Below and Beyond rating on steam is very bad, whats wrong with it?

[BasenjiMaster]

What's wrong with the Below and Beyond DLC? Was thinking of getting it, but due to the bad rating I stopped.

[HurtfulPlayer97]

https://steamcommunity.com/app/464920/discussions/0/3085520348632709225/

[Orphan Martian]

You pay $20 for the ability to unlock two new maps, asteroids and underground, both of which are very expensive to visit in terms of research and materials. Both are smaller than the Mars map and look unimpressive. One is a dark cave full of road blocks and obstacles to clear. The other is a little rock sitting on a black square against what looks like a motionless, stock image of space someone downloaded from Internet Explorer back in 1999. It may sound like I'm exaggerating, but I'm really not. That's supposed to be the asteroid hurtling past Mars, mind you.

You can build on asteroids and underground, but you have to manually count every kind of material you're sending. You transport these materials using elevators, but these cannot transfer water or energy like you might expect. The underground is practically cut off from the surface and you have to micromanage every single thing between them. You also need lots of exotic minerals from asteroids to build underground, so that's basically the endgame goal. Unfortunately, underground offers nothing you can't find on the surface, making the whole DLC feel pointless. You get 3 new wonders which only help you underground, and their passives are really lame (more research, more light, inifinite drone power underground. Yay?) In the end, it's all self-serving busywork that's disconnected from the base game.

With Green Planet, you could use brand new mechanics and buildings to terraform the whole map right from the get-go, and this drastically changes your entire playthrough. With B&B, you need a fully-established base to experience the new content, and then you just get to do more of the same thing with 10x the resource cost and micromanaging.

My reply might be snarky, but it's honest. Paradox/Abstraction just recycled and repackaged things from the base game and asked for more money. If any of this somehow sounds appealing to you, then by all means purchase the DLC and try it out for yourself. You won't get a refund though, since it will probably take you a few hours just to reach the asteroids, and that's assuming you don't run into any of the numerous game-breaking bugs which I haven't even mentioned.

[BasenjiMaster]

Originally posted by Orphan Martian:

You pay $20 for the ability to unlock two new maps, asteroids and underground, both of which are very expensive to visit in terms of research and materials. Both are smaller than the Mars map and look unimpressive. One is a dark cave full of road blocks and obstacles to clear. The other is a little rock sitting on a black square against what looks like a motionless, stock image of space someone downloaded from Internet Explorer back in 1999. It may sound like I'm exaggerating, but I'm really not. That's supposed to be the asteroid hurtling past Mars, mind you.

You can build on asteroids and underground, but you have to manually count every kind of material you're sending. You transport these materials using elevators, but these cannot transfer water or energy like you might expect. The underground is practically cut off from the surface and you have to micromanage every single thing between them. You also need lots of exotic minerals from asteroids to build underground, so that's basically the endgame goal. Unfortunately, underground offers nothing you can't find on the surface, making the whole DLC feel pointless. You get 3 new wonders which only help you underground, and their passives are really lame (more research, more light, inifinite drone power underground. Yay?) In the end, it's all self-serving busywork that's disconnected from the base game.

With Green Planet, you could use brand new mechanics and buildings to terraform the whole map right from the get-go, and this drastically changes your entire playthrough. With B&B, you need a fully-established base to experience the new content, and then you just get to do more of the same thing with 10x the resource cost and micromanaging.

My reply might be snarky, but it's honest. Paradox/Abstraction just recycled and repackaged things from the base game and asked for more money. If any of this somehow sounds appealing to you, then by all means purchase the DLC and try it out for yourself. You won't get a refund though, since it will probably take you a few hours just to reach the asteroids, and that's assuming you don't run into any of the numerous game-breaking bugs which I haven't even mentioned.

Perfect, thanks for taking the time to explain all that. Reading that, and the post the guy above linked it, this DLC sounds like an easy pass.

[Orphan Martian]

Originally posted by BasenjiMaster:

this DLC sounds like an easy pass.

