METEORS AND NUCLEAR MELTDOWNS AND ALIENS. It's a peculiarly sheltered, adorable and quaint conception of Mars colonization occurring under no possible framework than Ball Pit Capitalism and its weird as hell coming from the Tropico devs who straight-up let you brutalize the population and keep them in line with the cops and army at the cost of needing to keep the cops and army very happy like happens IRL. Because I came in from Tropico it sounds like you're doing what I also did for my first 3-4 colonies which is: build with the intent of growing into it with lots of immigrants, your colony of 60 now has 85 job vacancies, the empty work slots mean nothing gets built even to cover maintenance costs due to the performance penalties, service buildings start collapsing and people decide living on Mars sucks and leave which means you have more vacancies which means more stuff collapses which means you're now losing water and power and on an Earth of over 7 billion people nobody wants to go to Mars because they heard the Gamestop was only half staffed and that's no fun.
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May 19, 2019 23:01
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I got the game because it was 66% off. Seems fun so far. Took the "long ride" perk because in the tutorials it seemed the rockets were way too fast and hence I didn't think I'd need to play ahead. Boy was I wrong! in the actual games the rockets at like 10 times slower so in reality that's a LOT slower than I thought. Oh well, means I can't plug supply shortages in 30 seconds with a rocket I guess.
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May 19, 2019 23:01
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In summary, the fun is carefully guiding the (preferably) fast and (necessarily) efficient growth of a colony full of Individuals who have skills, personalities and desires to be living not-lovely-lives on mars to build an economic base where you can surmount your Mystery, after or possibly during which you'll hit a self-sustaining carrying capacity of growth and education (and reformation in the case of Sanitarium dome complexes) and then you can just be like "oh, we're getting a little tight on polymers" *plonk down 3 more fuel refineries, 9 more vaporators, and 4 more polymers factories with pipes, cables and switches where appropriate* *watch the 100 drones in the hub leap into action like army ants carrying resources to the building sites, taking turns in the charging stations, and seeing shuttles swarm all over the map carrying replacement resources and personnel from the education domes to their new home* Its like a combination Sims and Factorio.
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May 19, 2019 23:13
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Anyone else having issues with the camera? I was playing the new expansion for a couple hour when suddenly the camera just starting moving forward on its own. Its only an issue while playing Surviving Mars, and it persists even when I close and reopen the game, or start a new save file.
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May 19, 2019 23:18
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I have 2 open farms, each with 900 food grown on them available for harvest, but my drones no longer harvest from them. Anyone encounter this?
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May 19, 2019 23:32
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Is your storage of food within the drone's work area full?
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May 19, 2019 23:35
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Nope, have a ton of open food storage.
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May 19, 2019 23:38
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Khisanth Magus posted:I have 2 open farms, each with 900 food grown on them available for harvest, but my drones no longer harvest from them. Anyone encounter this? The tooltip says harvesting is low priority and done only by idle drones, so maybe you don't have enough drone capacity even though it seems like you should? It seemed slow in my game too, though, so it's possible there's some other factor I'm missing. Also, help, I didn't bother with the radio channels until picking this back up to play the expansion and now Marry Me (You don't like the sea) is stuck in my head.
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May 19, 2019 23:46
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Log082 posted:The tooltip says harvesting is low priority and done only by idle drones, so maybe you don't have enough drone capacity even though it seems like you should? It seemed slow in my game too, though, so it's possible there's some other factor I'm missing. I built a dedicated drone hub and restricted it's area to the farm and food storage. The drones are literally just idling on the plants they should be harvesting.
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May 20, 2019 00:00
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I want to try a super hard game mode, set all the disasters to max using game rules and embark somewhere with concrete, water and metal at level 3 only. For sponsor I'm thinking Japan, because getting distant metal deposits will be very important and a cheap extra rover will be a tremendous help for that. I'll also be able to buy an extra command rover so I can move around more easily and build in distant areas if need be. The flying drones are also good to have but the sector scan research bonus you get is a huge multiplier to stay alive early on and get heaters online. For commander I'm thinking either Astrogeologist for the guaranteed metal deposit and depe scanning combo's well with Japan's research bonus. Or grab City Mayor for reduced maintenance and construction costs, plus an extra bit of money for emergencies early on.
