Surviving Mars - Paradox Strategy

My first Martianborn Guru (spreads their traits) had the trait Chronic Condition. Oh, great I bred Typhoid Mary.

She worked in the diner.

My colony has a rather large number of alcoholics.

I wanted to see my cube mystery through to the end so I pushed on. I do like the flavor that the mystery added. I ended up with around 250 colonists. My difficulty was set to a pretty easy level, I think it was 50% because I chose the International Mars Mission, along with an easy site. I’m sure this took away much of the gravity my decisions might have made. I pretty much ignored any traits my colonists had because managing them did not seem like it would be an enjoyable task. I just let them work where they wanted to.

I won’t go so far as to say I really disliked it a lot, because I stuck with it. I liked getting my wonder built right at the buzzer too. The game play does seem more repetitive than most city builders, even with the genre tending to be repetitive. I think it’s because there ends up being these pockets of developed land. They all need power, probably a drone hub to keep things running smoothly, gotta keep things connected with power lines.

If there is some industry that requires people, then you need to built a dome, which will require more power, some water and air with the necessary pipes. Probably want to store some power, water and air locally to prepare for problems. Then you either need a food source, or at least some storage to dump some off at and some services to try and keep the colonists content.

I didn’t even really pay attention to if they were happy. I just put down a diner, and maybe a grocery store. In another dome I put a gym. I think the International Mars Mission makes it easier to keep people happy, so that may be why I didn’t need to pay attention to that stuff.

The flying drones definitely make it easier to keep things stocked up at different locations, but they frequently didn’t seem proactive. Many of my buildings would run out of inputs for a short time before a drone would drop off more.

This may be a game that gets better once they apply a few updates, but as of now this seems like the Stellaris of city builders - looks good initially but is rather thin and contains quite a bit of busywork .

Still having fun, I just opened my second dome and my first metal mine next to it. With a factory inside. Sol 109. This should finally (maybe) get us to self sufficient machine parts. Playing the euros we are researching crazy up here :)

I am still having fun too. I can understand all of the criticisms made against it, and agree with many of them. The game is very utilitarian, unlike Cities: Skyline and other city builders but like an actual Mars colony. Some of the mechanics definitely need to scale better in the late game.

The fact I eat the theme up with a big spoon clearly skews my opinion more positively. I also think it’s a game that must be played at hard difficulties, it makes the start and mid-game more interesting, and the disasters are very good at exposing the weaknesses of your base and causing a chain reaction of problems.

Anyway, I thought I would tackle the achievement tonight about using Space Y and having 200 drones before Sol 100. I notice very few people have it so thought it would be quite difficult. Anyway, I found out very early that there is a very easy way to spam the achievement, I got it at Sol 6 but probably could have done it at Sol 2 or 3.

Behold, this is what the Space X Mars colony will look like!

Urge to buy is falling…falling…at least at this price. I was so looking forward to it, too.

I am glad I wanted to buy this. The biggest complaint I see on the steam reviews is that the game is super micromanagement heavy and that the UI is pretty poor.

Ill definitely wait for a sale and hopefully they will address these issues. I do not like micro-management, so if that continues to be an issue, I may never buy it.

Yeah - I bought this, but refunded it. There was quite a lot of issues with the game. This being paradox, I fear that in a year or two, with all the DLC available, this will be a good game. But not until then. There’s just not enough there.

Damn it, why do I keep buying games from 3rd party sites where I cannot refund them.

Yup, thoroughly put off buying. Maybe if it’s a few pounds in a sale one day.

Here’s some screens from my almost complete game. I say complete because all I have left to do is get to 1000 colonists. I have all research done, and wonders built, over 100,000 million in funding, and all milestones except 1k people.

Mind - this was my very first game, started from Main Menu as “Easy Start” which I thought was going to be a tutorial. Instead it was just easy mode. I plan to try another run with a much higher difficulty.

First screen is the map overview showing 6 domes, 2 of which are mega, 1 oval, 1 “wonder” and 2 normal.


Second screen is 1 of the mega domes with a few wonders, a space elevator!, and a tunnel system.

I like the game but definitely see some shortcomings. There needs to be more information available. Some before have mentioned needing overlays. Most certainly need to be able to see each dome area and what the power/water levels there are, instead of 1 reading for the whole map.

Also, I never messed with the colonists. I let the game handle it. I’m hoping that on harder levels, it requires more input from me to move specialists around or make use of certain traits. All I did was try to manage unemployment and housing issues.

Awesome! I am curious how do tunnels work? I havent used any yet Do you built one near your dome then it asks you where the exit goes or do you have to build the exit as well? Which would be tricky for mountain tops…

Tunnels are odd, and generally only useful before you get shuttles.

You place the entrance, and then place the exit. Both have to be within range of a drone hub or drone rover. You can connect both ends to power and water lines which is cool.

What’s disappointing is that transport rovers won’t use them automatically. So if you’re passing a lot of materials from 1 site to another with automated transports, the tunnel is useless. If you’re doing so manually, say in the construction phase of a new dome area, then having the tunnels does save some travel time. You basically have to click on a transport, then on the tunnel. It will travel to the entrance and then appear at the exit, like it was teleported.

Thank you! Arg yeah thats annoying. As you can see form my shot my second dome is fairly close to my starting one but out of auto drone range, whatever that is (it seems random). Oddly though when I dropped a passenger ship near the first dome (in the shot upper left center) the passengers overspill auto went to the second dome. I have no shuttles. I dunno whats going on :) Anyway thanks for the info, that is very good to know.

I am really loving the game micro management and all. I’m playing it really slowly with lots of pauses.

I have one basic question, After you research something like 33% faster wind turbines or 50% more production from Moisture Vaporator how do you upgrade the parts. I thought they’d happen automatically and that isn’t the case.

Wait, I thought they auto-upgraded. I recall my oxygen tanks holding 50% more at some point.

I’m not sure if all upgrades are like this, but there are some where you have to select the particular instance you want to upgrade and press the button in the upper right corner of its window - also paying whatever the upgrade cost is in materials.

Rob, did you bite the bullet and get this? :D

I did …
… and wish I didn’t :-)

It’s not a total bust or anything, but definitely not worth a day one purchase.

Ah nice! I am still playing but the magic has worn off after 10 hours.

At least we have Frostpunk next month! :)