It's a shame because two months ago I would have highly recommended Surviving Mars. It is still a great game without B&B, but since they managed to break so much of the base game and refuse to let players roll back, I would stay away. Paradox handed off the development to a new team and they borked everything.

If you are looking for an awesome city-building game with survival mechanics, check out Frostpunk instead. It's glorious.

[FirestormMk3]

The only real reason to go to asteroids is for the BS resource "exotic materials" that are super exotic but Earth doesn't want any so they can't be sold, but are completely necessary to do things like build a repeater antenna for a drone hub. Below and beyond could have been a really cool thing with options to live in limited space in areas with lots of asteroid storms for instance and asteroid mining could have been an automated alternative to geologists, especially in the early game, and instead they made something that is silly.

Underground can't pass time in the early game while you wait for things to build up because drones can't move underground rock without fairly advanced tech, and it's not an alternative place to set up early because you need "exotic materials" to build identical structures, just underground, and you can't get those materials because you need multiple techs to get a lander to go to asteroids, including a staffed recon building on the surface, and it's not remotely cost-effective before prefab/refab. For whatever reason the elevator can't even connect life support grids like tunnels can. All in all, it add almost no content, adds zero options, and by the time you can exploit it for anything, there's no reason to. I got it for like 25% off and still wish I hadn't bought it.

As a note, I still do recommend Surviving Mars for newcomers, and would just tell them to buy the base season pass edition that comes with Space Race and Green Planet, I just think you should pass on *this* DLC until/unless it gets a major free expansion and/or overhaul. Frostpunk is also quite good though, but certainly a different experience than this game. This game can be overall laid back unless you encounter an emergency where Frostpunk is constantly high-stress and a race against the clock.

[Bored Peon]

It could become easy suitable content with mods, the problem is getting someone to make the mods. Which in order to do that mod creators need an input for an idea of what to change. However people have to actually play it in order to give that feedback.

For example, I gave a friend an idea for the automated miners to have more stages that included the upgrades instead of having to rebuild upgraded on the prefab every time. Which would make the micro management slightly reduced.

[BasenjiMaster]

Originally posted by Orphan Martian:

Originally posted by BasenjiMaster:

this DLC sounds like an easy pass.

It's a shame because two months ago I would have highly recommended Surviving Mars. It is still a great game without B&B, but since they managed to break so much of the base game and refuse to let players roll back, I would stay away. Paradox handed off the development to a new team and they borked everything.

If you are looking for an awesome city-building game with survival mechanics, check out Frostpunk instead. It's glorious.

Thanks. I bought Frostpunk back on release. I agree, it's outstanding, but I feel it's more of a puzzle game rather than a citybuilding management game. It's also crazy difficult, I have only managed to do the first story.

[FiatLux]

Originally posted by BasenjiMaster:

Frostpunk
<--SNIP-->
It's also crazy difficult, I have only managed to do the first story.

Concur ! , Frostpunk do not have an 'easy' mode , they may tell you that it has but no ! , even on most easy the game still acts as if solely made to break or beat player .
Like it is made to only allow the player to go that far and no longer.
I am sure that there are those that loves stress and punishment that can push the game farther but also I haven't played beyond first story .
Ref. : https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2510998102

[BLÀde]

i hated frospunk absolutely hated it. if you don't do stuff in a certain order every single time your whole colony dies. HATE IT SM has much more freedom to what you can do.

[Zavichij]

I feel that when/if the bugs that came with the DLC is resolved, then the DLC can be a stepping stone for modders.

Mods make the game plays more fun, like I detest to play 7 days to die, Empyrion, Rimworld without mods, because the base game is so empty. But I still like what the devs add to the games, because it open up new possibilities for modders.

It is sad that Surviving Mars latest DLC came with a lot of bugs that ruined the game play for many people. But if it's fixed, I see many possibilities on how to make this game more fun than before the DLC.

