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Sandwich Anarchist posted:All right out the gate poo poo. The terraforming you won't really have the infrastructure built up to really go for it until mid game, but the content is all there right from the get go wrt other colonies and mild diplomacy, plus animal ranches and new sponsors Alright, cool, I pulled the trigger. Speaking of which, I checked isthereanydeal and nabbed Surviving Mars First Colony Edition for $22.10 on Green Man Gaming which seems pretty gosh darn reasonable.
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Nov 11, 2019 17:39
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Terraforming makes the game so much cooler. It's a long-term investment (just like real terraforming haha) but it also all pays off. Wind farms work better, most of the natural disasters get disabled (though you introduce a new disaster, marsquakes, but whatever, they are nothing compared to a cold wave) and the green spreading around just looks cool.
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Nov 13, 2019 21:07
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Locke Dunnegan posted:I'm basically playing on the easiest non-cheat settings just to get an idea of the production chains and such, but before Sol 10 I feel like I'm needing to constantly call in resupply for advanced parts since I don't have anything like the production or manpower necessary for setting up that type of production just for maintenance and building out. sol 10 is... super aggressive for self sufficiency. like you're doing ok if you're just about landing your founders in a basic dome by sol 10. i think you're just building too fast and too hard, the pace of this game is chiller than that. don't worry, you'll hit an exponential growth curve fairly soon, but i'd say you should be at least covering your own maintenance cost in polymer and machine parts as well as gaining income by some means by sol 20 or so Locke Dunnegan posted:Alright, cool, I pulled the trigger. Speaking of which, I checked isthereanydeal and nabbed Surviving Mars First Colony Edition for $22.10 on Green Man Gaming which seems pretty gosh darn reasonable. yeah, that's a good price. completing a terraform will take quite a while, so you'll definitely get $22 worth of content out of the game if you even do it once or twice
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Nov 15, 2019 17:23
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Yeah, I need to watch some playthroughs or something, I keep running out of funds resupplying parts shortly after the Founders phase ends at like 25-35, because I have to sit on my hands with only 12-22 Founders and too many jobs I want them to do. Research, rare metals, and now I need to think about polymers at least if not machine parts manufacturing as well, gently caress. That said, I think my problem is I keep trying to make Apartments work instead of Living Quarters, but the power cost and not getting babies soon really sucks. I am fine just restarting over and over trying different things, though, so I'll just make more domes and use living quarters instead. Maybe I'll try Microdomes and Living Quarters everywhere instead next time. I'm also trying to get MegaMalls to work but even when there are very few colonists and the Mall is open and being worked, I keep getting tons of "x building is closed" comfort dings. Edit: also I think I had a bug where I got an event that gave me 10 probes as the USA, and it permanently converted all of my Advanced Probes into basic ones. Kinda killed that run, heh.
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Nov 15, 2019 18:30
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it sounds like you're running into two problems here -advanced buildings. you have no reason to build apartments at first. apartments are kind of bad for an early colony, you really want the comfort boost from living quarters and apartments are expensive to build and maintain. apartments are a bit of a trap in the early game because building more domes is better to bring more surface resources into range, and you don't really need to start packing colonists into domes until your main source of population growth is martianborn rather than migrants likewise, a mall is overkill for a fledgling colony. the mall is great as a one stop entertainment destination, but the downside balance is that malls eat up a huge amount of labor. labor is very scarce in the early colony, you should be ruthlessly scrutinizing how many job slots you have available and making sure there is a colonist available for like 95% of the jobs you have constructed. the early game has a lot of micro which will lessen as the colony grows. which leads us to... -overbuilding job slots. it is real easy to build a ton of buildings and then have fifty jobs that need doing when you only have 20 colonists. in the early game, you will be importing each colonist and so you need to be careful with how fast you build relative to population growth. it may be helpful to consider your food and living space available, then consider if you can afford another rocket full of migrants, and then at that point consider "ok, i'm importing 12 more people, what 12 jobs are they going to be doing?" and then bring those jobs online by the time the rocket lands when i play, i think of the "early colony" phase as getting founders, getting a kid (though it's fine to wait out the founder stage) and then becoming self sufficient. usually you can fill up three small domes with all the stuff you need to get a small colony on its feet, and it could take until sol 50 or so. you want to make sure that you are income positive, generating enough children to offset retirement and death, and producing enough raw and refined resources to cover your maintenance needs in case you can't import anything from earth. by the time you start building medium domes, educating your own specialists, and have trouble finding appropriate housing for all these kids/retirees, you'll be in the "middle, established" colony phase and that's when the growth curve kicks in and you can play sim mars and start building as fast as your drones can keep up with although, always keep in mind your ratio of working colonists to jobs. set priority for things like entertainment buildings to low, set priority for income