Welcome to Surviving Mars

[Eishtmo]

Welcome back. That last update was really long, so long I had to split it into two parts. But this one is going to just be one. Let’s dig in.

BTW, this is another two part update.

Last time we refabed one of the GHG factories, today, we’re refabing the waste rock processors. We have enough concrete for now and I need the waste rock for building atmosphere.

Research wise I swapped some things around. Interplanetary Projects will give me access to a special missions that will allow me to build atmosphere and water by sending rockets out.

Oh look, a tree and a bush. Trees will be growing like weeds now and I can’t wait to see the thriving forests they will eventually become.

In the meantime I need another Carbonate Processor. We’re moving fast towards finishing the techs needed for independence and I want to push hard to finish to finish the game not too long after. Getting up to 95% atmosphere is going to be a challenge.

I need more people underground. So many more people.

I’m also pushing to get the 40% workers in workshop milestone, so I start squeezing them in where ever I can. I will need more work space here in the near future, so I add an Art Workshop.

Gaming service? Okay, one electronics store coming up.

Swapping out the art store (which New Sol doesn’t like) for an electronics store (which they do) is easy enough. Note the name on the electronics store in red near by. Oh ha ha game.

Now I’m not running OUT of electronics, but if I can trade for some I will. Sadly no one wants to trade them with me.

Smart Home tech comes in. The real gem here is the Retirement Home. I’ll be looking to install these in domes with lots of Seniors in the near future.

ART! I take the last option as it has a better reward ultimately. Also, another Genius to the pile.

The Retirement home is a rather small building, only 3 hexes, but it holds a lot of people. 16 base, 19 thanks to the crowded living law. Now I won’t ever fill them up, but if I have 9 or 10 Seniors, that’s 9 or 10 extra living spaces in the main colony. Thus we can continue to grow faster.

Huh. No idea why she died. It says “low health” but that could mean anything.

I keep getting warnings about the Carbonate Processors not having enough waste rock. I THOUGHT it was because they weren’t getting enough attention, so I brought down one of my commanders to deal with them almost exclusively. But something else is going on as they aren’t keeping them topped off even after cranking them up to max priority.

Another Retirement home goes in. I think I install 4 or 5 of them throughout the colony. They’re small so I can fit them in just about anywhere. Also I put in another Hawking in this dome for more research.

Another law for the pile. This one isn’t strictly necessary as domes by themselves don’t soak up that much power, but I really just want to pass more laws.

Look how busy this part of the map is. Shuttles darting around, trains moving, the storage areas filling up faster than I can clear them out. We’re starting in on the late stage of the game and there’s so much going on it’s hard to keep track.

I set one of my rockets to automatic mode so I don’t have to keep chasing it around.

Deep Asteroid Mining will spawn extra resource patches on the asteroids, typically larger ones.

This one was nearly done, down to a single rare patch in the middle, now it has one more rare and two exotics.

And picked up an extra rare and exotic here. The third one got a few more too, I just forgot to screenshot it.

Another Terraforming milestone hit, Pure Rains. They won’t create toxic pools and shut things down. That’s about it.

Another dome getting a Retirement home, but to do so I need to yank out this Living Quarter.

And another Retirement home. Also Interplanetary Projects comes in. The techs are coming in fast and furious now. I need to bring a couple rockets back to do those projects.

Taking this out to make way for another Retirement home. The workers can be put to better use in the Hawkings next door.

Yes yes, you’re still not content. I brought you a Celebrity and you’re still not pleased. I wonder if they want one to spawn in the colony? That can happen, but it’s a random event. Bah.

Maned asteroid missions are something I just don’t enjoy managing, so this law won’t do much.

I’m pretty sure Dome Bioscaping covers the underground domes, but I can’t be sure. Otherwise it only effects a couple domes on the surface.

I start ordering supplies from Earth to get my rockets back. You can launch them empty if you must, but if I have some kind of need, why not?

That’s a much better reward.

Lot of stuff here now. Growth Simulators just makes plants grow faster. Advanced Rocketry’s big bonus is being able to BUILD rockets and landers. As we dig into the terraforming tree, we’ll want to be able to build them for some of the very special projects.

Sending this lander back to Mars full to the brim with stuff. 166 rares is a LOT for an asteroid. I’ll then route to the donut asteroid and pick up stuff from there.

Lake Crafting is the primary way to build water on Mars. The issue is that you have to be warm enough to have liquid water. No problem for us, but for new players they might try to install one without having the heat requirement.

By the way, look at our research. It’s really cooking now. In my last game, when I got to this point in the game, I was cranking out 13k of research per Sol, so I’m actually lagging behind. That said, at this point most of the techs are going to be finished in 2 or 3 Sol. I can push for Independence whenever I like now.

I wasn’t sure, but it appears the Elevator maxes out at the same point as the Drone Hub when it comes to drone count. Well, on this end. The underground half has plenty of room.

Martianborn Strength isn’t a game changer, at least now it isn’t. I hardly get any disasters but it’s cheapish.

Still short of workers underground. I have a third of my total population down here. I don’t know what else to do now.

Removing this should help a bit. Also makes room for, wait for it. . .

Yup, another Retirement home. Also Growth Simulators finishes. The trees are going to be growing fast now.

So much food. I have 4 farms and a fungal farm on the surface and they’ve filled one of the large storage areas. I have another, but man do I have a lot of food. I haven’t even bothered building the Open Farm yet, I don’t need it!

I still have a lot of laws to pass, but most are, to my mind, negative, at least politically. Swapping this over keeps the ball rolling. Because I have the consulting government active, I don’t think they can just pass laws, but I’d rather not risk it.

Look at all the green! It’ll start spreading on it’s own soon.

I swore this was close to both metal patches when I built it. I guess it wasn’t quite close enough. Ah well, I’ll fab it and move it over a bit.

This one is almost empty. Good, that will give me more room for storage and train tracks. Does mean they’ll need more work though. Another workshop will go in soon enough.

As I have plans for my two spare rockets, I lock them out of getting rares loaded by default. That will save some time and energy.

I also get Mars Nouveau in. That will be helpful soon.

I debate adding Interplanetary Astronomy to the queue. It unlocks the science wonder, but I’m not sure I need this right now. I also add High Powered Jets to haul more cargo faster.

I decide to just get the strut up here. Not the dome though, I really don’t need another dome in the underground yet.

Important Greenhouse Gases costs money and fuel. I have plenty of money, fuel is a bit more of an issue, but I should be fine.

Capture Ice Asteroids costs a lot more fuel and machine parts. The boost to water is significant, and worth doing a few times.

Keeping New Sol and FML happy with this is fine. It doesn’t DO anything as I get rid of most of my colonists flaws. Only Idiot hangs around, so maybe that will help them a bit.

Wow, this got long too, splitting here.

 

[Eishtmo]

Back again. 109 images is way too many for a single post.

Changed my mind on the Omega Telescope and swapped over to Positronic Brain. I am TIRED of my Nat Hab giving me issues. I think putting Biorobots out there might resolve most of them.

Remember that dead colonist? Said “low health” is what killed her. Turns out I didn’t have a medical building in the Mega dome. Whoops. Adding the Hospital will help with that especially as there are a lot of people in the dome.

