| I was sort of considering this but bet it's pretty clunky to play on Xbox. |
Surviving Mars • Page 2
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Daz190uk 463 posts
Seen 13 hours ago
Registered 10 years ago -
neems 5,635 posts
Seen 42 minutes ago
Registered 13 years ago@Bowzer43
Well there is a season pass available, with apparently 2 future expansions and various bits and bobs, and there is also a bunch of stuff on the workshop already. -
SnowmanRR 275 posts
Seen 5 days ago
Registered 11 years agoCurrently £24.99 at Argos on Xbox and PS4...cheapest I’ve seen so far. Hopefully my real world town planning skills will come in useful for this!! -
KRadiation 1,743 posts
Seen 2 days ago
Registered 13 years agoBought it from argos at that price. .gif)
First impressions.
The lack of a proper tutorial and story of some sort is a real oversight. Tropico was great in how it introducted the structures and what they do, explaining best locations and combinations and then giving you a motivation you build item A over item B. It set you up perfectly for an endless game where it's you in control and you understood what everything did.
This has the most vague excuse for tutorials I've seen. Its all "You need energy, solar panels produce energy" but it doesn't really explain it well in terms of "and you're gonna need a lot together with electric wires to to connect them to structures... Oh and they shut down at night.. Oh and you should build storage boxes to store excess energy produced.
I spent most of my first hour on fucking YouTube watching people talk through tactics and ways to atart the game!
And then once id built a few structures... I ran out of money and resources without really understanding why... I had buildings that needed repairing but no idea how to do that and a message telling me I can send the rocket back to earth if I want.... but no explanation as to why I would want to do that now.
The game does look like it could be really good fun. But it's shameful how poor they've made the first experiences. -
Skirlasvoud 4,039 posts
Seen 4 months ago
Registered 11 years agoI've played it for a good while now. It was one of the games I had on pre-order since the beginning of the year.
For anyone chomping at the bit: Don't. Hold off for a moment.
The game's slick and the early start is marvellous. That might also be the reason why all the trailers and promotional materials showcase the first few hours.
However, the developer is Haemimont Games and just like in their Tropico series, the city-building aspect collapses in the mid-to-late game through lacking AI. Because they developed it for consoles, controls for the PC can also be infuriating if you want to make up for it.
The game started at a 92% steam rating and has sunk to 63% now that people have played for a while.
Two complaints are common:
1) Domes do not connect to each other. People envisioned their colonists being able to travel between domes for services, housing and work. They cannot. The domes are self-contained entities.
Personally I don't mind. I like specializing my domes.
2) Is more egregious. Since you'll be specializing your domes since they're isolated entities, it's important that everything within works like clockwork. Certain colonists are specialists and they'll need to be in the correct dome and then working the correct building within that dome.
While on paper these specialists have more affinity for the buildings they're supposed to work and you as the manager can assign domes to have an affinity for attracting certain specialists, this system is broken. They decide for themselves what they think is important. A botanist would rather fill job slots at a diner with less than 50% occupancy, than fill the last job slot out of five at the farm. Then, when an unspecialized colonist comes along, they'll opt to work at the farm and the two never switch places.
You'll quickly find your botanists flipping burgers, medics taking care of the plants and unskilled labour manning the medical facilities.
You can manually correct this, but only TEMPORARILY - which is a baffling design decision. Because of console design, you also can't select more than one colonists and the game isn't designed around presenting information in a condensed way.
If you want to run an efficient colony of more than 100 people, you'll spend the entire game carefully zooming in on your people, selecting them one at a time, scrolling through the map and assigning them their correct job. By the time you're done, they'll revert back to making a mess of things, or they'll die of old age and there's a new generation that does the same.
Newborn colonists looking for a new home, seemingly go wherever they want when you run out of housing and your specialist domes will get flooded with unspecialised labour.
There's no population control and the population won't allow itself to be controlled either.
