Welcome to Surviving Mars

[Eishtmo]

Surviving Mars: The Political Animal

Hi, you might remember I wrote a giant thing about Surviving Mars and the relaunch of the game. After writing about it so long, I figured I should maybe, I don’t know, do a Let’s Play or something so you can see how it actually looks and plays.

This is a city builder though, and there’s not really an “end” to the game, so deciding on a goal is kind of important. For this I figured I should go for a particularly new and interesting achievement: The Political Animal.

Using the new politics system, EVERY law on the books must be passed. And there are a lot of them, and several have very specific requirements and we'll have to go into the end game to pull it off. So I’ll make it easy and use the newest sponsor and see what happens.

Oh, and I'm using imgur for the images, so if something doesn't load right let me know.

When starting a New Game, this is what comes up first. There’s a lot here and I don’t want to show you everything directly, so I’ll frequently link to the Surviving Mars Wiki so you can see what is under the options. I'll go through them briefly.

MISSION SPONSOR – These are the people paying for this trip. They provide funding, equipment and research. Some have special buildings (Law Office in this case) or special vehicles (a couple have special rockets for example). Others have special effects or free prefabs, often both.

COMMANDER PROFILE – The player is the commander, so it’s me. There’s a lot of different roles here and most give you a free tech or building prefabs. Combining certain Profiles with certain Sponsors can change how the game is straight up played.

I’ve chosen the new Sponsor, Interplanetary Codex, which gives a lot of political advances and Politician as, well, they make Laws easier to maintain.

MYSTERY – These are special events that typically don’t start until you have 100 colonists (there are exceptions, see the wiki for more). Some are quite fun, others are a pain the in ass, but none are BAD, and often have benefits in the long run. I’ve left it on Random for giggles.

FOUNDING FACTION – This is where you can choose which political party will be the founders of your colony. There’s a lot here, but they each have their likes and dislikes and if you do something they don’t like, they will get mad. The Wiki doesn’t have Interplanetary Codex listed at the time of writing, which is odd. Oh well, guess we’ll all discover this mess together.

RIVALS – These are going to be the other colonies built on Mars. If you read my review of the game, you might know rivals are half baked at best, but at least mildly useful. In this case I have taken China (will offer resources for food), Blue Sun (will offer money for resources) and Europe (will offer research for resources). The only other one that will offer anything specific is Russia who will always offer basic resources for advanced resources. The rest don’t offer anything special. If they ALL offered something different in exchange, it might be interesting, but they don’t. Moving on.

GAME RULES – Here’s where you can further modify the game to fit a desired play style. Make the game harder or easier, disable some of the DLCs or just change up how the game goes. I only will be doing 2 here:

Prefab Colony gives the a free dome, MOXIE, water tower, oxygen tank, and a pair of water vaporators. This is VERY good to have for an early game and just makes it easier in the long run and I don’t see any reason not to take it.

Tech Variety moves the techs up and down their respective trees a little (I think they can move up and down 2 or 3 slots). This just keeps things interesting honestly. The more extreme version, Chaos Theory, can be a LOT of fun when it gives you an end game wonder tech (say, the Molehole) as the first tech in the game. Of course it’s just as likely to make a basic tech, like Decommissioning Protocol, show up in an end game slot. Variety is a little nicer in the long run.

You can change the name of your colony and the logo as well, but I’m leaving them on default for this game.

Okay, let’s load up our first rocket. The rocket can only carry so much cargo and it every thing costs money.

The top third are the resources. Metals and concrete weight the most and are considered basic resources. They can usually be found on Mars itself. Food (also basic) isn’t necessary until you have people (which initially we won’t). The other three are advanced resources and are used mostly for maintenance of buildings. The initial goal of the game is to make it so you can import what you need easily.

The second third are the vehicles. Drones are the lifeblood of the colony. They do all the work but they need some kind of hub to be hooked to do anything. Probes are good for scouting areas of the map, eventually they’ll be worthless, but early on they can be very useful.

The Rovers (RCs) are where things get interesting. The Commander is a mobile drone hub, the Explorer is for studying Anomalies, the Transport can gather and move resources, and the Safari is for tourists (though I might have another use for it). There is also a Dozer we have to do research that’s good for terrain modification, but not useful here.

I will always suggest an Explorer, regardless of what you’re planning to do. In this case we have enough room for 2 rovers, so the choice of Commander or Transport is a tough one. In this case I went with Commander so I don’t have to worry about maintaining a Drone Hub for a little bit. Drone Hubs take Electronics to maintain and, well, those are expensive.

The last third are prefabs. With the Prefab Colony rule, I have most of what I need already, but I’ll leave the Drone Hub there, those are always useful.

Time to pick out a landing location. Altitude doesn’t mean much, though when this screen gets terraformed, areas like this would be underwater. If we put the colony here, it doesn’t do anything. Temperature likewise means very little.

Topography just dictates how much flat area there is to build on. Number of large rocks and such. This is where the Dozer would come in handy, but not super important otherwise.

Threats are a bigger deal. Dust Devils aren’t a serious threat, you can tell where they mostly form and avoid those areas, though domes seem to break them up.

Cold Waves are annoying. Increases power consumption during them and freeze anything not powered. There are ways to deal with it, so no biggy.

Meteors are both a serious threat, but also a boon. They bring floods of surface Metal and Polymers as well as Research Anomalies. Of course if they HIT your colony, well, that’s a nasty problem.

Dust Storms are STUPID dangerous. They damage pipes and power cables, drain power and water, and you can’t launch or land rockets and landers while they’re happening. It’s best to avoid them as much as possible.

Resources are just the odds of finding an extraction point for those. Concrete is really necessary, metals are less so and water even less. Obvious I chose a location that is opposite of that.

Oh, those rocket things are suggested landing sites. Nothing wrong with using those, but I’m mostly looking for no disasters. With a random mystery and my overall goal, dealing with Dust Storms and Cold Waves is something I want to avoid.

That’s the set up. Time to get to our asses to Mars. Until next time.

NEXT TIME: Things do not go as planned.

 

[Eishtmo]

WELCOME TO MARS!

There is some voiced lines in the game, and this is before genAI so it’s a real person. But it’s limited. So despite this long intro, the only part that’s actually voiced is “Welcome to Mars.” When I think of this game, this is what I think first.

This is the overview map. From here we get a look at the terrain of our map section. While you can see every area, knowing what’s there can only be done by scanning. The one area that is revealed is the suggested landing site. Usually that has 2 resources, usually concrete and something else, in this case water. If we want to see any more resources on the map, we’ll have to either scan it or use our probes. Let’s check around the suggested landing site with the probes.

More water, that’s nice, and another anomaly to scan. No metals. That’s not great, but not a disaster. Meteor storms can get us regular Metals. If we can get some Rare Metals nearby, we’ll be okay. Let’s land this pig.

Zooming in we are now at the actual build level of the game. The yellowish circles are Anomalies, these particuular ones will reveal more techs in the tech tree. The highlighted rock is a surface Metal deposit. The yellow patch is concrete.

I suppose I should cover some of the interface. Starting in the upper left is the political stage of the colony, then the clock, speed controls, money, research, and the resources. In the upper right is the current terraforming status. Just to it’s left is the status of our colonists, of which we have none.

Along the bottom are the various menus starting with the zoomed out map, demographs, mission goals, the build menu, the research screen, order from earth screen, politics, full Mars map, milestones, hints and the options burger. We’ll get more into them in as we go along. Let’s get our rocket down.

Rocket landed, and you can see the rovers coming out. The gray slabs just below the rocket are resource depots. The drones won’t unload the rocket unless they have somewhere to put it.

The little cluster of spheres are (or will be they’re under construction)Stirling Generators, in my personal opinion one of the best power producers in the game. Below them is the eventually location of the concrete extractor. You can also see where I am going to put that prefab dome I got from the game rules

Self-Sufficent Dome. Not exactly true, but close enough. Luckily I can turn off construction on those prefabs. Really don’t need a dome right now, nor a MOXIE or oxygen tank. And really only need the one vaporator. Why do I need one vaporator?

For this, the Fuel Refinery. I’m pretty sure most of the game is based on the book “The Case for Mars” by Rober Zubrin. The core of it was the idea of making what we need to live on Mars, like oxygen and fuel to get back. So the rocket, to leave Mars, must have fuel, so we need to make fuel.

Fuel, oxygen and water are basically the only things we cannot import to Mars, so they are the most important. And to make fuel, you need water and power, so I need at least one water vaporator. It takes a lot of fuel for the rocket, at least for now.

So I sent the Explorer out to the anomalies. Each of these will let reveal more techs on the tech tree. So let’s switch over to the research screen.

You didn’t believe me when I said they were columns in the review did you? Yeah, this is what it looks like.

The cost of the tech is associated with where it is on the column. 1000 is the cheapest, 32,000 is the most expensive. You can queue up 5 techs, which is nice, and essential if we stumble across any bonus research points as the game will use the first tech in the first available row as the dumping area if you don’t have anything queued up. The reason that first Engineering tech is 26% now is due to the bonus I got for discovering water on Mars.

The techs I have queued up are probably in order of priority and to dig deeper into the columns. Live From Mars gives the TV Station, a reliable way to generate income and add more applicants to the colonist pool. Mag Filtering makes the MOXIES better. Low-G Fungi is a good way to generate food. Low-G Drive just makes drones faster. Subsurface Heating is how you counter Cold Waves, but I’m just using it to get deeper into the Physics column. Probably remove it later.

So I am putting these images out of order a bit, so if you noticed my research jumped by 150 points, well there’s a reason for that.

Yes, Glorious Leader. Who is he? Um, well, we can guess at least. . . Sometimes the jokes in this game are a little weird. Events like these help make the early game a little nicer. While revealing techs can be nice, more research is better in the long run.

While we’re at it, let’s look at the Mission Goals page. Every Sponsor has list of goals. Many have strict time limits, this one doesn’t. The rewards vary in how valuable they are, and often don’t feel really worth it most of the time. 1,000 M for laws is pretty weak honestly. Mega Dome prefab would be nice, but to have all those ministries I probably will have enough resources to build one from scratch. 300 colonists is doable, but again, by that point I don’t need the money. 10,000 research for independence is okay, but probably not going to make much of dent by the time I get to that point. Making all the factions happy is possible early enough that the reward might be worth it, but I doubt it.

Honestly the milestones are more valuable. Some can be done by rivals, and the game will warn us if it's happening. Usually I lose out on the water one, but not in this case. For the most part the rest are easy enough to claim, and it's unlikely we'll miss many or even any of them.

The Planetary View isn’t useful now, but it will be. From here you can see where the Rivals are and communicate with them, but at this stage they don’t have much to say. Later there will special missions that require rockets to do and you can access them from here. As we terraform Mars the planet will change over time, so that's a neat feature.

In the meantime, it’s time to get this political party started. So my test game I started had me leading Brazil with the Utopia faction, so they both showed up as separate entries on this screen. BUT, Interplanetary Codes is both a Sponsor AND a Faction, so that means I have more votes here. I can pass anything I want, to hell with the others.

Of course, I could just ASK what they want. None of these are necessary or interesting right now.

Here’s the actual laws. Initially the Earth Council can only do so much. The important law here is the Founder Stage one, which I have to pass. I’ll go over why this is going to be hard later. For now, let’s look at the Sensor Tower usage.

Many laws can have several different settings, and this one changes a bonus you get form having a Sensor Tower. These normally just increase the scanning speed of sectors around them. This law will DOUBLE that speed. Oddly, the other factions really like the Navigation option, which speeds up the rockets. I’m not interested because it'll take a while to launch my first rocket, so I’ll just force through the Extra Scanning option.

Well, force is relative. Notice The Codex didn’t 100% for my law. But enough did for it to pass. I need to find some rare metals, hopefully on the bluff I set up my colony on.

Okay, an event anomaly. These give a variety of random choices. It be anything from spawning a hoard of dust devils to a special bonus. What do we get.

Oo, that’s a nice one. The bluff has no metals at all it turns out, so getting a rich deposit of either could change the entire nature of the game.

Is what I would say if the game didn’t promptly crash at this point. I guess I sat debating which to take for too long. The game relaunch has had some teething issues so I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but I am. The original version was pretty solid.

Let’s be honest, this is a bad roll for a landing site. The bluff is empty of exploitable metals. Hell the site of that anomaly would have been better than what the game chose as it has more concrete, water AND a research site which boosts any research done by a dome in that location.

The fact that we’re on a bluff doesn’t help either. It’s not that hard to get down, which is why I didn’t initially care, but I feel I could do much better on the lower level.

Around here actually. Yeah, you can see the underground entrance on the map without scanning so it's a nice way to scout without scanning. The Underground is a second map that can be explored and exploited, but only after you build an Elevator. They’re cheap to research, but expensive to build and maintain. Upside, they’re basically drone hubs and allow regular access underground. I hadn’t planned an underground build for this, but with it here, I’m tempted.

So I can restart the map. It’ll reset all the events and techs forcing us back to square one, but I suspect there will be more metals around this area and give us more room to expand in the future. Yeah, that sound like a good plan for next time. Until then.

NEXT TIME: We try, try again.

 

[Mogri]

I could swear I've played this game, but Steam disagrees.

In the category of "games about populating Mars," I think Terraformers is also pretty neat.

 

[Eishtmo]

This isn't going to be strictly about terraforming, though we will because of the goal I have set. You can actually turn it off if you want.

 

[Eishtmo]

I’m very annoyed the game crashed. But it does turn out to be a good thing because really we had a poor start. I have a new plan, set up near the Underground entrance. Has to be better than what we had before right?

Oh, that is MUCH better. Like lightyears better. Honestly most of the time the suggested landing site isn’t the worst, but in this case, wow.

Okay, this is where things get silly. The Underground always has two entrances (the mouth looking marks), and both of these are super close to each other for no good reason. I’m not complaining, but that’s wild. The upside to having them close is they can act as short cuts across the Underground map. The downside is, supporting 2 elevators. Let’s look at the far right one more.

Big patch of concrete, 2 water sources, a metal source, a rare metal source and that thing in the corner is a vista point. Any dome built near a vista will give bonus comfort to the residents. That’s good, that’s really good. Better yet, Elevators can act as drone hubs, one that doesn’t need electronics to maintain it. Oh yes, this is going to be nice.

Better still is that rare metal patch. Rare metals have two uses: making electronics or sell them to Earth. Early on it’s not worth processing them, but it is a good way to make money, and we need money. We shall set up here.

Before I move on, I forgot to get screen shot of the alert in the corner there, but it just says explore the Underground with an Elevator.

First though, we need to set up our research. Because I restarted the map, it reshuffles the techs so we’re starting from scratch. Elevator first, Live from Mars is more for money than anything else, Hygroscopic Vaporators improve the vaporators, low-g is just to get the next visible tech, and transport optimization lets transports haul more.

So I didn’t realize when I prepped for this landing that I didn’t have any metals. Usually I do, but for some reason I blanked on it. Then only noticed that I didn’t have it when the drones didn’t hook up any power. So I look for the nearest pile of surface metal and I find this one out near this anomaly. I’m wrong, but let’s not worry about that right now. Using my drone commander and some manual drone direction. This is something you CAN do, especially in an emergency. Drones are kind of dumb if you direct them like this, so keeping it simple is important.

In the meantime, I send the explorer to that anomaly. It’s a Breakthrough anomaly which is a special bonus tech you discover as you go along. There’s several ways to get them, but anomalies are the most common.

Since the relaunch, there’s a choice of 3 different Breakthroughs. Before, you’d just get a random one. I like this a lot.

So which is the best will depend on your circumstances. Project Phoenix has an achievement associated with it, but I’m not sure if I really need it now, or ever. There are very few colonists you want to have back, and late in the game, they’ll easily be replaced.

Good Vibrations is actually very attractive. Sanity decays in such a way that colonists can develop nasty flaws, or even kill themselves or others. It’s not really hard to keep it from spiraling out of control, so it’s only kind of useful.

Core Metals gives a super metal patch. Only a few per map, but these are going to be very strong. Low odds it’ll show up near our colony, but good enough that it’ll be worth it. Won’t know where until we research it though. Anyway, I take Core Metals in the hope for a big bonus.

We don’t get a Glorious Leader event, but something very similar. Bonus research, again, but also Prefab Compression, which lets us buy prefab spires from Earth. Spires are pretty expensive resource wise so that’s nice. Pretty sure you have to research the associated tech, but it’s been a while since I used it. Might be useful later.

In the meantime, politics raises it’s ugly head again. Factions will make requests of you once in a while. In this case, they want us to research Productivity Training, which gives a boost to our Geologists and Engineers.

Blue Sun really doesn’t like us right now. So doing this is fine. You get less than 5 Sol to complete the event, and early on research is easy enough to pull off. Later on, it might not be as easy. And it’s useful as well since we have mines to operate.

Shouldn’t be a problem here of course.

While we wait for that to cook, let’s get our scanning going. You can queue up the order of sector scans. Each area will tell you what’s possible to see there, the amount of buildable area and the boost, which just effects how fast it’s scanned. I would recommend against worrying about areas with no buildable area as there won’t be anything there early on. Catch up on it later when everything else is done.

Oh nice, a research anomaly. This typically gives 1000 research, which will easily complete Productivity Training. This is why we scan. Also notice the black rocks near the anomaly? That’s a pile of metal, and there’s another one south of the water tile. Above the water tile is a Research vista, which any dome built with that in range will increase the research of any facility in that dome. The problem is it’s on top of weird surface feature. I think this is a natural dust devil spawn point, or some kind of vent. In other words, it’s a bad place to build. At least there's some surface metal near there.

Back to the Earth Council. Opening the floor gets some, uh, less than useful choices. Passing laws the factions like should make them happier. And as you can see, only Europe is currently happy. Let’s see what they likewise

The Codex just wants us to pass laws and build Ministries for now. That’s fine.

China wants populated domes right now. We’re getting to it, relax.

Blue Sun likes anything that makes money, and dislike things that don’t. They don’t like the Sponsor Research law, but I really do, so shut up.

Europe on the other hand likes that Sponsor Research law.

Making the various factions happy will make us money as that’s the perk of our Sponsor. So we’ll have to do something about that. Of all the resources, money is like 3rd or 4th most important. The order is Water, Fuel and then either Oxygen or Money depending.

Well that’s annoying. The Rivals will complete milestones, which means we can’t get the research bonus from it. It’s not usually a big deal, but I want to stay ahead of the curve. Now we’re not told what breakthrough they’re completing, and honestly I don’t think they really are. It’s probably just a timer they’re playing with. As I said in my review, the rival system is half baked at best. I do hope they revamp them at some point.

I don’t show it, but I decide the best option is to go after Core Metals as the next tech so we can claim this milestone nice and quick.

Okay, we finished the tech, but we’re kind of short on materials, but still, let’s look at installing the Elevator. The ring around it shows the control range for the drones. My waste rock pile is outside of the range so I’ll have to move it soon, but I need resources to build it, and a way to power it. For now I’ll turn off the build while I figure out resources.

I’ll build a landing pad real quick as I have plenty of concrete. It does what it says in the block. Later you can set up the rocket automatically transport rare metals back to Earth when full and come back empty. This won’t be useful for a while, but eventually it will. Also pads can be switched to trade pads and you can offer something to the rivals in exchange for something else. There’s no reason not to build landing pads when you can.

So remember when I thought the nearest metal pile was way over near the other underground entrance? Well I was wrong, this is like due north of the colony build. Just need to get the drone commander in range and have something for the drones to take it too.

Now each Sponsor gives you different things, including extra rockets, which is what you are seeing here. Usually you have to pay for an extra rocket, or build one (late game), so having an extra one is nice. So I filled it up. Advanced resources are always on the menu, but some metal to help fill things out is nice too. The transport will be very necessary to harvest the surface metal we’re finding and more drones are always useful.

Our original rocket is now ready to leave. It’s fuel tank is full. The drones will latch on to the nearest drone hub (my commander rover in this case) and I can plan for my first colonists when it gets there.

And our second rocket has arrived with the transport. I’ll be putting it to work gathering metals right away. I have to manually direct it for now.

Meanwhile the drones will unload the rocket. Nice little close up of them at work if you were curious what they actually looked like. I’m reminded of the mini-tanks from Ghost in the Shell, I suspect this was totally intentional.

Finished the Core Metals tech. The three very red spots are the patches. One is near the 3. They aren’t close to the colony, damn. Well not a disaster anyway.

50,000 is a massive number. The one near the colony is worth like 500 so if I could access even one of these I’d probably never need another metal source again. But it’s a deep deposit, which means I need a tech to access it. This will be a nice location for either a dome or a Naturalistic Habitat to clean it out. But that will have to wait.

So let’s start planning to settle Mars. This is the screen that let’s you shuffle through the various applicants and figure out what you need.

First let’s deal with age groups. I don’t know why Child is here, you can never bring one in via rocket. Seniors are basically worthless to a young colony, they’ll just eat resources and take up space. Middle Aged colonists are just about ready to turn into Seniors, so they’re right out as well. I filter them out for this reason.

Specializations is where the real work begins. It’s really tempting to bring one of everybody, and the computer even suggests it. That’s really a bad idea as unless you have a place for them to work, there’s no point. Engineers aren’t going to do much early on, so they’re right out. Scientists need a research lab to do their thing, and those cost a lot of resources. At the same time, techs are cheap right now, so no need for them.

Officers WILL be useful in the future as they are the preferred specialist for the Earth Embassy, but their main role is to serve in the Security Stations, and they’re not super needed early on.

Botanists would be useful but I plan to use ranches early on. Later, when I have farms, I’ll want Botanists, but for now, they can sit this out.

Really, I just need non-specialists, Medics and Geologists who will work my mines.

Finally my master plan comes into play. See there’s a law that I MUST pass to end the Founder Stage early, but since I’m not sure what I need to do to get that done, I can’t have the Founder Stage end early. And that typically happens when the colonists have a kid. Best option here is to make sure there are no mating pairs. And at least one “Other Sex” which probably isn’t the most correct term, but better than nothing. Sadly there’s only one today, but I’ll fill up on female candidates.

And here we go, our Founders. Yes I took those other images earlier, ignore that, this is the group that I’m sending to Mars.

In the meantime, new law, increasing the price of exports per milestone. China likes it and so do I. I need money, gimme.

Now I reactivate the dome construction. I also do the same for the Elevator to use it as a drone hub.

Domes need 2 things: A place for colonists to live and a place to get food. The Prefab Colony gives us a couple Living Quarters for free. These can hold 14 colonists each, and one is perfect for our first batch as we can only have 12 people on this first rocket. For food, I usually place a Diner, but a grocer is still a valid choice, but colonists tend to complain about not having a cooked meal. Yeah, they don’t like taking the food home and cooking it. But with those, the needs are dealt with.

NEED is important here as it will keep them alive (plus water and oxygen of course), but it won’t make them happy. So they need more than that.

They need a place to work, a place to socialize, a place to relax and place to get medical check ups.

The Spacebar resolves 3 of these at once. Can’t really get a medical check up in a bar, or at least you shouldn’t. A medical post will do fine for medical checks. There are different sizes of for many of these to make the colony a little more flexible with it’s build, just hover over the little arrows. The full sized space bar will take up a full triangle of space in the dome (10 hexes) where the small one takes up 3. The medical post takes up one while it’s bigger brother takes up 3 and a much later version can take up a full 10.

I also need to produce food. There’s multiple options here from the humble hydroponic farm to the massive open farm that we can’t use until we get some terraforming levels in. The issue is production amounts, and the fact that Hydroponic farms can produce food quickly, they don’t produce a whole lot.

My preferred food producer is the indoor farm as it produces a good balance of food for water used. That said, I don’t have the tech for that yet so next best is the Ranch. Of course using the Ranch means any colonists that are marked “Vegan” get angry. I made sure to filter them out. It’s also why I didn’t take any Botanists, as they don’t like working in Ranches (because turkeys are not plants).

There are two other food sources: the mushroom farm and outdoor ranch, which are both external to the dome. I may build some in the future, but for now, they’re not necessary.

Most of these early colony buildings take concrete to build and maintain, so that’s why you need a lot of concrete early. In the meantime, the Elevator is done so

Welcome to the Underground. As I said in my review of the elements of the relaunched version of the game, this is VERY different than the old underground. The reason to be here is to look for anomalies right now. I somehow didn’t take a picture of the nearby anomaly to the elevator but

It’s a nice one

Really nice. That’s a pile of polymers, electronics and fuel. That’s good, I them all.

This is the request screen. It allows us to move stuff from the surface to the underground and vice versa. We just have to tell the computer what we want where and the computer will try to make it happen. Of course, you need drones to do that, and I don’t have any underground. So despite setting this, it won’t do anything. I used a transport instead, easier.

Here’s what the underground looks like. It’s weird how much darker this looks in game, I can’t see the maze of passages when playing, but they’re pretty obvious here. Maybe it’s screen related. Oh, and there’s another pair of Core Metal deposits. So there are 5 now, that means we have a LOT of metal to dig out. There are lights we can build later to light up the cave, and I will do it later, but for now the only areas that are lit are around the rovers and the Elevator. Wonder where the other entrance is down here.