Here’s that third asteroid, the one I left to haul materials around. An extra metal and rare patch popped up. And the solar panel broke while the drones are gone. So annoying.

The first pure rain falls on Mars.

Another milestone for the books.

Lakes come in 4 different sizes and several different shapes per size. Keeps things interesting. That said, they do require constant water to maintain, and big influx once built.

You can see the rough shape of this one for the “large” lake. I guess it’s big.

Once construction is done on the lake, another milestone is finished.

Dig a lake. Any lake.

That metal patch is exhausted now, so I set up a VR workshop to take on the workers. Makes FML happy.

Here’s our lake. It’ll suck up a lot of water early on until it’s full, then require a constant supply forever after.

50% atmosphere brings a couple big changes. The first is the end of Dust Storms (they can be triggered to happen, but won’t naturally happen any more). The second is blue skies, which changes the surface look.

Yeah, it’s way different now. Also note the light green patches, those are toxic pools, and dark green are natural vegetation. Mars is truly coming alive.

All that green and you can see clouds now.

Finished Gem Architecture for the Diamond Dome. It’s the bigger version of the Oval Dome.

Remember this location on the far north side of the map?

Well now it will be the home of the Diamond Dome. Well, eventually.

For a size comparison. Yeah, it’s a bit bigger.

My lander arrived at the donut asteroid and is collecting the massive pile of exotics gotten from there. No room for anything else.

First buy is done. I need a lot of greenhouse gases to get Mars up to pressure to open the domes.

In the meantime, I need to start thinking about trains on the surface. I want a large station here as it gets me access to most of my domes and I have plans for the lines to go to other places as well.

The Diamond Dome, the Mega Dome and the Nat Hab outpost should have stations. Maybe THAT will even out the Nat Habs. Maybe.

That said, I think connecting the old refugee dome to the Mega dome might be a good place to start. I need a tunnel.

Train tunnels are similar to regular tunnels, except not really. They ONLY let trains travel, not even power can go through them. The upside is they can go further, the down side is they’re MUCH larger. Similar material cost though.

Swap this to tourists. I’m not planning to get them, but I don’t need the research really.

Another workshop? I mean, that’s all you want, so sure, why not?

I really should get the last workshop tech. Oh well, TV Station GO!

AHHH, the ground is shaking! Seriously, the screen shakes with the Marsquake. It will damage a random number of buildings. In this case one of my domes and a TV station get hit. This is the result of. . .

If the fuel costs weren’t so high, I’d probably do these more often. It’s a quick and easy way to raise water levels on Mars. The lakes just don’t do it fast enough, even compared to the other terraforming devices.

Didn’t I turn your construction off? Ah well, guess I have a large station now. Have to work out how to connect it up.

Thanks to the other tunnel, the lake, and some terrain issues, this spot is the only one for a tunnel I can get.

I find a spot for the other one here. You can see that dark spot where I placed incomplete train tracks trying to get through this small pit over here to get around to the other station. This is a bit awkward, but it’ll work.

Only China wants to trade with me. Microgravity Medicine is what gives you the Medical spire.

Such a short little link to the tunnel.

This one is a bit bigger.

Fuel issues. Okay, this is my bad, I set the surface to want as much fuel as possible, and the elevator obliged. Which is starving my shuttles underground now. Crap. It’ll take a bit to iron this all out, luckily I have trains so the shuttles aren’t AS important, but still annoying.

Meanwhile, EVERYONE IS HAPPY! Wow, I haven’t had that in a while. Nice.

This should keep things up. Again, all the sectors are scanned so this law is worthless.

Finally got the lander back to this asteroid to sort out all the issues. Then Advanced Rocketry comes in.

Now I can just BUILD rockets and landers. They’re not strictly cheap, but I can do it. At this stage money is raining from the heavens, so I don’t have to, but I could.

Like underground I max out the desired amount for the stations. This turns the stations into makeshift stockpiles, which should keep everything nice and happy.

I really don’t need supply pods any more. Standing is kind of worthless, but fine I’ll take it.

Just wanted to show the train entering the tunnel. Harder to time than you might think. Also I have 3 trains on this stretch of rail.

That’s a big toxic pool. Drones will automatically clean up this mess, so no need to do anything special, but it is annoying.

Let’s keep everyone happy a bit longer shall we?

Martionborn Strength might come in handy if I get more marsquakes.

I will be changing this soon, but it made sense at the time. Advanced Gravity Maneuvers allow my landers to get to and from asteroids faster. Home Collective will effect every residence (except nurseries if I remember right) if I activate it. Planetary Projects unlocks projects to spread seeds and vegetation. Localized Terraforming is another wonder tech that gives another big dome.

The lake is now full. Still needs water though.

So a quick look at the soil quality levels across the map. The red patches are the toxic pools. At this point plants just need to start taking root and they’ll spread all over the map. That said I’ve never actually covered the entire map in green before. That’s a fun future project I suppose.

So many rares underground I build another storage site for them.

So many in fact, I change my mind on priorities. I need the the Space Elevator. This will automatically send rares back to Earth without need of a rocket. I have too many and need to clear them out now.

Look at this little patch of green so far away from any of the forestation plants. Neat.

I need another drone commander to start clearing up the toxic pools. I order one from Earth.

And add this law to the pile.

And I think that’s enough for tonight. The skies are blue, it can rain, the lake is pretty and it’s kind of green on the hills. A wonderful time to stop and review the colony. That’s what we’ll do next time.

NEXT TIME: How far we’ve come

 

[Eishtmo]

Welcome back. I know it hasn’t been too long since the last review, but really we’ve grown so fast in the last few parts I felt it was necessary to pause for a moment and look over the colony.

I’ve decided that the Command Center screens are, less than useful. So we’ll use the tool tips instead.

Funding is really, really good. Most of it comes from exports, but I don’t do that very quickly and in spurts. The regular income comes via Retirement Homes, the TV Stations, and the one Celeb we have living in the colony. We also get some cash depending on how many of the political parties are happy.

Research is better than it’s ever been. Our Sponsor gives us quite a bit, but we generate most of it ourselves. Oh, and we have a bunch of Geniuses.

572 total colonists. 53 children and 106 Seniors. We don’t have any earthborn colonists, everyone was born and raised on Mars.

Still have a good number of empty work slots and a lot of Engineers, which makes sense as we can’t import any resources from Earth any more. Need to make the advanced resources (polymers, machine parts, electronics) here.

Underground we have 280 colonists. 35 children, 22 Seniors. 852 total colonists. Nice. The next milestone is 1000 total colonists, so we should hit that soon enough.

Mostly geologists and scientists, which, again, makes sense. Most of our raw resources, metals and rares, come from down here. And we have a lot of science generating down here too.

We are down to one last Sponsor Mission: Declare Independence.

Milestones are getting finished slowly. We probably won’t get all of them before finishing the goal of the game. Mostly the various 100% terraforming ones (though we might get the Atmosphere one). 40% workers in workshops seems unlikely, but I won’t not try to do it.

Research is down to mostly the high level ones. There’s a couple near the top, but they’re not necessary. To declare independence, we need 120 techs and it’s likely we’ll have it by the end of the next update. Currently we’re doing Orbital Engineering to unlock the Space Elevator. We have way, WAY too many rare metals, more than we’ll ever consume, so I want this to sell the off. It basically removes the need to send rockets back to Earth.

