What exactly is the "Mars" connection in this game?

[evildrganymede]

I was expecting a colony builder that actually had some of the challenges specific to trying to y'know, *Survive Mars*, but it seems we've got generic map tiles under a Mars world map (and the tiles bear no resemblance to actual Martian topography except maybe in specific cases), Sols that may or may not last years, Earth-Mars travel times that are too quick, atmosphere that is too thick, and no CO2 ice. So I'm struggling to figure out what exactly this game has to do with Mars, specifically.

At this point I'm wondering if the devs even did any research into Mars at all for the game, because it's looking more to me like a generic space colony builder on a generic desert planet that shares very little in common with Mars at all - which would have been fine if they'd advertised it as such, but they didn't.

[ErynnSilver]

... tthey used actual photos of mars for the maps O.o

[morph113]

Don't take the game too seriously, it's a casual but at times challenging colony builder and not meant to be 100% scientifically accurate. Just take it for what it is. Also the travel times are pretty fine, 1 sol is supposed to be 1 year. It's only visually displayed as day/night to give you a better visual indication and because it feels better or otherwise you probably would have a few day/night cycles per second which wouldn't look really good.

[evildrganymede]

Well sure, but it's called Surviving MARS. I was expecting more relevance to Mars beyond just the global map. (tbh I feel kinda misled by it. I can live with it as a "Generic SF Colony Builder" game, but it's really not what I was hoping for based on the name).

[Zatheron]

I personally feel there are lots of connections. Honestly, what use would CO2 ice have? wouldn't extracting oxygen be an energy intensive process(compared to pulling it from water or plants)? the game seems to assume there is some water vapor in the atmosphere, as well as underground(which may or may not be true...). a mineral that makes concrete is quite plausable, along with a metal and rare-metals. the most absurd part is how polymers just appear from fuel lol.

[morph113]

What were you hoping for? Mars is just the setting, nothing more. It looks like mars and feels like mars. You got meteor showers and dust storms. Btw. where does it say that the atmosphere is thick? You mention stuff that I have no idea how you came to that conclusion. The dust storms are just dust storms. They are made up mostly of dust and just look so thick because it's all the fine dust giving it that colour. High wind velocities can still happen even in a thin atmosphere, it's just that with a thin atmosphere it doesn't really do much harm. Like in the movie the Martian it was heavily exaggerated. While the wind speeds can be that fast, it wouldn't really blow you away, it would feel like a breeze of thin air. But the issue with dust storms is the dust which causes all buildings to require maintenance pretty fast because it gets covered in dust.

Each map isn't taken from real life but it looks pretty much like mars doesn't it? What do you want it to look like? Would you know the difference if they would have made each map a 1:1 pinpoint accurate representation of a piece of land on Mars?

[evildrganymede]

I was hoping for a simulation of colony building *on Mars*. This isn't it. It's colony building on some generic desert planet. Sure, the soil is red, it has dust storms, the global map looks like Mars... but beyond that there's not much I can see here that is specifically related to Mars. The terrain tiles are mostly generic and don't correspond to actual topography. Travel times are unrealistic. Day lengths are unrealistic and there are no seasonal effects.

I mean, this is "Mars" to someone who knows very little about Mars beyond it being red and the next planet out from Earth. It really feels to me that the "Mars" part was added very late in the design process (probably to piggy-back on the SpaceX hype) and that really it was just designed as a generic Cities Skyline-style colony builder on a generic planet.

They could have called this game "Surviving Kepler 128-f" and nobody would know the difference. All they'd need to do is put a new red, cratered global map up and call it Kepler 128-f, say that the rockets take a day or so to hyperspace in from Earth, and that'd be it, because there's so little that ties it to Mars. The Mars theme is just "pasted on" here.

[Scrooge McDuck]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmFOBoy2MZ8 very informative

[morph113]

Well they do have to do some game balancing, what do you expect? You want 1 ingame day to take 24 real life hours and the travel to earth to take half a real life year? Or what do you mean with unrealistic times? I haven't paid much attention on how long the travel takes, but I think it's somewhat less than 1 sol which means it's a bit less than a year which actually pretty spot on if we consider the fact that the rocket doesn't launch during a perfect transfer window. So realistically it should always take a different amount of time as earth and mars are probably always in different positions when you launch a rocket. But for simplicity they made it easy and consistent, but a bit less than a year or 1 sol is pretty damn accurate for a travel to mars.

[vivas]

Originally posted by evildrganymede:

I was hoping for a simulation of colony building *on Mars*. This isn't it. It's colony building on some generic desert planet. Sure, the soil is red, it has dust storms, the global map looks like Mars... but beyond that there's not much I can see here that is specifically related to Mars. The terrain tiles are mostly generic and don't correspond to actual topography. Travel times are unrealistic. Day lengths are unrealistic and there are no seasonal effects.

I mean, this is "Mars" to someone who knows very little about Mars beyond it being red and the next planet out from Earth. It really feels to me that the "Mars" part was added very late in the design process (probably to piggy-back on the SpaceX hype) and that really it was just designed as a generic Cities Skyline-style colony builder on a generic planet.

Could you tell us what your vision of the game would be, what specific features would you put in or change to make it the game you are talking about? So not what the game is not but concrete changes.

[evildrganymede]

You know that a Sol is one martian day though (just over 24 hours). It's not a year. If they wanted it to be a year then (Earth year? Martian year?) they should have just called it that.

[evildrganymede]

Originally posted by vivas:

Could you tell us what your vision of the game would be, what specific features would you put in or change to make it the game you are talking about? So not what the game is not but concrete changes.

I've described that already. Mars tiles that correspond to actual locations on Mars (and we have topographic data for everything already). Challenges specific to Mars (e.g. thin atmosphere, CO2 ice, seasonal changes, pressure changes, etc). Realistic timescales for colonist aging and travel times. Realistic habitats (not domes). Dealing with radiation etc.

These are things that would have required some actual research into what Mars is like and what the challenges to colonise it specifically are.

[morph113]

Originally posted by evildrganymede:

You know that a Sol is one martian day though (just over 24 hours). It's not a year. If they wanted it to be a year then (Earth year? Martian year?) they should have just called it that.

Maybe they did it so it fits better to the day/night cycle. The "sol" in the game is, as far as I have observerd, both a day and a year. It's visually a day but the time a rocket travel takes fits to a year and also how old colonists get before they die fits with 1 sol = 1 year. I mean of all the things, you didn't think it's pretty unrealistic that the people die of old age after like 60-80 days? That you didn't find unrealistic?

[Samael]

"Realistic timescales for colonist aging and travel times."

Yeah sure.

[evildrganymede]

Originally posted by Samael:

"Realistic timescales for colonist aging and travel times."

Yeah sure.

As in, it takes at least a couple of weeks for rockets to get there and colonists don't age in a matter of days. But then the timescale in the game is completely confused anyway since a Sol is both a day and a year, except when it isn't.

[Roflmaou]

there are some levels of realism that would not be fun for most people. The developers cannot make a game to please everyone all the time, so they went for what is fun for the majority that fits within their vision of the game, not yours.