The game gets extremely unrewarding after a few hours, simply because the game isn't designed to have a functioning system around the mid-to-late game mark.
I'm still having fun, but I'm hoping they'll soon patch in better AI or tools and settings designed to control population systems. Personally, I'd hold off until then.
Edited by Skirlasvoud at 12:25:53 18-03-2018 -
Skirlasvoud 4,039 posts
Seen 4 months ago
Registered 11 years agoOn the plus side, the music is phenomenally good!
58:07 is the best standard song in the bunch.
Quantum sonic is a pre-order OST, but it's good enough for me not to regret my purchase.
Pretty much all the songs past 21:42 are ace on this one:
Edited by Skirlasvoud at 12:41:45 18-03-2018 -
Yeah, finding the game quite disappointing. It's micro-managament HELL. It's simplified where it should be more complex, and overly fiddly where things should work automatically.
It also lacks a proper goal/motivation of sorts. I am on Mars, I've established my first two domes, and now what? Keep doing the same thing, essentially? Just to have 100 instead of 50, and then 200 instead of 100 colonists? That works in games where you have a growing, evolving entity, but in Surviving Mars it almost seems to work better if you build a dozen independent, small "villages", so you're essentially doing the same thing over, and over, and over again.
Biggest problem for me is the micromanagment monster that is the transport of goods. You need to do it manually all the time because the drones have small-ish areas they work on:
If a good that is in sector A is needed in sector B, drones in both sectors will ignore the need and you have to load it into a transporter and go there manually.
Add a lack of a decent automated transport system, and I've lost all will to go on.
The game is not that complex, it's annoying, and the lack of information and more complex options (for example for the transport automation) is ... weird.
Avoid.
Edited by UncleLou at 16:23:03 18-03-2018 -
Your-Mother 8,172 posts
Seen 8 hours ago
Registered 5 years agoColonists can travel between domes once you have shuttles. I've got colonists working in domes they don't live in. Same with goods, if you make sure there's a shuttle bay near a depot they'll auto transfer goods to building projects in bulk.
It's weirdly designed in that the best strategy is to wholesale rebuild once you have the better techs unlocked, rather than expanding and replacing piecemeal. -
KRadiation 1,743 posts
Seen 2 days ago
Registered 13 years agoHad an odd moment just now where all my drones just decided to stop working. I presumed id ran out of a certain resource but then I tried to put a new building down and some random drone shot over to build that before then getting stuck in the same dead pattern the rest were in.
With no direction or help I'm just sat looking at my now useless base with no idea what's gone wrong.
Very much agree with UncleLou. Its like did the devs just decide to not bother making a game?
It's like half the team made the mechanisms for a game... And the other half were too busy getting pissed and then the deadline hit. -
Your-Mother 8,172 posts
Seen 8 hours ago
Registered 5 years agoDid you launch a rocket? They act as drone controllers, so if it launched and you lost a drone region they won't operate until you either build a drone hub or move the remote rover into range.
I do agree with the above though. I like what's there, but it feels very early access, and the sheer lack of documentation (the encyclopedia is useless) or tutorial means you'll just stumble onto things through trial and error. -
KRadiation 1,743 posts
Seen 2 days ago
Registered 13 years agoI'd put my first rocket with its back against some rocks in a C shape and noticed the drones all stuck in the rocks like the path finding was blocked. So I landed my 2nd rocket nearby in a clear section... those drones then also got stuck in the rocky area. As if they defaulted to the first rocket on proximity with resources.
I then salvaged that to get rid as I had no fuel to launch. But the drones remained stationary. -
Skirlasvoud 4,039 posts
Seen 4 months ago
Registered 11 years ago@Your-Mother
Your-Mother wrote:
Yes, Colonist can travel between domes, but only in the same fashion as we would move to a new city and house
Colonists can travel between domes once you have shuttles. I've got colonists working in domes they don't live in. Same with goods, if you make sure there's a shuttle bay near a depot they'll auto transfer goods to building projects in bulk.
