Surving Mars: Review

Paradox Interactive for a long time you can not call a company with a narrow specialization. Yes, so far no one makes global historical strategies better (and whether he does at all?) than the Swedes, but now they are known as publishers of projects of a wide variety of genres: from Arcad to role -playing games.

This time, the “paradoxes” decided to return to the urban planning topic: three years ago they already acted as the publisher of a very successful CITIES: SkyLines, And now under their leadership was released Surviving Mars, in which everyone can build the city of their dreams on the Red Planet. The developer also does not need to be represented once again – this is a well -known studio Haemimont Games, which we love in the last three parts Tropico. The perfect team? Perhaps yes. But this is not a guarantee of a good game.

They work on robots

The Martian Mission begins much earlier than the rocket leaves the starting table. To begin with, we have to choose the conditions that affect what, in fact, we will fly to our neighbor in the solar system. Financing, the number of accessible missiles and other features of the upcoming trip depends on the organizationalist and the leader of the expedition. The choice of payload is also important: take more polymers and spare parts with you or it is better to immerse a whole factory in the missile, and take up the assembly of the mechanisms already on the spot? If there are only a couple of missiles and meager financing (as, for example, when playing for Russia), then filling out the cargo compartment makes you break your head well. Finally, the latest preparations – you need to choose the place of landing, focusing on the tips that indicate the alleged location of the resources and possible difficulties (dust storms, cold, meteorite rains).

Is it risky to fly to Mars to create a whole colony without expiring the area properly and without creating in advance the infrastructure of the future settlement? Certainly! Colonialists c Surviving Mars the same opinion, so people are not allowed to be on the first rocket. The stage of initial training is entirely in hands manipulators of a whole construction team of autonomous drones. They do not need oxygen and food, only electricity is enough. There are building materials – it means that there will be work: the construction of extractor resources and factories for their processing, the construction of power plants and batteries, repair and maintenance of mechanisms ..

Nevertheless, you cannot do without people: to ensure a full cycle of production of robots is not able to. They are remarkably coping with ordinary work, but they cannot extract metals and rare minerals. The latter are also used for trading with land – this allows the colony to reach self -sufficiency and even make a profit. Well, in the end, we want to create a human settlement outside the Earth, and not a colony for soulless pieces of iron?

After these same pieces of iron are built inhabited dome, connect pipelines with oxygen and water to them, you can order the next start – with future Martians.

Spacey is called one of the options for the company – organizer of the Martian mission. How do you like such humor developers, Elon Musk (Elon Musk)?

Is there life on Mars?

As in any other respecting urban planning simulator, in Surviving Mars Residents have certain skills and character traits. It is logical to assume that for the first extraterrestrial colony the best of the best will be selected, but in reality it does not happen quite. Applicants who want to go on a distant journey, under a hundred, but not everyone will be an ideal colonist. Fortunately, the player can choose future residents on their own, based on his own idea of ​​who exactly should entrust such a crucial business.

However, you can not bother with the study of each applicant, but set parameters-for example, take only middle-aged male vegetarians on board. It is especially convenient in the later stages, when lazy to mess with each candidate separately. But I still want to take the first batch with my own hand-the pioneers of Mars must correspond to such a high title.

People are much more moody than robots. And it is not only the need to provide them with air suitable for breathing, clean water and food. In addition to natural need, there are not so landed – people need both work and a place to relax, a comfortable temperature in the dome and safety inside and outside.

If all the main needs are satisfied, then the number of settlers can increase naturally – “indigenous” Martians will also begin to appear very soon. However, there are enough volunteers who want to go into flight on Earth – there would be rockets.

Colonists freeze in a de -energized dome. For some reason, it is more important for drones to transfer slag to a landfill, and not to repair broken generators.

The larger the population of the colony, the more problems with the maintenance of buildings and structures and the satisfaction of the needs of colonists. And there are a lot of others, and it is not easy to keep track of everything. But it is much more sad that you have to fight not so much with various gameplay difficulties that are designed to entertain the player, but with an uncomfortable interface, meager mechanics and the lack of normal statistics and other data.

Error: Not Enough Data

If you compare Surviving Mars with similar strategies, then it is still closer to Rimworld or Dwarf Fortress, rather than classic urban planning simulators like Simcity. We do not have tens of thousands of inhabitants and hundreds of houses, but much smaller scale. Resources are not abstract “money” or “building materials”, but quite specific: metals, concrete, spare parts and others, located in specific warehouses. Each resident can be studied in detail – what he does, what character traits have and what is specifically satisfied or annoyed.

But how inconvenient it is realized! We do not have a list of colonists – we have to look for the right one either through the place of his work, or choose anyone and sort them out one at a time, until you get to the right. Another option is literally catching on the street, poking the mouse.

