Your Opinions?

[RagingRumskullian]

What are your opinions so far on thus game? At the time of posting this, the reviews were “mixed,” and only about 60% of them were positive. Personally, I’m just waiting for Paradox to do its trademark “release an aspect of the game that should’ve been included at launch as $15 DLC.” So... thoughts?

[Eagle_of_Fire]

Dude... You expected them to clone themselves and release them to reproduce?

There is a reason you're not supposed to reproduce between siblings you know... Better resolve the problem before it even happen.

[☢Ｄιαмση∂ѕρι∂єя☢]

I love it, but the bugs and lack of clarity on how things work is frustrating. Overall I'm very glad I bought it as a pretty hardcore gamer. It is not for those with little patience.

[=(FGR)=Sentinel]

Originally posted by Eagle_of_Fire:

Dude... You expected them to clone themselves and release them to reproduce?

There is a reason you're not supposed to reproduce between siblings you know... Better resolve the problem before it even happen.

The main issue is because there was exactly one person in this dome (I managed to get the tech that lets you replace the workers in service buildings with drones and had a dedicated farming dome set up by this point) so by the game's logic there was nobody else for them to clone but themselves and they couldn't splice together a new person from the genetic code of a group of people because, apparently, people can't interact with others outside their dome. I was testing to see if it was possible to create a colony made up of genetic copies of a single individual and if the developers thought ahead enough to have something happen with genetic degradation or something... but apparently they couldn't even keep internal consistency and I'm left wondering where this woman got the genetic material needed to make a male clone of anyone when she was the only person in the dome.

[BensonWT]

The mechanism how the drones AI works is horrible. The AI could not correctly prioritize which work to perform first with limited resources (esp advanced resources). When I was going through The Last War Mystery I experienced a terrible shortage of machine parts and I dont know what the drones are doing instead of using those only martian production of machine parts to maintain power supply facilities.

The game is fun but gets so frustrating late game.

1. OVERVIEW/SUMMARY pages are totally absent. I have no detailed/individual stat page where i can view how my colonists/drones are doing
2. How on earth am i suppose to micro each and every drone and assign each of them to another drone hub? How is it not possible to select multiple drones at a time? I couldn't believe it.
3. The game needs a lot of micro but does not allow player to give direct order on what drones should strictly do.

I am on Sol120 and I am so fed up with power shortage due to drones doing nuts with limited advanced resources in the course of a crisis (Mystery).

[Bored Peon]

Originally posted by BensonWT:

2. How on earth am i suppose to micro each and every drone and assign each of them to another drone hub? How is it not possible to select multiple drones at a time? I couldn't believe it.

Let me say it a third time.....here even got a picture...

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1335578707

Spam that deconstruct to remove excess drones, then click use prefab somewhere else.

[Nox]

I played the game for 27 hours, tested things, found significant bugs, found things I strongly liked and disliked and them submitted an appropriate review.

I am not someone who 'could not figure out the game'

http://steamcommunity.com/id/meatmachine/recommended/464920

[Eagle_of_Fire]

Originally posted by =(FGR)=Sentinel:

Originally posted by Eagle_of_Fire:

Dude... You expected them to clone themselves and release them to reproduce?

There is a reason you're not supposed to reproduce between siblings you know... Better resolve the problem before it even happen.

The main issue is because there was exactly one person in this dome (I managed to get the tech that lets you replace the workers in service buildings with drones and had a dedicated farming dome set up by this point) so by the game's logic there was nobody else for them to clone but themselves and they couldn't splice together a new person from the genetic code of a group of people because, apparently, people can't interact with others outside their dome. I was testing to see if it was possible to create a colony made up of genetic copies of a single individual and if the developers thought ahead enough to have something happen with genetic degradation or something... but apparently they couldn't even keep internal consistency and I'm left wondering where this woman got the genetic material needed to make a male clone of anyone when she was the only person in the dome.

*facepalm*

The flawed logic people use sometimes... I can't even...