Terraforming progress is going well. We need 95% atmosphere to open the domes, and we’re at 61% now. We won’t get there before declaring independence, but that’s okay. I do want to get up to 55% temperature to get rid of toxic rains.

The focus of this game has been politics. The Prosperity faction is pleased with us.

The Codex is our original Sponsor. They are also happy, but I think they’re kind of wishy washy about it.

New Sol is probably my favorite party in the game at the moment. I like most of what they want to do and usually will do it. It doesn’t work super well in this game tough.

Utopia is generally pleased as well.

The Flat Mars League is also, some how, happy. I think it’s because I keep building workshops. Otherwise they’d hate me.

Most of the laws are passed. We have 15 left, 2 are for independence and one is to open domes, which is the only restriction. Once I can declare independence, I think I can finish the achievement in about 15 sessions. Only because I have to convert to Single Party before shifting to Dictatorship.

The surface of Mars is slowly turning from red to green. The brighter map is because the sky has cleared. The sky on Mars is blue, BTW, it’s just full of dust so you couldn’t really tell. Thus why the sky “clears” in this game.

This is the core of our colony and the capital. Trees grow everywhere, landing pads ready for rockets for trade, a train station to connect to the world.

Our original dome is full, of people and buildings.

The Oval dome that was such a stress to build back in the day is also full.

The surface education dome is over full, but that’s because of people graduating from the schools and university. They’ll move on soon enough. I think there’s 1 hex of space left, I should fill in a garden or something.

This would have been our refugee dome, but the Last War mystery broke. There’s some room left here for people, but not buildings.

This medium dome I built to help ease our overall crowding. It’s still not full, but getting there. I have a full set of 10 hexes left, and 1 extra hex, but I want to keep my option open for building another dome to the right. All of these domes are set to prevent births if they are completely full.

The Mega dome up on the northern bluff is our newest addition to the colony. It’s very, very empty right now. I do plan to expand to the left to get at more research patches. The main plan here is to build workshops.

The Naturalistic Habitation has given me no end of issues. It didn’t in the last game, but I suspect I know why. In the last game, the Nat Habs I built were relatively close to one of the domes, the people could just about walk between them if need be. This one is kind of isolated. And when they decide to leave, they hang around outside waiting for a shuttle to come get them, and that’s when they start starving. It’s annoying.

My solution is obvious: a train station. Once built, they’ll hopefully just go to the station and ride the train back to the domes. Hopefully.

Right now the only place I want to expand is here with a Diamond dome. I have a couple other areas, but I may not get to it in this game.

The underground is completely lit up now.

The elevator dome is full of people, but I have a couple hexes of space to work with if need be. It’s main job is research, which is why it has a network node spire.

The main dome in the Cave of Wonders actually has plenty of room still. It’s main job right now is resource extraction, but it has a side and future job as a research hub.

This research dome isn’t as good as I had planned, but at least it has an amusement park.

The underground education dome is also doing well, though it does have about 6 hexes to grow into.

Our central hub dome here is going to transition over to workshop as the mines run out. Really should put a spire in, but I’m not sure which one yet.

Expansion wise, I have one dome planned for the Cave of Wonders. I simply don’t have enough people to build it yet.

I still want to build over here near the Bottomless Pit. There’s a lot of space here so it will be nice. But again, I don’t have enough people for it.

This is the last spot I want to build in thanks to the large metal patches.

Our asteroids are nearly cleared out. 3 patches left here.

Two patches left here. It feels like I wasted a lot of time building the infrastructure here, but then I remember I sent back 200 exotics from this ONE asteroid. And there’s another hundred waiting to be extracted.

Our newest asteroid is going to be emptied soon enough.

So let’s wrap up with terraforming graphs. You can see where Quaid’s machine was activated, and then where we dropped Ice Asteroids on the planet. The lake hasn’t had a lot of time to add to it though.

Same bump here. It is growing slowly, but it should start picking up as the trees and bushes take root.

Once I hit 55% temperature, I’ll take out the last GHG factory. Actually given that I’m a bit short of fuel I might stop it even sooner.

Atmosphere is the main focus right now. It’s going up quickly, but it’s also bleeding off into space about half as fast as it’s building.

That’s about it for now. We’ve expanded greatly and are finally getting to the last phases of this game. I might actually finish this before Sol 320. Depends on the atmosphere. Until next time.

NEXT TIME: Give me liberty of give me death.

 

[Violentvixen]

The Naturalistic Habitation has given me no end of issues. It didn’t in the last game, but I suspect I know why. In the last game, the Nat Habs I built were relatively close to one of the domes, the people could just about walk between them if need be. This one is kind of isolated. And when they decide to leave, they hang around outside waiting for a shuttle to come get them, and that’s when they start starving. It’s annoying.

My solution is obvious: a train station. Once built, they’ll hopefully just go to the station and ride the train back to the domes. Hopefully.

I enjoy that no matter how advanced and complex these games get there's still always goofy issues like this.

 

[Eishtmo]

Oh wait, it gets goofier. Anyway. . .

It was nice to do that review, gives a bit of perspective on where we are and what we’re doing. But it’s time to get moving, we’re almost there.

First of all, I need more fuel. The underground is constantly short of it right now, and despite seeming to have plenty, I know we’ll burn through it quickly.

Also added another refinery underground. Hopefully this will calm those warnings.

We’re almost done with all the tech we need for the Independence push, I guess we should do something special for 120. Queuing up Global Support for the first time. We could get anything.

I need concrete, I don’t need food. The open trade platforms are nice, but sending the ship myself is always an option. All the more reason to get more fuel if I make this a regular trip.

Gimme.

I decided to upgrade the auto extractor on this asteroid. Usually I don’t, but I have the polymers here, plenty of power, and it’s on top of 2 resource patches. No sense not doing it. I should note it will only extract one of the patches at a time, so speeding it up can only help.

I want more research and I can’t squeeze another Hawking into this dome, so down goes an old research lab. I also have unemployment in this dome, time to combat that.

I also amplify this mine as that’s a 2k metal patch and it can take it.

Also some homeless in the underground education dome, fixable with a single house.

Much of the issue is New Sol not being happy and me trying to bring them up. Free Seeds makes them happy, not that I will be getting seeds from Earth any more.

Orbital Engineering is done. Space Elevators are a great idea, but we simply don’t have the material science to build them. If someone talks about building one in the “near” future, they’re talking out their ass.

Three techs left.

That said, this is a science fiction game, so we can build them. All the wonders are expensive to build, but totally worth it.

I’m trying to keep it in range of the underground elevator. I suspect a lot of my issues keeping my carbonate processors going is because the hub drones are just constantly busy. I’m hoping this will lesson the load, but I suspect I may have to do more.

While that’s going, I want to hook up my rail line to the Nat Hab. I want to use a tunnel, but this vaporator is in the way.

This message will be popping up a lot for some reason. It’s very annoying.

Time to send this lander back with a nice load of exotics. I won’t notice until later that it wants to haul prefabs that aren’t on this rock. I’ll fix that eventually.

For some reason I have a bunch of people who don’t have jobs in this dome, despite there being PLENTY of work space here. I’m only showing the Art Workshop, but the VR Workshop is even emptier. I don’t get it, I just don’t get it.