It's weirdly designed in that the best strategy is to wholesale rebuild once you have the better techs unlocked, rather than expanding and replacing piecemeal.
I respectfully disagree with your claim that they can "work in domes they don't live in". That hasn't been the case for me, nor for thousands of other players now protesting that decision on the forums.
The only way that's true, is when you have an outside place of work like a Polymer or Extractor that is overlapped by two different domes. Or, when a dome is overpopulated and you allow homeless people to find a new home. When that happens, they do assign themselves to that particular dome though.
Colonists WILL not go to the buildings in another dome to either work, leisure or sleep, when they already officially inhabit their own.
Again, I don't mind that domes are technically individual entities, but that does mean the local AI needs to be working well... which it doesn't.
Otherwise, yes. Some strategically placed Shuttle in the center of the map, near my farms and major factories, usually takes care of cargo.
Nonetheless, there's several weird design decisions that work against a player's intuitive solutions, rather than allowing the player to work with them instinctively.
Edited by Skirlasvoud at 20:29:14 18-03-2018 -
Your-Mother 8,172 posts
Seen 8 hours ago
Registered 5 years agoI'm literally looking at a colonist right now who lives in dome #1 and works in a farm in dome #2. -
Your-Mother 8,172 posts
Seen 8 hours ago
Registered 5 years ago
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Skirlasvoud 4,039 posts
Seen 4 months ago
Registered 11 years ago...
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/am-i-the-only-one-who-feels-that-people-not-moving-between-domes-kinda-ruins-things.1080379/]Description_here
That seems hardly likely and I've never seen that happen either, but okay.
Maybe... that patched? I'm going to test that out right now and see if I can get people to live in one dome and work the farm in another. Maybe you're onto something. -
Skirlasvoud 4,039 posts
Seen 4 months ago
Registered 11 years agoThat's the same colonist and not an identical duplicate?
And those are screenshots within the same moment?
Rethorical questions maybe. I don't know what to say... I stand corrected?
Weird!
Thanks for putting the effort in Your-Mother!
Edited by Skirlasvoud at 20:47:03 18-03-2018 -
Your-Mother 8,172 posts
Seen 8 hours ago
Registered 5 years agoSame colonist, screenshots are a few seconds apart. -
Your-Mother wrote: Same with goods, if you make sure there's a shuttle bay near a depot they'll auto transfer goods to building projects in bulk.
Bloody hell, thanks for that, I soldiered on and made a beeline for the shuttle bay. That's a game-changer, literally. -
HarryPalmer 6,357 posts
Seen 18 hours ago
Registered 15 years agoAssume 'Avoid' has been upgraded to 'Hillbilly' then? -
Not yet, but at least I am looking forward to continuing now rather than uninstall it! -
HarryPalmer 6,357 posts
Seen 18 hours ago
Registered 15 years agoHeh. I'm tempted to pick this up for £25, but this thread is making that hard to justify. -
KRadiation 1,743 posts
Seen 2 days ago
Registered 13 years agoIt could be great if they patch a few things like the colonists not working where they should and maybe offered a little more help for the micro managing of stuff.
If it's 25 now.... maybe wait it out and if they fix it up you'll get it probably much cheaper than that down the line. -
neems 5,635 posts
Seen 42 minutes ago
Registered 13 years agoI haven't got to a second dome yet, but i have certainly seen popups talking about colonists using shuttles to get to work in another dome. I assumed they would have to be manually assigned though (colonist management seems lacking so far). -
Bambot 2,076 posts
Seen 14 hours ago
Registered 6 years agoWow. I've never seen such a positive review completely and utterly undermined by post after post slamming all of the most essential aspects of a sim-type game. I've gone back to the review to see how I could have missed all these critical points, and the reviewer just neglected to mention them at all.