In the meantime, our colonists have arrived. They’ll move into houses and take up jobs. In 10 Sol, as long as no body dies. I’ve never had it NOT succeed, though usually with a birth, so it’s not as challenging as you might think.

WHAT? Crap, I’m running out of water. Easy fix, I’ll turn off the fuel refinery as it eats water. This is why that pile of fuel I found down in the cave is helpful, I can get enough fuel to send a rocket out for another water vaporizer and other resources.

The issue is the Ranch, it drinks a lot of water. Geese drink more than a single unit of water, while the turkey drinks slightly less than 1, so I’ll swap the geese out for turkeys. Honestly those are the best choice right now, so I hope you like eternal thanksgiving folks.

Meanwhile my explorer underground found some Exotic Minerals. These are really needed to build underground and a few other special upgrades. Don’t worry about them for now, but it’s nice to get a small pile here. That said, most Exotics come from asteroids, so if you want to build an underground colony, you will have to mine asteroids at some point.

I screwed up here and didn’t build the rare metal extractor before the colonists arrived. No big deal, I’ll get it going here. There’s a range that colonists will walk outside of a dome to a building, so it can’t be too far away.

Despite this, I want to end this Founder Stage ASAP. And, well, it’s not popular. At all. Few like it, and considering my selected party is against it, that means I have to do something special.

Honestly, I just need to convince the Codex to support my vote. Build a Ministry of Economy & Industry. Eventually I will need all the Ministries for Sponsor goals, but I also don’t have the resources to support one.

I can afford to build it, but I’m a little short on power. I only have 6 extra and this takes 10. I have to convince Codex to support it or it will never pass this damn law, so I have to build one. Of course it just says “build” not “Have and use.” We have a deal.

The Founder Stage is over. I can bring more colonists in at will now. And the first hurdle to my goal has been done. Next step will be the Martian Assembly. But we’re not ready for that yet. Really not ready. This is a good place to stop for now.

NEXT TIME: Promises, power and exploration.

 

[Eishtmo]

Welcome back to Mars. We’ve gotten over our first hurdles and now it’s all about growing.

So first off the explorer dug this out of one of the surface anomalies. I have a couple drone hub prefabs, and $200M is pretty weak. The 4 vaporators though, yes please. Can always use those.

I just wanted to show this to talk about housing. If you look at the status panel to the right it says I have 10 vacant residential slots. Thing is, that’s wrong. If you look under Living Space, you’ll see I have 4 residential slots and 6 NURSERY slots. Yeah, the game combines these together. This is a bit annoying and it applies to the bar at the top too. The up arrow is 10 as well. Nurseries screw with your at a glance numbers. Just have to keep checking the dome info screen itself

Last time a planetary anomaly popped up that would give a breakthrough and now I have enough fuel and drones to deal with it. I specifically select Foundation here because Pioneer is loaded with rare metals for export and the drones will unload them again, and it just wastes more time.

As you can see, Pioneer is full and ready to go. You can only ever send out 30 units of rare metals. There are expansions to the rocket you can research, but that only effects trips BACK from Earth, never leaving Mars or for trading. Kind of annoying.

I prep this law next. This is for paying for extra research basically. It’s not required, especially right now, but it’s an easy pass from the looks of it.

The rocket gets back from that planetary anomaly and this, this is great.

Superfungus just makes fungal (mushroom) farms stronger, and Dome Streamlining is something that would totally be worth it but. . .

So I haven’t gotten much into the various domes of the game. There are 10 surface and 3 underground. The one we start with is a Basic dome, it has 60 hexes of space and room for 1 spire. This is good value for your resources, and comes free with the Prefab Colony.

There are others. Some are quite large, but they require mid to late game techs to unlock. It’s gonna be a while. There is one larger dome I could build right now, the Barrel dome, but it can’t hold a spire, and spires are very, very nice.

Now aside from the Earth Embassy and Martian Assembly, which are spires, most spires are super versions of regular buildings. Arcology is an apartment building, hanging gardens is a park, etc. But the advantage is they don’t take up extra hex space in the dome, meaning you can fit more inside.

Only 3 domes have more than one spire, and one isn’t a dome, it’s the Capital City, which is the cap stone wonder from terraforming Mars (you need a breathable atmosphere to build it)

The other two are the Oval and Diamond domes. And Multispiral Architecture gives us the Oval. Now technically the Diamond dome is better, slightly. It has 10 more hexes of space, but the Oval dome can’t be matched until we get the Mega dome, which is pretty high up in the tree.

I’m taking that one. I don’t have any mushroom farms, and while Dome Streamlining is nice, I don’t build THAT many domes, and with the Oval Dome, I may not need another for quite some time. It’s also early in the game, so the cost is a relatively low 3000 research. The Mega Dome’s tech is going to START at 15k. This is a bargain.

So much so I may have to put it to work sooner rather than later

Foundation is back and Pioneer has dropped of it’s load on Earth. Interesting point about drones and rockets: Rockets are always considered drone hubs and any drones they bring with them are going to be attached to them. However, unlike every other drone hub in the game, you can’t easily transfer them. You have to manually select them and assign them to a hub. And because I’m using the Elevator as a hub rather than, you know, a hub, I can’t just do that directly.

If I try, I’ll send the drones down to the underground, then have to recall them back to the surface. Instead I have to assign them to my RC Commander, then transfer them to the Elevator. Honestly this is better than it was because before I would have to do whole send them underground first. This way is slightly less annoying.

And Explorer AI is finished. This gives 100 extra research per Explorer, but loses effectiveness as there are more of them. I believe a second explorer will only give us an additional 80 research, which isn’t nothing, but it goes down from there. While 600 research is okay for now, the costs go up very, VERY quickly, so it’s not going to make a dent later on. I will eventually get a second explorer, but I shouldn’t need a 3rd unless one gets lost or destroyed (and yes, both can happen).

Just wanted to show the kids do get names and such. Don’t think you can trace their linage or anything this isn’t a Paradox game or something. . .

Well I guess the exception proves the rule I suppose. Would love if it did, could make the game far more personal. After the first dome of colonists they just become parts to slot in, which is a bit of missed opportunity for the game.

Found the other entrance in the underground. It’s actually quite a far from the other one down here, and in the opposite positions. Don’t try to make sense of it, I won’t. Still nice to know where it is for future development.

This law is nice as it increases production on one of the advanced resources. I would normally want Electronics, as they are super hard to make in numbers, but I’m not doing it at the moment, same with Machine Parts. Polymers are something I could make now, so I’ll get it set for now.

PARTY! WOO!

Seriously, this is more a flavor event than anything serious. The top two options boost morale, the bottom 3 boost comfort. No real wrong answer here. But I will show these punks how to dance. (NOTE: I can’t dance).

Concrete extractors are weird beasts. If the highlight hex portion can touch a resource patch, and in this case it’s that yellow patch around the concrete patch, it can extract it. Handy if you’re straining for drone range or need to keep power lines short. I’m not putting it in right now, just checking to see where I should put it in the future. Our old patch is starting to wind down, and I want to be able to replace it easily when the time comes.

The Drone Hub Extender would be a GREAT addition, as it would expand my drone’s range. The main obstacle to using them is the fact that they need Exotics to build and are pretty far down the tree.

Also they don’t work with Elevators, only a proper Drone Hub. Ah well, it’s fine, I can make due for now.

Finally, I have the Farm. Ranches are fine, you can probably run an entire colony on them if you want, but farms have other advantages.

Before I remove this ranch, I want to show it a bit close up. You can zoom in and rotate the camera, I just don’t do it much The amount of food these guys produce is quite good for early game. The issue is the water, oxygen and power consumption. Farms will drink more water, but ADD oxygen and take no power. Much more efficient in that regard. Even better, you can make the soil better by rotating crops and ultimately gain more food faster than these turkeys.

This underground event popped up. Back in the old version of the game, Explorers could literally fling themselves into the underground without an elevator and just putter around. But until you got an elevator you couldn’t get them back out.

The result is this event would be quite a gamble. Take the 1000 research now, or chance getting a greater reward. I roll the dice.

Snake eyes. Ah well, the rover isn’t destroyed, just damaged. In the old version it could be a long time before I could get the rover back from this, and it wouldn't generate any research in the meantime. A newbie trap if there ever was one.

And covered in rocks. I send my commander down to get it out. The O with the slash is the cancel activity button. I have it set so that when the commander shows up, the drones will remove the rocks first before trying to rescue the rover. Which they will try. It’s quite silly to watch.

Replacing the ranch with a farm has thrown my employment stuff into chaos. Part of cleaning it up let me actually fill up the Law Office. I’ve opened all 3 shifts, but limited how many can work there as I really want them working on things like growing food.

Another Breakthrough anomaly. This might take a bit more time to get. It needs 3 medics, and I have 2. In good news, Seniors do still count toward this, so I can send them if I have to. I need more peeps in my colony.

I also need more space. There is a law that can let me cram more people into the existing structures, but not too many. Apartments, however, are my bread and butter for housing in this game. No suburbs on Mars is what I say. But the dome is full and to get more people I would have to demolish the current buildings and replace them. Kind of a pain and to get a full load of new colonists, I can’t just replace one of them, I will have to do both. Decisions, decisions.

I will say we’ve got a lot of good places to build more domes. The spot under the 4 looks good for a long term mining dome. The Vista point below the 2 also looks good. Hell even the two rare metal points with the water on the far east side of the map would be good. Considering how terrible this map felt trying to build up on bluff, down here is basically paradise.

Okay, I don’t know what exactly happened here. I think swapped to the underground right when the time of day was changing (it doesn’t quite match the clock if you’re wondering) on the surface and so it brightened up the entire underground. You can really see how this is all lad out and can kind of make out blocks on the passages. Some are small and easy to clear, others need a tech to let us remove them. I’m guessing the semi circle cavern next to the elevator is the other wonder. It looks like it how I would expect that part of the cave to look. Is it? Won’t know until we get in there, and we can’t get in there, yet.

Rover repaired and scanned the new anomaly that appeared after the last scan and got me a 5000 research. That was totally worth the effort to bring the commander down here.

Giving me the Oval Dome and presents a whole new kind of problem: Do I build it? And if so, how?

Okay, let’s look at our resources. At NIGHT (not day) I generate 11 extra power and if you go back up you’ll see I get 17 power during the day. That’s the solar panels running and the mines going (though I have them staggered so they don’t work at the same time).

I need 40 power JUST to operate the dome. Not the things inside it, JUST the dome. I need more power if I want to pull this off, a lot more. I can build more wind turbines and solar panels, and maybe put in a power storage device (it’s a battery, and I think is the intended strategy for solar panels). I can either buy more Stirling Generators (at $400M a pop) or research the tech which I have access too, maybe 3000 research points, doable in about 5 Sol.

Faster actually, as I can pass the research focus law for the Physics column and reduce the costs down. Then there’s a research anomaly on the surface I have been holding on to for something like this. Maybe get it in 3 Sol if I rush. Though Stilrings cost a bit to build even then. Might have to rely on renewables until I can cobble everything together.

Oxygen isn’t an issue. I am generating the 2 I need, but I picked up the MOXIE improvement tech, so I can make it stronger easily enough. Water is covered by all those Vaproater prefabs we got at the beginning of this update. Though I have that improvement tech as well, so I may not need them right away.

I have plenty of metal and concrete, and more coming. It’s the Polymers I’m short on. I can get them from Earth easily enough. But I also want that money for other things, like Stirlings. And the maintenance cost for the dome is pretty high so I will need to make them. Polymer factories have to be manned. Which means I need more people, and more fuel as they take fuel AND water to make polymers.

I could also trade for them. I have a bit of excess metals. There’s enough surface deposits if I send out the transport I could get a couple loads of metal for trade, IF anyone wants to trade with me.

I could swap out the living quarters for apartments in the original dome, bring in more people and start making polymers and get enough for the dome. Give me time to get the money together to get everything else I need. But if I start making polymers sooner, I need another fuel refinery as it takes water AND fuel to make polymers, and I still need fuel for the rockets. Where if I wait a bit I can trade more rares back faster then get more money for the various resources.

On top of that I should check if there are any deep deposits where I want to build the Oval dome, as I really don’t want to build on top of something I can extract. You CAN get to it in many cases, but not in all. Adapted Probes can do the trick, but you can only buy them from Earth. Money again. UGH!

This is a tough decision because of the order of operations. I need another dome, and the Oval is the best choice. I need a polymer factory to maintain it. I need more people to run the factory and I need more fuel for the factory and more power in general for everything. And the best way to get most of this, even the Polymer Factory is to buy them from Earth. And I have $1.48 B, which won’t cover all this plus everything else I need to maintain.

I’m not likely going to kill my colony doing this. I have plenty of water and oxygen, and I can shut off the bigger dome if I’m still short on power before it’s finished. I have a RC Commander on hand if the Elevator breaks down and I can stop the extractors if need be. It’s just wild how this one breakthrough has thrown all my plans into disarray.

I have always said this game is easy, and it is. It’s also my cozy game, I usually don’t stress about these choices much, as they usually aren’t this complicated. The light randomness of this game is what keeps me playing but never breaks my brain with complication. I don’t think I’d enjoy something like Factorio and it’s complex decision making. I would be parallelized there.

Here though, I can get through it. Next time I will have a plan.

NEXT TIME: A plan.

 

[Violentvixen]

PARTY! WOO!

Seriously, this is more a flavor event than anything serious. The top two options boost morale, the bottom 3 boost comfort. No real wrong answer here. But I will show these punks how to dance. (NOTE: I can’t dance).

This is cute.

I'm aware of this game and pretty sure I own it on Steam due to some bundle but my goodness I had no idea of the level of detail. Thanks for doing this LP, it's cool to see.

 

[Eishtmo]

Keep in mind this is the Relaunched version, which is a bit better in some regards. That said, aside from the politics stuff, all the events are the same between the two versions.

 

[Eishtmo]

This post is, um, pretty long. 85 images or so. Imgur complained at me about it. Anyway, I'll be splitting this into two, and looks like I will have a couple more in the future too.

Last time, I needed a plan to build an Oval Dome. This time, I have one.

First I’m going to see if I can get some trades going. This is why we play with rivals, despite them being a half baked mechanic. That said, we may not get any, which would suck. In any case, we offer 50 metal for polymers. How many we get will depend on various factors but it’s probably going to be far less than 50. I bet on about 15, if that. Still 2 trades would get me an extra 30 polymers, and then I can make up the rest from Earth.

Second, we send the transport out to collect. This is a good spot. There was a mod in the previous version that would put numbers like this right on the map rather than having to hover over each one. I’d much rather that, but it’s fine for now.

I didn’t fully explain how this worked, but here’s the range the transport will cover. Then you select which resource you want the rover to collect. In this case I select “all.” It’s more efficient for this in case I didn’t see a polymer rock laying there.

The last step is to manually scroll the screen to where you want the resources dropped off. You can’t zoom out to the map screen and reposition. It’s always been that way and it’s annoying. But it also isn’t a big deal as the cases where I want to use this are pretty rare and limited to early game, usually.

Third, send my rocket out, well, once it’s full. Shouldn’t take too long, but might as well get as much money as possible from it. Yeah, this is much later on, it was about 6 rare metals short of full if when I started this update.

Next, time to figure out what I need in terms of power.

Oval Dome – 40 power
Fuel Refinery – 5 power
Polymer Factory – 10 power
Living Complex – 1 power
Medical Post – 1 power
Diner – 2 power
Spacebar (full size) – 2 power

So I need say 60 power total. I have 10 at night, and 15 during the day (I’m rounding for my own sanity). The polymer factory will only operate during the day, so I can put up a couple solar panels to cover that. An additional one to cover the Fuel Refinery during the day and turn it (and the old refinery) off at night. That brings me up to 20 at night. I need 30 more to cover the minimum. 3 Stirlings can cover that, and it eats half my current cash.

Then I need at least 2 probes, and use the rest to make up the polymers and other advanced resources I need.

So let’s see if I get anything from those trades.

Not a damn thing. Crap. Okay, good news, there’s money coming in from the Sponsor for keeping the voters happy, at least for now. That should help. Luckily I’m not in a super rush or anything so I can wait a bit.

I managed to get some better crops for my farms, specifically Cover Crops, which strongly boosts the soil quality. High quality soil means higher food yields. But the if you can recover quality, that means it can go down, and yes it can. Potatoes are one of the crops that eat into soil quality, but give high yields. Soybeans recover less than Cover Crops, but it’s the same as what potatoes take out, and wheat is basically neutral. So the idea is to rotate crops to get the best yields.

Underground I’ve been clearing some debris so I can explore more. This is before and after.

Okay, I’m running low on living space right now, so passing Crowded Living. Almost everyone loves it. Downside is it costs to support, but that should be fine (forshadowing).

In further preparation for the new dome, I need to pump up the output of the MOXIE and the Vaporator. One Vaporator, I did the others earlier. Downside is this cuts into my polymer stock, but I need these eventually.

Okay, let’s get some gear here so we can start. I would have taken more, but I’m out of money. 2 Stilrings isn’t quite enough, but I need the rest. I’m close, but not quite there. Will need another load.

Wait, what? I did not know this could happen. I mean, I should have, it makes sense at least But yeah, I spent all my money on the rocket. Whoops. Well, once I get more cash I’ll repass the law.

In the meantime I queue up some research. Fungal Farms are really just filler, I might use them later if need be. Stirling’s are to build them, of course but they’re cheaper to buy. Rover Command AI’s big bonus is the Automated Mode, which will let my transport just go collect stuff without being directed. It can be dangerous if, for example, you’re being hit with a meteor storm, but it’s usually easy enough.

I don’t have much left to explore underground, so I brought the explorer up. I can queue up tasks for the rover to perform, but honestly it’s really only useful for the explorer, and occasionally the transport. Automated Mode would mean I wouldn’t have to do do this at all.

More prep work. I want to move the power line that goes straight across to the metal extractor in case it’s in the way of connecting the new dome. Lay the new power line first, then delete the old one.

Storage space is full. That just means there’s no place for the drones to put the concrete. Building another storage space is all that I need to do. Oddly if there’s no place to put the waste rock, the drones will just dump it on the ground around the extractor. But can’t do that with the stuff I want.

I will note the rather large hole the extractor has dug so far. Have to do something about that in the future.

My mouse is annoying me. The left click is double clicking for no reason and I accidentally set the rocket down here rather than on a landing pad. It doesn’t make too much of a difference aside from putting a black mark on the ground and kicks up a lot of dust. Of course, this is also where I want the new dome to go, so that is annoying. It’ll be gone soon enough.

Adapted Probes allows the probes to do a Deep Scan of a sector. I used them right on top of my colony and found a nice deep metal deposit. THIS is why I wanted those probes. I knew, somehow, the game would place something here. I should be able to avoid it for building, but I needed to know it was here. It’s hard to see, but there is another anomaly north east of the dome, so deep scans reveal anomalies too.

Here’s about where the dome will go, and of course the rocket is in the way. Don’t have enough to build it anyway, so I can wait. The positioning is important as I intend to build a tunnel between the two domes. I’ll go into reasons why when it comes time, but it is important.

Heavy drone workload is a condition that means there’s more work than there are drones. I’ll kind of fix this by recalling my commander from the underground (forgot it was there still) and it should help, but I do need to get more drones soon.

Some of the anomalies give simple choices. Take a discount on research costs or get a deposit. I tend to take anything BUT the cost reduction. I think in terms of late game when the amount a tech costs doesn’t matter because I’m generating more research than all might Dog. The deposit isn’t something I can exploit now, but I might be able to soon.

My second rocket is back with more than enough polymers to start building. I’m double checking my usage and its, well, I don’t have any right now. That’s good! It means I don’t have to rush to get more polymers right away. I still need to, but I don’t have to rush it.

I have learned if you don’t pass a law when the opportunity comes, the other factions will do it for you. This is a good one to swap around as the factions love these and it will make them happy every couple of Sol.

Yes, I know, I need the Assembly. No I’m not building it now. It’s going in the new dome, once I get that built. And probably not even right away then. So chill out.

Rocket is out of here and on it’s way with a small load of rares. Now I have some space.

The explorer has revealed some more techs and they’ll all be helpful. Biome Engineering makes any dome with a Farm have better comfort. Mineral Applications can make the solar panels stronger among other things. Dust Repulsion reduces maintenance times on the panels. Given that I will be relying on solar for a bit, this is a good tech to get. But tech costs are outstripping my available research. I’ll have to fix that once I get the new dome settled in.

The Passage is a direct connection between domes. Everything it says it can do, it can (life support are pipes, BTW). Colonists usually don’t like to commute between domes and will suffer some penalties for doing it, but I’d rather have those than try to ship them somewhere else by other means.

Double checking the route of the passage. I haven’t deleted out that power line I mentioned earlier and it’s not for the passage I need to remove it. It’s really for the passage ramps. Those let drones and rovers climb over the passages to the other side. Drones, of course, can go through the dome if they must, but this is faster. Rovers can’t, of course, but they really shouldn’t need to. Still nice to have.

I have the new build off at the moment, but I need to either get that law or build the dome now. I have run out of living space in the original dome. Homeless colonists will suffer multiple penalties, so I would rather fix that sooner than later.

Speak of the devil, there’s the law. It boosts my living complexes up to 18 spaces. Apartments move up to 30 from 24, so I could squeeze even more people in if I wanted. Over filling a dome isn’t the greatest idea, but something I have done. Eventually I may seek to repeal the law just to increase comfort. Until then, this is fine.

Another dude of an anomaly. Applicants come in at a pretty consistent rate and getting 50 more feels like a waste of time. The cash isn’t much, but I’ll take it, always have a use. Oh wait, why is my water in the red?

Yeah, I just went ahead and built the dome. This is the last skin for the living quarters. I really wish they had more options for buildings. Some, like the apartments, have at 4 different designs, but many of the buildings have one or two, and the second one is the first one with a different color scheme.

Speaking of alternative skins, here’s the alt for the diner. There are alternative versions of the domes too, but at least one of them is stupid looking and the others just put a grid in the way.

I wanted the living complex because I have another load of colonists on the way. I didn’t notice until after they arrived I didn’t grab an extra medic so I could get that breakthrough location. This annoys me now, but at the time, I just wanted more peeps.

The Polymer factory is going in here. I’ve put in two of the vaporators already, but I will quickly discover I have underestimated, well, everything. I didn’t count the vaporators toward the power needs, and the water needs are higher than I thought once I built this factory and another farm. So I’m scrambling to get both the power and water I need.

Not long after my colonists have landed, the concrete plant finished off it’s resource patch. Time to tear it down. This will get me a bit more power back, but doesn’t help the water situation.

Now I can finally build the Earth Embassy. It prefers Officers but will run with anyone. No power though, so that’s good. As I have the Codex sponsor, I get a free prefab for it, so it’s MORE free.

The pit where my loyal and hard working concrete extractor dug itself. This WILL get in the way of further expansion.

The Flatten terrain option will make short work of it. Depending on how much work needs to be done, it might take the drones a bit to finish a terrain modification activity. Ramps especially take a while.

In this case, it’s just instant. It’s the small things that make this game worth it sometimes.

And here goes the passage ramp going in. You can see it needed the extra space where that power line was. This will keep things running smoothly.

CONTINUED IN THE NEXT POST.

 

[Eishtmo]

So Leia here is a special colonists. If they have super trait like this, the game by default will pin them to your dash. It’s not required, but it’s nice to know I got one. Saints are okay if you have a lot of religious people, but not super necessary. The other two options are Genius, which gives free research and Celebrity, which gives you money. If this were a Paradox game you could trace an entire lineage back to this lady I’m sure, but, well, uh, yeah.

Polymer plant is up and going, though that 3 production is a bit of a lie. Currently there is a law pushing production up for polymers, so it’s usually lower than that. The Earth Embassy is also up and going. Over time that bar will fill up and when done, it’ll give me 800 research. Nice at this stage of the game.

The original farm is up to 100% quality now, so this will be a the rotation from now until I get the more advanced crops. The new farm I built will have a different rotation to hopefully even out the water consumption between the two. Also I’ll set the new farm to have a second shift cycle. Food producers only work one shift, ever, and this also helps balance out the water usage.

“The Zone” sound ominous. I should check it out. Maybe there’s something special there.

Turns out there isn’t actually, it just reveals techs. Kind of a waste of resources. Ah well. That said, sometimes there are special anomalies that have mysterious descriptions. Maybe we'll see more in the future.

I mentioned before how there are trap anomalies in the underground, and here’s another. I could end up anywhere on the map, and my explorer could be trapped! Well, they would be in the previous version. The revamp of the underground has made this kind of a nothing burger. In fact, I just ended up in a place the rover had already been. I get why they changed the underground, I do, but the risk and worry of the old version is what made it interesting. And also frustrating.

Water problems has forced me to shut down a shift in the Fuel Refinery. The Polymer factory and one of the farms running at the same time made this necessary. I’m a bit ahead on fuel for now, so it’s not a disaster. If I had more things that ate fuel, I’d be worried, but I don’t, at least not yet.

China is completely happy with me. Should have a different level above happy.

Close up image of the Embassy. The designs of the buildings in this game are quite good, if a bit repetitive for some of them. The little park on the top likely can be accessed by colonists, just there aren’t any there right now.

