Surviving Mars (2018)

I really wanted to love this game, but gave up in the end. The premise is really interesting, graphics are nice and whole gameplay had so much potential, but multiple disadvantages ruined this game for me:

• No possibility to win a run
• Dumb AI (people don't move normally between the domes, drones do not prioritize fixing the leaks or delivering most needed resources
• Random events, which intentionally complicate your run
• Some things are made to be overcomplicated (like if you want to mind asteroids, prepare to build 20 sun modules and etc.)
• Main events are quite boring and end quickly

Played a couple of days during Steam free trial. I like the game and it feels like a spiritual successor to Outpost. I played on Easy (the international sponsor) as a mayor and used the rule option for +500 applicants. I modified the initial rocket load to remove some of the prefab buildings and add some rare resources and extra probes. I landed on Elysium and used the extra probes to find a better landing site next to the default tile. I had already played the tutorial so I knew how to play.

I built all the required infrastructure and built the first dome. I found selecting people to be more more tedious than needed. The filter option auto fills the rocket for you rather than sorting the applicants, which makes it harder to find the type of people you want. I was also annoyed that there is no way to filter by nationality and that race is not shown until the colonists land. I had one incident where the water chip failed and I decided to do nothing about it because I figured my one water extractor would be good enough. It was not. I had to scramble to fix the water shortage and put 3 plans in motion. First I learned how to do remote construction using the RC commander and RC transport by building another water extractor some distance from the base while also ordering some prefab evaporators from Earth and trying to unlock the tech to build evaporators. Luckily no one died.

I then built a triangle dome a bit to the north to exploit a rare metal deposit, and then a triangle dome attached to the main dome. I did not like how attaching domes uses up buildable space. I eventually got a shuttle hub and was disappointed that the people in the distant dome could not partake of entertainment in the main domes. I also built 2 sets of tunnels to get past the massive trench taking up the middle of the map; this was annoying because I kept having to order machine parts from Earth to build it. I later tried out the ramp option to get access to a plateau west of my base and I think that would have worked better than tunnels. After I got shuttles I wanted to see how well they would work for remote construction, so I built a brand new base from scratch in the far north of the map. With the RC commander and a universal depot the shuttles flew needed materials for construction. That base was built next to another rare metal deposit. My other domes were exclusively American and European, so I made this one exclusively Chinese and Indian. I had prefab factories brought in and later built another polymer one. Despite that, I was constantly short on polymers.

Fun game though it does get tedious at times. It would be interesting to play harder scenarios such as the option where Earth is destroyed and you only get what the initial rockets can carry.