This is not the worst thing – the need to engage in a separate settler does not arise so often. The main problem is much more complicated and embedded in the very essence of game mechanics. The fact is that the drones that are engaged in basic work are tied to special control centers. The latter are stationary, in the form of special buildings, and are also on missiles. The third option is a carrier transport. The robots assigned to the Central Belief will perform work only inside the radius of the action of this Tsu. Everything seems to be logical, but in practice the difficulties begin immediately after the colony grows a little.

Colonists can only work next to the dome. We saw promising deposits of rare metals – which means that you have to build a dome in the immediate vicinity of mines. We put the second tsu or distilty the carrier of drones to the place of the future construction site – the existing control center no longer “finishes” for such a distance. You think the drones will begin to work? It wasn’t there-for construction we need resources that lie in warehouses somewhere in the center of the colony (or are not unloaded at all). And if the warehouse is outside the action of the new Tsu (and it will be), then the drones simply do not see it.

Ok, you can drag the resources using a special machine – it is easy to do it once. And what in the future? Resources are spent on maintenance and repair, they are consumed by factories and production buildings. It is very easy to skip the moment of a shortage of materials in a separate area of ​​the settlement. Independently distribute resources between the colony warehouses is simply not able to! The storage facilities do not even have a banal system of priorities – only manual output of orders by transport drones.

The root of evil

Further – more. Common thing: light will go out in the residential dome – there is not enough energy. It is clear that somewhere we have shut down with the power supply system, but where exactly? Even if you have two or more closed power supply circuits, then you can only see the general indicator (deficiency or surplus) of the entire colony as a whole. Similarly with reserves of oxygen and water – neither detailed schedules, nor special layers of the accessibility of the resource that have already become a standard for the genre. You have to calculate everything manually, “surrender” each building.

In fact, we will not be able to create one large colony – it turns out a network of small, self -supporting settlements, sometimes not even related to each other. Otherwise – refinees in microcontrol. However, you are already in it like it: it is still unknown that it is easier to manage three or four villages, each of which must be provided by all types of resources for autonomous existence, or to distribute these resources manually within one large city.

In addition, the colonization of the planet occurs at a very leisurely pace. Studies stretch and stretch, some new mechanics are added very little, and almost nothing happens in the colony itself, despite the promised dangers like dust storms or meteorites falling. Yes, these natural disasters are found, but they are not as frightened as routine and the need to control everything manually – with a far from the most convenient interface. Finally, the lack of detailed statistics puts a cross on long -term planning and the possibility of comfortable development of its colony.

Surviving Mars, Despite the excellent picture and the absence of serious bugs, it gives an impression not even beta version, but a prototype. You can play it, but enjoy it – with great difficulty. Perhaps the situation will become better over time: Paradox Interactive Likes to correct the release flaws with the help of many DLCs. However, at the moment, it is better to colonize Mars in some other game.

Pros: beautiful and stylish graphics;pleasant musical accompaniment;The originality of the concept.

Cons: Inexplicable interface;the imperceptibility of the main gaming mechanic;tightness of passage;Few random events.

Surviving Mars

The best comments

Well, this is wrong, shuttle can automatically distribute resources across the colony, but for them you need to open the technology.

Even if you have two or more closed power supply circuits, then you can only see the general indicator (deficiency or surplus) of the entire colony as a whole. Similarly with reserves of oxygen and water – neither detailed schedules, nor special layers of access to the resource

Again, it is wrong. If you choose any building producing water, energy or oxygen, will show the parameters specifically for this energy network.

For some reason, I did not drown in microcontrol even with a colony of two thousand people. On the contrary, I often turned the game in anticipation of a new study, and nothing terrible happened.

I do not fundamentally agree. You can play with pleasure in Mars now.

Hint – on the panel below there is a button that increases the speed of the game.

Extremely disgusting, superficial review. Not only did the author play, judging by the review, from the force of three hours, without understanding the game at all, and the system of technology and breakthroughs was extremely mentioned, and the plots that give the player additional tests were not mentioned at all-fromThe third world on Earth until something unidentified.

I apologize, I did not play this game, so I don’t know which of you are two rights – you or the author. But this phrase is extremely embarrassed by me:

On the contrary, I often turned the game in anticipation of a new study, and nothing terrible happened.

Um … do we play games to keep them rolled up due to the low speed of the gameplay? So -so pleasure, not? In this case, my diploma is a great competitor to this game. I like to turn the Word file, sticking in the cuts in the sidge: D No, seriously, this bad example you cited. As for everything else, I repeat, I have no idea, but I would definitely not be interested in the game that I want to curtail.

For some reason, I did not drown in microcontrol even with a colony of two thousand people. On the contrary, I often turned the game in anticipation of a new study, and nothing terrible happened.

Everything about the local microcontrol system says the fact that our transport vehicles can only lead one type of resource from place to place on the machine. That is, in order to organize the fueling of remote -remote advances with iron, fuel and electronics, you need to configure three separate trade routes.