So I saved before starting to scan this anomaly. I have save scummed for things before, and I debate whether to do it now or now.

There is a wiki for the game and it actually lists all the anomalies you can run into and their rewards. The underground is filled with these things where you don’t know what you’ll get. I suppose you can guess what the rewards are from the descriptions, but it’s easier to look them up.

The rewards are all breakthroughs. First is Cryo sleep which adds passenger space on the rockets, Plasma Rocket which makes rockets faster, Vehicle Weight Optimizations which reduces the weight of drones and rovers, and finally Cargobay of Holding (yes, that’s the name) which reduces resource weight by 50%.

That last one will be REALLY handy when it comes time to mine asteroids or order resources in bulk from Earth. I’ll get it now and research it later.

The problem with this upgrade is that it takes my in very short supply exotics. Which I can only get from asteroid mining. I only need one of these to have them to make up a shortfall for now, but if I want to really use solar panels, I will need more in the future.

Nice that I’m broke right now. I haven’t really talked about the various rivals outside of them existing, but generally there’s not much you can do with them. Getting a standing boost is nice, but really doesn’t DO much for us in the long run.

Here’s what the screen looks like for Blue Sun. After that 20 boost they’re now at 38, which means they didn’t like me much before. I have no idea how the game determines what they have, but it doesn’t really mean anything to us.

This is all we can do with our rival colonies. It’s, um, kind of lame. There’s no negotiation on the trades, and while you can give or ask for resources, that just changes your standing with the rival, and not much else. I’m not sure what Insult is supposed to do, or why you would WANT to as I never have. There is a cover ops option, but again, I never do that either.

Trading techs is nice though. I don’t know if they actually do anything with the techs, but they only ask for your best techs regardless. This fine, one less tech I need to research.

Same here. Wow, they bought another rocket. And imported food. Oh, that’s not good. They must be having problems making fuel or something. I’m joking, that would be interesting story telling, but I’m pretty sure it’s just random.

And we have Seniors now. It’s why my Medical post is short a body. One of the doctors retired. Not dead, mind you, just retired. I could still use them for that planetary anomaly, if I had 3 of them total. Which I don’t.

Extractor amplification I got from Europe is a nice, cheap boost to use, except that it eats more power. I could afford it, but at this stage I really don’t need it. Steady income is fine for now.

I picked up Polymer blades a while ago, and just adding it to my wind mills now. Should resolve my power shortfalls for the time being. I should go from 5.7 power to 7.9 or so.

The last option might be worth it if I had a way to remove the collapsed tunnels in the underground. Unlike the piles of rubble I cleared up before, the tunnels need an extra tech, and it’s not on my docket at the moment. Again, applicants are a dime a dozen, so more research it is.

Yeah, here’s that tech. I have taken that event before, but I don’t remember how long you’re given and I just don’t want to chance it for now. Better to get a decent reward now than potentially none later.

FINALLY got a trade. Food for polymers. And yeah, it’s about 15 as I said. I’m going to shut it off once it’s done, but it’s nice they decided to help out, AFTER I didn’t need it any more.

The other colony will send their own rocket, but your drones have to do the work. They’ll stay until they’re filled up too. Luckily they don’t need fuel.

Deep Scanning Tech does the same thing as the probes I bought from Earth, only using the same scanning system I’m currently using instead. Can I do it in less than 5 Sol?

It’s pricey. Maybe doable. I have a few research anomalies I haven’t dug into yet. They could push me over the top. And it would be nice to have at this stage. I’ll get it right after the recon center finishes.

Which is now. Finishing the tech reveals the first asteroid map. But you need a lander to, well, land on it. It’s a rocket that only goes between Mars and the asteroids. It’s a pain in my rear to use, but worth it for exotics.

They all get random names and have a chance of spawning some resources. Getting to them and back again is what drives me up the wall. When I finally get one, I’ll explain all about it, trust me.

First research point down. 1500 research is nice and gets me closer. I’ll get a couple 1250 points later and the rest will come from my normal pool. I will have Deep Scanning in plenty of time.

That’s not good. Colonists do go crazy after a bit. I have to admit I didn’t fix the general issue before I finished this session, so, um, yeah, I’m a terrible leader sometimes.

So Adrien is in the diner. Yes, you can get this close and see the colonists. There’s a lot of detail I just kind of overlook as I’ve played the shit out of this game and just don’t pay attention any more. Different color uniforms designate different jobs. Brown is Geologist, green Botanist, yellow Engineer, red Officer, blue Non-Specialist.

Looks like I’ve finally revealed the normally second tier of dome techs. The Oval Dome tech was cheaper than this, but the Medium domes are cheaper to build. Also only one spire though so you know. The Amusement Park blurb here seems to indicate it’s just for tourists, but it isn’t strictly. It works just as well for the locals, as any proper amusement park should.

Queuing up the techs. I don’t have any pressing needs right now, but all of these are useful to pick up. Low-G Permits will allow me to explore more of the underground, 3D Machining is for a machine parts factory, the only major drain I have on my colony at the moment. The Atomic Accumulator is a super battery, which I still haven’t built any of but I probably should sooner rather than later. Automated Storage lets me build the biggest storage areas. The current ones hold 180 resources, these will hold 3000, but cost energy and maintenance.

With Deep Scanning done, it’s time to deep scan the map. You can see the areas I didn’t scan before in the lower left. I really want to deep scan around my colony and work my way across the map. I’m hoping for some more anomalies and some really good resource patches.

And so the first of our Founders dies. It’s been 40 Sol since we landed them here and the Middle Aged (so 30) ones we brought with us go first, so they’re probably, what, 100 Earth years? I think that’s roughly right. Gunhild spent a lot of time not doing anything as a Senior.

MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh I forget how they just lay on the ground like that. Walked out the door and dropped dead. So I probably won’t get it but there is a breakthrough that let’s you convert dead bodies into food, it’s literally called Soylent Green.

Finally revealed the Triboelectric Scrubber. I have favorite buildings in this game, and this is one of them. Basically it removes the maintenance cycle from buildings around it. IT will need it, but nothing around it will. This is how I hope the Stirling Generators full time. But it’s a bit pricey to get now. I need research badly.

Wow another one already. I should point out that the game won’t highlight every death. It did it this time because it had a different splash screen to put up. There’s one more for the last Founder to die, so it’ll show up again in about 20 Sol or so.

Must have lived in the same building as Gunhild. Hmm, faction support already. I might be able to figure out who all I’ll have to deal with when I build the Assembly. That said, Church of the New Ark is an asshole of a party, so I might have to be a bit aggressive in dealing with them.

Well that’s about it for now. Lots of excitement in this update. Things did not go as well as I planned, but it’s fine for now. Next time I think we’ll do a full review on where the colony stands and what I need to fix, which is more than you’d think. Then I’ll bring in more colonists and finally build the Martian Assembly. Just have to launch this rocket and save. . .

OH SHIT! Wait, is this game current with Fury Road? I thought it was older, am I old? Uh, well, this is bad. Okay so the death screen earlier mentioned that deaths not done by natural causes usually result losing applicants, so we kind of don’t want to do that. I think the first two options will result in damage to the colony and probably her death. Let’s try talking her down. Wait, are we actually in the colony?

Well, that worked out, somehow. Yeah, I really need to do some work, the colonists are starting to go nuts. Until then.

NEXT TIME: Reviewing our status and planning for the future.

 

[Eishtmo]

Well things got wild at the end of the last update. Clearly something isn’t going as well as it should and I need to fix it. Or at least do so long enough for numbers to take hold and make these little issues less of one. So let’s review where the colony is at right now.

General overview of the map of the colony. I do love the look of it at night. I think I remember it being darker in the previous version of the game. So dark that there was a mod to make it lighter. I think they incorporated it. Anyway, we’ve done a basic scan of most of the map aside from what’s up on the southern bluff, and we kind of know there’s not much up there. Right now we’re doing deep scans around the colony itself to see if there’s anything good there. Then we’ll do a simple mower pattern for the rest of the map and clear it.

I haven’t gone much over the Command Center tab. It’s the demographs of the game, containing various graphs and other things to flip through. I don’t use the graphs, mostly because I kind of a forgot they even existed. Probably would help much later in the game, but okay, fine. Let’s take a look at some of them.

Power. Most of these graphs are pretty flat, but some are more interesting. You can see how close to zero we’ve been running. I’m not sure this graph style is a good choice for this kind of game.

Oxygen. The change in demand near the middle is when I swapped out the Ranch for the Farm. The second increase is when the second dome went up.

Water. Again, demand and production increased as I built the new dome.

Metals. That spike in the beginning is me gathering surface metal. The mine didn’t come online until later.

Food. You can see the turkey harvesting, then the farms. Once the new farm is fully online, we’ll see multiple spikes.

Fuel. The only demand outside of rockets is the Polymer factory, but the lack of water is why I had to cut production. Need to fix that.

Under the colonist tab you can sort by various options, including specialization, age, and faction. Wow there are a lot of them. Most will be zero but a couple have some. Nothing I need to worry about right now.

Problematic is a good one to sort by. This highlights colonists that has problems like our friend from the last update. She can recover. The more serious issues will be Renegades, and when those show up I’ll talk about them.

An overview of the colony itself. We’ve got quite a bit of metal and we probably always will given what’s near by. Concrete is lower than it was because we’re not producing any more and used a bunch for the oval dome. We’re good on the rest of the resources.

We have 23 drones, really need more of those, and 46 colonists. Everyone has a home (yellow arrow is available and red is colonist looking) and a job (suitcase). The icon with a zero is “tourists” which we don’t have any. I have never tried building a tourist economy. Maybe I’ll have to look to it in the future.

Our original dome. 37 colonists. 4 belong to the Codex faction.

The make up. A couple kids, 10 Seniors. Only 1 empty residential slot. Given that most of the adults want kids, I need to fix that.

Our new dome. 9 colonists. 1 Codex faction member.

No one wants kids right now. Probably not happy with the lack of a medical building. Need to fix that asap.

We’re about halfway through the tech tree. The few techs near the top aren’t really necessary right now. Currently I’m trying to finish the Cargobay of Holding and Low-G Permits. Sustainable Architecture will make interior buildings cost less to maintain. Martianborn Adaptability is more for education (I don’t’ have any schools) but also unlocks the Large Nursery, a 10 hex building that holds 26 kids. Supportive Community helps recover sanity, which we kind of need after the end of the last update.

Overall look at Mars. Capture Meteors is a mission to trigger a meteor storm. High-Speed Comm Satellite will boost your Sponsor research. SETI Satellite is for cash. The projects are planetary anomalies.

This is the asteroid currently within reach of Mars. We can’t afford a lander right now, so we can’t visit it. There are different kinds of asteroids with different mixes of resources. We’ll really cover it later and how annoying it can be.

So now it’s time to talk about future expansion on the surface. F9 looks decent. Nice variety of resources.

A5 is good for rare metals, which I would really like to have.

D5 is also good, especially with two concrete patches nearby.

F6 is up on a bluff, but if I can get the tech to exploit the deep metal patch, this could be a really good long term site.

Building underground will take a bit more effort. At least the site around the elevator is pretty good. If I move underground I WILL have to build down here as colonists tend to do stupid things when they get underground and I’d rather they not walk off into the darkness.

Obviously building near the Cave of Wonders is basically a given. I’ll have to get rid of that rock arch, but this site is basically gold down here. Especially with that deep rare patch down to the south west

This site is a good site as well. Lots of rares to mine. Ignore that weird screenshot message, it started going crazy at this point for some reason.

Our Specialization make up is looking rough in some regards. No medics (active ones, they’re all old or dead). Need more of them.

Population make up. Eventually I’d like the number of Martianborn to outstrip the Earthborn, but that will take a while. Figure we’re starting to run out of Founders now, so they should be all gone before too much longer.

Okay, lots to do. More medics, more buildings, a rough plan for expansion and of course the main goal still is there. We need to build the Martian Assembly to progress on the Political Animal achievement, and also we have to start terraforming. Well, eventually, not yet. We’re not ready for that at all. Until next time.

NEXT TIME: Sorting colonists and interesting discoveries.

 

[Eishtmo]

Reviewing things was nice but let’s get back to work.

The Infirmary is the larger version of the Medical Post. Does the same thing, but more. The even larger version is even better. Then there’s the Spire version that does it the best.

The Infirmary has an alternative skin which I use here. Notice how the dome is actually partially over the resource patch. The extractor has a range around it, so it doesn’t have to be right on top of the patch for the work. In fact, you don’t want it on top of the patch as it’s harder to look at the status of the patch so you know if it’s about to be emptied.

That weird screenshot bug is still floating around, so I restart the game after this.

So there is a way to filter the dome populations. It’s really useful for, say, getting all the children out of dome 2 and putting them in the Nursery in Dome 1.

You can filter by a lot of options. For example (not show here) I will encourage all my Engineers to live in Dome 2 as the Polymer factory is next to Dome 2. Colonists complain if they have to commute between domes to work, so it makes them happier. I also moved all my Seniors to Dome 2 as Dome 1 has lower requirements for childbirth, and Seniors don’t have kids.

Finally time to install a Power Accumulator, aka a battery. As long as you have an excess of power, it will charge up to a maximum amount. When you’re running a power deficit, the battery will put out power up to a certain amount.

The idea is to use solar panels during the day, and Accumulators at night. It’s also nice in case there’s a disaster and it buys time for your drones to fix whatever went wrong.

Installing more Stirlings. I have some prefabs from earlier and I’m trying to build up my power supply so I can fill out my dome.

I need more medics and some officers. Another load of colonists is on the way. Bella here is tagged with the “Sexy” trait. Increases the odds of having kids.

Meanwhile the other rocket is waiting for those medics so I can finish that anomaly.

Christine was the one that lost sanity at the end of the other update. Seems that she’s found a way to deal, by betting on the ponies. It’s a minor issue.

Another nice law that will be useful later. Of course, it only effects Drone Hubs, which I don’t have any of.

The Codex really wants me to build ministries. I have neither the resources or space for them right now.

The rocket is done with the medic anomaly and that last one is a nice one. Dry Farming will save us a lot of water at this stage of the game.

I queue it up as soon as possible.

Just a close up of the large Spacebar. I’m not sure that would really be a good design, if you get too drunk and slip out of that chair. . .

And a close up of the large park.

We’re going to get more kids very soon here. Dome 2 has lower birth requirements now thanks to the Infirmary. Before it was 70, now it’s 55.

That said, I’m starting to run low on machine parts. But neither of my rockets is ready to send back.

Supply pods are a quick way to get a small amount of resources. The issue is that it costs money to order the pod.

Remember that Cargobay of Holding tech? Apparently it seems to apply to the pods. I need to double check that. . .

Another breakthrough point on the surface reveals this. Autonomous Hubs is very, very nice. It means the hubs can work without power or maintenance. That will be helpful later.

Zero-Space Computing would be nice, but the hubs are more valuable.

The asteroid moves out of range. I won’t get another one until I build a recon center.

The supply pod arrives. The pod itself can be salvaged for extra metal.

This event is an odd one. On one hand, if you want an extra rocket, it’s a good deal. On the other hand, it could randomly EXPLODE! I don’t need an extra rocket, I already have 2. So I’ll turn it down.

The Earth Embassy finally finishes it’s first reward. 800 research is decent at this stage. It’ll get us moving on Dry Farming.

Speaking of which. You can see the difference in our water level from the previous image. It’s good enough to turn my fuel refinery back to full strength.

Only 4 founders are left. It’s not that important, but it shows how long it’s been since those days.

There’s a couple more planetary anomalies. They just reveal more techs. Once all the techs revealed, these start giving research instead. This one wants random colonists so I’ll do it now while I have a bit of wiggle room.

While they’re gone, I’m going to take out this Small Grocer. I want to focus the colonists on other jobs and this little shop was more to give some work when I was a bit short. Shopping is an aspect of comfort, but if I put new shops in, they’ll be for polymers not food.

The first anomaly reveals this. The Meteor Defense System is how you deal with meteor storms. They work pretty quickly, but can be overwhelmed. One is enough to easily cover a couple domes. That said, that research cost is up there.

The second one gives me Deep Metal Extraction. I need this so I can get all those deep metal and rare patches. It’s not a high priority, but I want it sooner rather or later.

Bleh, Europe is only trading for the one resource I don’t have a lot of.

Oh good, got Low-G Permits. I can now fully explore the underground.

Collapsed Tunnels have been blocking us for too long. Tear down that wall! Now this is where I thought the last underground wonder was, and it’s not. Just a cave with another anomaly.

But what a gift. I mean, any of these would be good. The recon centers are least desirable as I can’t get to any asteroids right now. Domes are a cheap tech and they don’t cost much to build anyway. The real fight between the scrubbers and the Shuttle Hubs.

Trioelectric Scrubbers I talked about earlier, but they’re the key to mass amounts of power and to saving resources on pretty much anything we want. I want them, eventually. But I’m okay on power now.

The Shuttle Hubs are way more useful. These allow the use of shuttles that move resources and people between locations. Above ground, this will let me set up outposts for mining much easier than I could with trains.

Underground, it will allow me spread out through the underground much faster. I need a tech to make use of it, of course, and they take fuel, so I need more of that, but this is going to open the maps up.

And I just like them better than the trains. More reliable.

The underground anomalies are going to be come fast and furious now as I clear out the tunnels. Some, like these, will send us careening through the underground trying to get the prize.

The commander and it’s drones are busy clearing up the collapsed tunnels and debris, both of which you can see here. By the time this update is done, I should have all, or nearly all of them cleared. It really doesn’t take long.

Still on the trail of that last anomaly, and find ANOTHER one. This is the fun of the Underground.

Piles of resources. The transport will come down for these. I’ll have a few more of these before I’m done today.

Seriously? This is why I deleted the small grocer earlier. Fine, I’ll prioritize it and get some butts in the seats.

Breakthrough choice time. Death is Project Phonenix, which I already mentioned I don’t much care fore. Sleep is Rapid Sleep which I’ve never taken but seems to deal with sorting sleep cycles of the colonists. Fatigue is Martianborn Ingenuity which makes Martianborn better at work. Meh to all of these.

Age, though, is my baby. Forever Young makes Seniors not a problem any more. They can work and have children again. I will get this sooner rather than later.

Another anomaly reduces tech costs. Not what I really want but I won’t argue against it either. That discount will be nice as I move down that particular branch, but it’s nothing Mars shattering.

Speaking of shattering, what the hell game? Okay, so when a meteor is on the way, you’re usually given a warning, and a pretty decent one at that, but not this time. I got a pop up that didn’t last long enough to screen shot and then BOOM hit my dome. 5 polymer to fix. In the mean time it will spew out oxygen. Luckily I’m generating more than enough and I Have a tank full of spare oxygen just in case.

This is why I don’t want to capture any meteors right now. If they come down on my colony I will be wrecked.

More random resources in the underground. Purple is polymer, green is electronics and red is fuel. Very nice to find all of them. Though it will take the transport a few trips to get them all.

Finishing this tech means much of my maintenance costs will go down. Not ALL of them, only the stuff in the domes. So really it mostly just saves me concrete for now. Worth it though.

Sending more material back via rocket. A few more Stirlings and resources. I’m careful not to spend all my money so I don’t get the Crowded Living law revoked by accident.

And that’s it for the nearby concrete to colony. Those shuttle hubs might be put to work sooner than I would like to get more. I have a nice stockpile for now.

I’m not sure what triggered this, but it’s welcome. I want the rare metals, I have plenty of sources of regular metals and water.

More hunting anomalies. Some of the chains are quite long.

And our last Founder has died. Christine! Our poor stressed out gambler geologist.

Drone will clean her up eventually.

Okay, that’s still nice, but I’m not sure it was worth multiple stops.

This will probably be how we get concrete for the time being. Trading is why I even have rivals. Otherwise I wouldn’t even have them, there’d be no point.

Another faction opportunity we’ll have to skip. Plasma Cutters would be a nice tech as it will increase the production of our mines, but it’s just too expensive to get in the time limit.

Huh, I’ve been most everywhere now, where is that last underground wonder? Wait, it’s not in the middle is it? Did I not get close enough?

Yeah, that was it, I didn’t get close enough. The Bottomless Pit is a research focused wonder. The joke is you throw things into the pit to test if it’s actually bottomless. FOR SCIENCE! It can unlock more breakthroughs, so it’s worth doing, even late in the game.

The other two wonders, by the way, are the Ancient Artifact which gives a super drone hub that covers the entire underground and the Jumbo Cave which unlocks some advanced underground dome techs. A bigger one mostly.

I guess that’s a good place to stop. Mostly because it was 10:30 at night and I wanted to get some sleep. Anyway, next time I think it’s time to get the Martian Assembly up.

NEXT TIME: THE OPPOSITE OF PROGRESS

 

[Eishtmo]

Last time, we discovered a Bottomless Pit and I made a punny joke that you will eventually understand if you missed it.

We’re pretty stable right now. Cash is low, but we pushed pretty hard to expand the colony and load up on supplies.

We’re still scanning anomalies down in the dark, and really another rare metal patch is always appreciated.

Okay, breakthrough planetary anomaly. Need 7 Engineers. Okay, I can get them, but I need some time to get things set up.

I add another fuel depot. The rockets aren’t moving much at the moment and I don’t want to run out of storage room. Notice I have the depots oddly placed. So another game a long time ago I had a large storage area of fuel, practically full in fact. And it got hit with a meteor and blew it all up. So now I spread my fuel out, and typically around the landing pad to accelerate refueling. The pads have this nice little cut out that fits just right for the pads, so I use them.

Wait, what? I GOT THIS ALREADY! It’s how we got the capture breakthrough I still haven’t researched. Why did I get it again? What would happen if I took the first option again. . .

No, no, I’m not playing that game again. I’ll tag the last option, that will give me a random breakthrough.

Okay, that’s interesting. I tend not to use recharge stations, I probably should, but this would make them more useful. Low on the list.

Now we can build underground domes. Only Micro or Basic sized ones, the smallest domes we can build on the surface. Medium domes only unlock through the Jumbo Cave. I think. It may show up as a regular breakthrough.

Moving fast through the surface scanning. I know it seems silly to rescan everything, but deep scanning will reveal more resource patches and give us more anomalies to scan. I love scanning anomalies.

Even if I don’t get anything. Bleh.

I would love this tech, but I can’t get it right now. Just don’t generate enough research.

I really do need more research, but I also want to get that planetary anomaly that needs more Engineers. So time to set up more places to live.

Apartments are my bread and butter for housing. This particular skin is probably my favorite of the 4 styles. I tend to use different ones per dome, but I’ll try to change it up as we go along.

While I do want those Engineers, I want to get more Scientists first. And Officers, they work best in the Earth Embassy. And the Embassy is currently giving me some extra research, so I am getting more science doing this.

I set up the dome to keep all the Scientists and Officers in the dome where they’ll work.

We setup the first Research Lab, but I restrict who can work there. By default anyone can work anywhere, but by enforcing the best specialization makes restricts it. I will use this to sort people back and forth as need be.

More Saints? Oh please, don’t give me Children of the Ark as one of the political parties. They are such a pain in the ass to deal with.

And doing this again. Did the game run out of anomalies to give me? I thought there were quite a few different ones in the underground. Maybe an update messed them up.

Knowing that the event chain from earlier will wrap up soon, I make sure to arrange which research projects get a nice influx of points.

The Medical Post in Dome 1 is missing a worker. If you see this warning that’s what’s going on. I’ll fix it later, but it’s fine for now.

Okay, that’s the last of the Underground anomalies, at least so far. So let’s go take a look at the Cave of Wonders.

So most of the wonders and mysteries have this log of events so we can keep track of what’s happened so far and what to do next. In this case we can keep scanning for optional extra stuff. There is NO reason not to do this one.

Forever Young completed and now the Seniors are back to work. I had to open up some more work spaces. Seniors like Martha here have grey hair.

Heavy Workload isn’t something I plan to use, but I have to pass all the laws, so there we go.

More.

MORE!

Pick yourself up, dust yourself off and get us MORE!

While I’m digging my rover out, let’s flatten this area out so I can position a dome for future development.

I haven’t used too many waste rock stockpiles in the underground, but there’s a lot of waste rock down here and they do get in the way of building, so I’ll collect it here.

This is probably the best position for a future dome. This gives me the vista point, the research site, and puts me in range of petty much every resource patch in the area. Unless of course we get MORE!

This is probably the last choice, and while I would love MORE deposits, I’ll take the moral boost instead. I have more than enough honestly. This will make this dome the happiest dome in the entire colony when I finally build it.

Meanwhile Europe is still asking for way too much for their stupid science. BLEH!

Exploring the Pit is next. I love the first idea is thrown a rock in it. I’m sure we’ll get something more scientific over time.

Clearly we need to throw a bigger rock. We have plenty of waste rock so no big deal.

Well, it wasn’t the best plan I guess. I will do some metagaming here as I know exactly what the next few activities are, and we can’t really afford to do them right now. Maybe later.

Okay, I need a school. Schools prevent some of the bad traits, like idiot, while giving beneficial traits to the children.

I’ve put this off too long. Time to install the Martian Assembly. Because of my Sponsor, I get this for free as a prefab. Quite a large building. It also cannot be removed once installed, part of why I have been holding off.