generators and critical infrastructure to high, and check in randomly on bars and diners to see how staffed up they are. the university/sanitarium spire are also good low priority labor absorbers, if your university is fully staffed then maybe expand some, if there's nobody in attendance then maybe pull back a bit for priority levels, i generally do these buckets: -high priority is food infrastructure like farms and markets, clinics, income generators like rare mines, all life support infrastructure, domes themselves -medium priority is selected general entertainment buildings, research buildings, and essential manufacturing like machine parts, electronics, and fuel -low priority is most other entertainment buildings, education buildings (kids can't do anything else anyway), polymer manufacturing (polymers are super cheap) and things where i don't mind if they lose power or go understaffed also, remember that fuel production is completely automated, so one use for large water deposits you don't really need is to park a well on them, plug some fuel refineries onto it, and provide power in a little self contained and ignorable fuel refinery that doesn't need external inputs from your life support system
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Nov 15, 2019 19:07
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luxury handset posted:one use for large water deposits you don't really need is to park a well on them, plug some fuel refineries onto it, and provide power in a little self contained and ignorable fuel refinery that doesn't need external inputs from your life support system  gently caress
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Nov 15, 2019 21:04
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Although, you'll need some drones to unload the waste rock from the extractor and fuelfrom the fuel refinery. And maintence is like, elec for drone hub, machine parts for extractor and refiniery (also for wind turbine perhaps). So varying degrees of self sufficent. If you start with a vaporator and a fuel refinery, you can just tuck them together with a powersource near your original landing point for asap first refueling though.
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Nov 15, 2019 21:51
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Tylana posted:If you start with a vaporator and a fuel refinery, you can just tuck them together with a powersource near your original landing point for asap first refueling though. yeah definitely. while my first dome complex is getting planned out i'll set up a landing pad and a vaporator/fuel combo next to it. two or three of those is enough for early game fuel needs, and then a groundwater refinery if you just want to have trouble storing all the fuel you produce i'm a huge nerd so i like building dedicated spaceport complexes 
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Nov 15, 2019 22:06
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luxury handset posted:yeah definitely. while my first dome complex is getting planned out i'll set up a landing pad and a vaporator/fuel combo next to it. two or three of those is enough for early game fuel needs, and then a groundwater refinery if you just want to have trouble storing all the fuel you produce How do you manage resources like that? The micro on moving around bricks and beams must be a nightmare. Is it all shuttles and depots?
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Nov 15, 2019 22:11
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Sandwich Anarchist posted:How do you manage resources like that? The micro on moving around bricks and beams must be a nightmare. Is it all shuttles and depots? it's not that bad, i don't like logistics micro. each drone hub overlaps by one tile and i'll put a storage pile in that space until i get shuttles. if you don't store a bunch of stuff in the dome cluster piles (you can click the stockpile to disable it storing some specific thing) then it's really just a question of throwing more drones and shuttles into the mix if goods don't seem to be flowing around. i don't use the transport crawler for anything but setting it to auto so it drives around scooping up surface resources and just falling in a hole for all i care
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Nov 15, 2019 22:14
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Making hexes of domes seems mad to me. Admittedly I just play till I've beaten the mystery and sponsor goals. Then maybe a little just being bored or going to 1k colonists. Do you use a mod to let people passage more than one dome? EDIT : Also I was all stressing about how to get Gagarin's Legacy achievement but accidentally did it for two reasons. A) It includes water. B) It's 10k not 100k by Sol 100 EDIT EDIT : I guess I don't have to care about most domes getting dust on them, considering the maint is just concrete? I always try to avoid it but. Tylana fucked around with this message at 01:06 on Nov 16, 2019 |
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Nov 16, 2019 01:03
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Tylana posted:Making hexes of domes seems mad to me. Admittedly I just play till I've beaten the mystery and sponsor goals. Then maybe a little just being bored or going to 1k colonists. Do you use a mod to let people passage more than one dome? There is a mod I use that makes a new dome called a hub that lets you connect 6 domes together
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Nov 16, 2019 02:00
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luxury handset posted:it's not that bad, i don't like logistics micro. each drone hub overlaps by one tile and i'll put a storage pile in that space until i get shuttles. if you don't store a bunch of stuff in the dome cluster piles (you can click the stockpile to disable it storing some specific thing) then it's really just a question of throwing more drones and shuttles into the mix if goods don't seem to be flowing around. i don't use the transport crawler for anything but setting it to auto so it drives around scooping up surface resources and just falling in a hole for all i care I'm happy that that honeycomb setup seems to work for you since I thought about doing something similar (with the depots in the overlaps as well!) but I keep losing before I get to that point.