High-powered Jets will get resources moving faster. Sadly it doesn’t allow the shuttles to carry more people.

Two techs left.

Space Elevator finished. You can see part of how it works here, it will load exports (rares) and send them up in 100 unit batches. Even if my 3 rockets go up at the same time, I STILL would get more cash from the space elevator.

This is the other half of the space elevator: I can order stuff. Now, the Last War has limited my ability to order resources, which I normally could do, but I can order ANY prefab I want. Also no drones or rovers, but I can build them now.

I’m slowly adding to my milestone collection.

Exercise service? You mean a garden or something. Did I forget to put one in?

Yeah, I did. Don’t have a lot of space, so I’ll squeeze a small fountain in here. It counts.

Advanced Gravity Maneuvers just makes landers faster. Good for cycling materials back and forth.

One tech left.

Tunnel is done, now just a matter of hooking up the tracks to the station.

This is about when I realized that lander was trying to load prefabs. At least it opens more space up on the lander.

Pulling out the auto-clicker to push the metal and rare requests to the top. 4000 is how much the large storage areas can hold, so that should pull up most of my resources from the underground.

Creative Biorobotics is the last workshop tech. Home collective is a quick way of improving comfort in every living building in the colony, but it works like amplify and such so I’ll need a lot of polymers. Rover Printing will let us build rovers at will. Deep Water Extraction is the one tech I’ve not needed, but why not?

This is the third skin for the Arcology, but it looks weird underground for some reason. On the surface it has a ring that pops out of the top of the dome, but underground it doesn’t, I don’t know why.

Made a stop over at the donut asteroid and am clearing it out of as much as I can.

There we go, the mine is fully operational. 8 people working and living. . .

Uh, what? What is going on here? Why aren’t they living in the Nat Hab? Where are they living? Wait, are they. . .

THEY’RE COMMUTING! I did not expect that.

So I think the intention of the Nat Hab was as a tourist destination, not a remote worksite, which is how I wanted to use it. There’s an achievement for putting some number of them around a “Martian reserve” a thing I have not used and have no plans to because, again, I don’t do tourists. Still a bit of a disappointment, I was hoping to use Nat Habs like little mining towns with the rail station nearby to haul materials out.

Knowing how this works now, I think I should just install a micro dome or something for this patch. No reason not to at this point.

Oh that’s neat. Didn’t expect to see such signs. Not accurate, of course, it’s just part of the station texture, but it is neat.

Just wanted to show how much I am getting from each shot of the space elevator.

Getting close now. Almost 9k research per Sol isn’t too bad honestly.

Well, I missed the complete message, but here is Global Support ready to go again.

120 techs researched. Took 294 Sol. Would have been faster if it hadn’t been for the FML party.

And at the next session, I should be able to push for independence.

Here’s what we got for the tech: The RC Generator. I think this would have been more useful early on, which it would have if we had taken China as our Sponsor. I might still have a use for it on the asteroids, seriously thinking about it too. That said, not a priority build.

I should have built a playground cluster in the Mega dome earlier, but I didn’t because I am a derp. It’s fine.

Wait, wait, I get BOTH of China’s unique things? This is great! The RC Generator isn’t the best, but the Tai Chi Garden is amazing. It’s a garden, but it gives more comfort than the large garden, holds as many people, and is only 3 hexes, a third the size!

Okay, I probably didn’t need 3 here, but screw it. Large Gardens are a thing of the past.

Of course if I don’t have the space for one, I still can squeeze in a small fountain or something.

For too long have we lived under the yoke of Earth, slaves to their fickle desires. It is time to stand out alone from them, and be free to set our own course through the universe.

GIVE US LIBERTY!

And with that, we have finished the Codex’s sponsor goals. Woo!

Well, we’re not done done yet, sadly.

I guess the idea is that just OUR colony declared independence, not all of Mars, so our Sponsor built a new colony with blackjack and hookers. And they want us to help the new colony out with resources. I can probably swing the polymers and rares, but the fuel I’m a little short on.

Or just give them some cash. I mean, I’m SOOOO cash strapped it might be hard to. . .

Here’ s 5 bucks to fuck off.

And with that, we are truly free.

Milestone achieved. I think we’ll get the 1000 colonists and breathable atmosphere before this game is done, and maybe 100% atmosphere, as it is pretty close. The rest might be out of reach.

And we have a new set of Mission Goals. We’ve finished 4 of the 5 of these already. Mission goals are always a bit underwhelming, but at least these are pretty decent. Of course by the time you could declare independence you’d have most of these complete.

The 5 special techs offer some pretty nice options. Right now these two are the ones I really want. Fewer resources for terraforming should speed things up in the long run. And increasing research points is always a good thing. After that if I have the space I’ll slot the others in and talk about them then.

The bonuses I got for going independent has quickly finished Home Collective. As I said, it’s an upgrade to resident buildings, everything except Nurseries. It can get VERY pricey to implement, but very worth it.

More greenhouse gases. We’re doing pretty good on that, gaining about 1% atmosphere every Sol, but the sooner we get to 95% the better.

So by throwing off our Sponsor, we no longer have many of our Sponsor relation laws. It also got rid of the Founder stage law, finally. Still have scroll bars, but at least it’s only left and right, not up and down.

Our first law as an independent colony will wait until next time. I need a bit of a break.

NEXT TIME: I love democracy.

 

[Eishtmo]

Last time we finally declared independence from Earth. But it would be nice if we could go outside and not die horribly. Let’s work on that now.

Well I WAS going to take out this Nat Hab, but some people are moving in. I’ll let it sit for a bit while I clean other things up. I do need to remove it, but let’s see if they stay very long first.

I swap up the research queue. I need to get to 95% atmosphere, so I need to speed up the process a bit. Terraforming Amplification works like it does for extractors and factories. I also include Mega Satellites for a variety of reasons.

Apparently using the ctrl key to activate this on “all” the buildings, only applies to one map at a time. I did it on the surface at least.

I’ve built many landing pads at this point, but you can just build a trade pad. There’s no real point as you can swap the mode the same as always. It’s just interesting that you can. I did install another as I want to do more trading.

Retirement homes can also get the Home Collective treatment. Same with Arcologies, but not any of the Nurseries.

I undo the birth restrictions as I do have plenty of room to grow into on the surface right now, and eventually I want to get that Diamond dome built.

Also need more drones. It eats a lot of electronics, but I need them for my future plans.

I don’t really need the GHG factory any more. I need atmosphere, not heat at this point. Also I’m still short on fuel. Those shuttles are draining my supplies.

So I checked and this person living in the Nat Hab does NOT work there. Screw it, I’m refabing it. They are pricey to build, so I’m not going to scrap it.

It’s time to finish the Cave of Wonders dome cluster. The rare pad near the original dome is nearly empty, so this a good reason.

My plan for the former home of the Nat Hab is to build a micro dome out here. It needs to bridge the gap between the station and mine, and, well, everything is in the way. Have to move it all over.

Installing another, and the last, Hawking for this research pad. With the rare extractor nearly done, it’s best to be ready ahead of time.

Okay, so this law is funny. The idea, I think, is you pass this BEFORE you pay off the Sponsor to leave you alone. The law works by changing the rewards you get for finishing the independence missions. Which I finished long before. I suspect that this won’t really do anything but I need to pass all the laws. Competitive is the best balance from what I can tell.

