Per Aspera - MARS , LOGISTICS , TERRAFORMING

Games
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Big patch today. First significant update to the game since launch. Pasting notes below.

It’s been a little over two months since Per Aspera launched. Since that time, we’ve been working hard to evaluate everyone’s feedback. In the beginning of the new year, we took time to evaluate our post-launch plans and examine what you, our players, most requested. This patch is our biggest yet: it’s our first content update and is a substantial patch chock full of new features, bug fixes, QOL improvements, and more. We hope that you enjoy it.

Without further ado, read below for the list of changes!

Version: V1.1.0.0.5. 10873 .2021.2.11
Unless otherwise noted, these changes are save game compatible!

  • New Water Treatment Plant. Once there’s water on Mars, you can collect it from the seas

  • Pressing TAB will show building Icons and Positional Information

  • Patch changelogs info now in Main Menu

  • Users can continue playing after credits. (A save game will be generated after credits and users can launch it from the LOAD menu.)

  • Users can set projects to auto-renew

  • Added Custom Cursor

  • New Immersive HUD (Can be switched on via the Options Menu)

  • Added analytics solution for balance tracking

  • Added Pop-up for Metrics Disclaimer.

  • Added SFX for Swarms.

  • Added more tooltips.

  • Updated all Lenses to display information in a friendlier manner.

  • Buildings under construction will not carry over their high priority once they are built.

  • When you move swarms in combat lens, the swarms are not deselected.

  • When you press right click to deselect swarms, the combat lens no longer closes at the same time.

  • Terraforming Plan (Knowledge Base) now is available in Sandbox Mode

  • Increased worker drone collision area. They are easier to select and the camera will follow them.

  • Updated Popups to include more information and graphics

  • Updated several special sites’ 3d models

  • Improved Hyperloop UX and presentation

  • Now when placing hives, the combat lens turns on for better feedback of hive ranges

  • Rebalanced some building’s costs and required materials for construction for mines (This is save game compatible!)

  • Improved balance and functionality of the Storage Building (This is save game compatible!)

  • Added Mines extraction bonuses from for Lohitanga Sites.

  • Added descriptions for missing buildings in the Knowledge Base

  • Added a large amount of tooltips for all HUD elements

  • Building upgrades can now be canceled

  • Added control help in the Combat Lens

  • Improved Tech Tree Presentation

  • Hyperloops can be constructed from both sides now.

  • Airships are 5x faster

  • New Tech Tree balance

  • Updated positions for Special Sites

  • Updated Roads and decorations for them

  • Updated Sandbox music playlist

  • The structure panel will clear its selection when it opens or changes category

  • The tech popups for tech lanes show its description in the title

  • Fixed several issues with Resource Allocation to work as intended.

  • Fixed issue with Maintenance Drones priorities.

  • Fixed issue that would not stop Fire SFX once fire is extinguished

  • Fixed issue where if you cancel or close the lens when splitting, the split panel remained opened

  • Fixed issue where if one swarm was following other, if you moved (or split) the leading one, the other stopped following and returned to base

  • Fixed issues which prevented Deimos from crashing when loading a save-game

  • Fixed several issues with Narrative branching and story sequence.

  • Fixed issue with Hyperloops that would end up with a corrupted connection if placement was canceled in a specific moment

  • Fixed Research Tool tip to shows correct Research Points.

  • Fixed some issues that would result in crashes for a small amount of players

  • Improved Performance in some cases and reduced spikes when switching lenses

  • When Upgrading Roads, it will always chose the correct route between two buildings

  • Fixed issue that caused some drones to become stuck when upgrading roads

  • Removed batteries from initial available buildings in Sandbox mode

  • Fixed Traffic lens so Voronoi Areas no longer break

  • Fixed issue that would incorrectly show the cost of upgrading ways in some cases

  • Fixed issue with the camera clipping some objects during placement

  • Fixed the Building Info Panel not updating when changing pending scrap

  • Fixed power cluster canvas only turning off the text when behind the planet

  • Fixed issues with missing sounds

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That’s a great list of stuff, gotta get my ass back into this and finish the campaign.

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So I picked this up yesterday, the patch notes were a nice incentive so thanks for doing that @Woolen_Horde

It is a fairly unique take on colonizing Mars, but I’m not entirely sold its that compelling of a game.
I really dislike the lack of information/tutorial. The knowledge base is much to fluffy, and I really want to know how many mines I need per factory etc. I realize that I can crunch a lot of numbers and figure it out, but some general guidelines would nice. I really screwed up my game by building two new colonies only to find I didn’t have nearly enough water to keep them happy., so lots of my folks were going back to earth.

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Thanks for posting that.

Overall I’m enjoying this so will be interesting to see if any of the little annoyances are fixed by this update.