Well, by the way, the fact that you are curled up in the game, waiting for a new technology, does not speak at all in favor of the game, when half of its gameplay is fuss with residents, their characters, professions and moods.

Given the fact that in Steam the game rating is 64% – it is possible, but not everyone.

To ulcerate about “protracted”, while admitting that he himself turned the game from boredom – this is a lot of many ways.

Too many colonists for swaying microdistrict as in Rimworld. Too scarce set of production chains for immersion in the planning process, like Knights and Merchants. Too large and deserted Mars landscapes, coupled with a small amount of available infrastructure, do not allow the game to export the game, if only for the sake of photo mode as Anno 2205.

As a result, a very measured, very simple and tightened city-sevor with an emphasis on the personal qualities of the coloines, in which the monotony of the gameplay can sometimes be diluted with a random event with a local alcoholic-idiot, which was blown up by a fuel factory by blue.

The phrase “non -working mechanics”, it seems to me, must be taken to the subtitle of the game. Just an incredible amount of everything was made through one well -known place, and either works crookedly, or does not work at all.

The same truck. Enough with him, that only one resource carries. It is much worse that it is rapidly ending with a charge of battery, because of which the supply line is interrupted, you put it to charge, then you forget about it, and at some point you suddenly have a dome of 200 people from hunger begins to die. Not to mention the fact that the tunnels of cars in principle do not know how to see, except that manually poke them with his nose.

Shuttles transport cargo only when they receive a request. What gives rise to serious interruptions in supplies, including those leading to the inaccurate state of the shuttle themselves (they did not bring fuel on time, everything, sit Kukui).

If there are specific warehouses for specific resources and radius of the action of buildings, you expect at least some intelligible distribution system, which is not in principle. What can I say, when a loafing drone is far from always guessing to take a critically desired resource from a warehouse under the nose to a broken building ten meters.

Colonists generally inadequate. Not only do they sit and work hell out how, they still do not react to filters.
I made a separate dome for children. So that there are only children, schools, nursery, university, well, and every trifle for needs. In all other domes of children banned. So that they do not occupy a place in production places, but they grow quietly and receive a profession. As a result, there are three children and one hundred and fifty healthy foreheads of unemployed in the “children’s” dome. But in all the rest a crowd of youngsters who are bored and bad. I understood this only when they suddenly began to suction from longing and lack of playgrounds at once at once. This is the hell?

At the same time, the birth rate is generally a separate topic. At some point, people begin to breed at such a speed that I don’t even know what resource base you need to have in order to have time to build so many domes (ensuring food \ water \ oxygen / work and other rols for shops). I built three large domes at the same time, as a result, after the settlement of the homeless, it turned out to be one and a half times more than before.

Lei-Him, in principle, does not work. Resource mining does not. After the production of all deposits of rare metals, the only source of their production is the mega-shacht. Which produces about 20 units per day, and this is somehow not very enough to provide electronics with two and a half thousand colonists (and the corresponding base of buildings). You still have to buy something on earth.

At the same time, half of the potentially suitable place on the map turns out to be a zilch, because a couple of small pebbles are lying there, because of which I cannot put a new dome. For some reason, drones calmly disassemble boulders the size of a plant, and a couple of pebbles are not able to clear.

After all, why can I sell only one resource?

And why do I have a game all the time in the lower panel shoves some colonists?

And so on and further ..

Moreover, the game can not even give the cherished satisfaction from contemplating the fruits of his work. Simply because there are few houses, they are all the same, the animations of the men in the houses Cat cried (and they are very simple), and everything generally works too chaotic, and the sensations of the working mechanism cannot be obtained in any way.

The author is completely in solidarity. In this form, the game must be released into early access, and then still saw a year old with an eye on the opinion of the sympathetic. At the same time, without fear of remaking key mechanics from scratch in the process.

No, he wrote that he was folding the game ExpectedAnd. That is, not in order to get into the guides, but to kill time. I caught on this phrase, nothing more.

Just Kroganwrex said everything correctly, he would have added from himself that the game is not “pleasant musical accompaniment”, but simply amazing. I will explain about the folding of the game on my own example, I don’t want to turn off, but this can be done, for example, when you want to scout part of the card, to understand how to upset the colony (a little chef, but the choice remains for the player).
He played about 6 hours and while Surviving Mars, as for me, just raisins, for the extreme).

Planetbase is much weaker than Surving Mars, especially with regard to large colonies.
Offworld Trading Company is more a session, not a large -scale colonization of Mars.
Anno 2205 a little about another, the colonization of the moon is only a means of development, and not the very end in itself.
RimWorld is generally about another scale.

Criticism is good, especially when it is on the case. I accept claims, but I can not agree with everything said.