[=(FGR)=Sentinel]

I felt it would be entertaining to see if something could be done. People have done far worse in other games developed or produced by Paradox and this seemed to have a valid use if it worked as expected (ie, create a copy of someone with their traits) to simply produce a dome filled with geniuses to boost research or for other traits, which is actually what I meant to attempt. I mean, sure, we've already mapped the human genome, but that still kind of takes the fun out of it in a way, especially since I figured it'd work a bit like the sanitorium (and according to the wiki at the time, the cloning vats cloned the people who were operating it)

[DeviniusMaximus]

wait a year for it to come on half price. i'm pissed that i spent $85 canadian on the 2 dlc 2 add-on version and the game is annoying

[RagingRumskullian]

Man, this thread really exploded! Thank you guys for all your help!

[Treveri]

I am already starting to be over this game ... I am going to wait till I finish a scenario before I post my review, but I am right there with the others on these points:

Domes right next to each other can't share resources and facilities? Are you fricking kidding me? We're hauling people and crap from earth to mars, but we haven't figured out how to link two domes together? That is the most stoooopid game design ever!

There are UI issues all through this game! Too damned much micromanagement that just isn't necessary. Its almost as tho the Devs think micromanagemen is content. e.g. You bring up 20 drones from earth and you have to manually hunt down, click and reassign them to a hub or rover? Really? We colonized Mars for Christ's sake! We can't reassign all the drones with one command?

The fact that they didn't release it with a tutorial bewilders me. This is a game that never should have hit the market without a tutorial ... there were a 1000 qualified people out there that would have written up a tutorial for free ... all they had to do was tap that resource.

I have had to restart so many times because something that makes sense to me (as someone who's been playing base builders almost 30 years) is so far disconnected from what they think makes sense.

Again, there should have been a tutorial (and I don't mean 30 hours of YouTube watching some Brit on speed talking 90 miles an hour while he attempts to convince me how cool he is, how cool the game is and to LIKE his Youtube channel).

At this point, I am realizing it was a wise decision to just buy the base game ... I don't know that I'll be playing this long enough to even get into anything else.

[Hobbes]

Originally posted by Hobbes:

* Domes should have some kind of civillian ground link if placed close together

Originally posted by Bored Peon:

Shuttle tech, you can start with it as Rocket Scientist. It also comes up about the 8th slot in the research tree.

Wrong answer to the wrong problem. Shuttle hubs are for distance transport, I'm more interested in cojoining or linking domes via walking distance, there's no significant reason why this shouldn't be viable.

Originally posted by Hobbes:

* No linked network between drone hubs (SERIOUSLY? YOU'RE ON MARS AND THE DRONE HUBS CAN'T FRIGGING WIFI?)

Originally posted by Bored Peon:

Deconstruct the drones back into a prefab, then click on the new hub you want them at and use the prefab. It is actually WAY faster than reassigning.

Although I think you mean drones from one end of map will run to other end swithcing hubs as needed. That is actually VERY bad. You could easily end up with all your drones on one end of the map and not have drones to repair.

Networks intelligently load balance and don't decide to drop everything through the same T1 pipe, drone networks should not be "blind" if they're within each others ZOC, and deconstructing is a workaround, in reality drones should be able to function via a mesh network and be able to some extent wander outside their initial ZOC if they don't have the resources they need within their own ZOC, the fact they're dumb singleminded little sods is testament that there wasn't "joined up thinking" in how drone systems would be managed in such a situation.

If you have drone hubs outside of each others ZOC they should act independently, but drone controllers that have linked ZOC's should act or have the option to act as a "pooled" drone hub that acts as a supercontroller for the extended ZOC, with drones then being subassigned to hubs in a balanced manner.

[Don Vincenzoo 57]

The game is very micomanagement heavy /// that's what make me stop thinking about purchasing this game / micromanagement just for micromanagement : no way

[Bored Peon]

Originally posted by Treveri:

You bring up 20 drones from earth and you have to manually hunt down, click and reassign them to a hub or rover? Really? We colonized Mars for Christ's sake! We can't reassign all the drones with one command?

I said it three times and even posted a picture.....

Originally posted by Hobbes:

Originally posted by Bored Peon:

Shuttle tech, you can start with it as Rocket Scientist. It also comes up about the 8th slot in the research tree.

Wrong answer to the wrong problem. Shuttle hubs are for distance transport, I'm more interested in cojoining or linking domes via walking distance, there's no significant reason why this shouldn't be viable..

Shuttles will transport people between domes. You can watch them do it at the doorways to the domes if people decide to switch.