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I totally forgot I bought this.

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What do the “M’s” stand for?

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If it’s months, why are they shown in quadrants like that?

A few more questions as I just started. How do you know how many drone hubs and supply depots to use, and how do you decide where to place them?

Thanks!

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It’s been a while since I’ve played, but I think “M” stands for months and the quadrants mean one ship with colonists will arrive at 5 months, another ship at 7 months (that makes one year) and so on.

And maybe I’m totally wrong so if this doesn’t make sense to you, feel free to ignore me… ;)

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I believe it’s five months to load/unload/prep the ship, seven months to fly to Earth/Mars. So a round trip is 5 months to prep on Mars, 7 month travel time to Earth, 5 months to prep on Earth, 7 months travel time back to Mars.

It’s stupid, but I think it went back to the fact that you could only cancel the colonization mission when the ship was back on Mars, in that five month window. Of course, no one kept track of that because they were too busy with a billion other things and the colonization mission ran in the background, so one of the recent patches added the toggle that automatically restarted the mission. You deselect it if you want the mission to end, and the next time the ship arrives back on Mars it will stop.

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Ahhh OK, that does make sense. Thanks!

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As to drone hubs, look at your traffic overlay. If you’ve got areas that are red, it means there’s a lot going on there. And then look at your factories. If they’re not running near 100%, it means they’re being starved for resources. That will happen if you put all your factories next to one another. Even with hyperloops and a bunch of drone hubs, you’re going to be hard-pressed to keep resources flowing so factories aren’t sitting idle.

Drone hubs can sort of help with the traffic, but eventually you’re going to run into the problem that you simply can’t ship resources from the periphery fast enough to your central core.

The solution is to start moving production around so it’s not bottlenecking in the same place. Build hyperloops linking your resource areas to your production areas (and, frankly, across your lines of communication). But even with a hyperloop you can get traffic jams. What I usually do is build parallel hyperloop lines. Say I’ve got my base running east/west across the planet. I’ll put one hyperloop line north of that main east/west highway, and a second one south of it.

That’s because hyperloops can only move one item through them at one time, and while they’re fast, they can still backlog easily. Especially if you’re trying to ship things in both directions (resources back to your base, while components are headed to the periphery to expand the base).

Also, some people say don’t upgrade roads at all. But I do. Roads help your drones move faster, which means they can do more per unit of time. Make sure to upgrade roads that link your hyperlinks to your factories.

Finally, supply depots are a bit tricky because they just got rebalanced. But the idea is that you can use them to store resources/finished goods rather than have them stockpiled at your base.

Ever notice that you can build a bunch of mines but the drones never get the resources? It’s partially because there’s no demand in range for them. If a mine builds up a stockpile of 6 units, it stops mining. A worker has to remove a unit in order for the mine to “mine” another unit. Building a supply depot can create demand. The drones will shuttle those resources to the depot where they’ll sit, but the mine can continually operate.

I build supply depots near my hyperloop stations. That way goods stockpile near the hyperloops, and if they’re needed somewhere, they can quickly get into the system.

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Ahhh that makes a lot of sense.

Is there any indicator that shows me which mines have been fully excavated? It is a pain in the butt trying to hover over every single mine to find ones that may be empty.

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Hunting for exhausted mines is annoying. They need to fix that. The best way to do it is to zoom out a bit on the Mars map and hunt around a bit. Exhausted deposits are black.

Center of the image is an exhausted aluminum mine.

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Excellent. Thanks!

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Frustrating. It says I have 260 circuits, and yet there are zero circuits available for my maintenance facilities. So now most of my buildings are being run down to nothing. Any idea what’s going on with this? Is the 260 not actually how many circuits I have?

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Prioritize your maintenance facilities. Do you have polymers?

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@jpinard got me playing this again. :)

Look what I found!

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Well that was dumb of me. I had a tiny satellite base and they had somehow managed to accrue all those electronics. Is there a way to have the game show independent base stats at the bottom (or anywhere), instead of it showing the sum of everything? It is impossible to know what the real amount is per base otherwise.

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I don’t bother with satellite bases for that reason. Eventually you’ll need to connect everything and until you do, it’s a pain in the ass. I grow my base outward. If I need to reach an area, I’ll build a highway toward it, piece by piece.

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Plenty of excellent advice from @Woolen_Horde; I’ll just add don’t be afraid to prioritise buildings and you can never have too many workers!

It’s sometimes not enough to just monitor the stockpiles; I was making sure I had plenty of food & water for the colonists. But I got distracted with building etc and suddenly noticed my colonists had almost all gone. Turns out none of my water supplies were at 3 of the 4 domes; they were sitting in other places. So the colonists buggered off back to Earth. Prioritising domes has fixed that; for the moment anyway.