[ElPrezCBF]

Originally posted by BasenjiMaster:

Originally posted by Orphan Martian:

It's a shame because two months ago I would have highly recommended Surviving Mars. It is still a great game without B&B, but since they managed to break so much of the base game and refuse to let players roll back, I would stay away. Paradox handed off the development to a new team and they borked everything.

If you are looking for an awesome city-building game with survival mechanics, check out Frostpunk instead. It's glorious.

Thanks. I bought Frostpunk back on release. I agree, it's outstanding, but I feel it's more of a puzzle game rather than a citybuilding management game. It's also crazy difficult, I have only managed to do the first story.

Frostpunk is more like a puzzle game but I'd say mainly on higher difficulties. On normal, you can afford to use a more flexible strategy and still win. To put it into perspective, I completed the Winterhome scenario (arguably one of the harder ones) on normal despite making many sub-optimal moves.

It's hard to pinpoint a clear "winning" city builder tbh. SM is relaxing, fun and replayable but does not make you feel that choices matter as much as Frostpunk, which itself is very inflexible due to its relative difficulty and therefore results in lower replayability to all but the most hardcore players.

I like the music in Anno, but not its resource micromanagement and forced land grab strategy. Tropico is fun especially given its quest focus but pushes gameplay too much toward trade and money making just to sustain constant treasury drains from upkeep.

[Sticky Wicket]

I didn't buy B&B and I'm very glad I didn't. From everything Iv'e seen it does not integrate with the rest of it, and seems to be a DLC for it's own sake. This is completely unlike Green Planet which intelligently integrates with everything else and gives the whole game a new reason to play.

B&B could have been good if it had been more thoughtful; imho Surviving Mars really needs a good transit system. Going underground would have been a perfect opportunity to add an extensive metro monorail network, for example.

As it stands it just seems a very overpriced *busywork* DLC.

[J]

it's ♥♥♥♥♥ thats the problem with it

[SkiRich]

Originally posted by Sticky Wicket:

I didn't buy B&B and I'm very glad I didn't. From everything Iv'e seen it does not integrate with the rest of it, and seems to be a DLC for it's own sake. This is completely unlike Green Planet which intelligently integrates with everything else and gives the whole game a new reason to play.

B&B could have been good if it had been more thoughtful; imho Surviving Mars really needs a good transit system. Going underground would have been a perfect opportunity to add an extensive metro monorail network, for example.

As it stands it just seems a very overpriced *busywork* DLC.

The way the current code for task transportation is programmed a rail system would be nothing more than shuttles, on the ground, following a fixed path.

It would take a major overhaul of everything to create both a rail system, and something that uses it like a rail system instead of just depot transportations.

That effort alone is a DLC. Would you pay $20 for that? If so then provide that feedback to the devs. The more people saying they would pay $20 for a transportation system the more chances you have of getting one.

[Sticky Wicket]

Originally posted by SkiRich:

Originally posted by Sticky Wicket:

I didn't buy B&B and I'm very glad I didn't. From everything Iv'e seen it does not integrate with the rest of it, and seems to be a DLC for it's own sake. This is completely unlike Green Planet which intelligently integrates with everything else and gives the whole game a new reason to play.

B&B could have been good if it had been more thoughtful; imho Surviving Mars really needs a good transit system. Going underground would have been a perfect opportunity to add an extensive metro monorail network, for example.

As it stands it just seems a very overpriced *busywork* DLC.

The way the current code for task transportation is programmed a rail system would be nothing more than shuttles, on the ground, following a fixed path.

It would take a major overhaul of everything to create both a rail system, and something that uses it like a rail system instead of just depot transportations.

That effort alone is a DLC. Would you pay $20 for that? If so then provide that feedback to the devs. The more people saying they would pay $20 for a transportation system the more chances you have of getting one.

I would be very interested in a well implemented Transit system DLC for $20 so long as they didn't screw up the rest of the game in the process. I would like to have some control over what gets transported or there would be little point. A monorail network with the ability to build stations/depots so that speciffic amounts of materials and passengers could be sent from one place to another.