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May 20, 2019 00:36
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The leader you want with Japan is Doctor to make up for your tiny applicant pool.
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May 20, 2019 01:08
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Demiurge4 posted:For commander I'm thinking either Astrogeologist for the guaranteed metal deposit and depe scanning combo's well with Japan's research bonus. Or grab City Mayor for reduced maintenance and construction costs, plus an extra bit of money for emergencies early on. Inventor's also nice because it cuts out the only source of early-game electronics maintenance, letting you mostly ignore them for a long time. Also you can plop down drone hubs anywhere for logistics chains without worrying about power connections. Probably my favorite commander. City mayor is also very nice.
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May 20, 2019 01:09
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Willie Tomg posted:Terraforming is some endgame stuff, friend and 20% in any of it early is a TON. That seems to be the case, but then so many of the early terraforming items are so incredibly slow that it feels like I should be starting them ASAP to avoid waiting 50 Sols. Or is it that I’m supposed to solve my economy with moholes and endless resources first, and then throw down 20 GHG factories? If the latter, then the Terraforming faction feels like a giant trap. quote:Short version is you're growing too quickly and also wasting time on terraforming before your colony is online. There's nothing stopping you from doing it, but that's because this game isn't really about restricting your progress beyond what's gated by the tech tree. Throwing down buildings you cannot staff is a waste of power and maintenance cost... My only service buildings were some grocers because my medium domes had too many people to feed with just a diner. But yeah I probably should have put more lovely small domes together to hold people and crap out machine parts and electronics before thinking I was ready to build a big central dome and move all the residences there. Also, I thought converting from solar to wind would make things better when I kept getting hit with dust storms, but with no usable high elevation, maybe wind turbines are a trap. I also probably over-focus on tech costs; I rush getting a good Hawking Institute in a dome with a research bonus because otherwise I’m waiting hours for a mid-tier tech to finish but it seems like that’s just what you have to do until the factories are churning. Appreciate the advice. Still feeling like there’s half an hour of actual fun in each eight hour crash-and-burn.
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May 20, 2019 02:53
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Yeah, out of all the commander profiles I think Inventor is my favorite. No loss of drone service from power outages OR electronics shortages, plop hubs anywhere without worrying about mutual overlap for maintenance. The drone speed optimization sounds good, but the only numbers I can find come from a steam board discussion from March of 2018 where a poster claims that the maximum bonus is "about 150% work speed, not movement." Anyone have any harder numbers for this? Doctor is pretty huge for an easy pass on the Founder stage AND for enhanced bone-downs throughout the life of the colony, both of which are pretty big deals. I've done starts with Hydro Engineer, Oligarch, and Rocket Scientist as well and wind up missing the bonuses from either of the above basically the whole time.
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May 20, 2019 02:56
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Piell posted:Concrete is much more important than metals, since a transport can gather surface metals from anywhere but you need an extractor to get the concrete Unless you're playing as Blue Sun, their transport doubles as a concrete extractor on the go. But still better to build an extractor. EDIT: Inventor is also one of my favorites for having place-anywhere drone hubs that never cut out. Most people reccomend playing as a Doctor when you start with Japan but I like Inventor for them too, just a horde of wasp drones. Speedball fucked around with this message at 03:07 on May 20, 2019 |
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May 20, 2019 03:02
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skeleton warrior posted:That seems to be the case, but then so many of the early terraforming items are so incredibly slow that it feels like I should be starting them ASAP to avoid waiting 50 Sols. Or is it that I’m supposed to solve my economy with moholes and endless resources first, and then throw down 20 GHG factories? I haven't tried it out, but on paper it looks like it's mostly a gimmick for people whose hearts don't beat for less than 700% map difficulty. As far as terraforming in general, you are seriously not appreciating how hard your economy scales once your population hits quadruple digits. That massive resource cost is mostly as a project to throw your economy at after the mystery is done. Deep storages hold 4,000 of each resource and you'll be filling a couple of each of them if you play your cards right. Its insane. It could be worse, by the time I got my head around this game I had a really bumpin' colony with about 200 people and then my Mystery was.... The Metatron. On a map with cold waves i.e. if the power goes out and batteries get zilched to nothing then everyone just dies. RIP. I stopped taking random mysteries after that one, lol.
