Game gets too easy as you progress.

[kbmodigity]

I'm still kind of new to the game but I am finding that it becomes insanely easy as you progress down the tech tree.

When you first land on Mars you start with a basic setup making some power, get a fuel refinery up, start concrete extraction, etc. Even at this point you have limited amounts of advanced resources and have to walk somewhat of a fine line to not, lets say make to many power production buildings as your maintenance will quickly outweigh what you can afford to send to Mars as you only have so much money.

After getting a basic installation up you say, OK, lets get some colonists. The starting dome is so limiting because of its size that you have to balance to a high degree on buildings built to satisfy needs, food production, and then maybe be able to get 1 or 2 advanced material production buildings and enough workers to actually work them. All this while making sure you have enough housing.

Even 1/2 way through the tech tree you get techs that let you build medium sized domes. These make it so much easier to manage as you actually have some room to work with.

You also can get the archology and medical centers. These end up freeing up so much space and are so much better than infirmiraries and apartments. Before the medical center I would need an infirmirary in each of my even small domes. After I get medical centers I can have 5 domes all connected and only need one of them built. Archologies are pretty much the same. I put them in all my other domes and get tons of good comfort housing which I can then free up the space of an apartment or 2 to put in lets say a machine parts factory instead.

Right no I am the furthest in a game I have been and even have things now like the fusion reactor and the break through that makes them not require workers and increases thier power output. Having 5 of these alone i was able to power my entire infrastructure and tore down all my wind turbines and solar power generators. This made my maintenance costs drop by about 80%.

Now that my domes have been able to free up so much space from these advanced buildings, and having my maintenance cost pretty much disapear entirely I am now swimming in all advanced resources. I was before this barely walking the line of where I was making enough of them in maintenance and would from time to time have to resupply myself from Earth. The only thing that is somewhat of an issue is regular metal. I have depleted all the reasonable sources on Mars and have been ressuplying myself with it from Earth. This is of no concequence though as I am playing as Brazil and with the rare metal refinery i have unlimited rare metal to make money off of. A rocket full of metal gets to Mars and even after flying back with a full load of rare metal I end up making a profit. i am currently building the mohole for the first time and from everything I read about it I will soon have so much metal that the only slight problem i have will be gone too.

Once thats the case my game will basically turn into, run on fast and wait for terrafoming to progress so i can finally see what that is like.

The reason I bring up all these points is that in most city builder games as your cities get bigger you end up having problems that come up with growing and having to replan things. In a game like sim city, as your city gets bigger your traffic gets worse, pollution becomes an issue, etc. In Surviving Mars as you grow things just seem to get so much easier and all your problems dissapear.

I'm not saying that this is a bad game but just wish that there were things that would come up to add some challange after you are fully established.

[some moron]

I agree. The game only get's easier and easier.
I'm playing with inflation, so that would dampen your plans, but mostly I'm shocked how you really only need 4-5 domes to terraform the planet, I thought I would have to populate the planet to make an effect.
If you do nothing, tech will advance and the game gets easier. It would be difficult for me as a player to make the game get harder.
I don't necessarily want it harder from overyhead, or shortage of raw materials, it would be neat if the difficulty shifted from the things you talk about to some difficulty of a different nature, such as crime or something. Perhaps that's what terraforming was supposed to address. But it's not really so difficult as much a time suck.

[ElPrezCBF]

Try a harder scenario then. It should delay the point when you would find the game "too easy".

But about the game getting easier with time, which game doesn't? Some games introduce late game mechanics and this one has mysteries to make it more interesting. But if the game doesn't get easier over time, what is the point of progression then? Might as well throw tech out and have more disasters over time if that's what you want. Then again, you might not like the lack of progression.

[SkiRich]

First, its not a city builder, second, you havent tried higher difficulties.
If you were a veteran player of the game I could understand why you would say its easy.
Try to play a hard map space, a sponsor that doesnt give away free stuff, and a mystery thats one of the harder ones and report back.