Smart complexes are the “advanced” version of the living complexes we started the game with. They have several skins (I’m showing one off in the second image) but I don’t usually like using them. They have more comfort than standard living buildings, which is nice. But they cost more resources to build, hold fewer people AND need electronics for maintenance. I’m mostly including them here because, well, it’s a let’s play and you should see what some of them look like.

I set the new trade pad to swap food for polymers. Doing all those home collective upgrades cut into our supply a bit so I want to beef it up. Not like I don’t have plenty of food.

New Sol is a bit salty at the moment. They don’t like the smart homes and I just built two of them. I’ll put an electronics shop in the elevator dome.

And here’s the smart complex. That’s +20 comfort for fewer people and more resources. It’s not worth it honestly.

Of course, no one is living there because I forgot to hook up oxygen. Whoops. Here’s the alternative skin for the MOXIE.

At least Prosperity likes the smart homes.

Independent Terraforming finishes. It SHOULD reduce resource requirements, which will hopefully mean fewer delays on the processors.

I have a rocket working on bringing in more greenhouse gases. And 3 trade rockets are parked waiting for resources.

Finished the dome in the Cave of Wonders and I’m starting to populate it. Decided to add a Casino for no real reason. Something to build.

Casinos serve a few different needs, but are also, you know, kind of dumb. I think they’re really for a tourist colony build. They do look neat. When it’s done I’ll show off the alternative skin.

I also install an Arcology.

It’s at this point I notice the mouse pointer doesn’t actually show up in the screenshots. It should be where it says “salvage” on the screen. Anyway, I’m ripping out most of the power cable that wrapped around the dome to make room for a tunnel to link the last two domes together.

There’s the new tunnel. Once done, the Cave of Wonders will be completely connected.

Well, those are all junk suggestions. You know, I have a better suggestion. Tell me what you think about it.

Oh, you don’t like it? Well that’s a shame, maybe you should have worked harder.

Prosperity, you’re my only friend.

Here’s the alternative skin for the Casino. I prefer the original version, but it’s not terrible.

The import is done, and that adds just enough heat to eliminate toxic rains. So I bought an extra commander just to clean up toxic pools, and now it’s time to shine.

In the meantime, I decide to add another drone hub.

So I think the reason the carbonate processors keep giving me low resource warnings is because the drones are too busy to supply them. I thought I could fix it with a drone commander, but no luck there, so let’s use a straight up hub. I’ll take out the extender as I don’t need it any more.

When we paid off the Sponsor, we lost all our sponsor research points. That’s about 1000 research a Sol just gone.

But I can still do the High Speed Satellite special project. Hmm, I wonder what would happen if I did it again. I’m a bit short of fuel to do it, so I may try it later.

AHH! Didn’t expect to see a trade rocket this close up. It’s leaving if you’re curious. The rockets do stay on screen for a while, you can even see them launching and landing on the overview map. Neat to see it here.

I think my plan with the drone hub fixed it, or maybe the reduced resource consumption form that last tech, I don’t know. Or it could just be random. I do seem to get fewer warnings, so it helped at least.

That said, between all the buildings that need electronics and all the new drones I’m printing, I need more electronics. I up the priority on this factory to make some more.

Forgot to take the screen shot before enacting this law. Mostly I’m just starting to fill out the last few laws.

This is the only rare patch that only this dome can reach, so I might as well start working on it.

I decided to flip through my rivals and see if they had any techs they wanted to trade, but didn’t find much. In the meantime let’s go through our rivals and see how they’re doing.

Blue Sun Corporation barely has 150 colonists. I have nearly 1000.

China is about the same. 2500 research is less than a third of what I’m doing right now.

Europe is the same. Rivals are so lame. They’re not even in the same ball park as me. For once I’d love some rubber banding.

And Brazil is. . . Wait, Brazil? Where did they come from?

Okay, so I think this was spawned when I paid off my Sponsor to gain independence. Why didn’t it spawn a Codex colony? No idea. But they’re small, and young, and that’s about right for the stage they’d be at if they started only a few Sol ago.

Well, there’s the Cave of Wonders all filled up and connected.

I use the space elevator to order replacement Arcologies. I should note that doing this forces the space elevator to launch whatever it has loaded at the moment. It’s not a big deal, just something to be aware of.

I decide to try using the Martian Reservation. It’s just a fence in the ground, and it apparently can’t be built on terraformed land, that grass for example. Mostly I just want to see what it does, nothing else.

There are little gaps in it. That’s kind of neat. I think the idea is to use these with the Nat Habs for tourists. I think. There’s an achievement for it, so I guess that’s the idea at least. I’m not planning to build anything out here, so this should be helpful.

I install another forestation plant. I get a bonus comfort if the train travels through green areas, so I’ll try to fill the areas around the tracks with trees and grass for that.

I guess no one is happy about me switching to Single Party. I should do something about that.

Who needs democracy anyhow?

I lay in the train tunnel to the Diamond dome for the future.

So by accident I dropped the camera angle down real low and got this shot. You can just see the Mega dome up on the bluff and if you look through the left-most dome you can just pick out the micro dome I just built. The game is rather pretty.

Cleaning up the toxic pools is a chore for the drones. Each one will make a decent pile of waste rock which we can deal with now because we’re burning it to create atmosphere.

That said, we crossed another threshold and stopped random meteor storms. I can still CAUSE them, but I don’t really need to.

I need another Carbonate Processor. Before I install it we’re nearing the break even point, where just enough new atmosphere is created to balance out the losses. I don’t want any more delays.

I decide I need to set the landers to come home on their own. The first one still needs to mine a bit more out before it comes home. The second one will be ready as soon as it’s loaded.

Oh look, my iron first has made everyone happy. Or else.

Now I’m just going to pass laws until the game is over. Dictatorship basically means I can just turn laws on and off without penalty. Getting the advantages of laws, without the downsides basically.

I just wanted to show off the other dome skins as I haven’t really used them the entire game. The top one is my least favorite as you can’t see into the dome with it. The middle one is generally the one I use if I want something other than the standard bubble. The bottom is probably a nice balance between the bubble and the metal frame design.

The issue I have is there’s no real consistency between the non-spire domes and the spire domes. This is, I believe, the equivalent of the metal frame design. I mean, it’s cool, I like it, but it doesn’t quite match up. I will point out that the pathways in the dome do take on different colors too, so your preference there may matter.

Queuing up more techs. Martianborn Resilience is will improve performance across the board as all my colonists are Martianborn. Localized Terraforming is another wonder tech that gives the Geoscape Dome, which is the 3rd largest dome in the game.

In the corner you can see my achievement pop. Multiplantary species.

I now have 1000 colonists between the surface and underground. I’ll probably only get two more milestones before the game is over.

Terraforming Amplification has come in.

After installing you can see we’re adding almost twice as much atmosphere as we’re losing. So maybe 15 Sol before we finish the breathable atmosphere.

Almost 12k research. That is so nice. We’ll be skipping through techs pretty quickly now.

I just wanted to show you can look down inside the workshops. It’s Biorobotics, VR and Art in order left to right.

Okay, here is where I make a mistake. I looked this up on the wiki to see what was the best option, and misread what the downsides were. A dust storm would be bad, yes, and my newest dome would suffer the most, but I could push to fix that quick. I misread the second penalty.