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May 20, 2019 03:04
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Is the mystery where you find a buried sphere bugged? I had it pop like 200 sols ago, now I've built every wonder and I'm almost done terraforming and nothing else has come of it
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May 20, 2019 04:03
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Wafflecopper posted:Is the mystery where you find a buried sphere bugged? I had it pop like 200 sols ago, now I've built every wonder and I'm almost done terraforming and nothing else has come of it You have to start the mystery's chain of events by powering up the sphere. Then things snowball from there.
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May 20, 2019 04:23
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skeleton warrior posted:That seems to be the case, but then so many of the early terraforming items are so incredibly slow that it feels like I should be starting them ASAP to avoid waiting 50 Sols. Or is it that I’m supposed to solve my economy with moholes and endless resources first, and then throw down 20 GHG factories? And someone mentioned the auto anomaly mod for explorers. If you guys don’t know, you can now (without mods) select an explorer, then shift-right click to queue up a bunch of anomalies.
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May 20, 2019 04:57
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The lakes are extremely slow to build the water level but the special mission where you send off a rocket boosts it by 5%, and that results in all your vaporators doing +5% output...your resources start to snowball quite nicely as you terraform.
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May 20, 2019 05:09
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Inventor is best leader profile for the reasons mentioned above and because there is at least one "Your rocket just explodes for no reason" random event that can be countered by the inventor trait. I rage quit when I lose a rocket to stuff like renegades or randomness.
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May 20, 2019 05:39
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Is there an easier way to move resources between my sites rather than long haul trucking it with my RC Transports? Im liking the game so far but micromanaging individual resource piles for each drone hub is kinda tedious. Especially when the transporters dont seem to let me move over exact amounts.
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May 20, 2019 05:47
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My current game is really far behind where I usually am (about sol 240, I have about 340 people, mystery's done) and (apart from the truly horrific luck I had earlier) I think a big part of it is that the Terraforming sponsor / leader picks are traps. Terraforming isn't really something that should be started until midgame or maybe even not until after you've done the mystery, and if you're not terraforming, basically it means you have no starting bonuses at all. So you're playing on hard mode for like 100 days, and even then, the bonuses aren't actually all that good. Also, I think probably there should be some more breadcrumb type rewards for making terraforming progress. I'm this far along  And the only really noteworthy boost I've had is eliminating cold snaps. Except I'm near the equator so I already don't have any.
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May 20, 2019 05:51
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AnEdgelord posted:Is there an easier way to move resources between my sites rather than long haul trucking it with my RC Transports? Im liking the game so far but micromanaging individual resource piles for each drone hub is kinda tedious. Especially when the transporters dont seem to let me move over exact amounts. Eventually you will get shuttle hubs that provide shuttles between resource dumps as needed automatically. To a degree chained drone hubs and depots can do some moving of resources around.
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May 20, 2019 06:19
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Moving along with this playthrough's mystery and this lil guy decided he'd had enough and is slowly trundling along in a rage across 3/4 of the map to gently caress. MY. poo poo. UP. 
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May 20, 2019 08:43
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Speedball posted:You have to start the mystery's chain of events by powering up the sphere. Then things snowball from there. Is that supposed to be an expedition? Because I’ve done all of them, haven’t had anything else sphere-related
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May 20, 2019 10:34
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No, click the sphere. There are three interactions you can pick from.
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May 20, 2019 10:39
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I also bought this game because it was on sale and the terraforming stuff seems cool, I've always wanted a terraforming game. So far I'm a bit disappointed at the way the society you run on Mars actually works, everything outside of the domes is fine and fun to build but the stuff inside the domes is dumb, like a caricature of 1950s American society or something. It reminds me of that depressing part at the end of Interstellar where mankind has gone into space only to build a suburb. Nobody brave enough to settle on another world permanently would give a gently caress about casinos. Why not have the entertainment come from things like manned excursions to natural sites, and have those be a source of potential danger and management?
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May 20, 2019 10:48
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Yeah the games aesthetic bothers me too. I’m sure it’s because they want the game to seem less hardcore survival sim and be more accessible. I don’t hate the idea of the domes but I think they should come much later as your society matures. The most serious aspect of the game is the power and life support grid, everything else is sort of just there.