So we get to chose our starting government. This is a random selection from quite a list. The idea is that it will spawn certain factions, and set how different elements of the government works. I take Liberal Utopia as I’m planning for passing the last law in the game and Consulting is a nice fit for my evil plans.

So the laws that start our colony are pretty nice.

Consulting means we don’t have to worry about votes. We just pass whatever we want. I still want to keep the parties happy, but if I want something now, I can just take it.

Number of seats doesn’t mean anything because they don’t vote, but I want to let them think it matters at least.

I don’t mind political opponents. Eventually I will, but not now.

Culture just makes the different parties happy or not. Most don’t matter.

Happy Childhood means a chance to get an additional perk. Positive for now. Maybe later I’ll want something more, aggressive. But it’s fine for now.

And here’s our parties and. . . Oh no.

Remember when I said I should build a school way back when the first kids got born? Yeah, the stupid party has been formed. The Flat Mars League is an anti-science party. Keeping them happy while expanding will be a nightmare.

There has never been a more appropriate acronym for a name.

New Sol is pretty easy to please. Just have to build some shopping buildings and they’ll probably be happy for a long time.

Our Sponsor is now a party. Nothing has changed here.

This is the faction I took in my last game. Should be okay with them.

And that’s the laws list fully expanded, minus the stuff for being independent. That’s the next goal: Martian Independence.

And first thing the Flat heads want a workshop.

Workshops are special buildings that do one thing really well: give people a place to work. As we graduate out of survival mode in the game, we’ll soon have more people than jobs, so workshops give us somewhere to put them. At the moment we have one workshop, the TV Studio. It’s also the only one that produces anything of value: Money.

We’ll stick it behind the Assembly building and. . . wait, what is that goal?

Okay, so last time I played, the goal to declare independence was 30% in all terraforming stats. I didn’t know this but that was a random chance based on your initial government.

I could have gotten the terraforming one again here, or have the 2500 research per Sol. Which would have been a pain with the Idiot party at work. 120 techs is totally doable. Though I might not do it right away even if I do get the techs I need.

In the meantime my deep scanning has given me more breakthroughs, and I’m taking core rare metals. More resource patches will always be nice.

Also you can see how many work slots the TV studio has. That’s PER SHIFT. Having 40% of your workers in workshops is one of the milestones.

There isn’t really a downside to any of these choices, but I don’t import food much and the food service buildings don’t cost much to build, so I’ll take the comfort boost.

I built a Large Nursery in the other dome, so it’s time to clear some space in the old one. Taking out the playground and the nursery. I haven’t decided what to build in their place, but I think much of my work will be replacing the housing complexes.

Underground Flight School is what will eventually allow me to fully populate the underground. Also you can see the Large Nursery between the school and apartment.

Further confirmation of the requirements to declare independence. Have to look at the research screen to see how many I have, wish it was on this screen too. There are 147 base techs, plus all the breakthroughs so I’ll be most of the way through the entire tree before I can do this. Almost wish it had been the terraforming one, I could have done that quicker.

Another breakthrough anomaly. Service bots aren’t super necessary, and kind of expensive. If I was pushing harder for workshop spam they might be worth it. Vector Pump would be nice, if I didn’t have so many water patches I could flood the surface myself. Magnetic Extraction is just flat out better.

Almost forgot to flatten out the spot the old concrete plant was in.

The school at work. I think the worst part is the Large Nursery holds way more kids than the school does. Like more than 2 times. Luckily I don’t have a lot of kids right now, so it’s no big deal. I can set which traits they should learn from the school, but they’re pretty limited and I think these are the best for the time being.

And I think that’s a good place to stop. This is a big step for colony and our next step will take a bit longer.

Oh, and the joke? The opposite of progress? Congress.

NEXT TIME: We’re lucky they’re so stupid.

 

[Violentvixen]

I have no idea why, but as soon as I read Frugalarchy my brain put it to the tune of the Robin Hood song.

 

[Mogri]

Well, now mine does too

 

[Eishtmo]

How evil.

 

[Eishtmo]

Last time we finally built the Martian Assembly building, and promptly were reminded that stupidity wasn’t left behind on Earth. This time we need to start spinning our colony up and being laying the ground work for expansion.

I’m still trying to trade for machine parts. This will fail, again. So I’ll switch it to concrete.

And China comes through. I have plenty of metal, so trading it for concrete is a good deal. Long term, I see trading metal for lots of stuff. Should be fun.

Seriously, you want me to declare independence already? FML.

Honestly, I’d rather prepare this law instead. This has the Earth Embassy gives me a second gift, in this case a supply pod with one of these items, for free. Please, I would love that.

My power is in the red so it’s pulling from my batteries. I can fix this with the extra Stirling prefab I have here. I should be able to build up my power pretty smoothly now. And who the hell is Earthsick?

Svante doesn’t like being on Mars. Earthsick colonists will get on the first rocket they can find and want to leave ASAP. I want more colonists from Earth, so I’ll send the rocket on it’s way. There is a law that deals with Earthsick colonists, and they’re petty things.

Workshops are worker magnets. People will file in rapidly and exit the jobs I actually need done. So I restrict the number of slots by disabling them (turning them red). It slows the progress on the TV show they’re producing, but it’s not my priority right now.

This spot has so much metal in it. 52K? Crazy. I don’t think I’ve ever had a map with this much. I really need to expand the colony.

A close up of the Martian Assembly building. When the Assembly is meeting it will say that on this screen, but I don’t know what these symbols are for. Probably random. When the Assembly is in session, it will say it on these screens.

My next load of colonists to start filling out the colony more. I’ve suddenly thought how odd it is to bring in so many new colonists. Usually I just let the colony grow via children, so shipping in a lot of colonists is something not common for me. I need them though.

Energy Infrastructure will slowly solve my power problems. Drones are good too. Probes are, well, worthless at this stage. Water Infrastructure would give me more vaporators, so worth is relative to need.

Get in the factory and get to work.

Checking the rare metals pad, we still have quite a bit to dig out. I should point out that the “High” grade just means it produces less waste rock per unit of ore. Waste rock will eventually be a very big problem. We’re doing fine at the moment.

Another breakthrough choice. Nano Refinement is useless on this map, I have metals for DAYS. Overcharge would be nice, but unnecessary. Dome Streamlining, though, that would help me expand a great deal.

Sometimes a colonist just doesn’t know what to do with themselves. Zenith here just can’t find a job, despite there being plenty. I can assign one to him and get him going. I do note he is lazy, so he probably just didn’t want one. Too bad, go to work ya bum.

This tech really just makes my tanks hold more stuff. Always good to have, but I haven’t really had any shortfalls in a while. There’s a big project I will eventually do much later down the line that will need it though.

Culture doesn’t really affect anything except making a party happier. This will push New Sol and FML a bit closer to being happy.

It’s time to shed some light on the underground. I need a bucket load of polymers for it, and I have plenty.

The light tripod will help brighten up this place. I do need a drone to build it and a polymer for it, so I grab my drone commander with a single drone and the transport with a full load of polymers to being the process.

Much better! I do try to space the lights out. I park the drone commander on a current light and see where I can place the next one. I’m keeping the lights to the sides of the passages to make way for various things.

Outsourcing is a nice option for research. The costs of some of these techs is getting very, VERY high. 5000 research is a bargin at $1 B, and I have $3B, but I don’t want to use it yet. I have an evil plan in the works. That said, I’m sure FML will hate it.

ANOTHER breakthrough anomaly. So many, I luv them. Vector pump still not appealing. Inspiring Architecture was broken at launch and caused the game to lock up. They supposedly fixed it but no, not this time. Mole People, that’s a great plan. With some many good resources underground, I am looking to expand down there.

So the rule with building underground is always, ALWAYS build your first dome right near the entrance. This one is a nice location. The reason to build it here though is that colonists are kind of stupid.

They want to live in a dome, and if the dome is far away, they’ll head there. On foot. Even if there are trains or shuttles ready to ferry them to the dome. So I build a dome here so they don’t run through the dark tunnels until they run out of oxygen. ASK ME HOW I KNOW!

Oh, and I finished the Dozer Rover tech. I get why these exist, but I rarely use them.

Better angle on the dome. In any case, I won’t be building this YET. I want that Dome Streamlining tech first. I don’t think it effects the Exotic Minerals (in fact I’m sure it doesn’t), but cutting down on the concrete and metal costs can only help me out in the future.

Project Iridium wants an RC Safari. Well I have been planning to bring one in, so let’s arrange it.

Safari rovers are special. They’re for tourists but occasionally they’ll show up as a requirement for a planetary anomaly. I usually try to have one of each rover for this reason.

I also piled on a bunch of drones.

Ah yes, the Earthsick law. Forced to Stay is extreme, but it makes FML happy, and honestly I don’t usually have a lot of Earthsick people. That one earlier is more the exception that the rule.

I just happened to check my sponsor goals and, um, when did I finish that last one? FML is unhappy, right?

How are they happy? Why? Wait, where’s that one anger point.

EARLIER:

That one. “More than estimated 800 Research per Sol” Where did it go?

Okay, this is going to be stupid. So I got the extra positive point for the Earthsick law and that brought them up to just below the Happy mark. Then, and I had to think about it but it’s the only answer: it got dark out.

During the day, my research lab is going. 2 shifts worth, 3 scientists each, pumping away hard to raise my research rate to 1000. But the last shift, the one at night, is disabled. No one is working, so the research drops to it’s base rate, which right now is 600. BELOW the 800 they want. That made them Happy.

We’re lucky they’re so stupid.

Okay, Safari rover is here, and thus begins my master plan. Safari’s follow a waypoint route for their tour. The underground is SO big, I can’t easily explore every corner for extra resources or anomalies. So I set up a tour route and let the Safari do all the work. This first route is in the south west corner of the map

And look at that, 2 more anomalies for me to scan. Wonderful. Ignore that this is far into the future.

And my first gift from the Embassy has arrived. These will be a regular thing for a while. That takes quite a load off for the near future.

Here you can see all the prefabs I have on hand now. You start with 1 drone hub, I brought a second at launch, and the 4 recharge stations. The shuttle hubs came from that anomaly event and the extractor was from completing the recon center tech.

Another freebie product. Remember that thing earlier where the price of food went up and I wasn’t concerned about it? Yeah, this is part of why. That said, I tag Seeds here as that’s part of my terraforming efforts.

And we’re just about back to where we left off with scanning. Oh, and I apparently picked up ANOTHER Saint on that last trip. Lot of them running around.

The Codex isn’t happy. I can fix it, sure, but not yet.

Another damn breakthrough. I went with Hull Polarization in this case. As the buildings get more advanced, they start needing more resources, and if I have idiots running around, they’ll break things too. If I can save resources I will.

There’s my favorite tech in the game. Prefab-Refab lets us take an existent building and turn it into a prefab to set up again later. It’s frightfully expensive, but it is at the bottom of the tree and it's completely worth it.

Okay, back to this image. You can see how much I’ve lit up of the underground at this point. I want to loop all the way around to the other entrance and back to the elevator. Then I’ll worry about side passages.

Autonomous Hubs comes in finally. I don’t need them YET, but this will be a big boon when I do need them.

Time to send some stuff downstairs. I usually send only a small amount down and keep the main storage on the surface. 30 is the limit of the large, universal depot per item. I don’t quite have enough, or need that many electronics and machine parts in the underground, so I send less. Until I get a new dome established, everything will have to come from the surface.

I was wondering why I couldn’t build the dome a bit further over, and it turned out there was some surface metal laying around over there. I feel dumb. This is why I used to use a mod to highlight them on the surface. Once this is out of the way I’ll move the dome over a bit.

This is the only part of this law FML is fine with. Brainwash the kids, we don’t care, as long as you don’t educate them. This is more for Universities which I don’t think I’ve even researched yet.

I shifted the dome over near the elevator a bit. You can see how much brighter things are getting now. I got a bit side tracked with my tripod lighting. I’ll move back toward the elevator next time.

Exiting the game and it makes a reference to Alpha Centauri. Now there’s a game I wasted WAY too much time on. Makes it all the more galling the rivals system is so gutless. You guys have seen this working before, CLEARLY.

Anyway, that’s enough for now. Until then.

NEXT TIME: The Sun is overrated.

 

[Eishtmo]

Welcome back. Our colony isn’t doing half bad right now. Growth is doing well and we’ve got plans for the future. I guess we should. . . What is that around my rare metal extractor?

The hell? Okay, so when a drone doesn’t have a place to put waste rock it just dumps it around whatever it’s pulling it out of. But I have a place for waste rock.

Oh, that’s why. The last pile is JUST outside drone range of the Elevator. Okay, that makes sense. And the only reason some ended up here is because when drones first arrive on a rocket, they BELONG to the rocket, which is in range. Annoying. I’ll set up another pile. Waste rock will only grow in annoyance as time goes on. There are uses for it, really good ones, but it’ll be a bit before we can get those techs.

Tech wise, I’m going to finish Core Rares, get Dome Streamlining, then get Capture Asteroid as if we want to expand deeper into the underground, I need more Exotics, and they come from asteroids. Passenger module lets me bring in more people. Martian Education is a big boost as the University trains specialists and the School Spire can hold all the children a Large Nursery has, and then some.

In the meantime, I need more resources, more drones, and some small factories. Machine Parts require metal to make, and Electronics need rare metals. I have plenty of metal so I might as well start cranking out Machine Parts. These small ones really don’t produce more than a small amount, enough to keep up with consumption basically. But that’s all I need right now.

Mysterious Rocket. This is a nice event as letting the rocket land gives you a free rocket. There is a potential downside, either a moral hit or a food production hit, both for a short time. But free rocket!

And peeps! More colonists for the colony. For free. Though we don’t get to pick who we get. No matter, get in my dome.

I do need to get some more job openings at the moment. I make enough polymers for a couple Art Stores. These will satisfy the Luxury and Shopping services, and it makes New Sol happy, so wins all around.

And with those extra 10 colonists, we’re now officially over 100. Of course, that means the Mysteries can start spawning. Most take at LEAST 100 colonists, but others need more. So I’ll have to keep an eye out. At this point I think I can handle most of the issues if they come up.

I did quick check to see if any of those new colonists will be a problem and NOPE. Good, makes my life easier.

That said, I’m starting to get tight on space so I replaced one of the living complexes with an apartment. This is the base skin.

The big issue with the Machine Parts factory, both kinds, is the colossal power requirements. Basically nothing short of full on Wonders take this much power. I can afford it, if I only run it for one shift. I need more power.

Why do the Flat Martians like this? I don’t understand. Okay, if it makes you happy.

And it does. Fine by me.

The Core Rare tech is done and it’s kind of hard to pick out which are which at this point.

This one is closest to the colony proper. It’s still a bit out of drone range though. I’ll have to think out to exploit it.

Or I could just get this one. Damn that was a lucky draw. It’s also part of the reason I wanted the tech before I even considered building. This dome will be very lucrative, once I get the tech to get to it.

Time to do some Outsourcing. It boosts your tech for a short time. 1000 research per Sol for 5 Sols for $1 B? I think I can handle that right now.

I thought I saw some scientists working in one of the mines, and I thought that was odd. Turns out I have 9 of them now. Must have gotten 3 of them from the mysterious rocket. I’ll activate the last shift. FML won’t be happy about that, but I want that tech as soon as possible.

And now I generate more machine parts than I use. Well, just anyway.

I might get this done before the outsourcing finishes. Very nice.

My adventures with the Safari rover revealed even more anomalies. I also didn’t realize those passages didn’t connect when I started laying down light poles.

I missed the earlier one, but this is the TV Station at work. Yeah, it’s not much money, but every little bit helps.

You can rename most anything in this game. This is the free rocket I got so I dub it Settler #!, to keep it in line with the rest of the rockets. It’s a nice theme name.

Loading up the rocket, but I don’t need a whole lot right now. So I grab another commander and transport. Why?

I need concrete. This patch is well outside drone range, so I need a way to build and maintain it, then to get the material back. Commanders can do the work remotely but getting the material out to build and bringing the concrete back I need a Transport. Or I could do shuttles, but I don’t have the fuel throughput for that yet.

There’s that Seniors policy. Deporting them is one way to deal with Seniors via the laws. The other options are to work them to death or drain them of cash if they live in retirement homes. So it’s the US health care system basically. I don’t need either as my Seniors work hard and have plenty of Viagra.

Instead I’ll prep this. Reducing shuttle fuel consumption is nice, even if the cost to maintain this law is a bit of research.

I need more cash, and the easiest way to do it is via the SETI Satellite special mission. It’s costly in terms of electronics, but I have enough and can spare them for now.

I finished my loop around the underground. Looks like some kind of critter. Anyway, now to fill in the various side passages.

The concrete extractor takes metals and machine parts to build, and machine parts to maintain. I also need to power it, but one large solar panel can handle that, and I’ll just turn off the night shift so it doesn’t bug me. The panels need metal to maintain, but I can keep a small supply near the extractor while it works.

RockScape concert! Awesome, I have all their albums. Can you slip me some tickets?

Whoops.

It’s a silly event and honestly there upside is rather mild, but I still take it anyway. Why would anyone refuse it? Unless they’re stuffy religious types.

Double shift law will increase my production. Most of my job sites are doubles, so that’s always a bonus. If any were opposed to it, the Single shift is fine too, but that would mostly effect the farms as that’s the only shift they can have.

And I got my new concrete extractor set up. Notice the solar panel is outside of that ring around the extractor? That ring is the dust ring. Anything in that ring will be covered in dust and need maintenance more often.

Dome Streamlining is done. And look at the difference it makes for the Oval Dome. I’ll be plopping these down all over.

But really the underground dome got the biggest boost. As I figured, the Exotics didn’t get affected, but that’s fine. I can get more of those.

Down to the last few sectors to scan. Now don’t think I’ll pack up my sensor towers any time soon. They can still warn of coming disasters, and the more you have the more warning you get. That said, I did pick an area with few disasters, so it hasn’t come up. Yet.

Keeping the Moron party happy with the little things.

With the tech finally in hand, and my load of polymers empty, I set the underground transport to automated. It will go around, gather any surface resources and bring them to the nearest depot, which is next to the new dome.

And it immediately goes and picks up a pile of polymers. Whelp, guess I’m putting in more lights instead. Gives me something to do while waiting for techs to finish.

Speaking of which, there’s Capture Asteroid. Should probably get the lander tech so I can, you know, land on asteroids.

Lots of small techs to grab. Obviously Micro-G Landers give me the asteroid landers. Martian Vegetation is the first serious tech of the teraforming tree, but I’m looking for something particular further down the tree. Underground trains are just to let me build train stations in the underground. And it’s cheap.

Also time to get rid of these windmills. I get more power per tile from the Stirlings.

Well that’s done. Yay cash. Not sure why this makes money, but it does!

That said, the amount of cash you get drops every time you do it, so eventually it isn’t worth the effort.

That old metal patch is starting to dry up. They don’t last forever, and 120 Sol is actually a really long time (roughly 240 years, technically). Sadly it will keep telling me it’s running out until it runs out. Something that didn’t happen at all in the old version.

This makes the Flaters happy, but also means I don’t have to worry about building any gaming buildings. Saves on maintenance. Though Shopping would save me even more money, but whatever.

The next rocket we bring in will carry 22 people rather than 12. Considering I’m planning some explosive growth in the nearish future, that could help a lot.

And there’s the Martian University and School Spire. So I’m debating building a separate dome just for education, but I think I want a bigger one. I need to debate what size and how big. I’m still a bit short on power for lots of domes, but it is something I need to start thinking about.

Seriously, why are all these suggestions bad? I mean, the Codex’s suggestion isn’t too bad, but I’m not doing that right now.

Instead we’ll do this. Gets some workers out of the Embassy and back into the regular workforce. I think it increases the rate of the Embassy rewards to match the lower workforce requirements, so I should be getting them more often now.

I need more power, make up electronics I used for SETI, and another explorer. Eventually when I start dealing with asteroids, the explorer will be needed. Also I just like having a back up.

Martian Vegetation. Seeds are a resource I kind of hate. Early on, you either buy them from Earth or sacrifice your food production to make them. For a long time, you’re constantly scrapping together enough seeds for the Forestation Plants.

Then, at a certain point, seeds just being auto generated by the literal thousands. Luckily the drones won’t gather them if your storage is full, but they will fill that storage. I recommend only have a few pads of seeds or else you’ll never be rid of the damn things.

With my metal patch finally drying up, and the rare metal one not much longer for this world either, I need Deep Metal Extraction. It’s expensive, so I’ll probably do the Outsourcing thing again to get it.

Also I didn’t get the tech I wanted from the terraforming tree, so Greenhouse Mars is the next tech that’s cheap and somewhat useful. It burns fuel to make greenhouse gases and warm the planet. This is the real trap of the terraforming tree, it’s early on and easy to set up, but it drains your fuel stocks when you need them the most. The worst part though is that planet warming is needed for most of the other terraforming options, like advanced plants and lakes, so you do kind of want to start early.

Water Reclamation gives us a spire that reduces the water consumption of a dome. Not useful, but really, really cheap.

Also notices the Bottomless Pit Lab tech is 10% done because I threw some big rocks into it. I think you can get it down to 50% if you follow all the options.

And the landers are here at last.

For now, we can only buy them from Earth, but that’s okay. $1 B isn’t too bad, and it will be useful, but I don’t need it yet.

Okay, so I need to pass the Independence laws for the achievement, but I also need this thing, Dictatorship. It requires Single Party and Consulting to even prepare. I’m halfway there. Of course, I still need the rest of the laws too and I’m not as far as it might seem.

In the meantime, I’ll grab this. Lower power usage would be very useful right now.

I don’t have enough water on the surface for my underground dome, and water vaporators can’t be built here. So since I have plenty, I’ll build a water extractor instead. It’s a mine, for water. It doesn’t need any workers at least.

I also set up some of my Stirlings down here. Power and water can be routed up through the Elevator so I can share resources between the underground and surface.

Really? A breakthrough anomaly here?

You can’t see it because the icons are blocking it, but the square behind the Transport icon is where that anomaly is. I’ll have to flatten the ground to get in there as rovers won’t be able to get it. I was a bit afraid of this, and there’s another spot (under 3 I think) where there’s some flat ground, and the chance for another anomaly. Or even a resource! This game.

And with the metal patch empty, now the rare metal patch is on it’s last legs. I need to get another mine up, and the best one is down in the underground.

I can build trains down here now.

Trains come in two parts, stations and tracks. You start with a regular station, which allows one track in and out of the station. I do plan to set one up down here mostly to move resources from the Cave of Wonders to the elevator, but I don’t need one yet.

Figure I should do some tech trading. Remote farming is a tech I’m not sure how it’s supposed to work but it increases the productivity of some of the early farming buildings outside of dome ranges. But those need people to work them, and they have to live in domes. Well I have Nat Habs, so those will be nice to have later I guess.

Subsurface Heating gives me the subsurface heater, which I don’t need as my colony is basically on the equator. No cold waves here. Same reason I moved to Texas honestly.

Dome is up, but it’s short on oxygen as my single MOXIE can’t support all 3 domes. No biggy, I’ll build it down here. Eventually I’ll build some storage for water and oxygen down here as well, just in case something stupid happens on the surface.

I set up the brown version of the apartment down here. I’m not playing games with population this time. I don’t have enough Exotics to build another full sized dome so I can’t quickly expand if this grows too fast.

One of the key secrets to making a happy dome is to build a garden. Small gardens are nice for filler, but a medium one is the best option for this dome. The large one I used in the Oval one on the surface.

I also used the alternative skin for the rare metal extractor. It just looks different, that’s all. I’m keeping it to the side so I have room for train tracks later.

I really wouldn’t think the FML would like tipping, but they do, I guess. Okay.

Water extractors will only produce as much water as the demand calls for, up to their maximum. So this could produce 6, but it only needs 1.5 to keep the colony topped off. Once I get another water tower set up, it’ll go full bore until the tower is full.

So I used the elevator to call down some colonists (I meant to have a screenshot of it and forgot) and somehow the children came. Go away. I don’t have a place for you down here.

I do want to clear this patch relatively quickly. I’ll get Deep Metal Extraction soon, and once they start mining that they’ll basically never stop. Clearing the smaller patch will make it so I don’t have to worry about moving workers around later.

Well since I have that stupid anomaly stuck behind some rough terrain, looks like it’s time to bring in a Dozer. And more drones and electronics. And my first load of seeds. Might as well get started with greening Mars.

More resources from the underground anomalies. Love to see it.

I set up a second fuel refinery and set my 3rd rocket to take rare metals. I’m going to probably have to start a regular route soon as I will have rares coming out of my ears soon enough.

So the elevator requests will keep pulling what you, even if the other side doesn’t have it. I wanted 3 Geologists (all of the ones I had on the surface) and one died down here. Now it’s trying to bring in another and can’t.

Finally starting to get to the bottom of the tech tree. The various Wonders now start showing up. These are super buildings that do one thing really well. The Space Elevator will ship out exports automatically and you can order new products from Earth without a rocket. Very nice, but also very expensive to research, build and maintain. With it though, you could almost do without any rockets at all. Almost.

Forestation Plants plant plants. Lichen to start, but then grasses, bushes and trees. Pricey to build and they take quite a bit of power, but I want to get started sooner rather than later as plants seem to take a while.