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Nov 16, 2019 06:32
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This is a lot of good info, thanks! I am having more luck chilling out and not rushing things, and am doing a little better. I just keep forgetting about something until it's too late, like water storage for vaporators before an early Great Dust Storm right as my first colonists arrive, or having maintenance mats on hand if I have funds when a dust devil appears right on my life support right as colonists arrive (notice a pattern?). I'm not even playing particularly spooky maps 
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Nov 16, 2019 06:37
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luxury handset posted:yeah definitely. while my first dome complex is getting planned out i'll set up a landing pad and a vaporator/fuel combo next to it. two or three of those is enough for early game fuel needs, and then a groundwater refinery if you just want to have trouble storing all the fuel you produce do you actually need 6 rocket pads or is it just for symmetry?
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Nov 16, 2019 06:49
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Locke Dunnegan posted:This is a lot of good info, thanks! I am having more luck chilling out and not rushing things, and am doing a little better. I just keep forgetting about something until it's too late, like water storage for vaporators before an early Great Dust Storm right as my first colonists arrive, or having maintenance mats on hand if I have funds when a dust devil appears right on my life support right as colonists arrive (notice a pattern?). I'm not even playing particularly spooky maps Have at least three sensor towers, and start filling at least one tank of air and of water before your Founders lift off. Make it two and time it such that they are almost full when the rocket lands for maximum redundancy. This game has a chill pace but if you gently caress up air, water, or power badly you’re going to start having to pick which domes get supplied and which were secretly mass graves all along. Always build 50% more cushion than you think you need, always build for redundancy and the play will be as chill as the pace.
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Nov 16, 2019 07:23
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Locke Dunnegan posted:This is a lot of good info, thanks! I am having more luck chilling out and not rushing things, and am doing a little better. I just keep forgetting about something until it's too late, like water storage for vaporators before an early Great Dust Storm right as my first colonists arrive, or having maintenance mats on hand if I have funds when a dust devil appears right on my life support right as colonists arrive (notice a pattern?). I'm not even playing particularly spooky maps Tylana posted:EDIT EDIT : I guess I don't have to care about most domes getting dust on them, considering the maint is just concrete? I always try to avoid it but.
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Nov 16, 2019 09:39
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Similarly, you can tuck a O2 and H2O tank and a power accumulator around the supply nub of a dome to keep it going if your pipes and cables get meteored. Theoretically you could even put in switches and stuff to lock off leaks but... eeeh. If running with Space Race, you can make a Trade Pad, and select it to offer X for Y. Rivals only ever seem to have enough metal/concrete/food/polymers, but maybe I don't play long enough. If have an early metals deposit, or some good concrete sources, you can usually trade one or the other for a few hundred food to ease up your start. This does involve your rivals having people on mars, but once you beat a milestone, I think the rivals get a boost to catch up?
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Nov 16, 2019 13:03
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Tylana posted:Similarly, you can tuck a O2 and H2O tank and a power accumulator around the supply nub of a dome to keep it going if your pipes and cables get meteored. Theoretically you could even put in switches and stuff to lock off leaks but... eeeh. The best thing to do with rivals is not be rivals, because you can hit them up for rare resources for free at the cost of reputation, which you also get for free.
