I can understand how games can get so frustrating when they don’t explain the controls thoroughly. Best practice, from what I know, is to place the contract extractor over the resource, and to connect it to power select power cable, then left click once (dont hold) on a tile adjacent to your solar panel, then as you move the mouse you should see black cable appearing, then go to a tile adjacent to the extractor and if it all looks good left click again.
It’s all trivial once you figure it out, so I recommend you don’t give up over something like this.
In other news: 36 colonists and first martian born!
Thanks. Maybe my mistake was that I was clicking-and-holding when laying cable? I was mashing right-click like crazy to cancel my cable, and it didn’t do anything.
OK, after an hour and a half of frustration, I finally managed to build (1) a large solar panel, (2) a concrete extractor, and (3) a cable connecting them. I have to admit, it was satisfying to finish this task.
Really, I’m not a complete idiot. I’ve played pretty much every city-building sim ever made! But this game’s tutorial leaves something to be desired. That said, I’m feeling better about the gameplay. It looks promising.
I think I was clicking-and-dragging the cable, which was causing unexpected behavior. Also, the game hint said if the target-building’s tiles turned yellow, I had connected it right, but this hint was misleading or worse. I had been connecting the cable to the area the extractor will extract from, not the extractor itself. (I thought this was valid because the hexes by the cable lit up yellow, as the hint said they should, but those yellow hexes are indicating the extraction radius of the building, not the place to plug in the cable. Sheesh.) The important thing seems to be that the cable end at a hex next to the building itself.
Anyway, I’ll give it another go tomorrow. Sorry for the drama. Normally it takes a lot to irritate me; I probably shouldn’t have tried this game when I was tired. I do think it’s got promise.
I figured out why my graphics were fuzzy - at first I could not see any options other than resolution, but once I looked into options from the main menu, I suddenly could. Everything was set to “low” - changing that, solved my issue!
Impressions from 5 hours playing, got a colony with like 60 colonists, two domes, producing (little bits of) every advanced resource, etc.:
I really like the tech system. I like that the order is jumbled so I next game it will be a bit different. The techs do make a big difference and aren’t just +X% to something which I really like. This is especially true for breakthrough techs, I have researched 6 so far (playing as a Futurist and funded by Europe so specialised in breakthrough research) and two of them really changed the way I set up my colony. Great stuff.
I think the game has too many colonists for individual colonist simulation. I mean, I like that they are individuals walking around and do get allocated to jobs, but the game gives you information on their personal stats, traits, specializations, quirks, I am just not sure it’s really needed. It might become more important in higher difficulty modes and in the future when you have enough domes to specialize production, but at the moment I haven’t paid any attention to colonist traits/quirks and don’t feel poorer for it. I thought the same was true for Tropico.
200% is a nice difficulty… There were a couple of points where I thought my colonists might end up dying. I hope that the game ramps up disaster severity as the game goes on. Next game if all goes well I might try upping it to 250% now that I know what I am doing.
Anomalies feel on the inconsequential side of things, similar to Stellaris, I am looking forward to the mystery coming later. I like that you can select what mystery you want to play with so that you can see them all in 9 games without repetition.
You don’t have 100% control over resource logistics as you further develop your base. This might annoy some people, but I am enjoying the logistics side of the game more than in other recent games like Rise of Industry.
I like that the game forces you to develop outposts and think about the best way to connect them to the main base. At the moment I have really two bases, connected by a really long pipe and power line, with a dome each.
Resource scarcity makes the game interesting, I feel, so if anyone feels the game is too easy try a harder different starting point or a harder sponsor.
I like how the game allows you to customise the difficulty with flavour instead of a simple: easy - medium - hard choice.
The art style is so good when zoomed it. For anyone who has a dome, build a spacebar and zoom in close, it’s so cool! I want to go to a bar like that. It’s a little anti-social though, I don’t see anyone hooking up after locking eyes there.
I also really like how you starting seeing Mars dust over everything if they haven’t been maintained in a while.
Still on the visual side, once you have built 20+ wind turbines in one place looking at them really becomes hypnotic.
For people having problems groking exactly how the interface works, I highly recommend Quill18’s tutorial series on Youtube. I was frustrated with trying to lay cable (and a couple of other things) until I watched the first 4 chapters. Now I’m having more fun with this than any city builder in a long time.
Not that I’m not getting ready to restart for the 4th or 5th time.
While I appriciate the sentiment and heads-up about how to get better at the game, I’m not about to watch 4 videos to be able to play a game. That is a failure of the game UI, messaging or perhaps simply a choice the developers made.
My problem wasn’t the interface, it was what to do next. I am supposed to find water? There was zero water around. I know what I am looking for now, looking forward to starting a new game tonight.
On a scale of fiddliness and complexity with, say, Cities Skylines on the low/easy side and Factorio or Stationeers on the high/hard side, where does this game fall?
Just a tip you can use moisture vaporators as your main water supply, I have managed to do it. It is possible down the road to hook up water deposits that are really far away with any main base through tunnels as well.
Build sensor towers, they auto-scan adjacent tiles in the order you specify in the map mode. If you don’t have any water, build sensors outwards (the closer to the tiles being scanned, the faster they scan those tiles) until you find some great areas to build on.