That weird shading is the Soil Enrichment law active from the Sensor Towers. The richer the soil, the easier it is for various plants to take root. I expect there to be a lot of lichen in the near future around the colony.

Deal with the devil eh? I went to the story bits on the wiki just to see what I would get from this deal and, yeah, it’s not worth it in the long run. Whodathunk? I tell him to scram.

Bye bye. Go talk to Blue Sun, I’m sure they’ll be happy to agree.

Whoa, what happened to my power? I thought I had more than enough.

Oh, right, the factory. No biggy, just plop down a couple more Stirlings. It’ll be fine. I really am running into power issues more and more. I almost want to blow all my cash on more Stirlings just to make up the difference.

More Exotics. Nice. That should be enough to build a whole second dome and still have some left over.

But for now I think I’ll call it a night. I think we need to focus on power and research, then start expanding some more. That’s a rough plan at least. Until then.

NEXT TIME: Rocking out, space style

 

[Eishtmo]

Last time we dug deep and set up an underground dome. The quest for more resources continues

Before we continue on, I want to show you the opening menu. I probably should have started here, but meh.

Tutorials are just that, a serious of short tutorials. I know I did them in the previous version, but I skipped them this time because, well, I didn’t need them.

New Game and Load Game are obvious.

Creative Mode I have never actually ever used. I know, weird right? I think the idea is to be able to build your ideal colony without, you know, playing the game. Neat idea and I’m glad it’s here.

Challenges is another thing I have never done, though I have looked at it. Just a series of “do X before X Sol” type things with some basics established.

Along the bottom is the Mod Manager and Editor. Yes, the game can be modded, and there have been some good ones in the old version. But currently mods disable the achievements. Despite playing a fully scale game last time, because I needed a mod to fix my game so it played because of a bug, I didn’t get any of the achievements for it. I’m going modless for this run though.

That’s really a shame as there are always some good quality of life stuff in there, like putting amount of surface resources on the large map, highlighting resources on the ground with little icons (so I would have known there were metal patches near the elevator for instance), an some slightly larger resource depots.

The big draw though is more colony icons, sponsors and profiles. Sometimes entire buildings and new techs. And music. Yes, the game has music, and there was a mod in the old version to add the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack disk called Radio Free Mars. So fitting. Guess I’ll just have to play it from my own recordings as I play.

So we’re doing pretty well right now. I still need more power during the day, and I need to expand more, but we’re stable right now.

Almost done scanning the whole map. There’s another concrete patch in the bottom corner, and I would like to clear that too. Looks like I need to make a path.

Go forth Dozer, do your work. The Dozer will do any landscaping project, and also haul around 100 waste rock, far more than my transport. Downside is I can’t automate that part.

There is a limit to how much you can landscape at one time, so I this path is half the length it needs to be.

Here’s the other half. The hexes look weird when they cover very vertical areas like this. You an also see what it will take to flatten the area, the removal of waste rock in this case. Ramps usually need waste rock to build them.

Our terraforming machines have been busy. See all the green stuff? Lichen. There’s now life on Mars itself.

I want it the forestation plants to be faster. Let’s get this prepped to go.

I’m adding Low-G Engineering to my research queue. The larger, single spire dome might come in handy somewhere down the line. Maybe even near the current domes on the surface.

Mega Storage are extra large storage tanks that I would prefer over my current tanks. Still looking for that tech in the terraforming tree.

In the meantime, I want to get that Deep Metal Extraction done. Outsource away.

The Elevator won’t pull resources from one side or the other unless there’s demand for it. Given that I want the rare metals on the surface, I need to build in demand. The simple answer is to over request it. Well, at least for now. I’ll have to check it later. For now, it should be fine. Long term, I’ll have to increase it from 100 to 1000.

And we’ve finished all the sector scans. That means probes are absolutely useless. Wish there was a use for them at this point, but luckily I don’t have any.

Still have children in the underground. Fine, FINE, I’ll set up a Nursery. I’ll worry about a school later.

Really? REALLY? Gem Architecture? The DIAMOND dome? Of course I took it.

I’ll be honest, in my time playing the old version of the game, I rarely got either of the double spire domes, so rare I don’t think I’ve ever built either of them. I’m going to credit the choice of breakthroughs for this. I do worry this might effect my game as there are specific breakthroughs I prefer and I’ll take them over something more interesting.

I think I’ll put a dome up here in the future. I’ve mocked in an Oval, but I kind of want a Diamond. 3 decent resources in range, concrete just off to the side, and another metal patch to the south that I can expand to with a dome if I want. This is in the far north of the map, so it’s about as far away as I can get. Though I do need to clear some space. Dozer, get to work.

On the right, the Dozer at work, on the left, Deep Metal Extraction is done, in the middle, I got another Stirling from the Embassy. Very nice.

I think the underground anomalies looped back on themselves. I don’t mind the cost reduction, but I would like something new instead.

I’m checking my settings for colonists in the underground. I sent all my Scientists to the underground as that dome is on a research point, which means I get more research from buildings in there. I plan to have several in the future.

FML is At Breaking Point. They’re very, VERY unhappy. Not sure how to fix this. Or if it can be fixed.

That doesn’t mean I can’t do something at least. The Detainment Center is a way to discourage people from joining a particular faction. In this case, the Flatidiots. The downside is it only works on a per dome basis. So I will still have FML in the other domes. But as this one is the most populous, it should reduce their overall influence. Also they like me at night, so that might keep things from getting worse with them.

More planetary anomalies. Only one, Element, is a breakthrough. I have enough Engineers for that, so let’s see what we get.

Neo Concrete isn’t all that important honestly. Even the worst concrete maps are still good enough to build domes.

In the old version of the game, Printed Electronics was a really good breakthrough as drones were hard to come by. But with the Earth Embassy, and the supply of free drones it will dish out when I switch over (and I will eventually), it’s not as necessary.

Honestly only the Ancient Terraforming Device is worth the effort. It will be nice much later into the game than it is now, which is good as it will cost a lot to research it.

Terraforming Goals, as a law, is really, REALLY crazy. Sustainable Effort basically makes terraforming exponential. I was stunned in my first game at how quick I moved Mars from nothing to a breathable atmosphere. It’s so bad I think they’re working on a nerf for it. Going to use it while I can.

“Cause trouble” could mean anything. I’m not sure what will happen. I guess I’ll try to make them slightly happier.

Okay, I didn’t mean to highlight Holographic Scanning here. The point is Creative Realities, which unlocks the VR Workshop. Installing one should cause them to chill out a bit. Maybe.

Wow, doing that SETI launch really, REALLY pissed them off. I don’t think it’ll expire either. That’s annoying.

And Low-G Engineering is done. The Amusement park is a nice addition, and it does more than just please Tourists, the locals will go as well, and be happy.

I’m also still building lights in the underground.

The better soil work is starting to take root. So there are 3 option slots for the forestation plant, and I’m not sure HOW they work, but right now I only have lichen anyway, so it doesn’t matter at the moment.

Wow, my sensor towers really stand out on this map now. There's no way to see this unless you have this mode activated from the forestration plants, at least as far as I know.

Need more supplies. Honestly I need to start building electronics myself. Oh, and this is an annoying issue. How many electronics do I currently have on my colony? Can’t tell? NEITHER CAN I! Those clouds make it hard to read. It’s 72, but I have to zoom in to see it. Can we put a shadow behind the numbers guys? Or a drop shadow or something?

I have quite a bit of rares, and decent fuel stocks, I can set this rocket to automated mode. It will now fill up on rares, go to Earth, and come right back for another load.

Oh, I found a couple more collapsed tunnels. That don’t really block anything. I’ll clear them out while my commander is here.

The description here is a bit deceptive. It seems to imply that people can’t leave domes without it, which is not true. What it ACTUALLY does, is retracts the domes themselves and opens them to the Martian atmosphere. Which means it can’t pass, and usually can’t even be prepared, until you have a breathable atmosphere, which I do not. It seems the Law Office can just prepare any old law. This will be useful later.

Finally found the tech I was looking for. The Carbonate Processor turns waste rock into atmosphere. It’s one of the two ways you can normally use waste rock. The other option turns waste rock into concrete. It’ll be a bit before I get either as they are 30k and 20k respectfully.

I’d love to declare independence, but you idiots don’t like science and I need 120 techs to do it. God they’re so stupid.

More Exotics in the underground. Well, I guess the recycled anomalies down here aren’t the worst thing. That should give me enough to build another underground dome, easily.

Oh, and I’m swapping out living quarters for apartments in the Oval dome, that’s why there is so many homeless. That will clear up soon enough.

So I wanted to put a medium dome right about here, but it won’t fit. Not without flattening out that hill near by, and I’d rather not. A basic one will fit here. I want to use it as my “education” dome. A School Spire, Large Nursery, and a Martian University. This will make the need for Earth colonists in the future.

More trading. Blue Sun doesn’t like me enough to trade techs I guess. Anyway, Drone Hub lets you build Drone Hubs, and is a tech I would have gotten if I didn’t use the elevator as a hub, and Safe Transport just makes rail transport safer, whatever that means.

With my old metal mine gone, and my rare extractor nearly done with it’s patch, I need a new place for people to work. The recon center is nice as it doesn’t contribute to our research amount directly, but can generate tech, as well as find asteroids. As I plan to expand my build underground as we go along, I need asteroid mining to get more Exotics. Also I can show you more stuff.

So let’s buy a Lander.

Increasing my underground extractors is a nice effect, let’s prep that. I do wonder why the upkeep says -4 research. Do I GAIN research from this? That would be a nice little bonus. Very little.

I’m going to swap the trade pad back to a landing pad for the lander. You can do this basically at will. Also I have another supply pod coming in.

I install an Electronics Factory to start supplying myself with electronics. I have a near infinite supply of rare metals now, might as well put them, and my people, to work.

Creative Realities is nearly done. I want that Triboelectric Scrubber, and Gene Adaption will let me use better crops for my farms. I need more food in general.

Here’s the VR Workshop. They eat Electronics, and just give places to work. That’s it. Should make the Moron Party happier.

Just wanted to show the drone’s swarming on the stockpiles to take them to the workshop. It’s fun watching them run.

I’m glad you like it. /s

I’m running a bit short of fuel, so I cancel the automated mode for Foundation. The landing pad it leaves from is restricted to be used solely by the automated rocket, so you can disable it via that pad.

MOAR SEEDS! I mean, they’re free, no reason not to.

Especially as this law is now active. Should speed my plant growth by leaps and bounds.

Recon centers don’t generate research, they generate “recon.” Once it hits 100, it will either detect an asteroid, or generate some research points.

And here’s an asteroid. Now I could do a Detailed Scan of the asteroid, using the electronics stored in the Recon Center. That will tell you exactly how many resource patches, how much is in those patches, and what’s on the surface. Nice I suppose, but it’s just easier to send a lander there directly.

Easier just to plan a trip. The will autoload a suggested load out, but this is terrible. Let’s start over.

First, we got a prefab Micro-G extractor way back when, so we’ll take that. Due to an oversight I won’t realize I can’t build any more until after I reach the asteroid. I never researched the tech.

First trip to an asteroid, I always take an explorer. It’s why I have a second one honestly. Not every time, but often enough, there are anomalies on the asteroids.

5 drones, 30 machine parts, 30 fuel and 30 metal. That’s all you really need, and most of the machine parts are for maintenance. ALWAYS take at least 15 fuel. You need that to get the lander back. I take more for reasons I will make clear in a bit.

While the lander loads up, I put in another seed pad and another metal pad. I know, my stockpiles look TERRIBLE. Don’t worry about it right now, once I get the scrubber I’ll fix it for good.

Okay, so you can’t see it, but notice how it says 25/30 for fuel? Yeah, that’s going up and down. Why? Not sure. I THINK the game treats the lander as a resource depot, and the rovers will take what it needs from there first. I have other rockets and the polymer plant that want fuel, so the drone, rather than going for the easy to access fuel pads, takes from the rocket first.

THIS is why I set it to more than 15. If you don’t and launch at the wrong time, you could go up with 14 fuel instead of 15 and strand your rocket. It’s VERY annoying to do this. I hope they fix this in the future.

Anyway, let’s go to Sargon BL10. Notice how the fuel is down to 24 now? I told you it was fluctuating. Due to various issues with the landers, we currently have to manually launch the landers. It’s annoying, but at least I can make sure it has enough fuel.

Welcome to Sargon BL10. Asteroids are small maps, small enough that if you place your lander just right you can get drone coverage on the entire map. There are 4 patches here, 2 rares, 1 exotic and 1 water.

None of the patches are very large. In fact they’re quite tiny. 50 is high for an asteroid in my experience. There’s also a scattering of surface resources, metals, polymers and exotics.

With the breakthrough tech we got, we don’t have to worry about the timer any more. Once we’re done with an asteroid, though, we can release it on it’s way. We can only have up to 3 asteroids in orbit at any given time, so it’s best to do so.

It’s at this point I forgot I can’t build another extractor. Ah well. I use solar panels here, so best to turn off the night shift or you’ll get warnings about not enough power. Again, small pad, only 46. It’ll take about 35 Sol to clear it out. That’s fine, I don’t mind waiting. The faster way is to get actual colonists up here, but again, small patches. Not worth the effort.

I also don’t have the tech.

What a pointless law. Prep it anyway. I’ll pass it later. Still got that -2 research. I need to test that soon.

Remember back when we got the Open Dome law prepared and normally we couldn’t. THIS is why it’s helpful. You can’t prepare the next law in the row until you prep the previous one. Normally, you can’t prepare the Open Dome law until you could, you know, open the domes. But the Law Office DGAF. It prepped this law for me, and I could pass it right now, but I’ll hold off a bit. There is, theoretically, a limit to the number of breakthroughs a single play through can have, and I want to put it off as long as possible.

More extractors. More drones, more power. Extractors aren’t super expensive right now, so it’s fine to buy them. That said, this is why the Prefab-Refab tech is so nice. It would let me turn deployed extractors back into prefabs and move them around, either on the asteroid, or send them back to Mars for the next one. Reduce waste and all that.

I don’t know why, but when the lander left, it took my commander’s drones with it, and I forgot to check that. I can resupply it from the elevator stock, but still, annoying. That said, the extractors can work without drones watching them 24/7, but eventually they’ll fill up or breakdown. Best not to do it for too long.

Sadly this warning will be perpetual on the asteroid until the patch is depleted.

And there’s the recon center at work. Another extra 1000 research to the pile, didn’t even budge my normal research amount. Sadly I can’t build them underground for, um, obvious reasons. And they don’t benefit from research patches either.

But that’s enough for now. Expansion is the name of the game now. Also we need to do some work so we can get the rest of the laws passed. Should be fun.

First though, I think we need an overview of the colony.

NEXT TIME: Colony review.

 

[Eishtmo]

Welcome back. This time we’ll take a brief moment to review the status of the colony and figure out what we’re doing next.

We’ll look at the command center first. Decent amount of money and at night minimal research. Power is high, at night since I don’t have a lot working at the moment. Oxygen is good, as is water.

You’d think this page would deal with the ENTIRE colony, but it only counts the surface. That’s fine. 141 colonists, we’re a bit low on fuel. Concrete is stable.

Underground numbers are a lot lower, because of course they are. Most of the Exotics are still stacked up where the explorer found it, but it does mean we can build at least one more dome. Not really necessary yet, as we don’t have the population yet.

Full review of the surface. You can see we’ve started filling up the terraforming dials in the upper right corner. A whole half a percent. It’s a start.

There’s lots of anomalies up on the bluffs so I either need ramps or tunnels to get up there.

Anyway, plenty of places to build new domes and some really good ones beyond that.

This MASSIVE metal patch probably won’t get a dome. I’ll probably put a Nat Hab out here to work on it. Will need another commander for it though. And a shuttle hub. Can’t wait to start digging into it.

This spot just north of the main colony would be great to start working, but I need to do some work to get it. Drone hub, hub extender, another dome. It’ll be a great mining location in the future.

I have plans for this location, but it’s not a priority yet. It’s pretty far from the colony heart and I’d either need more shuttle hubs or a train to make it long term viable.

The main colony is filling out nicely. I want to build my education dome in the south. There’s still this metal patch I can mine out but haven’t yet. I need more fuel too and once the techs come in, better storage.

My little transport is still busily collecting surface metals. It’s why I haven’t pushed to get the new metal mine up yet.

The underground is still underdeveloped, but that’s okay, it’s room to grow. I have like 70% of it lit at this point so we can start looking at new dome locations.

Obviously this is the best location. I’ll have 2 or 3 domes here just to extract everything.

The Bottomless Pit will be okay eventually, and will generate a good amount of research in the future.

I always assumed the Naturalistic Habitation buildings were for the underground, but nope, can’t build them here. Thus I have to find a way to squeeze a dome in here for this rare patch.

I do want a small dome over here near the other entrance. It’s low on the list right now.

There’s ANOTHER big rare metal patch near the main entrance I’d like to exploit at some point. I also want to install a water and oxygen tank down here.

Our work on the asteroid is just beginning. I need more extractors and I want these Exotics for underground growth. Shouldn’t be too hard honestly.

Our sole underground dome has plenty of room to grow, even if it doesn’t have a lot of work to do right now. I’ll fix that eventually.

Our original dome is almost completely full. It has room for more work slots, mostly in the form of night shifts, but it’s almost out of residential slots. I don’t think we need to replace the living quarters yet, but the time may come sooner than any of us think.

Our Oval dome has quite a bit of space, but the kids are taking up a lot of space. I need to get them out.

Politically we’re looking pretty good. Utopia is the biggest party and they’re pleased with us.

The Codex wants some Ministries, but is fine otherwise. Still upset about skipping the Founder Stage. You’d think they’d get over it by now, it’s been 400 years.

New Sol has a lot of negatives, and also a lot of positives. Honestly they’re pretty easy to please.

I wish I had some Celebrities to throw into the colony to please these guys. No Gurus though, they’re bad news.

Almost all the laws are prepared by now. Just have to start passing a few to get us closer to our goal.

Speaking of goals, we’re halfway to our research goal of 120 techs. Gene Adaptation will give us new foods that will boost our food production by a lot. Triboelectric Scrubbing will solve our power needs.

Honestly I don’t have any particular goal for the tech tree in mind at the moment. We’re almost done revealing all the techs in the main tree, so that’s nice. Once that’s done anything that would “reveal techs” will just give us research.

We’re in good shape overall. As we cross the line to 150 colonists, I’m feeling pretty good about how things are going. Next time we’ll keep going.

NEXT TIME: The best laid plans of mice and Martians. . .

 

[Eishtmo]

Last time, a general review. Now, we keep on movin’ on.

First things first, let’s adjust our techs. I’m slotting in Prefab Compression as it’s been sitting at the top of the breakthrough column for a while. For some reason it came out at 10k research, when usually the breakthroughs are cheaper the earlier you get them. I’m generating enough research now to make it worth the effort.

Why do you guys want this? I mean it’s not even your favorite policy. I mean I’ll do it if it shuts you up.

While I only have 3 kids in the underground, they might as well get an education. If I can keep you from being a member of the Flat Mars League, I will.

Gene Adaptation comes in just as I finish setting that. This just gives us better food choices.

Instead of potatoes and soybeans, now we can get corn and fruit trees. Also the wheat will get swapped out for quinoa, but I’ll wait until the wheat finishes. The yields are like 50% better.

I usually place a pad of food near the domes, and I set a decent amount to them so the drones can quickly top them off. Just keeps the annoying messages down in the future.

Simultaneous launch of my rockets. Really you can only do it by pausing, hitting the launch key for each one, then unpausing. Kind of neat to see.

While this funding came in from the TV station ($300 M is high for them), I also install another fuel refinery.

Living underground bothers people for some reason. Who wants to see the sun anyway? I’ll help them out by using some of my exotics to improve the medical post to ease the sanity penalty. At least until I can get the Mole People breakthrough.

I want to build my education dome built so that means I need more power. And more seeds. Always more seeds.

A double load of funding from a double launch going up.

Often you can cause multiple buildings do the same thing by holding the control key and selecting. As I said, the forestation plants can only do lichen right now. Still, I’ll queue up all 3 slots. Still not quite sure what it does but I won’t worry about it.

Sustainable Effort won’t really come into play until we hit some terraforming goals, but boy, once it does.

And our new crop rotation is now up and going. I don’t think we’ll need more food for a while. Though we are running short on water now. Corn drinks a lot.

Might as well get the Mole People tech going. It’s going to be a while.

New event. I’m taking the research as I want to get through the tree faster, and we have plenty of money. If this had hit much earlier, we’d be doing really well by now.

It does finish the Mega Storage tech, allowing us to build the Large Water and Large Oxygen tanks. I’ll set them up down here to take advantage of the water extractor.

I think the elevator won’t draw water from the underground until the tower up here is empty, and I don’t like seeing red in my resource bar, so in goes my last vaporator. Upgrade it, done with that.

My dude, if we open the domes now, we will all DIE.

More food production. It won’t be a lot right now, but later, it will be massive.

So the elevator isn’t sending enough metal down to finish the water tank, so I summon more. Apparently if it’s in a building site, it doesn’t count as being used. Same thing happens with the lander I bet.

Speaking of the lander, it’s mostly full. I don’t want it to get much higher because it prioritizes resources over the drones and rovers and will leave them behind if it’s actually full. The last note from the devs say they’re working to put the manual mode back in for the landers, and I hope it’s sooner rather than later. Anyway, I’m sending the lander back to Mars.

Setting another rocket to automatically ship stuff back to Earth.

Meanwhile the Oval dome is full of people. I need that new dome now.

Welcome back lander. We’ll send you back out momentarily.

While my new dome is being built, I cancel the flight of the lander. I need to reset it’s payload or things will get stupid.

Don’t forget fuel, don’t forget drones. Everything else, fuck it, but don’t forget those two or you will hate this game.

Dome is done and connecting up. First things first, we need that school spire.

Now it would be great if I could just have a dome full of kids, but they need to eat, so you need some grownups in there too. I set up an apartment, the larger nursery and eventually a spacebar, diner and infirmary. The tunnel is currently being built and it will link the dome up to the rest of the grid.

I’ll then push the “children should live here” button. I’ll turn it off in the Oval dome, though I won’t demand the kids leave.

That school fills up fast. I didn’t show the options for traits the schools hand out. Nerd is a moral boost when a tech is finished. Composted reduces sanity losses. Enthusiast increases performance with high moral. Religious adds base moral. Survivor makes it so they don’t suffer as much health loss if they lack food, water, oxygen or power. The three I have set here are the best I can get right now.

I would do the upgrade, but that will generate geniuses, and that will tick off the Flat idiots.

I also have the martian university under construction, and 3 playgrounds for the kids.

Look, I know it makes us look like a resource colony. But we can use that money to buy the shit we need to survive. And we’re never going to use all that. EVER.

At least the lander is full this time. Off you go. Wait, why is there 4 warnings on my asteroid? Eh, it’s probably fine. (Narrator: It was not fine)

The university is up. You can set it to train any specific specialization you want, or let the auto command do the work. It will train people until they finish the various needs. It also only accounts for the surface, so if you have needs underground, better hope you have some need for it on the surface too.

I usually only run one shift because it will suck up any untrained colonists it can find, and we need jobs done. This is also another reason to have an apartment in the dome, so I have a place for these guys to live.

The Oval dome’s child population is gone. Time to remove the nursery and school. I told you Decommissioning Protocol was a damn important tech to have.

I’m running short on power and the rocket with more Stirlings is still on the way. Easiest way to fix it is to open some of them. They will double their power output but will need maintenance now. For a short term fix, that’s okay.

WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED HERE?!

Cave-in? So I cleared it too early, but I got a warning about a marsquake “underground.” But no, it happened on my asteroid! That’s a weird bug. It also damages things, cuts off power and just lays a bunch of debris around. I am surprised I didn’t get any cave-ins in the underground before this.

Wait, I don’t think I’ve gotten ANY. My last game I didn’t do anything with the underground until I was nearly done with the game, but I did have asteroids up, but I didn’t get this then either.

Oh, do you think they crossed the wires somewhere? So underground access will trigger cave-ins, but they’ll happen on the asteroid maps instead. That’s insane. It’s fixable at least, but I need to keep it in mind for the future.

Another asteroid has come along. Pretty much the same as the current one.

I have 14 Sol to land on it to trigger the capture option, and given the disaster I ran into and the drain on my metal supplies here, I may have to go back to Mars earlier than I had originally planned. I’ll hold off for about 7 Sol before I do that though.

Oh, hello new faction. Prosperity uh, well I am going to be prosperous so that’s fine I guess.

Wow, they’re really happy with us. Wait, that Consumer Culture law is their favorite. Did FML asking for it trigger their creation? Wild if so. Might be something to keep in mind for the future.

The large water and oxygen tanks are done. Their storage capacity is MUCH higher than the standard tanks. The water extractor is now moving at full steam to fill it up. In the future I will really need this tank, as you shall see in the future.

Meanwhile, I got my Triboelectric Scrubbers. Huzzah!

First I need to order some supplies. More auto extractors, stirlings and vaporators. Though really the stirlings is more out of habit at this point, especially as I have $10 B in cash, so I spent it all.