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May 20, 2019 11:22
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Boksi posted:Inventor's also nice because it cuts out the only source of early-game electronics maintenance, letting you mostly ignore them for a long time. Also you can plop down drone hubs anywhere for logistics chains without worrying about power connections. Probably my favorite commander. City mayor is also very nice. You forget the best part of Inventor: it makes your drone hubs basically indestructible. I'm like 95% confident that they won't care about even direct meteor strike because nothing else that lacks a maintenance bar does. Ships and the tunnels you use to expand your network just laugh them off.
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May 20, 2019 12:09
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Alkydere posted:You forget the best part of Inventor: it makes your drone hubs basically indestructible. I'm like 95% confident that they won't care about even direct meteor strike because nothing else that lacks a maintenance bar does. Ships and the tunnels you use to expand your network just laugh them off. Unsure about this, I had a meteor strike take out a tunnel and doom my entire colony to dehydration. Didn't see the hit itself so I don't know if it's direct. Tunnels still seem to be king for things like remote water mining, lest you have to maintain drone hubs and metal for repairs all the way across the map (and you can't build on the uneven land of terraformed ramps, and I can't find a way to make a small flat platform for a hub)
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May 20, 2019 12:16
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Yeah, direct meteor strikes will absolutely destroy tunnels. Sometimes immediately after you repair them from a previous meteor strike, as I found out in a colony that thus taught me not to rely on tunnels for life support.
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May 20, 2019 12:20
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This is why large water tanks are a must.
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May 20, 2019 12:24
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Man these drones running around pissed off with their little arms up in the air is funny but I'm getting real tired of repairing destroyed vaporators. It's also real fun that when they get a wild hair and decide to wreck a farm or ranch instead I gotta remember to reset the crop/livestock settings every time. No to mention losing soil quality.  E: One of the little pricks just ruined a full large water tank! 
Honky Dong Country fucked around with this message at 12:52 on May 20, 2019 |
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May 20, 2019 12:44
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Obliterati posted:Unsure about this, I had a meteor strike take out a tunnel and doom my entire colony to dehydration. Didn't see the hit itself so I don't know if it's direct. Tunnels still seem to be king for things like remote water mining, lest you have to maintain drone hubs and metal for repairs all the way across the map (and you can't build on the uneven land of terraformed ramps, and I can't find a way to make a small flat platform for a hub) Ah they might have updated that at some point, I'm pretty sure I've seen a tunnel shrug off a meteor strike, but that might have been a glance or just way back when. Demiurge4 posted:This is why large water tanks are a must. Oh gently caress yes. Take the amount of water storage you think you need. Double it. Then double it again...somewhere else just in case if you don't have a meteor defense system or have a particularly nasty Mystery.
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May 20, 2019 12:50
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Demiurge4 posted:Yeah the games aesthetic bothers me too. I’m sure it’s because they want the game to seem less hardcore survival sim and be more accessible. I don’t hate the idea of the domes but I think they should come much later as your society matures. The most serious aspect of the game is the power and life support grid, everything else is sort of just there. Yeah it would have been cool if your first colony is just a digout with 4 people. 12 people at the beginning is too many, not realistic and it's hard to get to know them individually all at once.
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May 20, 2019 12:54
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Surviving Mars isn't a game worried about realism. Lots of stuff in it takes cues from real science but it also just makes up as lot of stuff because it is more fun and more accessible.
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May 20, 2019 13:05
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HiKaizer posted:Surviving Mars isn't a game worried about realism. Lots of stuff in it takes cues from real science but it also just makes up as lot of stuff because it is more fun and more accessible. This is why we have cool stuff like water-stealing fireflies, hell yeah. EDIT: OOOH, one neat thing about the ranches in Project Laika....no specialization required. In fact unspecialized fools seem to be the preference. Botanists can now focus on growing seeds if necessary. Speedball fucked around with this message at 13:18 on May 20, 2019 |
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May 20, 2019 13:09
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Shibawanko posted:I also bought this game because it was on sale and the terraforming stuff seems cool, I've always wanted a terraforming game. The casinos are for tourists, but again I agree that shopping being an assumed thing is more than a bit odd. There's an electronics store but no public arcade?
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May 20, 2019 13:19
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| # ? May 29, 2024 03:02 |
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surviving mars was developed by haemimont, who previously made tropico 3/4, so they're coming at it from that philosophy of agent-based needs satisfaction and a somewhat light tone (and music!)
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May 20, 2019 13:33
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