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Nov 16, 2019 13:43
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I'm a little confused, because I don't seem to have any of the issues with sustainability and start up that other people do. I'm not playing easy sponsors or super easy locations either. Like, 1 hydro farm is plenty for the founders, I build 2 each of co2 and h2o tanks, etc
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Nov 16, 2019 14:39
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Sandwich Anarchist posted:I'm a little confused, because I don't seem to have any of the issues with sustainability and start up that other people do. I'm not playing easy sponsors or super easy locations either. Like, 1 hydro farm is plenty for the founders, I build 2 each of co2 and h2o tanks, etc You can get by with very little but if you're playing on a hell mars with one or more of the maxed out disasters then having endless redundancy and backups is a very good idea. Everything is fine until it's not, and it can get extremely not fine in a hurry with some disaster combos
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Nov 16, 2019 17:12
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Tylana posted:If running with Space Race, you can make a Trade Pad, and select it to offer X for Y. Rivals only ever seem to have enough metal/concrete/food/polymers, but maybe I don't play long enough. If have an early metals deposit, or some good concrete sources, you can usually trade one or the other for a few hundred food to ease up your start. This does involve your rivals having people on mars, but once you beat a milestone, I think the rivals get a boost to catch up? Trade pads are especially great for Russia since the unique building lets you generate infinite concrete. And if the other colonies offer trades of concrete for cash, that could easily be your whole economy for the whole mid game.
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Nov 16, 2019 17:35
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Two each of life support tanks plus two accumulators per Basic-sized dome will get you through practically any disaster unless you’re running some serious hellMars poo poo. Attach all that poo poo directly to the dome and either throw a valve and a switch on all of the outgoing lines or spend a moderate amount of metal to bulk up network storage such that leaks are less problematic. Also, it is gamey but in areas with lots of drone service, demolishing and rebuilding pipes or cables with leaks costs more resources than repairing, but is faster and loses fewer resources.
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Nov 16, 2019 19:16
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I just pinned my water/power/air storage to my screen in what may be the most big-brained idea I've had so far given how that's what I keep loving up. I do wish the UI showed gain/loss of resources right alongside the total amount on the top of the screen, though, since in a lot of ways increase and decrease is more useful than total amount for some resources. I know I can see graphs and poo poo by using the Command Center but that thing is super poorly designed, there are lots of things I should be able to click on or at least hover over for more info in the Command Screen but nope, some of the cute UI bubbles light up when you click on them and... nothing. EDIT: Are there some solid mods either through the Paradox manager or Steam that people seem to enjoy or think are essential? I picked up a bunch of the Silvatech stuff but have only build the Medium storage tanks, the Adv Fuel Refinery, and the Fueled Reactor. The Fueled Reactor in particular is cool with enough fuel production, because it can make a HUGE heated area around it along with make 75 power, but that eats up a ton of fuel. Locke Dunnegan fucked around with this message at 16:58 on Nov 17, 2019 |
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Nov 17, 2019 16:40
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Locke Dunnegan posted:I just pinned my water/power/air storage to my screen in what may be the most big-brained idea I've had so far given how that's what I keep loving up. I do wish the UI showed gain/loss of resources right alongside the total amount on the top of the screen, though, since in a lot of ways increase and decrease is more useful than total amount for some resources. I know I can see graphs and poo poo by using the Command Center but that thing is super poorly designed, there are lots of things I should be able to click on or at least hover over for more info in the Command Screen but nope, some of the cute UI bubbles light up when you click on them and... nothing. Hovering your mouse over any resource on the top bar shows your production, usage, and maintenance costs for every resource.
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Nov 17, 2019 17:49
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My non-Silva mods seem to be :- Construction Show Dust Grid Automated Tourism Construction Show Max Range AutoscanMap
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Nov 17, 2019 19:29
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Sandwich Anarchist posted:Hovering your mouse over any resource on the top bar shows your production, usage, and maintenance costs for every resource. While I do know that, I am remembering to look more often. I meant having maybe a little (+/- X/sol) next to each resource, or have an option to enable it or something. I have plenty of screen space, dropping the top bar down an extra line to add a rate to each resource change would be nice. Meteors just fell on my entire loving colony on Sol 90. I had been lagging on having a stored supply of advanced materials because I was making slightly more than I needed aside from constructions, so I couldn't fix the fractures for like 5 sols and most of the people died. Except I have Phoenix up so a ton of my colonists just got reincarnated for free. Also I'm making Biorobots anyway so I don't care about my applicant pool. I only ended up losing about 1/3 of my colony and everyone's pissed of course, but whatever, as long as I can buy and make electronics I'll just make more happy people. Biorobots get reincarnated via Pheonix too in case of death, right? I know they don't die of old age, apparently. EDIT: Holy loving poo poo. I found the remains of a nuclear research facility, but found nothing inside. Like one sol later someone loving terrorist bombed my Nursery and School in retaliation for spying. 