Alright, time to build the first scrubber. I sit in inside the hole in amongst the Stirlings I started when I first landed here. I have been waiting for this.

Changing the range changes how much power the scrubber uses. You want to tighten it up as much as possible. From now on, it will go off every couple hours and reset the maintenance clock on everything in the range.

And now I can open all the Stirlings. I went from -1 power to +361 power. Now I WILL need more power in the future, but not for a while.

I do the same underground, though I can tighten up it’s range even more here.

Might as well add this to the research queue. That will give all my non-specialists a performance boost. There’s one more left, but that can wait.

I didn’t notice it until now, but apparently I have a Genius colonist. Just one, but that’s all you need to get free research. Of course, this pisses off the FML, but not much I can do about it.

More supplies. I’m going to run a bit of an electronics deficit for a bit, but as long as I have cash, I can resolve that.

Still have a few Sol before I need to recall my lander. There’s a little bar next to the white asteroid at the bottom that slowly fills as the escape time comes closer.

Well that’s annoying. I should be fine for 3 days. No big.

Oh crap, I forgot my elevator is my drone hub! If it’s shut down, that means the drones don’t work. AHHHHHHHH!

Okay, underground is easy to solve, I’ll drag over my commander. The area I need to cover is small enough it can deal with it. It also can take on most of the drones too.

The surface, though, can’t be covered by a commander. Okay then, time to install a proper Drone Hub. I have the Autonomous Hub tech so I don’t have to worry about supporting it, and a pair of prefabs. What I really need is a drone to build the prefab, so I recall my commander on the surface from the concrete site to do the work. I’ll send them back when it’s done.

Meanwhile, that stupid Minor Discovery message won’t clear. I send a bug report so maybe it’ll get fixed in the future.

And once I was done with that, my poor tower got hit by a meteor. The damn things have been stupid accurate. I’ll fix it later.

Much later.

The Mystery is upon us: The Last War. Couldn’t have gotten one of the easy ones, could we? I’m going to stop here. We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us.

NEXT TIME: War! What is good for? Absolutely nothin’.

 

[Eishtmo]

Last time, the random Mystery of this game finally reared it’s head. Now, we have to deal with it.

Okay, look, I’ve done most of the mysteries at some point, including this one, so I generally know what’s coming. Mystery doesn’t really apply here, at least to me. Also they’re all listed on the wiki.

That doesn’t mean we don’t have our work cut out for us. This is one of the harder mysteries and it’s one of the few that has a straight up fail condition. And this one has one of the worst ones you can get.

(Technically they all can fail, if you colony collapses and everyone dies, but that’s only happened maybe once to me, mostly due to a meteor storm that landed directly on my colony.)

What do we have to look forward to? Lots of refugees and lots of resource demands.

We could get almost 170 new colonists, and no we don’t get to pick who. Resources are also going to be in pretty high demand. We can probably swing the resources, but the people are going to be a struggle.

Oh, and we probably won’t get resupplies and might get hit with meteors too. Yay.

So we need a place to put new colonists, crank out lots of resources, and be prepared to defend the colony from meteor strikes. Also, we can’t just let everyone die. Yeah, that would be bad.

Succeed and we get cheaper supplies, a wonder tech or breakthrough (probably wonder honestly) and lots of people wanting to move to Mars. Fail, and at best we’ll have to pay extra for all gear, at worse, we’ll only be able to get refugees. No more supplies, period.

And just after I did the review post too.

STEP 1: We need another dome. I was debating putting in a Medium dome here, just for variety sake, but no, I need a place to put people. Another Oval Dome is required. Maybe I’ll build a medium nearby for overflow.

STEP 2: Tech. We need 4 techs in particular before things get really stupid. First, the Drone Hub Extender. This will let us use the brand new hub we just built to cover the new dome

Second, Meteor Defense System. The friggin’ space lasers will protect the colony from the meteors. And as I’ve been slapped by them a couple of times now, I really should get this sooner.

Third, 3D Machining AND Micro Manufacturing. This will allow us to build the full sized Machine Part and Electronics factories. We will need those.

There are some others I may want as well, but those 4 are the high priority ones. Though I’m finishing the current Prefab Compression as that MAY cover the extra techs I want. I don’t remember, it’s been a while since I last used it.

STEP 3: We stock up on supplies. Polymers and food we should be able to generate enough, or trade for. Machine Parts and Electronics we need more of as we can’t replenish them as quickly. If we run out of seeds, who cares?

Huh, I think there’s something wrong with the “in colony” reports for the various prefabs. Very strange.

Alright, let’s get going. I need this tech asap, so we’ll outsource it at least while we can.

I add more slots for incoming resources. Each depot can only hold 180 units, and I’m going t be bringing in over 200 for the advanced ones.

I think I need another polymer factory. That means more fuel too.

This patch is almost out too. Concrete is my only resource of concern, so I’ll grab that other patch under the southern bluff.

So here’s how this Mystery works. As thing go on, we’ll be given options that will either raise or lower the war tension. If it hits 100%, it’s global thermonuclear war. If it hits 0%, we win. Anything in between will just result in more expensive supplies.

10% to start. Got a ways to go. Also sending my transport to gather up the concrete at this patch and prep to move to a new one.

So this is a weird law and you’re probably wondering why it exists. You can send colonists to asteroids to run the mining operations. And if there were bigger patches on the asteroids, I might do it, but there usually aren’t and when there are, the automated ones work just fine thanks. Thing is, there is VERY limited water on them, and if it runs out, the location has to be abandoned.

This is a better choice for now. The refugees we’ll eventually be getting won’t be in a good mood so this should keep them from getting these negative traits.

And that’s the end of that concrete patch. I have plenty to dig through right now and there are two ways to make more, but they’re far in the future and. . .

4 warnings on the asteroid again. Dog Damn it.

I have a theory. So the game can keep track of 5 total maps, 3 asteroids, 1 underground and the main map. I THINK they associated the underground Marsquake event with map 2, which should be the underground. But they might have labeled the maps 0-4, not 1-5.

In any case, this is going to get very frustrating, so once I clear out this asteroid, I may just leave it in place so it can take all the cave-ins and the underground is free of them. And so another asteroid doesn’t get them.

I don’t recall this event. It’s the result of finishing the prefab tech for the spires. Direct payment isn’t very lucrative. Martian Patents is one of 2 repeatable techs that gives you cash every time you finish them. It also raises the research cost. I suppose it might be good early on, but I’m solidly mid game now.

Extra stirlings will never not be nice to have, but the Archology prefabs are best choice. They’re super apartments and I could certainly use them.

New concrete location is set up. You can just see the commander coming out of the rock cut. All it needs now is some resource depots and some supplies to build it.

The only thing my commander in the underground can’t cover is the oxygen tank. No big loss right now, just means it can’t fill or dispense oxygen.

Thankfully the elevator comes back online not long after. I transfer most of the drones back over and they go to work.

War Tension increases 1% per Sol, and will bound up or down depending on events. The goal is to force it down to 0 as quick as we can. Hmm, I wonder if all the spires became available with that tech from earlier.

Oh yes, they are here. All of them are. Being able to get all the spires WITHOUT the techs will save me so much energy. I think only a few, like the school spire, have another building that comes with them when you research it, so this is a good savings.

I order a Medical Center and Sanitarium. The Medical Center is a super infirmary, it takes more peeps to run, but it can serve more people. The Sanitarium is a special building that can remove negative traits.

The refugees we will eventually get will have all sorts of issues. Putting these two in our new dome together and moving our refugees to that dome will fix their major issues and save us a lot of grief in the future.

Also I’m running out of food for some reason. Bringing some extra should help, eventually.

Still cleaning up debris on the asteroid. And as it gets done, the Hub Extenders come in.

Drone Hub Extenders do just that, they extend the range of the Drone Hub. I forget how far they can be, but I’m pretty sure they have to be in the range of the hub they’re associated with. I’ll have to move the planned dome to get it to be covered. I also placed it to cover the future location of a dome just to the NE of the colony. It won’t be going in any time soon, but eventually.

Once it’s done, click this button and connect to the hub.

I mean, I’m really running out of food. What the hell is going on here?

I set up a trade to bring more in. My guess is that the farms are synced up in a way that put a long delay between production that they normally don’t have. I should probably put in a fungal farm to make up the delay in the future.

New concrete extractor is up and going. This should last a while.

I need more rares on the surface, so I push it up in the elevator.

Yet another asteroid. I really need to lock these two down so I can exploit them in the future.

So remember this? I got it randomly and said it might be useful. Well it’s now useful! The hub extenders only have a single recharge station (main hubs have 2) and are pretty far out. If I build a few out there and add this tech, it should allow the drones to charge faster while moving between the two main areas.

I started with some prefabs for them, so I might as well use them. They take a little power, but all 3 together barely takes 1 unit of power total.

I’m not getting it, but it’s interesting how you can program your university students to be whatever party you want.

Instead I’m getting this. Time to start cranking out those college grads.

Okay, it’s cleared up enough and I don’t have a lot of time to lock down that second asteroid. Let’s get it back to Mars.

Oh look this event again. Not looking a gift horse in the mouth, this will help immensely. Just have to dig the poor rover out afterwards.

Things are getting bad already. I take the first option to slow the war tension as much as possible.

Still goes up to 19%. Also my food is fixed now, yay.

Always take fuel, always take drones. I’m only going to lock it down, so no need for anything else.

Okay, the Blue Sun rocket is almost empty of food.

My lander arrives on the asteroid and for some reason my drones decide to putter around here. I don’t understand. . .

I forget the results of this, but I know the second option is the better one here. A follow up event will be more worth it.

In the meantime, I build another polymer plant. This is an alt skin for it, and it’s in range of my two main domes. I’m not quite generating enough polymers to support the colony so this should help.

Prosperity likes it at least.

WHAT THE HELL? How are they now the majority party? I sense something fucky just happened.

Oh, the game crashed. Oddly not on the politics screen, but on an asteroid screen. The last auto save is about a Sol and Half back, so everything from landing on that asteroid until the last image now no longer happened.

Also means I have to redo stuff like the polymer plant.

On the upside, it makes this asteroid a bit better. I hate this lay out as the only way to exploit everything is to build ramps, and I don’t have the time for that. At least now everything is kind of together.

That also means that event didn’t happen, btw. So instead we get this one. I go with the second option.

Not much, but every little bit helps.

Especially as it finishes the MDS Laser tech.

The lasers have a coverage range and will shoot down anything that gets close. They are very fast so it’s unlikely I’ll be able to screenshot it when and if they target one. 2 is enough to cover all 3 domes. I’ll need a third up at the new dome.

I shift from colonists to Funding on this law. I should have plenty of applicants now and cash is more useful.

DOGDAMNIT! Look, I wouldn’t be normally this upset, but these rock piles limit where my lander can, you know, LAND. You can see where the old landing spot is and it’s covered in rocks. I have room to the right of screen if I take out that empty waste rock pile, but if things go wrong I could be locked out of landing here ever again.

This frustrates me so much I forget to make sure my drones leave with the lander. I’ll come back for you kids later, I promise.

Running out of living space. I take out the old living quarters and put in a new apartment.

I need to get that last asteroid locked down so I can get back to the first one and clean everything up. Rocket has at least 15 fuel, it’s good to go.

Power is no longer an issue, so I switch to the one thing I really need now: Drones. It will probably stay here for the rest of the game.

THIS is why I bring explorers to these asteroids. Two anomalies. Sadly I’ll be leaving right away, but at least the asteroid is locked down now and I can come back later.

As the rocket goes in to land, I get Micro Manufacturing. The small factories can only build enough to sustain a colony, these can build excess amounts. I will need them.

I set a transport route for the concrete. There’s not a lot yet, but eventually there will be.

I also finally build that metal extractor, with the alternative skin. Without any need for geologists on the surface, the university won’t train any, so this will give the underground something to draw from.

Yeah, I knew this was coming eventually.

I have a couple rockets on Earth right now, so I put in a couple big orders. I should be good for quite some time with this.

Back to my debris covered asteroid. I plan to clean it out and then leave it in orbit to suck down all the cave-ins for me.

I passed the Black Market law, and now I can trade stuff for cash. Sounds like a plan.

Politician profile coming in handy once again.

Another load. I wonder if I should bother sending any more rockets up for the cash.

Still running out of space. Fine, I’ll use one of the Arcologies. There are 3 different skins, but I prefer this one in general. It just looks neat.

And people love living in it. The apartments hold 30 people BTW (with Crowded Living Law) and will move out to be in the mighty tower.

Also 3D Machining comes in. That’s, um, the last of the techs I need. Now I’ll focus on stuff to help in the future.

Oh, and the black market is here too. Neat.

The war tension keeps going up.

Since I have the seeds I plant another forestation plant. You can see how the soil enrichment has spiked into the green around the sensor tower. Might as well start making it look nice over here.

. . .

It’s getting crowded in the domes, and increasing the visitor slots in the service buildings should help. It doesn’t cost too much.

And there’s the cutoff.

And here’s where I’m going to stop for the night. We should be okay for a while. Now to wait for the next phase of the mystery.

NEXT TIME: Patchwork

 

[Eishtmo]

I was a bit frustrated last time. Just in time for the most recent game patch!

I’m sorry, I’m not updating this as I finish each part. It’s tragic. Also wow, that picture is much bigger than I planned. Anyway, the most recent patch is here and it IS going to affect us.

First, they fixed the asteroids getting cave-ins. AND, they were nice enough to clean up all the cave-in debris on the asteroids. I’m appreciative. They also added the manual mode to the landers which means I have to recover my muscle memory on how to use it.

They added more laws. Damn screen has scroll bars now. They also modified several of them, including the terraforming law that was WAY too over powered. They changed ministries to have only one shift, which defeats a rough plan I had for all those refugees (I was going to put them to work for the government). Ah well, I can work with these changes. There’s been some tweaking of the factions, but we’ll have to see how that looks as time goes on, maybe.

Most of the rest of the changes are QOL stuff or bug fixes. Some I had experienced, most I haven’t. Considering the game has been out for a month and half, this very lengthy amount of fixes is quite appreciated.

Well since they’re fixing the cave-ins, I guess I better get these. Support Struts prevent cave-ins in an area around the strut. Downside is they take metals to maintain. Upside, no cave-ins around the area. This is good for domes and other structures, like the elevators.

There’s automated mode for the lander. It’s specifically for moving material back and forth, which not how I use it.

Okay, they made the load out screen a bit easier to read. The idea is you set the lander to request an amount of material and will leave as soon as it’s full. The last part I forgot and was surprised. Unlearning my methods of using the landers has really messed me up.

As a result I sent the lander off by accident, but when it gets back, this will get torn down. The resource patch is gone, so no need for it.

Part of the law update changed how Crowded Living works, so now it just adds a flat 3 slots. Before it was a percentage, and maybe it needs to be a bit more, like 4 or 5, or scaled to the building or something. Need more apartments I guess.

2 minutes? Hahaha, we’re 89 seconds in the real world.

Sigh.

I need some steady food underground. Fungal Farm will do just fine. Unlike the other food options, it produces food continuously not in batches. Good for maintaining supplies.

Looks like the flat heads are getting a bit feisty.

I need to add another apartment to the Oval dome, and clean up some stuff. First, though, I add a Security Station. These are what Officers are actually for, they prevent Renegades from spawning, and with FML breaking down due to the fact that I’m doing science, best to have them around. I also move the detention center and art store to this spot. And remove a playground I forgot was still there.

Wireless power is done. Never gotten this one before, I wonder how it works.

Oh, that’s how. See the blue circle around the Drone Hub? That’s it working. Neat. Also nice to know it works for the recharge stations attached to the hubs. Okay, so I can plan placement for recharge stations in the future.

I’m trying to remember to keep tabs on the underground part of the colony. Just running out of work for people down here. I do need to expand sooner rather than later.

In the meantime, my rockets have delivered another few loads of rares to Earth. I’m mostly curious what I can’t get any more from Earth.

Okay, there we go. They won’t sell us resources, but everything else is just fine. Including fucking seeds. Alright then.

I’m going to grab some spire prefabs while I have the money. Water Reclamation System reduces the water usage in the dome. I guess if I was doing a full on farming dome it might be worth it, but I rarely see a reason for it.

Network Node is a research booster. You get more boost for more nodes. Again, I rarely use them, but I’m going to have one on hand if I want it.

Hanging Gardens is a spire version of a garden. Honestly I usually build an Arcology and then just use a full garden, but either way works. Already covered School Spire, but I want a spare for the future.

More Drones and a few more vaporators. I need to plan for another new dome as my living space has been cut back greatly.

Finally, the largest storage depots. The problem with these is they take power and maintenance. The upside is they hold 4000 of any given resource. I have 2 25,000 patches of rares. I think I could use these.

This is the general layout I use for them. The scrubbers keep them from needing maintenance which might keep them from working. Eventually I’ll add a single universal depot nearby so the drones can grab something quickly.

Now that I can store so much, I have the surface demand more. I probably should set this to 4000, but I have to click it for every entry. And I don’t want to get out the autoclicker for that at the moment.

First load of refugees is on the way now. Time to get that new dome building.

The orange rocket is our refugee rocket. It’s why I park the landing pad near the dome, so they have less distance to walk.

Okay, so time to start populating the dome. Security station, diner, art shop, apartment, spacebar. Then the Sanatorium.

And the Medical Center. Originally my plan was build my various ministries here, but they reduced the number of work slots so I might build some, but not all now. Also added more water

Pretty sure this is a silly event. Pluto is OBVIOUSLY the 9th planet.

Still not wrong. Also after watching this video, I'm a bit angry about it now.

Decided to please FML a bit by revoking the research focus. I don’t really need it at the moment so it’s fine.

I bring over the transport to help move material over to the new storage areas. The lit areas on the large storage is where materials go in, which is why I orientate them like this. Honestly the fastest way is to simply delete the old depot from underneath it.

And there are the supports.

This is the range one of these covers. It’s not really all that big, and it bites into our exotics stockpile. I mostly go for covering the dome itself as the rest can be repaired easily. If the dome is cracked, people could die.

Figure since I have enough officers, I’ll go clear this one planetary anomaly I haven’t done yet. It’ll only give resources (I think small pile of polymers in this case), but it’ll be off the list.

I mean to take a picture of the refugee rocket landing, but I was stunned to see the refugees walking over to the main dome cluster! This isn’t where I wanted you to go!

Crap, crap, crap. Shuttle Hub, GO! I also set the dome to being positive for anyone with the Refugee trait, and they all start WALKING back over. Good gravy guys. Shuttles are something I’ve been wanting for a bit anyway.

Sanatorium at work. These are the traits it can remove, or just set one to auto and let them cook. ALL colonists want to use this, and will go out of their way to be there. Which is annoying. But fine, at least they don’t have to walk now.

Fine, I’ll submit. Fun bit of trivia: One of the other Mysteries is about a company that is using Mars to test weapon systems. I almost think that one and this mystery would be fun to have back to back. That particular mystery actually has combat, in a city builder game. Wild.

Triple launch. So nice.

Oh come on! Oh, it’s the black market law. And the red tape one. I could probably give up one of them later.

Just wanted to show the shuttle at work. They move pretty quickly so sometimes it’s hard to catch.

The easiest way to please The Codex is to build a ministry building. So I do. This one is for Culture.

In the meantime, I’m done with this rock. Sure there’s still some water here, but the only use I have for it is fuel, and it would take too long to empty.

Abandon Asteroid, good bye you bastard.

Gimme research. I don’t need applicants, I’m getting free peeps from a war torn Earth.

By default Shuttle Hubs start with 3 shuttles, and they’re over worked now. So I build a few more. They max out at 6, for now.

I’m a bit short on concrete, so I trade for it. The exchange rate for it is pretty good.

So three things. One, the shuttle is moving people around. If you see one near the door like this, that’s what is going on.

Two, the dome has a name! Usually the domes draw names from the Sponsor, but for some reason Codex didn’t have any. Guess they fixed it with the update. It’s not retroactive though.

Three, there are way more than 20 people living in this dome. It’s very attractive apparently.

So the shuttles will access resource depots, and they’ve been draining my supplies from the concrete extractor. I changed the demand to keep it full.

More seeds.

So I intended to show building a ramp here on the asteroid, but, well I messed up. I wasn’t feeling very good when I played this. Sinus pressure and such. It was annoying and I missed several shots I meant to take and just, well didn’t. Sorry. Anyway, what you see here is me preparing to put a ramp in, but it needs clear space. So eventually I'll shrink it down (R and T keys) so it fits then drag it to the large bulge in the middle of the map.

This won’t last long, but FML lost all seats in the Assembly. Only now looking at this image did I notice the increasing political tension. Uh, that might not be good in the next update. I told you I was sick.

Added another drone hub extender here for a couple reasons. One is to reach the other underground entrance. The second reason I’ll will talk about when the time comes. Which is not this update.

Mole People comes in. Extra moral for the underground is nice and will allow us to expand underground a bit faster.

Need more food, AGAIN. Look, usually this isn’t an issue, but for some reason people are eating like crazy. I’ll get it under control eventually.

Slipped in the Magentic Extraction to make my mines stronger. That said, I think I’ll be changing this next session.

Like I said, I wasn’t feeling super good, so I called it here. The colony is growing rapidly now, and I couldn’t be more proud. Until next time.

NEXT TIME: The Colony Must Grow.

 

[Eishtmo]

When we left off, I was proud. And my colonists were starving. Um, maybe I should be less proud.

Really less proud. That said, I do have a trade rocket dropping off some more food, so we should be okay. Eventually.

I decided to change up my research. Signal booster does what it says, and will make it so I can cover way more area than I could before with my hubs. Covering a wider area will help in the long run. Fuel compression gives us more space on the rocket for resources (which we can’t buy) and Waste Rock Liquefaction is to deal with waste rock.

So I want all my rare metals on the surface. But increasing the amount is a single click at a time endeavor. I have an auto clickler.

About a minute later (including time to take screenshots) I now have it set to 2000 for the surface. I kind of wish they had a “max” option or something for this.

The drones are heading off to get the food off the rocket. Go drones go! I will note it takes a bit for the colonists to lose enough health to die, so it's an emergency, but not a dire one.

Just a close up of playgrounds in the education dome. The middle hex is an “alley” style garden. It just has a small path in it, and I was swapping between the different styles. I like this one for this particular location.

I’m tired of running out of food, so I’m installing a fungal farm. This should help even out our food stocks on the surface.

Having the black market law allows us to trade rare metals, I wonder how much food we can get for them?

That’s not much better than trading polymers honestly. Still, it’s not like I’m running short on the stuff, so gimme that food.

The way the manual mode for the lander actually works is you can set how much you want the lander to haul, and as soon as it’s full, it’ll head back to Mars. The resource patches are 40 rares and 32 exotics, so once they are empty, the lander will leave. That’s the idea anyway.

I meant to take this shot last time, but this is the cost to build the ramp. There’s a lot of excess waste rock, but it also needs a few pieces of waste to finish it. My goal is to get access to the polymer resources in the lower right corner there. The jet black rocks.

Why FML, do you want to support your rival factions? Sigh. In any case, Codex is only content, so I want to fix that first, then I’ll work on pleasing FML a bit to lower tension.

Revoking the Red Tape law will make Codex happier. And give me more work slots.

I did consider installing another VR workshop, but then it was like, wait, I need more electronics. Let’s put in a full sized factory, that would be a better plan.

The factory takes a lot of people, so it’s almost as good as a workshop.

The fungal farm actually eats oxygen, so I need more. I’ll install another MOXIE to offset it.

I need to slow down reproduction. Setting it this way will stem the tide until I get another dome built. Oh yeah, I’m going to need another dome. Yay.

I need to build more domes underground too. First I need some fuel. We’ll be back in a bit.

That’s so sweet. The game does have fireworks that go off with milestones and this event, but you can’t see them during the day, and even at night they're hard to get a screenshot of. I will likely keep trying as the game goes on, and likely fail.

Okay, Codex is happy again. Still, I need to cool FML down some more.

This should help make them happier.

Hmm, I wonder how much concrete I can get for this.

Not as much as I would have expected. I am underwhelmed by these trades.

I did notice that I still am not producing enough electronics, so I’ll get Factory Amplification. It’ll give a boost to production, but cost power and some resources. You can turn the amplification on and off as needed.

I need another dome. Putting a medium dome here gets access to the Vista point which makes the dome automatically more comfortable.

This is why I put the hub extender where I did, so I can cover this dome entirely. Otherwise I couldn’t get close enough to get the vista point.

Back underground I send my transport out to collect resources. I’ve been ignoring them for too long.

This is where I want to the dome in the Cave of Wonders. It covers most of the resource patches.

Also got Magnetic Extraction.

Okay, that’s a bit pricey for the moment, but eventually it will be very nice.

To install the tunnel to the new dome, I had to remove the small electronics factory I put in here earlier. And while I’m at it, I’ll swap out the medical post with a proper infirmary.

There, that’s much better.

Another new asteroid. “It is worth nothing that our scans show some irregularities” is code for “asteroid has anomalies.” I want to visit this sooner or later.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. No.

Costs nothing, does nothing, makes people happy.

Upgrading the new vaporators on the new dome. But also, Factory Amplification has gotten done.

