May meteor storms please be removed?

[Astrostars2025]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3337417187
This is the result of a meteor storm I just had. I was constantly building and loading rockets into my launcher for 12 minutes straight, and unfortunately my base still got damaged.

Constantly needing to manually reload a rocket launcher is not very fun, and likely due to a bug my base still got damaged in the process, which pissed me off. I'm just lucky that the rest of my base was mostly intact.

I understand that the game's trying to make things somewhat interesting, but I think this was a bit too much in both terms of realism and game play. In real life, NASA's rovers never needed to deal with this kind of thing, even though minor impacts have been recorded by satellites. An example is the Curiosity rover. It has been on mars for more than 12 years and has not encountered qny big meteor storms such as those in the game. Maybe once like every 75 to one hundred years one would encounter this.
I am therefore requesting to the developers to please remove this feature. This is such a great game, but in its present state meteor storms really hold it back in terms of both fun and gameplay.

Note: I finally got around to editing this, as the previous form was created out of major annoyance due to my base being ravaged by a meteor storm (see my screenshot).

[Astrostars2025]

Just don't allow them ever, solves all the problems 😁

[Astrostars2025]

These damn meteors are just so annoying, especially when you are lower in the tech tree and just starting out, meteors will come and butt ♥♥♥♥ you, destroying everything and killing you, ending your game.

[Seraphin]

LukaszP has already said that they are continuing to balance Meteor Storms… so let’s see what they do with it.

[Remnar]

I'm currently following this game. I've played another Mars game, Surviving Mars. In that game, if you have beacons set up, you get a warning a meteor shower is incoming. It doesn't tell you where, but it gives you a lot of time to prepare. When the meteors are near, it shows the area in red where it will hit. This gives you a little bit of time to move drones or people out of the way. Maybe this idea could help with Occupy Mars?

[Seraphin]

In Occupy Mars, storms always follow the player, so you can lure them away from your base. If you are within range of a self-built and powered antenna, there is a prediction of what kind of storm is coming for several hours of gameplay. So you basically have the opportunity to prepare.

Most storms don't really harm your base... Dust devils can damage your buildings, but usually they won't destroy your base if you keep it in good condition. But meteor storms really harm your base, they can even destroy many buildings during a storm.

You can prepare to defend yourself against them. In my opinion, this is not balanced, but I have already discussed it and am curious to see what the developers will do about it.

You can run away from the base, maybe even seek shelter in a cave if you know one. I'm not sure how safe ruins are. But you can still run away with your vehicles. The easiest is a rover as it is a sturdy mobile base itself... you can still get hit accidentally but that doesn't necessarily mean you die. But the rover especially is late in the game. And running away is kind of an exploit and I find it annoying, as you're just trying to stay in movement and keep enough distance to your base while not being hit.

If your base gets hit by a meteor storm at the very beginning, I haven't had that happen yet but then I'm sure it's really frustrating and can most likely mean your death. And later in game it's still a lot of work to rebuild, if you haven't been prepared well.

You can also reload your save if you have a save right before the first weather warning as those are random and there will probably be another storm afterward. But that's also an exploit.

[Astrostars2025]

引用自 Seraphin：

In Occupy Mars, storms always follow the player, so you can lure them away from your base. If you are within range of a self-built and powered antenna, there is a prediction of what kind of storm is coming for several hours of gameplay. So you basically have the opportunity to prepare.

Most storms don't really harm your base... Dust devils can damage your buildings, but usually they won't destroy your base if you keep it in good condition. But meteor storms really harm your base, they can even destroy many buildings during a storm.

You can prepare to defend yourself against them. In my opinion, this is not balanced, but I have already discussed it and am curious to see what the developers will do about it.

You can run away from the base, maybe even seek shelter in a cave if you know one. I'm not sure how safe ruins are. But you can still run away with your vehicles. The easiest is a rover as it is a sturdy mobile base itself... you can still get hit accidentally but that doesn't necessarily mean you die. But the rover especially is late in the game. And running away is kind of an exploit and I find it annoying, as you're just trying to stay in movement and keep enough distance to your base while not being hit.

If your base gets hit by a meteor storm at the very beginning, I haven't had that happen yet but then I'm sure it's really frustrating and can most likely mean your death. And later in game it's still a lot of work to rebuild, if you haven't been prepared well.

You can also reload your save if you have a save right before the first weather warning as those are random and there will probably be another storm afterward. But that's also an exploit.

I already touched upon this earlier in the discussion, using the mod is the best option regardless.

[Seraphin]

Yeah, modding is another way you can go.
I was just talking about unmodded vanilla, as that's the actual state of development.

[LukaszP]

I've been testing changes in meteor storm mechanic during the weekend. Those changes include:
- making meteor storms shorter (they are about 25% shorter than otherweather events)
- increasing capacity of anti meteor launcher to 40 rockets (more would look weird or require different model)
- there should be less meteors for each hour of the storm
- every rocket in rocket launcher storage has gives you 10 rocket heads.