Well, this is wrong, shuttle can automatically distribute resources across the colony, but for them you need to open the technology.

Apparently, I was not lucky to get to them, given the “random” procedure for opening technologies. Nevertheless, there is no getting away from the fuss with ordinary drones and warehouses – the shuttles are not available immediately. Microcontrol is terrible.
No matter how to lie, but the layers with the distribution of resources were in tropico from the same Haemimont Games. Why is there not such a thing – it is incomprehensible.
Tighten is confirmed by your words that you can turn the game and deal with your business. I believe that this should not be in a good game (if it is not mining in Ivka, of course). When compared with Rimworld or DF, then both of these strategies can not be called casual. Nevertheless, playing in them is simpler than in SM (even despite the high threshold of entry and a terrible DF interface – although you can get used to managing hotkeys). Because you play them, and not try to understand the general logic of gameplay and defeat the inconvenience associated with ill -conceived mechanics.

I played not three hours, of course, but not thirty. Plots and breakthroughs – yes, my jamb, I could not stuff it and the already rather big text. Apparently too carried away by the denunciation of the shortcomings.

Yeah, through a technology that opens somewhere for an hour the fifth game. It is a pity that there is no technology that would reduce drones in bucks, and not one at a time.

Well, type, then half of the game content can be thrown away in this case. A quarter, if not a third of all buildings in the game are sharpened to teach colonists and changes their characters.

Stop finding a deep deposit and get the tech (there are 100k sources … or 10k – stick 4 extractors, dust tower, tsu, spare parts and fuel warehouse and cut all improvements for extractors and there will be norms), as well as request tributes of pieces6-8.

I have another problem – food (in the colonial group on the mountain) and in the wildest unemployment and homelessness

Transport vehicles can only lead one type of resource from place to place on the machine. That is, in order to organize the fueling of remote -remote advances with iron, fuel and electronics, you need to configure three separate trade routes.

To ulcerate about “protracted”, while admitting that he himself turned the game from boredom – this is a lot of many ways.

I do this in any town -planning simulator. And I turn it not for half an hour, but God forbid for five minutes, and not from boredom, but from reluctance to do something else while waiting for some thing and impatience.

They are somewhere in the middle, hence the thesis about the “played three hours”.

Do they need here? The icons of deposits are already shown to the ka card, and there is almost no other distribution here. But I agree, the interface is not very convenient.

Tighten is confirmed by your words that you can turn the game and deal with your business.

I may have been expressed incorrectly, but wrote above that I turned the game for literally 5-10 minutes and exclusively from unwillingness to engage in other matters while the technology is being studied.

The game, of course, is not perfect, its main problems, in my opinion, after 34 hours and three colonies are not a very convenient interface, lack of content at the end of the game and the inability to connect the domes, which forces to build all amenities in each dome.

Well, most often I want to turn the game at the end, when you already have a closed system with a giant margin of idiotness and you just wait for some thing to tell yourself that this colony has been passed. Well, or at the beginning to find the entire location at once.

It seems to me or I am one such a fool that they connect the entire colony into one system due to the tunnel system?

Mistracted, but I love the strategy and I want to say the following: to turn the game for 5-10 minutes without any difficulty-not such a good sign. The fact that you may not deal with other things in the game also says that either mechanics are broken and tritely do not work, or are not needed (which is not far from the first). I will not remember a single strategy in which I played for more than 50 hours where I could turn the game at 5 (!) minutes and returning not to get a collapse, which will have to rake the good ones the same 5 minutes. Okay, there were rare moments, in the same second settlers, but they only happened at the end, when there was already the capture of the last town hall and there was no meaning in the micro -study. Majesty, Stronghold, and even Anno was “punished” in every possible way.
And about the beauty of the landscapes that you talked about above. Take a look at Cits Skylines, who came out of under the wing of the same Paradox Interactive. Incredibly beautiful landscapes. Yes, urban ones, but this is not an excuse in the weakness of designers. As one person said: “Urban planning games are needed for two things-to fall through the brain due to improvement and for beautiful screenshots.”

which lie in warehouses somewhere in the center of the colony (or are not at all unloaded from the rocket). And if the warehouse is outside the action of the new Tsu (and it will be), then the drones simply do not see it.

The problem with the transportation of resources is solved by setting warehouses at the boundaries of the zones of the ZU, ideally, you can have three Tsu with one warehouse.
But otherwise the game is boring very. There are many problems with water in the later stages, and this is destroyed by the creation of a mega-colony.

Planetbase – the same Mars. Only more mundane: instead of giant domes and casinos, civilian comic bases.

Offworld Trading Company is also Mars, only with a bias in a market economy, and not in the development of settlements.

Anno 2205 – Moon, but still.

Rimworld – a hundred times better than everything above is better, although in fact it is not a Martian sim, but rather just a sim colony on a strange planet.https://casino-party.fr/