Waste Rock Liquefaction will turn waste rock into concrete. This is the second best use for waste rock. The first is part of the terraforming tree.

Okay, Pit optional 2, throw in a drone.

Yes, I’m sure it has been destroyed throwing it down into a bottomless pit. That’s what happens.

The next one will raise it up to 50% if I remember right, but the cost is a bit too high for me at the moment. You’ll see.

Okay, so I got 105 concrete for 50 rares, and 72 for 50 metals. Hmm, Given I have basically unlimited amounts of either, I don’t know.

$20 M? However will I afford that? It’s not like I have $17.7 B just laying around not being used or something.

I don’t remember what the reward for this was. We’ll find out eventually I’m sure.

In the meantime I’ll order some more prefabs. An extra factory I don’t have to build would be nice. I also order another commander I have a plan for but we won’t get to this update.

No one likes Heavy Workload, but for some reason I can’t revoke it. I am annoyed.

Eat less food so I can build up my food stocks.

Shopping service? That’s actually pretty easy to satisfy honestly.

Grocery store for the win.

Well that makes New Sol happy. There’s a lot they don’t like, including gaming and shopping issues. I’ll have to fix that.

Still really angry with us. Moral Values Law seems to make them extra mad. I could get rid of that.

A second electronics factory. That should bring us into producing extra which will hopefully trade for more.

So I forgot to take a picture of the shuttle hub I built underground. That’s why I built the fuel refinery. Anyway, they’re taking material over to the Cave of Wonders to prep for that dome install.

Some of the small decoration options. Small garden, fountain and statue. They’re just nice to have.

Okay, FML is just “not content” now, and the tension is going down. Good, good.

Figure we should check in with our rivals and see if we can trade techs. Blue Sun has 100 colonists and pathetic research. Also nothing to trade.

China has 100 colonists and equally pathetic research. At least they have something to trade.

Europe is the same. Like I said rivals are half baked and don’t do much. Seriously, I’m rocking 300+ colonists and 3k research. And the only reason I’m going so slow is because FML hates research.

Be happy FML, at least until I can plan to deport each and everyone of you.

And that’s drained. Just a bit more left on this asteroid, though I may leave early to get that last asteroid locked down.

Signal boosters is in, and the new factory is up and going. Woo.

Oh look, I got another Genius. Nice.

I have quite a few Geniuses.

And I have to stop here because I need to go make dinner. Next time, more fun.

NEXT TIME: Cavers do it in the dark,

 

[Eishtmo]

Welcome back. Last time I had to stop to make dinner. This time, I also have to stop to make dinner, but I’m not in quite as much a rush.

So it’s now Sol 202, and the last event from the Last War was on Sol 179. What is going on? I didn’t think there was that much time between events.

Huh, I thought I could trade rares for anything. I did it last time. Did they do a stealth patch, or. . .

Ah ha! That’s it. If I set the requested item first, THEN the export, I can use rares. But I can’t the other way. That might explain why rares don’t significantly more per unit as I would expect.

While that is cooking I have been very busy planning out the Cave of Wonders. I could get more domes in but I think 4 is enough for this area. I have the support strut highlighted to make sure it covers all 4 domes and the middle where I put the stirlings to power it all.

Eventually I’ll connect it to the rest of grid. In the meantime, I turn on two of the struts and the dome closest to the Cave itself.

On the asteroid, I’m going to finish clearing out the rare patch before sending my rocket home to get that new asteroid locked down.

I order another explorer and some more prefabs. The 2 small factories will go into the underground domes to keep them topped up.

Got my techs set up. Waste Rock Liquefaction is to get rid of waste rock, Greenhouse Mars is the second step to making Mars habitable, Atomic Accumulator is the super sized battery, Emergency training makes officers and medics better, Topology AI is just to fill in more of the Terraforming tree.

With no refugees coming in the near future, I turn off the filter for the second Oval dome.

Efficient Assembly is basically useless at this point, but Codex isn’t happy enough right now. I minor boost.

Speaking of the Codes, R&E ministry? Sure, why not.

It has a neat round design.

More spires, more drones.

Kind of a nothingburger of a choice. I have plenty of funds and I’ll be getting more by the day. I haven’t brought any new colonists in since forever ago. Research I can use I guess.

Prefab Arcology GO! This is one of the alternative skins for it. I don’t like this one as much, but the third one looks weird underground for some reason and I already have the regular one up on the surface.

I need concrete. I have plans. . .

Hmm, why hasn’t the Cave of Wonders finished yet? I needed 3 people in the cave and, well, I have them.

I think the only thing that will regularly fall under 200 is fuel and that’s not covered by this. Still, it’s another law I need on the books.

Lander came back and now I set it up to go to this asteroid to claim it’s “mystery,” whatever that may be.

The Waste Rock Processor does what it says on the tin. I want some more concrete, and this is a way to get it without using an extractor.

I set one up underground and on the surface. There is a LOT of waste rock underground, but it’s scattered all over. I’ll have to do some work to harvest it all.

I add a pond to make my Cave of Wonders dome a bit more attractive.

Also Greenhouse Mars is finished.

I hate donut asteroids. They’re hard to place the lander somewhere that covers most of the resource patches. Eventually I’ll have to move it around and it’s just a pain.

Ah, well, this isn’t a great event to start out with. Still, this is why I brought the rover.

It will roll around and scan the various anomalies. Once it’s done, we are out of here.

Okay, time to actually build a train. They are very finicky, so there’s a kind of build sequence you need to follow. First, build the stations. I’m placing this one here so I can eventually run the track out the right side of the screen. The route I’m focusing on is south. The hex layout of the map means you can’t lay the station vertical.

Second station back near the elevator. Stations can do many things, but the big thing is store resources. They’re makeshift depots. They’ll also try to balance the resources between them via the trains, so if one is overloaded, it will send the excess to the other station. Good way to move stuff around. It will also take people, but they have to be in range of the dome. But for now I have shuttles to do the work.

The radiation on the asteroid “damages’ buildings. Probably just triggers another maintenance cycle. Which would be a big deal if I, you know, had any buildings on the asteroid. And I don’t. Just a rocket, a rover, some resources and drones. Nothing else.

More stirlings. The underground is going to need them.

I don’t know why this is an option. Yes, it can fail, but that just means you keep going. I think the intent is that if you’re here, you’re mining, and when the timer is an issue, I can see why it might work. But I don’t have to worry about a timer.

Success. If it fails, it’ll spawn another anomaly or 2.

Laying out tracks is annoying. I pause the game while I work on it. Anyway, ALWAYS start the build on this spot on the station. If you don’t, it might not connect and cause issues.

And then work your way towards the other station. Try not to make too sharp a turn and always start the turn earlier than you would think. If you’re not sure, click to lay it down and start the next segment. End on the same station tile on the other station.

Eventually I’ll tear up the track and add in a Large Station right about here so I can branch the network into the Bottomless pit and back into the dark, left side of the map. Large stations, unlike regular ones, have two sets of tracks.

Now I haven’t gotten that far yet, but apparently loops cause issues for the trains. That makes sense as if they were built on the original’s version, that didn’t even DO loops. The small stations had ONE way in, that was it. Still, in theory it SHOULD do loops. I hope it does eventually.

Well, that one failed. No big deal, just try, try again.

It takes a LONG time to build tracks. Like a really long time. Most structures in the game, once they have the required materials, will go up in a few seconds, but train tracks just drag on and on. There’s at least 3 minutes between when I completed the track and when this pic was taken. It still won’t be finished for another 10 minutes. And this is at double game speed.

I use Amplify on my fuel refineries. This increases production at the cost of power, a lot of power. But I have enough power AND you can turn amplify off if need be.

And done at last. Okay, time to pack up the rocket and head home.

What the hell? Okay, so I guess you get some extra resource patches for cleaning up the asteroid. But why are they big? I don’t know. It’s a visual glitch. I think it’s caused by map swapping while zooming in or something. It happened in the previous version of the game, and it doesn’t effect anything. Just looks weird. It should clear up on a reload.

Meanwhile Emergency Training finished. Oh, I forgot it gives you the Hospital, the tier 3 medical building. The spire version is better, but if you don’t have the room for one, the Hospital is a good choice.

I’m now just back filling my research. Most of these techs are nice to have, but aren’t game changes. Well, Large Stations is, arguably, but I don’t need them right now.

I need to get the temperature up, so I switch the Terraforming Focus to temperature. This should help quite a bit in the near future.

Yes yes, thank you. Stations do need power, BTW, so I ran a power line around the unbuilt dome.

The waste rock tracker. You can see how much is in the underground vs the other locations. You can also see the production vs consumption. At some point we’ll either outstrip the ability of my waste rock processor to keep up, or I’ll run out of waste rock for it.

Oh, and you can amplify the processor too. Eventually I’ll balance it out via work shifts, amplify and multiple processors.

Large Stations done. You don’t get a free train with a station, you have to build it. First button, upper left of the panel. Tracks can only hold so many trains, 2 in this case. I’m not sure you can do more. The train will self deploy when it’s done. I’ll build a second one as well. You can build more, but they’re saved basically as prefabs.

Now to show you the train, but, um, don’t get too excited.

Yup, that’s it. “Train” is a relative term. They can carry people and cargo, though I think colonists prefer shuttles if they’re available. They do move pretty quick, and there’s a couple laws that allow more cargo and faster speed.

Need more spires. If I’m going to expand my underground colony, I’ll need them.

Oh yeah, this one. We’ll hold off publishing it.

Luxurious Trains might make train travel more attractive. Wait, a second, where’s the Mystery log?

Okay, so the Mystery log for the Last War should only clear when the Last War is over. Maybe it got cleared by accident when I was clearing the one for the asteroid and it might come back with a reload. Or it bugged out, after all it’s been a long time since we got an event. I mean, it kind of sucks as we can’t get resources from Earth any more, but we’ll be fine.

The GHG factory will raise the temperature of the planet. It eats fuel and power, but doesn’t need anything else. If I run low on fuel, I’ll turn these off for a while.

Back on that first asteroid, there are a lot of scattered surface resources. The easiest way to collect them is to send the transport out. Mostly it’s polymers and metals, but there are some exotics.

GHG factories are up and going. They’re one of the earliest terraforming buildings you can get normally, and a bit of a newbie trap. They drink fuel, fuel you need to move rockets. But they work very, very well.

Green View won’t don anything for a while, but it Battery Optimization (drones need less charging) and Terraforming Subsidies (free cash) will finish revealing the rest of the tech tree.

Finally, though, it’s time to get the good techs. Prefab-refab is just great, and Hull Polarization will reduce maintenance costs.

Our research speed is taking hold fast. Green View is already here.

I used Amplify on the processor to production and consumption of waste rock.

Adding another ministry. A big V shape.

This is the same reward if we had selected the first option. I think there’s a chance of it failing and that would be, bad. But I don’t know. Best to confirm it instead.

New Sol wants more shopping. I decided to install an Electronics Shop as we have a positive flow of electronics at the moment.

Two more ministries and we’ll finish one more Sponsor goal. The Mega Dome is one of the larger domes you can build.

So I haven’t shown this before, but there are specific milestones for the terraforming process. Each one will change how Mars looks and have other effects.

Our hard goal is Breathable Atmosphere, which will allow us to pass the “Open Dome” law. You don’t have to do the water or plant options at all for that, but it feels silly not too. Especially as that leads us to being able to build the Open Farm, the ultimate food generation building.

Eventually I plan to use the extra concrete to build tunnels. These allow me to move rovers, power and fuel both long distances, but also up on to the bluffs. There’s quite a few anomalies on the bluffs and I can’t get to them at the moment. That said, it’s still kind of pricey in terms of concrete, so I’ll hold off.

Trains have their own tunnels, but they ONLY move trains, not anything else.

Battery Optimization is done. Drones won’t have to stop to charge as much, which isn’t too helpful as I usually have way more drones than I actually need.

And that column of the tree is done. It reveals one of the wonders: The Excavator. It just makes concrete out of, um, nothing. Yeah, the wonders are very overpowered sometimes. For once I might actually build this thing. I usually don’t need it, or stop before I do need it.

Well, time to go make more dinner. This time it’s chicken fingers. Last time was roast. Anyway, until next time.

NEXT TIME: Well that explains that.

 

[Eishtmo]

Hello again. I have good news and bad news.

The good news is I figured out why we haven’t gotten any more events for The Last War.

The bad news is because it’s bugged. Yeah, seems a lot of the Mysteries aren’t working properly, and the last patch didn’t fix them, or perhaps couldn’t with a current game. This only kind of sucks as it limits what I can import from Earth. The good news is I can produce what I need, so not such a big deal. Still a shame as having that extra challenge would have made this one hell of a game.

(EDITING NOTE: Recently it appears it's connected to that asteroid event I had earlier. Asteroid events appear to break the main Mysteries. No, there's no update for it as of this posting. It seems consistent at least.)

In the meantime, I need to sort out my resources. I’m now generating a decent amount of metals underground, and I need extra to support more domes down there anyway. Out comes the autoclicker and I crank up metals to 2000. Eventually they’ll both have to be higher, but this is fine for now.

Oh, quick shot of the trains passing each other. This is why there really can’t be more than two on a track as short as the one I made. Which is actually a pretty damn long track.

Time to plant some more lights. I forgot there were concrete patches down here. Might have to do something with them at some point.

FML fell back down to content. But their suggestion is kind of ass. I don’t do any of this.

Instead I crank up underground mining. I’m now going to start ticking off minor laws that shouldn’t hurt me too much in the long run.

I also add an electronics factory to the underground. Just to make sure they don’t have any shortages.

I also add another fungal farm. I’m starting to push the underground to being self sufficient.

Oh, and there’s a research point under the dome there. Could be nice to start exploiting it.

Terraforming Subsidies comes in. It just gives you extra cash which we REALLY don’t need right now. But that’s not why I did it.

With that, I have finished revealing the tech tree. We’re 31 techs from independence now.

I think it’s time to start cranking out some techs. Mars Nouveau reduces metal and concrete cost for buildings. Water Conservation System will do what it says for domes.

On the asteroid my transport ran out of storage space to put the resources it gathered so it just piled them up. I had to add a couple pads so the stuff would have somewhere to go. It’s gathering them up to take them over there, and the drones will arrive soon to help.

More drones, more spires.

Fuel consumption is a constant issue. You can see we’re only generating an extra 10 per Sol vs what we’re using. Some is going to the GHG factory, but a lot goes to the shuttle hubs. It’s why I only have 2 of each right now (and I don’t have the tech to build more shuttle hubs).

Still trading rares for concrete. Got to be the silliest thing I’m doing in this game, but it’s not like I don’t have plenty.

Our polymer production is lagging too. I do the Amplify upgrades to get it back up. Running out would SUCK.

The last two sponsor relation laws are both tourist laws. I’m not sure I get why there are two of them, and I really don’t care.

So much money coming in and so little to spend it on.

Huh, that’s weird. Why did that malfunction? Is there an idiot working there? They can cause malfunctions.

That’s not an idiot, it’s a Renegade!

A Genius Renegade at that. Renegades are a nuisance more than a real threat. Usually the security stations keep them from spawning, but they can spawn anyway. They’ll break things or steal resources. Early game they can be a disaster, but not at this point in the game.

We’ve got 2 of them in the surface colony right now. I have options, but I’ll have to wait for the next legislative session to begin dealing with them.

Somewhere along the line I never hooked up this vaporator. Silly oversight.

Ah, there we go, just over positive. I should build another polymer factory, but not at the moment. I should note these panels don’t update right away, so you do have to wait to check them to see if your change did what it was supposed to.

Shuttle Hub is a bit overloaded. I can fix that.

Compact Hangers just lets us add 6 more shuttles to each hub. That should help.

Almost done clearing out this asteroid. Notice you can do all the upgrades on these like you can do on surface extractors. There may come a time when this is useful to do, but not today.

I figured these giant patch markers would clear up by now, but I guess not. So weird.

I had another trade load of concrete come in so now it’s time to build some tunnels. They’re available right from the start, but the cost in machine parts is kind of prohibitive. Still, if you want to get up, down, or even create shortcuts, they work great.

Look, I’ll do it next time, I have priorities here first.

There are 3 ways to use the laws to deal with Renegades. You can Deport them, crackdown (which I forget what it does, but I suspect it just makes them madder) and Reform, which only works if you have a Sanitarium. Guess what?

Now I can cure Renegade status. I open another shift in the Sanatorium so hopefully they’ll come in to get “fixed.” Very Clockwork Orange of us.

Of course the Flatitdiots don’t like it. I’ll deal with you next session, so chill out.

I build another tunnel to reach our old starting bluff. They do have a limited range, as you can see. They also take up some space so I try to keep them where I don’t want to build other things, like domes.

All these drones are hauling concrete for the first tunnel.

While I was busy with the tunnels, I sent one of my extra rovers to do the last Bottomless Pit optional. THROW IN THE ROVER!

Who would have thought throwing things into a Bottomless Pit wouldn’t do anything? Well can’t blame us for trying.

So I double checked after this and it actually completed 90% of the Bottomless Pit Lab tech with that stunt. Guess it did do some good.

This was a busy few minutes. First the tunnel got finished. The best part about these is that they require NO maintenance. They also can be hooked to your power and life support grids, allowing you to transfer those across much larger distances. Finally, the rovers can use them to get up on the bluffs, which my Explorer is busy doing right now.

This event is really only worth the effort if you have a lot of Religious colonists. There is a Sponsor that encourages this, so I get why it might be useful.

But I have 43 out of 388. It’s really not worth the cost to the rest of the colonists. Luckily I have the Politician Profile, so this just goes away.

Poor Explorer. It gave it’s life. Now it can be recycled, once I get a commander over there to do it of course. Oh look, ANOTHER anomaly, this one in the underground.

Not a repeat this time. Four options. The first gives us Giant Crops. Wheat, Corn and Potatoes have a giant version with a higher yield. Tempting, but I’m doing good on food both underground and on the surface now.

The second is the Prefab Compression tech we already have. It’s how we can buy all those spires from Earth. Funny how it shows up as an option twice.

The third is Interplanetary Learning, which adds Workaholic and Hippie to the schools to teach our children. Not needed.

The fourth, though, is the best option here. Global Support allows us to unlock unique rovers and buildings of OTHER Sponsors.

There are 5 Rovers that act like one of our current rovers, but can do something else.

And all but one of the Sponsors has a unique building, and they can be very, VERY powerful.

And the big thing is that it is REPEATABLE. Oh, it costs quite a bit, but even once might change the entire nature of this game. This is a wonderful breakthrough to come across, though I wish I had gotten it earlier. Breakthroughs higher up on the tech tree are cheaper.

The surface rover is busy snapping up the last few anomalies up on the bluffs. The one it’s going to would normally reveal techs, but since they’re all revealed now, it will just give us bonus research points.

That said, I do have 2 more breakthroughs and at least one standard anomaly, so we got good odds of getting something good.

Look, I know you guys aren’t happy about the whole Renegade thing, but how about I do this for you? A bone? No no, these are tips, not bones.

Prefab-Refab has come in at last. And is that rumor? Planetary anomaly?

New Planetary Anomalies will spawn randomly, I never know when. The old version of the game would give you a head’s up, not so much the relaunch.

Looks like the Safari rover is going on another Safari. Hope it brings in some big game breakthroughs.

I only have one rocket on Mars at the moment, and to send it on it’s way, the drones have to offload all the rares they had already loaded.

The Explorer brings in a few less than useful breakthroughs. Traveling to Earth isn’t a major priority now, especially as Last War is broken. Service bots continue to not be useful at this stage. I guess Resilient Vegetation it is.

The Safari rover was a bit more successful. Alien Imprints can reduce the cost of all techs, but at this point it costs so much itself it’s not really worth it. Neural Empathy might be useful, but I’m doing fine without it. So I guess after skipping over it 2 or 3 times now, Vector Pump finally wins.

And ignore my tool bar. And the date. IGNORE ME!

So I Refabed one of my drone extenders and you can see it just sits in my inventory just like any other prefab.

The reason I did that is to move it a bit further out. I originally laid the extenders at the max range of the regular hub, but since then we’ve picked up a tech that expands our range, so I can put it a bit further out to cover more area. The extender here is at the max limit of the main hub.

You can see the various ranges. My new extender reaches out well past the tunnel. The old extender reaches just to the tunnel, and the main hub reaches just past the landing pad near the second Oval dome.

I have no idea what each of these options do. But I’m a politician, not a scientist. Let them figure it out.

Well as long as they’re happy.

500 colonists. That counts everyone underground.

Laying lights in this spot and noticed there wasn’t just this Deep Metal spot, but the one on the left is the same. 100K worth of metals in this small cavern. I have stupid amounts of resources.

Here’s the other Tourist law. That finishes the Sponsor Relations row.

The real reason Prefab-Refab is so useful is for asteroids. Since I’ve cleared this rock, I can now pack up the extractor and solar panels and send them back to Mars to be sent to the next asteroid.

I’ll send the lander back with most of the stuff I’ve collected on this rock. It’ll take a couple trips because of all the metal. Lots of polymers here, which I’m surprised at.

Sure, gimme another rare metal patch. WHY NOT!?

The last breakthrough on the map. Let’s see what we get.

You know, I think I got most of the good ones by this point. Sustained Workload involves using Heavy Workload, and I generally don’t. Advanced Drone Drive might be useful if drones didn’t make up a quarter of our population. Positron Brain let’s us build android colonists. They never get old, or sick, but also don’t have kids and still eat, breathe and sleep. Might be useful for some tasks, but I need the Drone Assembler tech, which I haven’t researched yet as I didn’t think it a priority.

Oh damn it. Power went a little wonky on the surface. I had it mostly fixed when this popped up. Meh. Nothing more Stirlings can’t fix.

This concrete patch is cleared out. I already fabbed up the extractor and will quickly do the solar panel now. Also it seems Blue Sun got a Planetary Anomaly. Good for them.

Always annoys me when I don’t build things properly. This apartment isn’t sitting in a normal square. I’ll build a new one and take this one out so they take up the right amount of room again.

And I finished the Compact Hanger tech so more shuttles to keep things going.

New Sun wants us to build a relaxation building. The Amusement Park counts. They want it in this underground dome, so why not?

Meanwhile I build yet another ministry, after I cleared that space from earlier.

Might as well get this anomaly too.

It’ll give a good chunk of research. Also I put in a hanging garden. I’ll show a better shot next time as I thought I got one with this run, and apparently didn’t. Whoops.

Making FML happy again. Honestly it hasn’t been as bad as I feared, they’re just really, really stupid.

And that’s it for now. It’s possible they’ll fix the Last War before I get the Political Animal achievement, so if that happens I’ll keep pushing forward until it’s done (for THAT achievement at least). That said, I think we’re overdue for a full review, so let’s do that.

NEXT TIME: Colony Review Time!

 

[Eishtmo]

Welcome back. Despite the disappointment of not being able to finish the Last War due to a bug, we’ve come pretty far and it’s time to go through where we stand now and start planning our next major push.

Cash and research are good. I would love to have more research, and I have some plans to do it, but right now I have other priorities.

Surface status is decent with resources, though we are a bit down on Machine Parts. Probably should build a major factory for them. 420 colonists and 8 unemployed. One problematic, which is probably a Renegade that’s being “cured” as we speak.

Underground our advanced resources are mostly at bare minimums, which is fine. 106 colonists. So that’s 526 colonists for the entire colony. Not bad, not bad at all.

We still have 3 asteroids in orbit, though once I clear the one, I’ll be abandoning it. Terraforming is slowly moving, though notice heating is moving very quickly. That law boost has been very, very helpful.

The surface is fully explored and accessible now. So many options for future expansion it’s hard to choose. We’re also rolling up on the big domes, and they will need more space than our current crop. Odds are good we’ll be moving away from our little corner of the map.

Underground is mostly lit now. Just the lower left corner is left to do for the most part. At a glance I see 3 locations for expansion: The Bottomless Pit, the point halfway between our current locations, and super metal spot to the left of that I highlighted last time.

The tech tree is fully revealed. We’re still 29 techs short of our goal, but 14 or so of them are in the upper half of the tree, so relatively cheap. The final push will be VERY fast. That said, I do need to look at some specific techs that will help our expansion greatly.

On the Political side, New Sol is very happy.

Prosperity would be happier if I built some smart residences, but that’s a tech I don’t have. I could capture meteors, I don’t NEED to, but I could, as a treat.

Codex is mostly happy. What they aren’t happy about are things I don’t plan to do anything about.

Utopia wants Media Centers and the SETI special project. Which I have done, just not recently. And I don’t really need it either.

Flat Mars League is still in a Faction Disaster, despite wobbling between Content and Happy for many Sol now. If I can bring a Celebrity or Dog forbid a Guru in, it might calm them down a bit.

I really don’t like the scroll bars. Anyway the only law row we haven’t done much with is Tech Deregulation, and only some of those are interesting at the moment. I almost feel like I want to hold off on most of those until I’m ready to push the finale of this game. Still might be something there.

One ministry left, then the only Sponsor mission I have left is declare Independence. I don’t often worry about Sponsor goals, but to be this close to finishing a set is quite nice honestly.

These are all the remaining Milestones to finish. Most are related to terraforming, which we probably won’t get before this game ends.

