Surviving Mars: Video Game Overview

Paradox interactive For a long time, it is impossible to name the company with a narrow specialization. Yes, no one makes global historical strategies better (and whether?) than the Swedes, but now those are known both as publishers of projects of a wide variety of genres: from arcad to role-playing games.

This time, “paradoxes” decided to return to the town-planning topic: three years ago they had already performed the publisher very successful CITIES: SkyLines, And now under their beginning published Surviving Mars, in which everyone can build the city of their dreams on the red planet. The developer is also not necessary to represent – this is the well-known studio Haemimont Games, Which we love for the last three parts Tropico. Perfect team? Perhaps yes. But this is not a good game warranty.

Robots robots

Martian mission begins much earlier than the rocket will leave the starting table. To begin with, it is necessary to choose the conditions that affect what, in fact, we will fly to our neighbor in the solar system. Funding, the number of available missiles and other features of the coming journey depends on the company-organizer and leader. The choice of payload is also important: take with you more polymers and spare parts or it is better to immerse a whole plant in the rocket, and the assembly mechanisms are already in place? If in the presence of a whole pair of rockets and scant financing (as, for example, when playing Russia), the filling of the cargo compartment makes the brain. Finally, the latest preparations – it is necessary to choose a landing site, focusing on tips, which indicate the intended location of resources and possible difficulties (dust storms, cold, meteorite rains).

Whether to fly to Mars risky to create a whole colony that does not extend as a terrain and without creating in advance the infrastructure of the future settlement? Certainly! Colonializers B Surviving Mars of the same opinion, so the first rocket people do not let. The initial preparation stage is entirely in the hands of manipulators of a whole building brigade of autonomous drones. They do not need oxygen and food, only electricity is enough. There are building materials – it means that there will be a job: the construction of extractors of resources and plants for their processing, building power plants and batteries, repair and maintenance of mechanisms ..

Nevertheless, without people do not do: provide a full cycle of production robots are not able. They wonderfully cope with ordinary work, but can not produce metals and rare minerals. The latter are used as well as for trade with Earth – it allows the colonies to go to self-sufficiency and even make a profit. Well, in the end, we want to create a human settlement outside the land, and not a colony for sonless hardware?

After these versions are built inhabited dome, pipelines with oxygen and water will be connected to them, you can order the next start – with future Martians.SPACEY is called one of the company options – the organizer of the Martian mission. How do you like this humor of developers, Ilon Mask (Elon Musk)?

Is there life on Mars?

As in any other self-respecting urban planning simulator, in Surviving Mars Residents have definite skills and features. It is logical to assume that the best of the best will be selected for the first extraterrestrial colony, but in fact it does not quite. Contenders wishing to go on a distant journey, under a hundred, but not everyone will be an ideal colonist. Fortunately, the player can choose future residents independently, based on his own idea of who exactly be entrusted to such a responsible business.

However, it is possible not to bother with the study of each applicant, but to specify the parameters – for example, to take on the board only middle-aged men. Especially convenient in late stages, when it was too lazy to mess with each candidate separately. But the first batch still want to take away the personnel – the pioneer of Mars must correspond to such a high rank.

People where younger robots. And it’s not only need to provide them suitable for breathing air, clean water and food. In addition to natural needs, there are not so landy – people need both work and a place to relax, comfortable temperature in the dome and safety inside and outside.

If all the basic needs are satisfied, the number of settlers can increase and naturally – the “indigenous” marciana will begin to appear very soon. However, there are enough volunteers on earth who wanted to go to the flight – there would be rockets.Colonists are murdered in a de-energized dome. For some reason, the drones are more important to transfer the slag to the landfill, and not to repair broken generators.
The greater the population of the colony, the more problems with the service of buildings and structures and the satisfaction of the needs of the colonists. And those and others becomes very much, and you are not easy for every1. But it is more sadly that fighting is not so much with various gameplay difficulties, which are designed to entertain players, how much with an uncomfortable interface, scarce mechanics and the lack of normal statistics and other data.

Error: Not Enough Data

If compared Surviving Mars with similar strategies, then she is still closer to RimWorld or DWARF FORTRESS, rather than classic urban planning simulators like SIMCITY. We have no tens of thousands of inhabitants and hundreds of houses, but a much smaller scale. Resources are not abstract “money” or “building materials”, but quite specific: metals, concrete, spare parts and others located on the specific warehouses. Each inhabitant can be studied in detail – what it does, what character traits has and what exactly is satisfied or irritated.

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

This is not the worst thing – the need to engage in a separate settlement occurs not so often. The main problem is much more difficult and laid in the very essence of gaming mechanics. The fact is that drones that are engaged in basic works are tied to special management centers. The latter are stationary, in the form of special buildings, and are also on rockets. Third Option – Carrier Transport. The robots attributed to the CSU will perform work only inside the radius of this CSU. It seems everything is logical, but in practice difficulties begin immediately after the colony is slightly growing.Over time, buildings are covered with dust – a sign of emergency breakdown.
Colonists can only work next to the dome. We saw promising deposits of rare metals – it means there will have to build a dome in close proximity to the mines. We put the second CSU or distilling the drone carrier to the place of the future construction – the existing management center no longer “fines” on such a distance. Think, drones will take care of work? It was not there – it was – for the construction we need the resources that lie in warehouses somewhere in the center of the colony (or not unloaded from the rocket at all). And if the warehouse is outside the action of the new CSU (and it will be), then the drones simply do not see.

Well, you can drag resources with a special typewriter – to do it once is not difficult. And what’s later? Resources are spent on service and repair, they consume factories and production buildings. It is very easy to skip the moment of deficiency of materials in some separate area of settlement. Independently distribute resources between the colony warehouses are simply not able to! The storages do not even have a banal priority system – only manual return of orders to transport drones.

Root of evil

Further more. The usual thing: in the residential dome goes out light – insufficient energy. It is clear that somewhere we contracted with the power supply system, but where exactly? Even if you have two or more closed power supply circuit, you can see only a common indicator (deficit or surplus) of the entire colony in general. Similarly, with the reserves of oxygen and water – neither detailed graphs, nor special layers of the availability of the resource already become the standard for the genre. You have to calculate everything by hand, “Sobly” every building.

In fact, we will not have to create one big colon – it turns out a network of small, which are on the self-sufficiency of settlements, sometimes not even related to each other. Otherwise – drown in the microcontrol. However, you will be drown in it: it is still unknown that it is easier to control three-four villages, each of which needs to provide all kinds of resources for autonomous existence, or distribute these resources manually inside one large city.One of the local “wonders of the world” is an artificial sun, a powerful energy source.
Everything else, the colonization of the planet occurs in a very leisurely pace. Studies stretch and stretch, some new mechanic is added very little, and in the colony itself almost nothing happens, despite the promised dangers like dust storms or the fall of meteorites. Yes, these natural disasters meet, but they are not so frighten as the routine and the need to control everything manually – with a far from most convenient interface. Finally, the lack of detailed statistics puts the cross on long-term planning and the possibility of a comfortable development of his colony.***
Surviving Mars, Despite the excellent picture and the lack of serious bugs, it makes the impression of not the beta version, but the prototype. Play it is possible, but having fun – with great difficulty. Perhaps the situation will eventually become better: Paradox interactive Loves to correct the flaws of the release with the set of DLC. However, currently colonize Mars better in some other game.