Sadly, this is becoming par for the course with EG reviews. Honestly, you guys just love to wax poetic about stuff. And that's great but you're not at uni any more. Please be at least a LITTLE bit objective. -
MrWorf 64,187 posts
Seen 11 hours ago
Registered 20 years agoSkirlasvoud wrote:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/am-i-the-only-one-who-feels-that-people-not-moving-between-domes-kinda-ruins-things.1080379/
...
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/am-i-the-only-one-who-feels-that-people-not-moving-between-domes-kinda-ruins-things.1080379/]Description_here
That seems hardly likely and I've never seen that happen either, but okay.
Maybe... that patched? I'm going to test that out right now and see if I can get people to live in one dome and work the farm in another. Maybe you're onto something.
Link fixed -
Bambot 2,076 posts
Seen 14 hours ago
Registered 6 years agoHarryPalmer wrote:
I was about to hop on my bike to Argos, but then I read the comments on the review, and this thread. LordDemigod's comment under the review is the most damning, and then it all unravels from there.
Heh. I'm tempted to pick this up for £25, but this thread is making that hard to justify.
How could a company that makes sim-style games fuck up/neglect such basic elements as are being described here? -
HarryPalmer 6,357 posts
Seen 18 hours ago
Registered 15 years agoI'm still on the fence. Watched a few videos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wyxg5VhiNuM and it does look cool - plus I trust Christian, sounds like he's on my level when it comes to these sorts of games, £25 is juuuuuuuust low enough I think. -
Carlo 21,801 posts
Seen 2 days ago
Registered 16 years agoSkirlasvoud wrote:
/Cancels click and collect at Argos
While on paper these specialists have more affinity for the buildings they're supposed to work and you as the manager can assign domes to have an affinity for attracting certain specialists, this system is broken. They decide for themselves what they think is important. A botanist would rather fill job slots at a diner with less than 50% occupancy, than fill the last job slot out of five at the farm. Then, when an unspecialized colonist comes along, they'll opt to work at the farm and the two never switch places.
You'll quickly find your botanists flipping burgers, medics taking care of the plants and unskilled labour manning the medical facilities.
You can manually correct this, but only TEMPORARILY - which is a baffling design decision. Because of console design, you also can't select more than one colonists and the game isn't designed around presenting information in a condensed way.
If you want to run an efficient colony of more than 100 people, you'll spend the entire game carefully zooming in on your people, selecting them one at a time, scrolling through the map and assigning them their correct job. By the time you're done, they'll revert back to making a mess of things, or they'll die of old age and there's a new generation that does the same.
This final third of the game falling apart is my issue with City Skylines (and I stopped playing that out of sheer frustration of the micromanagement). -
Bambot 2,076 posts
Seen 14 hours ago
Registered 6 years agoThankfully none of my local Argos's have it in stock. Saved me a £25 mistake, there.
I wonder if they're going to focus all the patch attention on the PC release? No Mans Sky introduced me to the concept of shipping a truly underwhelming, unfinished game on PS4 and then patching it till it came closer to what they'd promised, so clearly it's possible. -
I'd agree with most other people. I've spent 20 hours on this and while I've enjoyed most of that time, I'm pretty much done with the game now. The mysteries aren't enough to make it replayable, and essentially once you find a way to work around each resource, you've solved the game.
My first few colonies had big errors because I didn't understand a game mechanic or bug (dust or colonists moving to bad jobs).
Once I worked out how to solve all that (build shuttles, make sure each dome is self-reliant, don't overbuild until you can afford the maintenance) the game is now suddenly very easy. It still throws a few curveballs at you (mostly machine part and electronics factories both going down at the same time, leading to nothing working or being able to be fixed) but they're not that fun to deal with.
It lacks the charm or potential for unique solutions that something like Simcity has. In theory you could make a dome just full of achoholics, but why would you? They don't act or look any different, it just changes the efficiency of some buildings.
.gif)
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