20% atmosphere LOSS? Oh hell no. I thought it said there was a 20% chance OF a dust storm. I reloaded an earlier autosave, I am much too close to be put back that much. I didn’t even really need heat and water. I have accepted other setbacks, but this is too much.

With the reload, I decide I need more power. Time to build the Artificial Sun, perhaps my favorite wonder.

I then power up the autoclicker to request as much waste rock as possible. I’m actually starting to chew through it on the surface now.

I’m not sure I like this replacement event. Seek some help if you’re feeling the same way.

Not fast enough. Good bye Corona, you will be missed.

My education dome is starting to overflow, so I added another apartment to hopefully take some of the overflow.

The Artificial Sun is done, but not activated yet. It needs water to start up, a lot of water. 1000 units is a LOT of water. That large tank nearby holds 1500, so I have enough water, but it will take a bit to fill it up.

But that’s for next time. Looks like we’re close to finishing, so maybe I can wrap this up then. Until next time.

NEXT TIME: Bad moons rising.

 

[Eishtmo]

Last time we started building our own star. Now it’s time to let the sun shine on our skin.

I’ve mostly used the large dumping sites because, well, waste rock builds up quick. But for smaller toxic pools like this, the standard site is just fine.

While the Artificial Sun fills with all that water, I put in a pair of scrubbers.

Ah, there’s our sun. Okay, it’s not super bright, that’s more due to my graphics settings. I’ve been running this on medium this whole time, mostly as I’m too lazy to change it. Anyway, the Artificial Sun is like the real sun as it can power solar panels within it’s radius. I’ll be filling the whole thing with panels and the scrubbers will keep them clean.

Underground I’ve finished off this one spot of rares, but it’s still working. . . Because of the law I passed that lets them. Yeah, it’s silly. I’ll close this anyway and move it over.

You can send rockets on an expedition from the rocket screen, rather than going to the planetary screen. Makes it easier to pick specific rockets for a task. This helps as I often don’t remember which rocket is which.

More greenhouse gases.

You can just see “Session Open” scrolling around the assembly. I remembered I hadn’t shown it off.

Let’s do this breakthrough law. I’m tired of waiting.

Extractor AI would be nice if I was still a very young colony, but I can build domes whenever and whereever I want now. Gene Selection might be good, but I’m working at scale at this point and don’t care what traits individual colonists have as long as they’re not “renegade.” But I do like the Beach Boys, so Good Vibrations it is.

That event I undid last time reminded me I really need to hook up this microdome to the overall grid. I’ll use a tunnel to shorten the trip.

At the same time Mega Satellites comes in.

I line up the rest of the independence breakthroughs. Improved post-indpendence rocketry will allow us to haul more cargo and people on our rockets. Kind of useless. Becoming adults faster is probably more dangerous than useful, but whatever.

I decide to build one of the RC Generators and take it up to an asteroid for giggles. You can just build one. I suppose I could buy one from Earth, but that would require sending a rocket and it’s just not worth it any more.

Mega Satellites allows these two special projects. The first one raises the temperature a pretty damn good amount, the second slows atmosphere loss. Both require sacrificing a rocket.

I don’t need the heat, but slowing the atmosphere loss could speed things up a bit. I select our bonus rocket, Settler, to do the task. Good bye freebie rocket, you served us well.

The Artificial Sun by itself added 1000 power to the grid by itself. A full load solar panels is roughly another 300. Doubling it via improved photovoltaics is probably about 600ish. There’s some small panels in there and the scrubber so it’s not wholly accurate. Oh, and you don’t need to keep the water plugged in after the sun has activated so more room for solar panels.

Rover Printing finishes. This will let me build any of the rovers I have access to. Now I never need to go back to Earth.

Mostly wanted to show this picture of the Generator with it’s panels deployed.

Knocking out another law.

And there it is. 95% atmosphere. Finally.

In the old version of the game you could just open the domes with a button on the dome information screen. Now you have to pass a law. I suspect that disabling the law system will let you open the domes manually again, but I can’t be so sure.

Martianborn Resilience is done. Now all my colonists will be better at whatever it is they do.

We’re generating way more atmosphere than we’re losing. That’s good, but also a bit wasteful. I can trim things down a bit.

To do that, first we’ll remove one of the processors. Then we’ll disable the amplification.

I’ll slot in the Bottomless Pit Lab. Shouldn’t take long to finish.

I need more space underground (running out of living space), so I might as well build the lab and it’s associated domes.

So when I take screenshots it records the time down to the second. The time between when I set the Pit Lab tech to start and this coming up was 59 seconds. I am doing a LOT of research now.

And here’s the lab going in. Wow, that’s expensive in terms of exotics. I have plenty, but damn. I’ll have to send more down from the surface.

I’ve been holding off on this law until the atmosphere was done as I don’t need so much waste any more. I’m holding off on the Open Dome law until the end.

Better late than never I guess. Gives me a bit of a safety margin. If the atmosphere every dips back below 95, the domes will have to be closed again, and that’s annoying.

Yeah, that should be good enough. I don’t think I could cut it any closer without risk.

I placed the station in the middle as the plan is to have it go through to the other entrance to the right. Now I just need to hook it up to the rest of the underground half of the colony.

30 power? Good Dog that’s a lot of power. I could run entire mining operations with these things.

Localized Terraforming gives us the Geoscape Dome, a wonder dome. I have just the place in mind for it.

First I need to get a train tunnel there. I had planned for it back when I built the large station down here.

Saving fuel is probably a good plan. Not sure why it’s part of the Deregulation row, but whatever.

Remember when we first started? This bluff location was a bad starting area. Well time to come back with a vengeance.

Of course to really go crazy, we need the Capital City. This is NOT a dome, but it is by far the largest living area you can build in the game. I’ll be putting it down here in this corner.

I sent the Generator to an asteroid that promptly got drained. I’ll leave it behind with the drones and haul the first group of stuff out.

The Energy Focus law is an interesting one. Each one will boost one of the producer while reducing two others. So one remains unaffected. I’m not sure why Wind has a dollar value attached to it. I’d say it’s because I didn’t have any wind turbines, but I don’t have any Fusion plants either.

Anyway, Stirlings have been my bread and butter up until recently, so I feel I owe the little guys.

20 to 24 power EACH is a nice boost. The solar panels lose 0.5 power per. Barely noticable.

Does it kill my medics? Normally I’d say losing population is a bad thing, but, um, it’s not. We have so many losing a half our medics, which probably make up the smallest portion of our population probably won’t even be noticed.

Okay, started construction on the lab as the dome and station are done, just need to finish hooking them up to the grids.

I put in a Medical Center as I really couldn’t decide what would fit best here. Can’t hurt at least.

The Art Store has this as an alternative skin, which looks kind of stupid honestly.

I finish populating the area. I’m vaguely planning more domes in this area, but the game is nearly done, so no need anything more advanced than vague planning.

There’s the last of the independence techs. You’d have to scroll back up, but I was only getting about 15k research before this finished, now it’s over 20k. The tech tree has been conquered, it just doesn’t know it yet.

Planetary Projects just unlocks cloud and vegetation seeding missions which are part of the terraforming tree. Rejuvenation Treatment gives medical buildings the ability to improve comfort I believe. Martian Festivals is a general boost. Behavioral Melding (which I will queue in) allows the Sanatorium to add positive perks as it removes the bad ones.