I guess some people would rather rant than learn.

[=(FGR)=Sentinel]

Honestly with the quirks and (admittedly major) flaws I'm still kind of enjoying the game, but I don't think I'll ever be able to get the absolute most out of my colony without some of the flaws being fixed. The lack of a tutorial and in-depth explaination of the game's mechanics in the game itself has even led to a few incorrect guides being put up, and apparently things like cloning were stated by Haemimont to work differently than they eventually ended up in the game, resulting in incorrect information being put in the wiki. From an article on Rock, Paper, Shotgun:

"Haemimont CEO Gabriel Dobrev sketched out some eccentric possibilities. Research cloning, for example, and you can do without the male sex entirely. Pump R&D dollars into mind control, and you never have to worry about citizens going renegade when you neglect their needs. There are technologies that abolish old age, allowing workers to remain productive right up till they cop it, and technologies that let you recycle the dead, much to the outrage of their nearest and dearest."

From this we can be forgiven for expecting the "Safe Mode" breakthrough or the Society tech wonder to have an impact on raising stats that drop dangerously low (Safe Mode does this... but only for sanity, not morale or comfort, which are what causes the problems usually) and that cloning lets you decide certain aspects of the clone you create, if not simply clone a specific colonist when it doesn't do either; everything about clones is random. I understand that these things could have changed in the month and a half between that article and the game's release, but it's telling when the wiki that's already been made for the game has massive holes in its information base and is outright wrong on a number of accounts simply because the only things they have to go on for what they do is either information from the devs that was given a month before the game's release or a common-sense assumption based off an insignificant ingame description of a tech.

This is even worse when you look at the ingame encyclopedia, which really only says how a disaster might affect the colony in the most general terms (do water tanks freeze up even when in range of a subsuface heater or an ARTIFICAL SUN during cold waves?) and for everything else mostly parrots the (occasionally unhelpful) tooltips. This is annoying with some sponsors, specifically the USA and (ironically) Paradox. I know the USA is supposed to provide additional funding, but I'm not sure if it's the $100 M listed under "other" and if its a daily amount (it doesn't actually tell you how much extra funding it is in the tooltip) and with Paradox's extra breakthroughs you don't know how many they actually give.

The minimalistic approach to ingame help and information basically reduces this to a deadly game of trial-and-error. To give an idea, the game doesn't outright tell you what traits schools provide, what sanitoriums can treat, or what the Network Node Spire does... You have to build the school (a small investment late game, but always a risk when electronics are in short supply) or sanitorium (more expensive, like all spires) in order to look at the options for them, while the Network Node continues to exist as this arcane object that refuses to reveal how it works even after construction.

Research Collaboration is also something that is left obscure in how it works, which leads to extremely frustrating results when you try to guess the way it works for anything other than Exploration Rovers: from testing with Science Institutes, I've learned that the collaboration loss for each building increases by a FLAT 10% for every other Institute... Meaning that you should produce the same amount of research with 6 of them as you do with 5, with 7 as you would 4, etc. If this is true, the absolute BEST you can get is with 5 institutes. If we say, hypotetically, that every institute would bring in 1500 research on its own, having two up provides 2700, 3 provide 3600, 4 provide 4200, and five provide 4500. Basically, if you can get every institute to have the same efficiency, adding another institute causes you to "lose" 20% of an institute plus the cumulative loss from all the others (ie, for every instute after the second, you "lose" 20% of an institute from just that second institute, but the third causes you to "lose" an extra 20% of one that gets added on for every extra institute after) and once you build your sixth institute, you've technically "lost" the full research potential of three institutes, with that sixth institute giving the "loss" of a full institute's research potential. This means that after the sixth institute, you actually "lose" more than you gain... IF it works how I assume it does, which I have to since I have no reason to think it DOESN'T.

So not only did they make the game in a way that (as Treveri stated) makes little to no sense to anyone but them, they also designed a mechanic that impacts a system you interact with almost constantly in the exact opposite way every other company does and shows WHY nobody does it that way: reducing research speed as research potential increases. There's a reason why popular games like the Civilization series and Stellaris increase tech COSTS whenever you settle a new city/planet rather than reduce research INCOME every time you build a new research building... and they wouldn't be nearly as popular if they did what Surviving Mars has done.