During the tests i was using about 250 to 300 rocket heads per 7-7,5 hour storms, but becouse of the fact that each rocket gives you more ammo in the launcher i actually needed to assembly on workbench only 6 kits per each storm.
6 kits gave me 30 rockets and it gave me 300 ammo, which is enough for casual meteror storm.

So, you still need to have rockets but for each rocket you have more ammo. Probably we'll try to postpone generating meteor storms to mid game in one of future patches but that change wasn't ready for update.

[meraco]

引用自 LukaszP：

I've been testing changes in meteor storm mechanic during the weekend. Those changes include:
- making meteor storms shorter (they are about 25% shorter than otherweather events)
- increasing capacity of anti meteor launcher to 40 rockets (more would look weird or require different model)
- there should be less meteors for each hour of the storm
- every rocket in rocket launcher storage has gives you 10 rocket heads.

During the tests i was using about 250 to 300 rocket heads per 7-7,5 hour storms, but becouse of the fact that each rocket gives you more ammo in the launcher i actually needed to assembly on workbench only 6 kits per each storm.
6 kits gave me 30 rockets and it gave me 300 ammo, which is enough for casual meteror storm.

So, you still need to have rockets but for each rocket you have more ammo. Probably we'll try to postpone generating meteor storms to mid game in one of future patches but that change wasn't ready for update.

How about an option to turn off all storms.

Either at the start of a new game or even applied to a save game.

Anything, so long as we can have a peaceful mode.

[LukaszP]

引用自 meraco：

How about an option to turn off all storms.

Either at the start of a new game or even applied to a save game.

Anything, so long as we can have a peaceful mode.

Well, there is an option to switch off meteor storms at the beginning of the game. When you start sandbox mode, you have possibility to switch off all weather effects.

[Seraphin]

引用自 LukaszP：

I've been testing changes in meteor storm mechanic during the weekend. Those changes include:

[...]

Thanks for your update LukaszP, I'm looking forward to test it.

Six kits for one storm sounds easy to do, even if you didn't prepare until the forecast.

Only thing that still sound's strange is the additional multiplying in the rocket launcher, instead doing that on the assembly of of the kits itself. But the sum is the same at the end, it just sounds not logically ... but probably getting 50 rockets out of one single kit instead would feel unlogical too. Just as a hint facing toward usability, not criticism.

[Astrostars2025]

引用自 LukaszP：

引用自 meraco：

How about an option to turn off all storms.

Either at the start of a new game or even applied to a save game.

Anything, so long as we can have a peaceful mode.

Well, there is an option to switch off meteor storms at the beginning of the game. When you start sandbox mode, you have possibility to switch off all weather effects.

That's the problem though, if you attempt to disable meteors, you disable ALL weather events and also disable achievements. Some of us are asking to just turn off meteor storms individually while keeping all other weather events (and achievements!) on due to how unfair meteor storms are.

引用自 LukaszP：

I've been testing changes in meteor storm mechanic during the weekend. Those changes include:
- making meteor storms shorter (they are about 25% shorter than otherweather events)
- increasing capacity of anti meteor launcher to 40 rockets (more would look weird or require different model)
- there should be less meteors for each hour of the storm
- every rocket in rocket launcher storage has gives you 10 rocket heads.

During the tests i was using about 250 to 300 rocket heads per 7-7,5 hour storms, but becouse of the fact that each rocket gives you more ammo in the launcher i actually needed to assembly on workbench only 6 kits per each storm.
6 kits gave me 30 rockets and it gave me 300 ammo, which is enough for casual meteror storm.

So, you still need to have rockets but for each rocket you have more ammo. Probably we'll try to postpone generating meteor storms to mid game in one of future patches but that change wasn't ready for update.

If they must remain in game, this is a LOT better I guess. However it should be implemented so that meteor storms only begin ti happen AFTER the player researches the meteorite defense system.

[LukaszP]

引用自 Starman20290：

If they must remain in game, this is a LOT better I guess. However it should be implemented so that meteor storms only begin ti happen AFTER the player researches the meteorite defense system.

thats the plan for next change in that system. I tas told that that change would require rebuilding bigger part of weather randomisation system. In that moment we wanted to freeze the build and start final tests, so we decided to split those changes in two parts.

I'll also discuss if we can add possibility of choosing specific weather events, although its the same problem as above - would require more changes in code.

[meins_RR]

引用自 LukaszP：

引用自 meraco：

How about an option to turn off all storms.

Either at the start of a new game or even applied to a save game.

Anything, so long as we can have a peaceful mode.

Well, there is an option to switch off meteor storms at the beginning of the game. When you start sandbox mode, you have possibility to switch off all weather effects.

Falsche Antwort ..... nicht im Sandbox sondern im Story Modus soll es entschärft werden ..

[Remnar]

I have another idea. Though, if you must rewrite the weather system, do so. The meteor storms that happen before you get the defenses for it, shouldn't damage the base. This should be a simple implementation, if you are using collision features that can be turned off. If there is masking, you can change that instead. This solves most of the problems people are having, without the difficulty of rewriting the entire weather system.