The Capital City is really, REALLY big, and needs a lot of clear, flat land to build. Here I am setting up this area for it.

Planetary Projects comes in nice and quick.

Trains can haul more. 2 laws remain.

What? WHAT? WHY CAN’T I HOOK IT TO POWER!? Oh good lord, it’s rough terrain right at the base of the damn thing. If it can’t get power, it doesn’t work.

Grumble grumble grumble. It’s really annoying as when the lab activates, it lights up the edges of the pit and it looks really neat. But I can’t do it for you. So annoyed.

So yeah, the Capital City is HUGE. 51 large slots, 18 small, 3 spires. A Mega dome has 24 large slots, and one spire. Nothing else comes close. The best part though, is that while it needs a lot of power and water, it really doesn’t need much in terms of resources. Like less than half of a Mega dome. Sadly, you can only build one.

Seed Vegetation is a good way to max out our plant level. Often there’s 2 of these waiting to be done too. As I said, seeds can build up very quickly, so having any way to get rid of them is nice.

I’m annoyed by the lack of power, but at least people can “work” there. Anyway, the idea is you throw stuff into the pit for research. Each of those “upgrades” will give you a breakthrough, but they each require dumping large amounts of resources. Good way to get rid of excessive resources I suppose.

Hello Vector Pump, nice to have you around finally.

I hate taking away work slots from my colonists. If you’re going for the 40% workers in workshops milestone, this is the way to do it. That said, of the three options, Service Automation seems the less dramatic. That only effects diners, shops and things like that. The biggest of those hold like 6 workers, so it’s not that bad in the long run. Factory and research would hurt more as there are large numbers of people in their biggest buildings, though there are fewer of them. I’ll do service anyway, it’s fine.

IT’S NOT FINE! IT'S VERY NOT FINE! WHY ARE WORKSHOPS CONSIDERED SERVICE BUILDINGS?! THOSE ARE MY BIGGEST EMPLOYERS!

This is a disaster of epic proportions! I went from 11 unemployed to 150! Oh my DOG! Okay, okay, I can undo this in a couple Sol, swap it to Factory. In the mean time, I’ll open every shift in every job location I can.

In the meantime, another bug report, because this is stupid serious. The point of workshops is to put people to work when there’s nothing else to do, and this currently removes that. What a disaster.

Resilient Architecture just reduces maintenance. Nuclear Fusion unlocks the last power producer, the Fusion Plants, and those only work at peak power if they have a full load of workers. I think we’ll get through the Service Automation disaster before we get this, but it’ll be nice to have them in case.

Goodbye Seldon BG3, you were an okay asteroid.

More Planetary Anomalies spawned, including another breakthrough. Mine.

Lowering the priority on the Pit Lab will prevent it from complaining that it doesn’t have power. I just want the warning to go away.

Rejuvenation Treatment comes in. It’s an upgrade you need to add to the medical buildings, so I’ll do it as I have time.

Huh, the icon is missing. Weird.

I guess Rapid Sleep regens Sanity faster. Hive Mind is really only for Arcologies, and while I have some, I don’t have that many. Superconducting Computing though, would add, oh, 2500 research. This is very nice early on, and just mean at this point.

Okay, the icon is here, at least. Weird.

Cloud Seeding just improves soil quality. Which I don’t need any more.

Just clearing up Planetary Anomalies.

New asteroid shows up, let’s do a scan just so you can see what it looks like.

Tells you exactly how many of each resource is there. Like I said, it’s often not worth it as I usually clear them out anyway, but if you don’t have the asteroid anchor tech(s), then it might be useful.

Anyway, I’ll send a lander up shortly.

Martian Festivals finished, but I got a lot of techs quickly. What’s going on?

Oh, I got the 100% atmosphere milestone.

Let’s shift this to Factory Automation. Most of my research is done underground and I don’t have the space there for that many unemployed workers.

I admit my fear was that all three options affected the workshops. Glad to know it didn’t.

The new asteroid is a bit cramped. I’ll be forgetting this for a bit, but at this point I don’t really need it any more.

I order more drone hubs. Going to need them.

Red Tap Reduction has the same effect as the automation laws, only it effects ministries and the Earth Embassy. Still annoying, but best to take it near the end.

Seeding the world. If only it were that easy.

Uh, I didn’t have that queued up. Oh, red ! On my research. It emptied the queue. Whoops.

See that 69% (go on, say it) on the tree? That’s the next tech in the chain. Once the game cleared my queue, it moved through the techs so fast it cleared one and more than half cleared another. I slow it down with Global Support and the other late game breakthroughs.

I sent the Generator over to the Micro Dome to take over coverage of it. Since I don’t care what it does now, I unpin it from menu. As we add more domes, it will start getting crowded.

That said, I think we can end things here anyway. OPEN THE DOMES!

And the domes are now open. Nice.

Where’s my achievement?

Oh damn it.

NEXT TIME: The Political Animal

 

[Eishtmo]

I have all the laws. You can see that. You’ve watched me do it. I didn’t get the achievement.

Why? No idea.

Close up of an opened dome.

Look, I knew it was possible that the achievement wouldn’t fire. It didn’t work at all at launch.

Geoscape Dome with third Archology skin.

So I went searching through Steam discussions and Reddit. Reddit was a complete bust BTW. At least the one I found.

Unlocked through Global Support, Temple Spire.

Steam had one thread that did say it was achievable after the 1.03 patch. We’re on 1.04 now. Did they break it again? Possibly, they did add more laws and modify others.

Alternative Grocer skin.

I played for a bit longer that day, about 5 minutes or so. Maybe it would pop up late or something. But by then I was frustrated by the Service Automation and Bottomless Pit Lab issues, so I stopped.

Installing Drone Hub Extender underground.
I loaded the game up the next day thinking maybe it would pop on reload. It didn’t.

Geoscape dome bug report.

I played for about an hour, where most of these images come from. I had a couple options to try.

Asteroid event I haven’t gotten before.

First, I could try playing with the laws themselves.

So I revoked one law and had to wait for the next session to reenact it.

Open domes don’t need MOXIES any more. Doesn’t effect underground.

So given I had started on the Capital City, figured I could finish it up while I tried to get the achievement to fire.

Reenacting this law didn’t work.

Upgrading the vaporators with Vector Pumps.

I could try shifting some of the multiple choice laws around. I fear they intend me to trigger them all at least once.

Capital City built. Installing Forestation Plants

There’s a few reasons that would suck. First, many of the options are kind of shit. Deport all Seniors is really nasty, for example.

Alternative skin for Hanging Gardens.

There’s also all the various government laws. I’m in dictatorship, I can’t change those unless I revoke that and go backwards for a bit.

Swapping to Consumer Culture. Didn’t work.

Monument of Mars Liberty

I know achievements aren’t broken as a whole. I get one for building this monument for example.

Media center, they and detention centers can’t appear in the same dome together.

The description of the achievement is vague enough that I can’t know for sure if it was something I did wrong, or something wrong with the game.

Smart Apartment, fewer people more cost.

I felt really defeated at this point.

View of the Capital city and it’s 3 spires. Temple spire in the front.

I’ve been doing this since the 20th of November and it’s the 4th of January as I type this. For it not to work after all that, it hurts.