Locke Dunnegan fucked around with this message at 01:04 on Nov 18, 2019 |
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Nov 18, 2019 00:49
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Wafflecopper posted:do you actually need 6 rocket pads or is it just for symmetry? by the time i took that screenshot i was using six rocket pads (i had iirc four rockets of my own going back and forth, and two regular trade deals to get rid of excess food/polymer) but when i set it up it was just for aesthetic's sake Tylana posted:Making hexes of domes seems mad to me. Admittedly I just play till I've beaten the mystery and sponsor goals. Then maybe a little just being bored or going to 1k colonists. Do you use a mod to let people passage more than one dome? nah, i play without mods. when i'm setting up dome complexes i prefer trios because then all the domes are reachable for all colonists, the little six small dome complex was an experiment that kind of worked - i just alternated whether each dome was tasked with industrial or recreational buildings aside from the general food/research/housing Mr. Fall Down Terror fucked around with this message at 18:23 on Nov 18, 2019 |
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Nov 18, 2019 18:17
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I don't want to go hog wild with mods that explicitly make the game easier but I downloaded some for passages: - Sensible Passage Use removes the ding from working or using services in adjacent domes - Not sure if it's the same or another mod but I can also build passages into the non-buildable "street" areas of domes instead of eating space and also being super loving finicky to line up right. Now I can Do The Thing and have sprawling dome cities just like I want. Apparently the original game didn't even have passages? Seems super weird and not that thematic to the modular nature of a lot of space equipment design, but what do I know.
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Nov 18, 2019 23:38
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yeah lolquote:Passages i think the 'each dome is a mini city' would have worked better if they were larger. you still have to carefully ration available space until you get the domes that are large enough to contain everything you need, but a small dome is just useless by itself except as a mining outpost or containment dome
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Nov 19, 2019 07:07
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luxury handset posted:yeah lol Glad I started playing well after that. I would like to be able to put two domes with their doors touching and have them count as connected though. Splicer fucked around with this message at 12:12 on Nov 19, 2019 |
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Nov 19, 2019 12:05
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What the game really needs is a trains dlc.
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Nov 19, 2019 14:34
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Demiurge4 posted:What the game really needs is a trains dlc. gently caress yeah, dude And somehow, a Doom tie-in for the ultimate Mars experience 
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Nov 19, 2019 17:05
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How long does a visitor visit a thing for? The whole shift?
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Nov 19, 2019 18:08
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Do you mean, Tourist? https://survivingmars.paradoxwikis.com/Tourist Or do you mean, colonists using service buildings?
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Nov 19, 2019 18:18
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you can dig around in the source code for the game on github https://github.com/HaemimontGames/SurvivingMars if i'm reading the visit_duration property correctly, the default is 5 (hours?) with a few variances like the outdoor gym. not sure if that's five hours per need or if one visit to a building takes care of all needs gym and hanging garden spire are duration of 3, medical spire is duration of 4
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Nov 19, 2019 18:59
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Tylana posted:Do you mean, Tourist? https://survivingmars.paradoxwikis.com/Tourist luxury handset posted:you can dig around in the source code for the game on github e: sorry, where are you seeing the default 5? I can only see the exceptions in BuildingTemplate.lua e2: found it, searching github on mobile is a nightmare Splicer fucked around with this message at 23:33 on Nov 19, 2019 |
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Nov 19, 2019 23:11
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Okay I just downloaded like 80 ChoGGi UI/QoL mods and lordy. Everything from auto-pausing on game load/start to having extra info toggles on basically every screen, this is amazing. Also I started yet another game (still building out too fast after Founders phase  ) and got a free Trib on Sol 2 from an event. I'm just building a bunch of stupid expensive poo poo in the max range around it and building a ring of pipes/cables around it to connect the blob with everything. Here's to hoping I'm lucky with the level 3 meteor hazards...  Though if I get hosed from a meteor then the lesson is to choose the 2 MDS from the event instead when I know there will be meteors on the map. EDIT: "Meteor Swarm incoming" god dammit
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Nov 21, 2019 02:28
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That weird thing where the first colony edition is on sale for less than the season pass is happening again.
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Nov 29, 2019 13:44
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Is there a reason I'm missing why my Advanced Martian Engines upgrade stops working eventually? Also my pinned rockets eventually gain an overlay saying their rare resources and fuel amount, when it isn't that way when I start a new game. I have a whole heap of mods so maybe it's one of them causing that, but I don't remember getting anything that would specifically roll back a research upgrade after a random period of time. Unless there's a button that makes my rockets switch from requiring 30 fuel to 50 fuel for some reason and I missed it.
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Nov 30, 2019 12:07
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