On to our domes. Dome #1 is pretty full now. Not just people, but buildings. Not even a single hex of space left.

Remember when we were struggling to get the resources to build this dome? Ah, memories. Anyway, I have some unemployed people and a full set of empty hexes. I need to do something here. Maybe I’ll put the last ministry here.

Our education dome is still going strong. There’s some empty space and I’m not sure if I want to put anything there right now.

Our original Refugee dome also has an unemployment problem, but plenty of room to grow.

The Medium dome I built out here is still growing. I have 1 2/3 slots left to fill. Also you can see the Hanging Garden in the middle.

The entryway dome to the underground has most of it’s space taken up with the school. I really need to build another education dome for the underground.

Our first Cave of Wonders dome (and that event didn’t finish either, so I suspect it’s bugged too) is ready for more, just not enough people underground to fill it at the moment. Maybe I should transfer more from the surface down here.

And the newest dome has a Network Node spire (I don’t think I mentioned it before, sorry). That boosts the research in a dome, and this will probably have a lot of research before I’m done with it.

Okay, so what’s the plan for the future?

Honestly, I think I need to push the terrafrorming a bit harder. The Open Dome law might slow us down if we’re not ready for it. That means we need that +20% terrraforming breakthrough we found. That’s a good start, and we need more than that, but it’ll work to get us going.

I also want more research. There’s an entire research building I have neglected to get and given I have a couple domes on research patches, I should probably get that sooner rather than later. That’s another tech.

As I said, I should funnel more colonists into the underground. There’s a lot of work to do down there. And build an education dome down there.

On the surface, I think we need to work on some wonders. More techs, yes, but we have enough resources build one or more of them. I also need to build some larger storage tanks on the surface, and probably expand my storage depot for the mountains of rares and metals that will be coming in soon.

I think I should add more landing pads and buy another lander so I can harvest the asteroids a bit faster. Oh and build that last ministry. That would give me a Mega Dome prefab, and that means finding a site for that and building the support structures for it.

Well that’s enough planning. Time to get back into the fray.

NEXT TIME: Water, water over there, kind of.

 

[Eishtmo]

Taking a moment to review our current status is a good way of figuring out what needs to happen next. Now it’s time to push forward.

First we sort out the research. We’ll finish up Hull Polarization as it’s almost done anyway. The next 3 techs are all heavy hitters. Carbonate Processor is what we need for more atmosphere, Resilient Vegetation will help us plant more plants, and Ancient Terraforming Device will give us a nice big push.

I got more stuff from Earth. Multiple Drone Hubs for future expansion and topping off my spire supplies. I also ordered a rocket full of Stirlings, but I forgot to screenshot it apparently.

Closing down the remains of this concrete patch. No I don’t know why there’s a big light colored triangle on the screen. I don’t remember it.

Adding another landing pad, though this will be a dedicated trading pad.

And ordered another lander. Multiple landers will make it so I can clear out asteroids faster.

I also pump up requests for fuel on the surface. The Terrforming Device tech gives less percentage than I thought (for some reason I thought it was 30%, and it’s only 20%), so I’ll need to keep the GHG’s going a bit longer.

I also reroute my powerline around this dome. I’ll be connecting it to the previous dome first when I do build it, and I just don’t want to interrupt power the train station.

I clear out an empty waste rock site behind the launch pads. Eventually I’ll clear another one to make room for an additional pad, but not now.

To make room for more workers and to fill the need for Machine Parts, I build the factory up here.

And install the last ministry building in the last slot in the original Oval Dome.

Now there only remains one Sponsor goal left to complete.

I built an extra Dron Hub Extender, then refabed it. I have plans for this thing. Wonderful, glorious plans.

Hull Polarization comes in. That should slow the drain on my resources.

It feels kind of pointless to send rockets back to Earth. Prefabs are nice, yes, but not essential.

Wow, that patch cleared out quick. Geologists plus the various upgrades make short work of even large patches.

I need more power, and the best option is Stirlings. To make room, it’s time to pack up some of the solar panels. They’ll go to a good home, on one of the asteroids.

Speaking of cleared out patches. Glad this is done now. Eventually (not this update) I’ll reroute my power and life support lines through this area to connect the underground grid together.

This one is still going strong though. I open another shift and add the Magnetic Extractor upgrade.

Uh, well, I guess funds. Extra supply pod isn’t really necessary at this point.

Going to finish clearing out one of the asteroids. Once that’s done, I’ll be letting it go and moving on to the next asteroid.

More Stirlings.

Our new lander has arrived, and it’s time to get it ready for it’s target asteroid.

This one in fact. Not much here, but enough that I want to clear it out.

I wonder about what FML wants sometimes. Sure, why not.

I don’t know what will break them out of “faction disaster” or even IF they can be broken out of it.

Mega Domes are the largest normal domes you can build. If I didn’t have the Oval and Diamond domes available, most of the domes once I get the tech for them will be Mega Domes.

The new lander arrives, and the anomaly there gives me a Physics discount. Okay, that’s nice, I guess.

Random malfunctions leads me to discovering I have an idiot doing research. Sigh, can’t cure stupid sadly. Also, this is a rotated view of the elevator dome. I usually get the one angle because that’s the angle the overall map snaps to when you zoom out, but you can totally go around at different ones.

Still trading rares for concrete. It seems silly, and it is, but my concrete production is way, WAY behind.

I pack up the metal extractor after it finishes the patch off. It’s time to set up a mining outpost.

Going to try a deregulation tech. It’ll upset the Codex a bit, but whatever, faster rockets go.

Didn’t I build those extra shuttles? Or did that happen before the game crashed? Eh, let’s just get them going.

I need some overflow housing in the education dome. A simple living quarter should help. It’s a small 3 hex building. Considering I don’t have enough room for anything larger, that should help.

FML want’s a Celebrity on Mars, so let’s give them one. But just one.

Celebrities work like Geniuses, except they give cash per Sol rather than research. There is not a downside to having one.

Before I abandon asteroids, I tend to clear them of everything. There is an achievement for leaving nothing behind, but I’d have to clear out the water as well to get it. I just do it out of habit.

Good bye Pombero BL13. Have fun floating around the solar system, and probably falling into Jupiter.

So I didn’t notice this, and I don’t know when they did it, but it says “roundtrip fuel.” That means I don’t have to worry about fuel any more. That is a nice addition. Must have come with the last patch.

The Naturalistic Habitat I think was meant for tourists. I’ve used it for mining outposts before, and it kind of works, but children will move into it for some dumb reason. And I want geologists to work the mines.

Anyway, the upside of them is that they only really require food. You don’t even need power or water. It’s great.

The issue is getting people to actually move in. These are a new thing in the game, so I guess it’s fine that they weren’t really planned to be used this way, but they should have known someone would use them that way.

This is the biggest glitch with Nat Habs. They claim people are starving, but, um, they aren’t. It will clear eventually, but the “dome at risk” warning won’t clear easily because Nat Habs aren’t domes yet they work like domes. It’s weird and annoying.

I decided to do each of the repeatable special missions that I haven’t yet. High-speed comms will give us more sponsor research. Capture meteors I have talked about before, so it’s time to show you what it means.

Okay, they really don’t like the Tech Deregulation laws. They are very angry at me.

This should help a bit.

Another new asteroid has strolled into orbit. Nothing special on this one, I’ll get it later, after I finish with this round asteroid and it’s giant resource patches.

The funny part is those giant patches vanished as soon as I started building. Weird. Anyway, this is the plan for this rock. Donut asteroids are a pain to farm with a lander, so I used my prefab drone hub and extender to fully cover it. I’ll be farming everything basically at the same time.

Codex is still cranky, so I’ll switch to this. Should help a bit.

Carbonate Processor is done.

This is the other major use of waste rock, building an atmosphere for Mrs. These things are huge and eat a lot of power. That said, there is an issue with them: Mars can’t hold onto that atmosphere. The thicker it gets, the more gets lost into space, so you have to build more to maintain it. I THINK you can maintain a breathable atmosphere with 3 of them, but there are other things that can be done to slow down loss.

Water can now appear on the surface, meaning we can dig lakes. We won’t for a moment, but we could.

It’s a milestone to have.

So I want to build that Mega Dome on the northern bluff, but I need some space for it. The Dozer will be put to work once again.

Since I have the drone hub at work, I don’t need the lander to stay here, so it went back to Mars to prep to capture that new asteroid. That said, you can see what I’m doing with the extractors now. I originally planned to go around the other way with the power cables, but the path was blocked by the terrain.

Here comes the meteors.

Here’s the impact point of one of the meteors. And look, they’re landing in the lower right corner of the map, not that far from my central colony. I know this game too well.

It’s totally repeatable as well. You can do it as many times as you like. Once is probably enough. That said, there have been times when I have used it repeatedly, especially when I'm short on metals.

Positioning the Mega Dome prefab up here. I need to get the infrastructure connected up, and it’s close to the tunnel so that should be easier. I just need to rope my commander up from the under ground to get it going.

Speaking of which, it’s time to get access to that other rare patch. The easiest way is via a micro dome.

Polymer deposit is the result of a meteor, as is the research anomaly. And there’s the warning the location is about to be hit by a meteor. There are so many that come down.

And the satellite is done. Looks like the probes. . . Anyway, like the SETI mission, the value of this goes down every time you complete it. I don’t know if it goes to zero as I have never bothered, but maybe.

Well come on over. Why not? I can make some room.

I’ll get another apartment and VR Workshop in for them.

And that’s all for now. Next time we will build the Mega Dome and keep right on growing.

NEXT TIME: Trains and Mega Domes.

 

[Eishtmo]

Hello again. Last time we launched a comms satellite, dropped meteors on the colony and prepared to build a Mega Dome. Let’s dig in.

Right before I wrapped up last time, this dome got finished in the underground. It’s purpose is to work that second rare metal patch. The micro dome is the perfect choice for this task. On the downside, they’re smaller than a basic dome and can’t have a spire. On the upside, they’re cheaper, and given I don’t plan to do too much here, I don’t need a full sized dome. Honestly I don’t think I can fit a basic one in here either.

For some reason a couple people have already moved in. It’s because I have the extractor up and ready to go, so people came to work. I’ll fix that soon enough. This will get all the basic amenities: an apartment, a park, a diner, and a medical building. I’ll still have room to expand and change as I want, but for now, that’s all I need.

Getting rid of this power cable to make room for for the connecting tunnel. I’m at an odd angle here, but this is the southern most of the four domes in the Cave of Wonders. This will, eventually, be my underground education dome.

I also start removing some of the waste rock piles as they empty out. I will regret this later, but at the moment it seemed like a good idea.

Our newest asteroid doesn’t have much for us to play with. Pity.

I decide to bring more non-specialists down from the surface. I have work to do and no one to do it, and the surface is getting pretty crowded at the moment.

Uh, didn’t I bring some extractor prefabs? Oh wait, I used them all on the donut asteroid. Blah. I’ll send the lander back to Mars and order more extractors from Earth in the meantime.

Getting the new education dome built. Note the power cable wrapping around the left side.

Oh right, forgot about that. So as the atmosphere gets thicker, solar panels start being less efficient. Before, the single large solar panel was just enough to power the concrete extractor. Now, not so much.

I haven’t used the small solar panels as of yet, but this should give me enough power for the extractor.

Looking at how long it’s taking for some of these more expensive techs has told me I need more research. The easiest way is to get this tech first. The Hawking Institute is a large research lab and generates more science per person/hex than the regular lab.

Decide to see who’s trading, and so far only Europe wants to at the moment. Drone Printing would actually be nice to have at this point.

Drone Printing gives us the Drone Assembler, an exterior building that can build drones and (after we research the tech) biorobots. It uses electronics, which I don’t make enough of to support, at least at the moment. Looks like I’ll be building another electronics factory.

I summon more waste rock to the surface. Between the waste rock processor and the carbonate processor I’ve been burning through my surface waste rock piles pretty quickly. That said, I have a LOT of waste rock underground, so why not transfer it to the surface.

While I fill out the underground education dome, the Nat Hab on the surface gives me yet another warning. So annoying. I ignore it for now.

New Sol isn’t as happy as it was, and wants gaming in one of the underground domes.

I could build a casino, it counts towards gaming, but the electronics shop is smaller and does much the same. I will need more electronics for it though.

Random minor event. Well, it’s minor now. A couple hundred Sol ago it would have been a major.

Uh, well, huh. They were leaving the Nat Hab, and ran until they suffocated I guess. Whoops. I’ll have to figure something out to make this less likely to happen.

Running a bit short of oxygen down in the underground. It’s a combination of the two fungal farms and the multiple domes. It also doesn’t help when the domes aren’t on the same network. Did I actually need this? Possibly not, but it doesn’t hurt to have it in now.

The Martian Institute of Science finishes. The resulting Hawking Institute will give me quite a boost in science, but the best option is to remove the old research labs. I’ll be destroying them entirely.

Why are you starving in my dome? Wait, I wonder if they came from the Nat Hab as “starving” and just haven’t gotten any food yet. It’s hard to say honestly.

With the new education dome, the kids have left the elevator dome. I pack up the nursery and school for use later.

I replace the school with the alternative skin Hawking building. I’ll be tearing out the two research labs and the medical post and adding another Hawking there later.

I’m really running out of room on the surface. Swapping all the domes to “forbidden when full” will slow things down and give me a chance to catch up.

New Sol is REALLY unhappy. They didn’t like the meteor mission, like at all, and a number of other niggling things have been bothering them. I’ll look to cool them off.

Running out of places for people to work, so I’ll install a Drone Assembler here. Two of the domes can get to it, so that should help a bit. They don’t automatically build drones, you have to queue them up, so if I don’t have the electronics to spare, it will just sit idle, but the workers will still go in every day.

Resilient Vegetation comes in. This would be great, except I haven’t and can’t do any water terraforming on Mars at the moment. I lack the techs.

Just a shot of a child riding the train to their new home.

Planning for a new dome in the underground. Mostly it’s because of those resource patches, but I also plan to build a large train station in this area, and I don’t want people getting off at the station and deciding to walk the rest of the way to their destination.

I order more extractors and vaporators from Earth. I still can’t build the vaporators as I don’t have the tech yet. I also order more seeds. This will likely be the last seed order I place as the techs are coming in to render them unnecessary.

I now have 2 Hawkings and the difference in my tech has gone up by quite a bit. Before I was at 3.9k research, now I’m at 5.4, and it will go up again as I add another network node and hawking to the elevator dome.

So the big project with the underground is reworking the rail transport. The core of it will be this large station. From here there will eventually be one line heading into each of the 4 openings into the cavern. To left is a location filled with metal resources. At the top is the Cave of Wonders, the bottom is the elevator, and to the right is the Bottomless Pit. But to do this, I have to pull out the old tracks.

Now I actually wanted the station more to the right, but uneven terrain prevented me from placing it there. As long I can get the tracks where I want them, it will be fine. Oh, I also want to link up the power and life support grids, so there’s that too.

This came up and I don’t know if it actually did anything. I think I got a shot of research, but usually it’s followed by a dome shattering kaboom, and some note about that kaboom. But no, nothing, the window just closed. Odd.

And the Ancient Terraforming Device is done. Every terraforming stat jumps by 20%.

I didn’t mention, but this game does have an in game encyclopedia, and that green prompt in the previous image pointed to it. Toxic rains are now possible, and they’re more annoying than dangerous. When they happen, I’ll let you know.

And you can see the effect on Mars itself. There’s a thin layer of atmosphere and brackish water in the low lands. Good job Quaid.

That said, we can now plant grass on Mars. I’ll set all the forestation plants to do that full bore.

Meanwhile the atmospheric losses begin to take hold. It’s a small percentage now, but it will grow over time.

Tech wise I start planning things out. Domeless farming and Adapted Vegetation will both give us a way to produce seeds without needing them from Earth. And thanks to the previous two techs, once they’re done we should be able to use them immediately if we want.

After some back and forth, I'm finally ready to start laying out the new asteroid mining project. Shouldn’t take too long to clear it out.

Why is this one drone attached to this rocket? And where is it? Usually there’s a small blue arrow over drones under the particular hub’s control, and I don’t see this one anywhere.

Anyway, the Drone Assembler is making drones but only as packed versions. I can unpack them on the various hubs (except for rockets and landers). I unpack them at the new hub I installed on the northern bluff to cover the new Mega Dome I’m installing there.

With the Mega Dome built I get another milestone.

And then I get warnings about power and water and I didn’t understand why. As you saw, it was connected to the tunnel, so it should be fine.

If I had remembered to plug in the other end of the tunnel. Whoops.

Maybe it's time to touch grass. It’s such a nice effect.

Okay, I need to split this one, it’s gotten too long. See you at the next part.

 

[Eishtmo]

Back again, let’s pick up where we left off.

Underground, I finished the large station and it’s nearby dome. Large stations have 4 rail heads, so I linked them in such a way to not block the paths to the other two branches. So the outer track on the southern side, and the inner track on the northern side. This way the inner south track can go to the left, and the outer north track to the right and the Bottomless Pit.

Anyway, Water Conservation has come in and halved my dome’s water consumption. I now have way more water than I will ever actually need.

Working on filling out the Mega dome. I’m making it my back up education dome, as the population of the domes is starting to outstrip my old education dome. I also installed an electronics factory and this, the Open Air Gym. It’s been available since the beginning, but I usually prefer to use gardens. They look nicer, but it covers the exercise need and this dome is big enough to need it.

I still have a worker shortage underground. And I’m running out of storage space for metals and rares. This is after I opened up the storage taps for the trains stations. I need more storage underground.

Installing the large storage buildings underground is, well, weird. I usually don’t. Anyway, this was part of the original plan for this area, but, um, the train station was originally supposed to be further over.

I temporarily put in the track to the left side of the map to make sure I can make that turn (90 degree turns are not possible). I also need to dodge around the dust cloud created by the metal extractor. The scrubber will do a lot of work, but it might not be enough to override that dust. Still, better than nothing.

Oh come on, this is a beautiful mine and Nat Hab! Come live here! Half tempted to get biorobots and send them out here.

I installed a landing pad near the Mega dome so I can land supply pods or whatever as I need.

The Mega dome is big, and I don’t need that much more stuff. Also it doesn’t really have any mines nearby, so I need places for these guys to work. Creative Dispositions gives the polymer powered Art Workshops. Less workers than the Virtual Reality Workshops, but it takes polymers rather than electronics.

I also added more forestation plants near the Mega dome. Also I start harvesting the concrete patch that’s near the Mega dome.

Little drone packing up an extractor that had depleted it’s resource patch up on one of the asteroids.

The Art Workshops aren’t ready yet, so I put a VR one in the Mega dome.

I summon more colonists to the underground. I have so much to do and so few people to do them.

Since I finished lighting up the underground, I send off my underground transport to collect waste rock. Most of it is in small piles where the collapsed tunnels and debris piles were, so gathering them up will help keep the surface topped up.

Gimme more stirlings.

Oh good, the Art Workshops are now available.

Building more drones. Yeah, 1 electronic per drone is VERY expensive. This is why I prefer the embassy rewards, but I need more drones. I’m having constant shortages because the drones are ALWAYS working on something with no down time. If I can get more in the field, thanks to the elevator, than I can hopefully remove the warnings.

Toxic rains are, as I said, more annoying than dangerous. The warning time is really short for some reason. Usually I get a couple Sol warning with all my sensor towers. And by usually, I mean the last game I played. I think this is bugged. Sigh.

The junction area is fully up and running. I need more drones down here too. I need so many drones I might start trading for electronics soon.

Speaking of drones, there’s some desire to change from drones to energy, and with the Drone Assembler, I’m willing to change it now.

I decided to remove the fungal farm. Honestly I’ve got more food than I would ever want and the dome doesn’t have enough workers to support two Hawkings with it still there.

My extra stirlings have arrived. I’m planning to finish off my stirling farm in this update, so I need these for that.

Micro Fusion is our first Wonder tech, unlocking the Artificial Sun tech.

The Artificial Sun is the super power planet of the game. 1000 energy is crazy high for one building, but, um, it can do more than that. The issue is this thing needs a LOT of water to get it powered up. I have enough now, so no big deal. The bigger deal is where to put it.

You can see how much power I generate now, 1200 energy. 1000 energy from the Sun will basically double our power supply.

I’m starting to use up my waste rock. One option is to use this law to increase production and waste rock. I can lower it later with another law, but it’s fine for now.

Okay, something is bugged with the event thing as the toxic rains started LONG after the warning disappeared. You can just see the streaks of the rain with this shot, and the effect is rather nice in motion. Anyway, toxic rains disable forestation plants and open farms and create patches of toxic material on the map. None of this is a great threat to us, so no worries.

I’m going to add Smart Homes to my research queue. This will unlock the smart home group, which are nicer than standard homes and apartments, but hold fewer people. I rarely use them for that reason. Retirement homes, however, ARE useful. They hold a fairly large number of people in a 3 hex building, but only Seniors. I have a lot of older people floating around, so having a way to free up normal slots would be very nice.

Hotels are a tourist building, but normal colonists can live there too if you want.

Almost forgot to install more MDS lasers near the Mega dome. It takes 2 of them to cover the entire dome and I place them so they cover the water and oxygen tanks I installed near the tunnel. Also you can see I installed an Art Workshop in the dome.

Got the weird bug that brightened up the underground, but you can now clearly see that yes, I did light up the entire underground. I really didn’t plan to do a big underground build for this game, but I’m having a lot of fun with it.

I order some replacement spires and other things from Earth. I probably should just set rockets to cycle back to Earth on their own at this point, I rarely need anything from there.

Domeless farming is done.

The Open Farm is the final evolution of food production in the game and they’re quite large. Like the Artificial Sun, I need to find a good place for it.

I swear I’m going to build some robots and let them run this place. They’d be better at it.

With the retirement homes on the horizon, I pass this law. I get why this law exists, Seniors are usually a serious problem, but with Forever Young, it’s just pointless. Still, I have to pass all the laws, so I’ll do this version.

I kind of forgot to build the support strut here. Bit of an oversight. Still haven’t had an underground collapse since this game began (besides the asteroid mess) so I suspect it’s still bugged, but better safe than sorry.

I have massive piles of cash, no reason not to outsource the tech. I have 19 techs to finish, and no reason not to accelerate it.

I had to move the sensor tower over to fully flesh out stirling farm. I packed up the original sensor tower to move it somewhere else.

I really don’t care about this law, we finished scanning sectors so long ago it doesn’t really matter.

I angled up the camera so I could see that I had filled the entire range of the scrubber with stirlings. Funny thing is because I could expand the range of the scrubber and add MORE stirlings if I wanted. I don’t plan to right now, especially as I plan to put in the Artificial Sun in the near future.

Adapted Vegetation is done. Who wants to plant some bushes and trees?

Bushes and trees are how we make the forestation plants self sufficient, at least in terms of seeds. Drones will harvest bushes and trees if there’s somewhere to store the seeds. If not, they’ll leave them alone. This is why I didn’t build a large storage area for seeds, the drones WILL fill it.

Also note that the planting requirements are actually HALF of what they’re supposed to be. That breakthrough did a lot of work.

I will do grass, bush and tree as the 3 plant times the forestation plant will use.

It also gives me a milestone. Most of the milestones are kind of underwhelming in their rewards, and this is no exception, but at least it’s a fitting milestone for this game.

Ah, the toxic pool, one of the few consequences of toxic rains. These spots will pop up on the map after toxic rains and they can be cleaned up by drones and produces a nice pile of waste rocks.

I’ve been thinking as to why the Nat Hab is causing so many problems, and I think it’s because people are trying to leave it and won’t wait for a shuttle. So I either need more shuttles or a train. Shuttles are easier to deal with, and while those two free ones we got have served us well, they need help.

Here’s an alternative skin for the shuttle hub. I can never pick which I prefer. This one is up in the Cave of Wonders, and the second one is near the Mega dome.

Lots here to cover. Martian Aerodynamics makes shuttles faster, another stab at reducing the Nat Hab issues. Dome Bioscaping is specifically for making basic and micro domes more comfortable, and I have a lot of them underground. Creative Biorobotics is for making the last workshop which eats machine parts. Lake crafting is for making lakes, which is how you build water for terraforming.

My plans for the far north need access via tunnels. The one entrance at the bottom of the screen is just north of the Mega dome.

Codex is rather unhappy, so I’ve been trying to make them happier recently. This will help a bit.

I changed my mind with the tech tree. I’ve nearly cleared out the donut shaped asteroid, but with all that infrastructure installed, I think I can get more out of it by grabbing this tech. This ill pop up deep deposits on asteroids, so give me more to work with on them.

I finally add a network node spire to the elevator dome. This is an alternative skin for it, weird looking. Anyway, this will further boost my research production. I’m already at 6.5k, so this should make it even better.

Finished Martian Aerodynamics. Shuttle races now approved.

Hit 50% temperature. This is the dead minimum I need to open the domes. 55% is what I need to stop toxic rains, so I have a small amount to go if I want to get rid of them.

That said I don’t need two GHG factories. It will slow the increase in temperature, but will stop eating into my fuel stocks which my shuttles need now.

And that’s where we’ll stop for today. Until next time.

NEXT TIME: Hello Mr. Blue Sky