[some moron]

Well, I'd say most things you describe just make it harder in the beginning. But it's the same - if you can survive then things just get easier and easier. If you can make it through the first few very difficult disasters, then it will just get easier and easier.
Once you get tech for MDS and heaters and factories, then automate stuff, it only gets easier. The disasters are nullified and the difficulty disappears.
One thing could be a tech tree where you have to choose a path, and don't get everything. Kudos to breakthroughs for not being available every game.
Or colonists get more picky or develop new luxury needs, so that there is a challenge in mid game that is not in early game. Actually, that makes the most sense and would be easy - the early colonists would only be able to do crude jobs. Specialists should require higher comfort, except that "high" comfort is very low, extremely easy to accomplish for all colonists. As I've indicated, you don't need to build any comfort buildings at all zero to have extremely high comfort which is just silly.
Maybe we actually need to generate revenue to keep the mission going, so tourists are probably mandatory, except they are even more highly demanding, which would probably match reality. The setting for "high" comfort needs to be higher.
I'd also like to see the need for greater colonization. Maybe no automation, all the terraforming equipment requires workers. Because, otherwise. I only need like three domes. More domes would be more difficult to manage, so why build them? But if the workers were required to staff buildings I would be forced to manage a larger population.

[kbmodigity]

Originally posted by twel70:

But about the game getting easier with time, which game doesn't?

As I stated in my original post. Look at sim city. As your city gets bigger new problems are thrown in as a result of the higher population increase. Traffic goes up. Pollution goes up. Crime goes up. You are forced to readjust the way you originally planned to have to deal with the new problems that arise.

Edit: A great game that gets harder as the game goes on -- XCom

[kbmodigity]

Originally posted by SkiRich:

First, its not a city builder, second, you havent tried higher difficulties.

The very first tag of what type of game this is on the store page is "City Builder".

You have no clue what I tried and what I haven't. I did state that I am still somewhat new to the game but you are ASSUMING that I haven't tried a hard scenario.

[Kizzle]

Water.

[Kizzle]

Originally posted by Kizzle:

Water.

However, I do concede that my current stores of ~1.6M deposits at 102 units/sol of consumption, I'll be able to play for 130 days, 24 hours a day, realtime. :)

I guess the next challenge will be to see exactly how many domes I can cram into the map when I completely flatten everything, in the most efficient way possible haha.

[kbmodigity]

Originally posted by Kizzle:

Water.

Moisture vaperetors, plus all the techs that lessen the water consumption of EVERYTHING. I run a 15 medium dome map with maybe 1 or 2 water extractors and the rest moisture exrtacters. And day by day as my terraforming goes up its adding more water to my infrastructure.

[SkiRich]

Originally posted by kbmodigity:

Originally posted by SkiRich:

First, its not a city builder, second, you havent tried higher difficulties.

The very first tag of what type of game this is on the store page is "City Builder".

You have no clue what I tried and what I haven't. I did state that I am still somewhat new to the game but you are ASSUMING that I haven't tried a hard scenario.

It’s marked as simulation and strategy as the genre.
You are referring to user tags.
I can tag it as a circus sim. Doesn’t make it a circus sim.
You said you are still fairly new to the game.
So have you experienced any of the things I mentioned?
Folks struggle with this game on higher levels unless you are a veteran player.

[BLÀde]

LOL try a 875% game

[Aturchomicz]

Originally posted by BLÀde:

LOL try a 875% game

yeah that gets easy after the metatron mystery is over

[BLÀde]

try one of these maps with this mod
63n115w
67n116w
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1783321149&searchtext=winter

[ElPrezCBF]

Originally posted by kbmodigity:

Originally posted by twel70:

But about the game getting easier with time, which game doesn't?

As I stated in my original post. Look at sim city. As your city gets bigger new problems are thrown in as a result of the higher population increase. Traffic goes up. Pollution goes up. Crime goes up. You are forced to readjust the way you originally planned to have to deal with the new problems that arise.

Edit: A great game that gets harder as the game goes on -- XCom

Forced to readjust? The point of a city builder is to plan ahead so you do not need to make huge readjustments. Disasters and other late game mechanics are merely thrown into a city builder to give you some sense of immersion. By late game, you should be swimming in resources and tech unlocks such that these are just minor inconveniences. Otherwise why bother with progression mechanics?

It's not about creating challenges just for the sake of doing so and have them nullify your progress. It's about how easy or difficult your journey is in getting to a self-sufficiency state. And this does not necessarily have to follow the sim city model.

Xcom is the worst example because it's way more dependent on rng than any other game. I wouldn't discuss difficulty in relation to that game although I don't deny some strategy is involved.

[Ericus1]

OP's absolutely correct. No matter what options/choices you make, the difficulty of the game is entirely front loaded, and there aren't really mechanics that come in to take their place once you mitigate the early challenges. The one exception may be the mysteries, but even those are finite challenges. It is one of the places future DLC could focus.