Real talk, is it worth buying?

[Bröthër Gíg Hul Sundín]

So ive been following this game for a little while now, and it looks pretty promising. I tried Aven Colony's first like 4-5 levels and i enjoyed it pretty much, which i think should be pretty similiar, right? Plus that one other recent colony building strategy, which i cant at all remember how it was called. :D
The fact that its made by Paradox is also awesome, i love anything they made in the past 10 years, mostly Stellaris and HOI4. Meaning, its bound to have the same UI layout, controls and gameplay mechanics, which makes stuff A LOT easier.
It looks almost too good to be true, therefore im asking for really honest answers to: Is there anything, i dunno, gamebreaking, unimmersive, buggy, unbalanced etc. etc. i should know about? Its still in an early stage, so there might be some bugs to squash. I just dont wanna waste money on something i will try, wait for a couple weeks for it to get patched, forget about it and not play it for a couple months, as is my habit. :D
Thanks in advance for replying :)

[Ogami]

This game is NOT made by Paradox. They are only the publisher.
"Surviving Mars" is by the developer who made the Tropico games and is based on a modified Tropico 5 engine.

As for the game itself, its way more of a sandbox then for example Aven Colony or Planetbase. There are no missions to follow. The difficulty setting depends entirely on the creation of your game at the beginning, stuff like where you land , choosing your sponsor and such things.
That will either increase or decrease the overall difficulty of the game.
The gameplay itself ist very much a sandbox after that with the only goal being to create a valid space colony and not run out of resources/money.

[Azunai]

it's not made by paradox. they publish the game, but didn't develop it.

afaik, the guys who developed the game also made the "Tropico" games, so that's probably a better comparison. the game doesn't rally have much in common with paradox grand strategy games.

seems kinda fun so far. too soon to actually pass a final verdict - only played like 2 hours last night.

[Bröthër Gíg Hul Sundín]

Oh! Must have missed that completely, thanks for clearing that up!
Luckily i played most Tropico games as well, so its still safe. :D
Anyway, same question, anything broken etc.? And thanks for that quick reply btw :)

[Bröthër Gíg Hul Sundín]

Oh i see, so its kinda like Cities in a way? Can you kinda alter the map settings, like resources, map smoothness and stuff?

[Ogami]

Originally posted by Ruzuchi:

Oh i see, so its kinda like Cities in a way? Can you kinda alter the map settings, like resources, map smoothness and stuff?

No but you can freely choose the landing place of your colony ship when starting a new game and it will show you the available resources in the region you will land and also the dangers present ( sand storms, meteorite showers and so on).
Depending on where you land you will get a "difficulty bonus %" ranging from 30-40% or so up to 500%+. Every milestone you reach with your colony gives points which get multiplied with your difficulty %. So you basically try to fulfill all the milestones for your colony and get a high score in the process. That is pretty much the structure of a game.

As for Cities Skylines, its a bit similar but on a MUCH smaller scale.
I am now 6 hours into my first game and just reached 30 human colonists.
So dont expect to build giant cities on Mars with hundreds of thousands of colonists.
I think the highest milestone to achieve is 1000 colonists.
The focus is also a lot more on managing your individual colonists. Each colonist has his own personality, traits and perks and must be handled accordingly.

[Bröthër Gíg Hul Sundín]

Hmmm... i did not know all this until now. :D
Can you assign the colonists to different jobs/posts freely? Cause that would make for some funny scenarios, combining that with their personalities. :D

[Fluffless]

To be honest, I find micromanaging all the colonists to be very tiring. A button like "assign colonists to favorite task and change residence accordingly" would be a great help. The UI is also a small mess, I tend to loose overall view. To be honest, I suggest waiting a few weeks and see where the game stands - I wish I had.

/ You can, thing is, a colonist assigned to the "wrong" job will get a huge penalty. Colonists are stupid enough to assign themselves to those wrong tasks all the time, though.
Also, everything within a dome is only of benefit for its own residents - so no highly specialised domes like "education dome", "industry dome" or whatever - even if the domes are right next to each other.

[Pestilence]

Assigning colonists to different jobs is a mess right now, though I am sure it will be addressed via a patch very soon due to all the complaints.

Also, picking your landing site is very much like Rimworld if you have played that, having a globe that shows the info of the site where you put your cursor, like how much metal or water is in the area and flat or steep and cold or very cold, how many dangers, etc.

[Damien]

Lol people complain about micro management then buy a game about being in control of colonising mars..... What the fu,ck did you expect? God the world just gets more dumb every day.

[Bröthër Gíg Hul Sundín]

Oh, yea Rimworld is a very familiar example. :)
Well, gonna wait for a couple weeks rather than buy something incomplete :)
Thanks a lot guys

[Mansen]

Originally posted by Sond:

Assigning colonists to different jobs is a mess right now, though I am sure it will be addressed via a patch very soon due to all the complaints

You don't - They are perfectly capable of doing this by themselves, provided your other priorities aren't overriding this.

[Bröthër Gíg Hul Sundín]

Originally posted by Sir.Nerdbane:

Lol people complain about micro management then buy a game about being in control of colonising mars..... What the fu,ck did you expect? God the world just gets more dumb every day.

Dude, take your pills maybe..?
Nobody said anything remotely sounding like they dont know its a micromanagement game.
I even specifically said i enjoy pretty much every Paradox game. ( ͡° ͜V ͡°)

[Ellye]

I really liked it so far.

It needs improvment on two things that are heavy micromanagement currently: colonist jobs and transportation of resources.

You can mostly ignore the colonist micromanaging if you want to, just like you don't need to micromanage citzens on Tropico (by the same devs). But you can't ignore transportation, and it's a lot of clicking that shouldn't be needed.

But despite that, I'm really, really liking the game. I must note that city building is my favorite genre, and Tropico is my favorite series in the genre, so I'm a bit biased - this game is exactly the kind of game that I enjoy the most, after all.

By the way, the mod support seems fantastic from what I've seem of the mod tools so far. This will be really good for fine tuning the game for different tastes.

[boa]

Originally posted by Sir.Nerdbane:

Lol people complain about micro management then buy a game about being in control of colonising mars..... What the fu,ck did you expect? God the world just gets more dumb every day.

Buy the game, play it few hours, then comment on the mechanics that you obviously have no idea about.
Stupid colonists behaviors in picking jobs is biggest flaw in that game right now. Even when you swap their jobs every morning they can go whenever they want.
Micromanaging hundreds of people all the time is just wrong.

[Anarcotaku]

Originally posted by Ellye:

I really liked it so far.

It needs improvment on two things that are heavy micromanagement currently: colonist jobs and transportation of resources.

You can mostly ignore the colonist micromanaging if you want to, just like you don't need to micromanage citzens on Tropico (by the same devs). But you can't ignore transportation, and it's a lot of clicking that shouldn't be needed.

But despite that, I'm really, really liking the game. I must note that city building is my favorite genre, and Tropico is my favorite series in the genre, so I'm a bit biased - this game is exactly the kind of game that I enjoy the most, after all.

My opinion is exactly this.