Swapping to Egalitarianism. Still didn’t work.

Got the 40% Workers milestone.

So what do I do now? City builders like this don’t have goals, it’s why I set one, and I can’t achieve it for some stupid reason.

Piss off event.

Despite everything, I had fun with this run.

Europe’s Low-G Lab unlocked with Global Support.

As I have said before, it’s not a hard game, to the point that it’s my cozy game.

Capital City with all ministries, spires and basic resources. Focus on Temple Spire.

It’s not supposed to be frustrating or annoying like this. These last couple of days have really sapped my will to play. I did everything I thought I was supposed to, but apparently it wasn’t enough.

Last War bug report

Now they might fix it at some point, and I’ll happily come back and add the image that indicates I got the achievement, but it might be a bit, if ever.

Surface full map.

I had considered maybe doing another game, but I think I have done everything you could do in this game. Didn’t help I had 3 bugs that popped up at the very end here, and the achievement not popping, I’m not really up for it any more. At least for now.

Underground full map.

The game isn’t a disaster despite all this. It’s not so buggy as to be unplayable, just breaks some interesting gameplay features. It’s clunky in some areas, but not enough to make it unwieldy.

Core of the old colony.

If you’ve played the old version, and didn’t get the DLCs, it’s worth getting. If you did get all the DLCs (and that’s pretty unlikely), then it’s harder to recommend. The political system does make it better, and they did promise more in the future. But the bugs are there, and it’s not up to full speed yet.

It’s better than the original version, but not by that much yet. Ultimately, it still Surviving Mars, and Surviving Mars, as a game, is just okay.

Thank you for following along with me. This has been fun to share this game and it’s weirdness with you. I do hope you enjoyed it. If you have any questions please ask.

And after 1600 images and 62,000 words, I’m going back to Earth.

Or am I?

 

[StriderDL]

I really enjoyed this, bravo!

 

[Eishtmo]

Oh, we're not done yet.

EPILOGUE

Like said last time, I had finished this run on January 4th. Last week, January 19th, right after I posted the last colony review post, there was a patch. Patch 1.0.5 has a lot in it, but given I’m done with the game, does it matter?

Well, some of it does pertain our game here. And maybe, just maybe, they fixed things. So after I write about the patch, I’ll load up the game and we’ll see if anything has changed.

First, they added a new large wind turbine. Why? I’m not sure. Something about being able to rotate it. I didn’t use wind turbines much in this game because early on I was running short on machine parts and later because I had plenty of Stirlings, so I didn’t need them. Still, I don’t understand why they needed ANOTHER large wind turbine, because they already had one.

The Martian Assembly can now be moved, finally. I kind of understand why they didn’t want it to move, mostly they didn’t want players to tear it down and still get the benefit. But when you have a building called “CAPITAL CITY” and can’t move your capital there, it was kind of silly.

They added +5 and MAX buttons to the underground transfer screen. I’ll probably still need to use the auto-clicker occasionally, but this is a big win.

For whatever reason they increased the amount the waste rock depots could hold. And by a lot, 4 times in fact. That’s weird. Look, I played the original game a lot, and I never really had an issue with too much waste rock. You might think I had a lot in this game, but I really didn’t. It was completely manageable. And when I wasn’t, there’s a trick I never bothered using where you can MAKE surface features with waste rock. So why the bigger depots? No idea. Oh, and it increased the amount of waste rock currently in the depots by 4 times too. So everyone gets more waste rock!

Asteroids got a bit of a rework. More space for landers, landers can knock away smaller rocks from not clear areas, and fewer, but larger, deposits. Seems fine. Larger deposits would help make putting colonists up there more likely, but I’d have to actually do it. None of these changes effect current asteroid maps, only future ones.

They fixed the mysteries! But only for future games, doesn’t effect current saves. Also there was apparently a bug in the Last War specifically. At one point in the mystery you can’t send or recall rockets from Earth, we didn’t get there. Anyway, apparently it also affected LANDERS. Meaning no asteroids. Imagine if it had broke during that phase, and locked us out of asteroids forever. Dodged a bit of a bullet. We’d have survived, but it would have limited our growth underground.

They did one significant change, they reduced the number of techs for independence from 120 techs to 80. We hit independence at Sol 294. If we had it at 80 techs, it would have been about Sol 205 or so. That’s a big difference. Glad they fixed that for the future.

And of course, there was a bunch of tweaks to the laws again. Mostly balancing issues and convincing the factions to both calm down from faction disasters (I had a feeling that might be bugged, I was right!) and not purpose laws that couldn’t be passed (remember how FML wanted to open the domes, before we had any atmosphere? That wasn’t flavor, that was a bug). But more importantly, was this comment:

“The Founder’s Privilege law now correctly gets repealed when all Founders die or leave.”

The what law? Founder’s Privilege? I don’t remember that law.

The last patch, 1.0.4, added more laws and modified others. I suspect this Founder’s Privilege was added with that patch. And it came almost exactly 100 Sol after my last founder died. I never even HAD the chance to pass this law.

This is possibly the smoking gun. I missed this law because, well, it didn’t exist until after I couldn’t have passed it anyway. Without it, I couldn’t get the achievement. Now a chance they fixed it so you still could. Originally when they fixed the achievement, it was set to go off if you couldn’t pass laws anymore but there’s no guarantee.

Enough stalling, let’s find out.

So while we’re loading in, here are a couple of the random loading images the game uses. These aren’t the best ones, but they’re not bad.

Oh, and the window frame on the first one? Yeah, to get the game to properly do full screen I have to turn the game from full screen to windowed and back to full screen. Is that a game bug or something to do with playing on Linux? I don’t know.

The load game screen. It has a lot of details. 37 hours of play time is about right.

Okay, so already I’m seeing oddness in the form of the “war on earth” message being spammed across every map (see the bottom right corner for the blue circles). That’s annoying, but nothing I can’t handle.

Still can’t plug in the Bottomless Pit Lab. Annoying.

And the Geoscape dome still can’t be accessed properly. I reported it once, I’m not going to do it again. I’m not feeling good here.

Okay, so I need a bit to wait before the next legislative session and we’ll try swapping over a law to see if it works. In the mean time, glamour shots of the colony and some minor stuff.

They changed the color of the vista and research points. That’s handy as they tend to blend in with the resource patches. This is welcome.

There’s the move button for the Assembly. I didn’t click it, but I suspect it works like a refab. Thank you guys, that helps a lot.

Holy moly that’s a lot of waste rock. If I were playing longer I’d probably have to build more waste rock liquifiers. Or hope I get the Brazil’s Rare Metal Refinery that can turn waste rocks into MORE rares or India’s Metal Refinery that makes even MORE metals.

Uh, you can’t scan sectors underground.

That’s a bug. I think they were trying to fix a different bug for the surface.

I could go check the other things out, but they're not important. This is. Alright folks, let's do this.

https://imgur.com/a/4UxrdYA

YESSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!

There it is, the achievement. I got it. Only took another 20 days. You have no idea how happy this makes me.

Thanks again for following me for this. I may not do another game for a while as there are still a few bugs to fix, but next time I load it up, maybe we’ll do another thread. Or not, not sure how the rules would work for something like this. Ah well, now I’m heading off.

This Let's Play is complete.