Hello and thank you for checking out this shiny new dev diary dedicated to the upcoming update, codenamed Sagan. While our previous update (Da Vinci) catered mostly to our players that like to focus their efforts on city-building in Creative Mode, Sagan's main feature is targeted towards our more hardcore survivalist crowd. It introduces a new game mode meant to test your colony building skills as well as your mastery of not just surviving under the alien conditions, but being fast and efficient while doing so.
Challenges
How can you measure the skills of a player in a sandbox city-builder? Even in a survival-oriented one, like Surviving Mars, the difference between a very good player and merely a competent one is often in the efficiency and game time they need to accomplish their goals. While the existing Score system tries to evaluate this to some degree, it is far from perfect, and there is really no fair way to balance it for all possible play styles and game rules.
Challenges are meant to be our answer to this problem, introducing a new way to test your skills. Each Challenge presents a single objective before you that may be as simple as "complete the Founder stage" or more complex like "research all technologies". All Challenges are time-limited, so you have to optimize your approach and be efficient to pass the test.
Each Challenge is set on specific map coordinates, with a particular sponsor and game rules. If you are attempting a Challenge, you are playing under the same basic conditions as any other player. As a side effect, specific Challenges encourage you to try combinations of sponsors and game conditions that you would likely not experience otherwise. No Mysteries are active during the challenges, because we don't want any distractions to get in the way of pursuing the challenge objective.
Each Challenge has a time limit to be "completed" - you will fail if the objective is not completed during this time. If you manage to finish a challenge exceptionally fast, in another, much tighter time frame, it will be considered "perfected". While completing some challenges can be a significant feat on its own, perfecting them is balanced to be a challenge. Even our most dedicated players here at Haemimont had to learn new challenges and rethink their approach more than once while pursuing perfection. And if you are really adventurous you can try to set your own record - how quicker than the perfected deadline you can finish a challenge? We expect to discover new ways to play our own game more efficiently once we see what the best players can do.
We have created three different Challenges for all sponsors, except Paradox Interactive, since we wanted to avoid exclusive challenges locked behind the bonus sponsor. Challenges vary in playtime greatly - the shortest can be completed in just a few Sols and are ideal for a quick play session that still puts your skills to the test, while the longest can take hundreds of Sols. Each sponsor offers three Challenges spanning different time frames.
If you particularly enjoy a given Challenge playthrough, you are free to continue playing the map as a normal sandbox game after the Challenge has ended, even if it was failed.
Maps
We've made some pretty significant changes to our maps in Sagan with two main goals in mind - to guarantee that players playing on the same map encounter the same technologies in the same order and to increase the overall visual variety of the maps. The accumulated changes will make sure that all maps in the game will be different than the maps on the same coordinates that you've visited pre-Sagan. On the upside, they should remain significantly more stable in future releases.
To guarantee an even playing ground for the Challenges and for the players that like to compare their score and accomplishments while playing on the same map, randomization of technologies and possible breakthroughs is now map dependent. This means that if you are playing on the same coordinates the technologies in the research screen will always appear in the same order and encountered anomalies will tend to yield the same breakthroughs. If you are lucky to get a particular breakthrough or technology early, keep in mind that all players playing on the same map will also be able to do so. The one exception is the "Chaos Theory" game rule that will offer a true randomization of technologies, even on the same map just for the players that enjoy a completely unpredictable experience. Of course, technologies added in future updates will also shake the status quo a bit.
Revisiting the map generation logic, we noticed that several sets of environment objects and map themes were underused, resulting in many maps ending much more visually similar to one another than our artists and level designers intended. We tweaked the map generation algorithm and you should see more radically different maps from now on. Check out the screenshots below for some beautiful landscapes from the new maps.
Self-sufficient Rovers
Managing battery power of your Rovers almost never provided real survival challenges, but was an annoying source of frustration, especially when managing multiple vehicles at the same time. As part of our initiative to reduce tedious micromanagement and focus your attention on more important mechanics, we removed the batteries from all Rovers and made the vehicles self-sufficient. Drone batteries and Charging Station still work like they did before and we are quite happy with them.
We also redesigned to Rover Command AI technology that previously removed Rover batteries as part of its effects. Currently, in addition to increasing Commander Drone capacity as before, it provides a much needed automated mode to Explorer and Transport functionality. This handy feature was inspired by some of the most popular mods out there - thanks, Mod creators, keep being awesome!
Patch highlights
As is tradition, I will end with some highlights from the patch notes. Feel free to check the complete list when it comes out (which will be very very soon!).
- Concrete deposits have been reworked to work more like other existing deposits. Their functionality now depends on the deposit marker, instead of the exact coverage over the yellowish terrain patch. Concrete Extractors can now easily exhaust nearby markers without the need to place extractors to cover up the whole patch, a feat that was practically impossible in many previous cases.
- Popup messages were getting a bit too intrusive, so most of them now appear minimized as a notification and do not interrupt gameplay. They will be maximized automatically if you don't pay attention to them for a while, but generally are less likely to interrupt you. We were happy to find out that players tend to pay more attention to messages when they are opened manually instead of automatically.
- Dust effects of buildings and rockets are now visualized by building placement and selection, making this process more transparent. It is now more obvious why buildings tend to malfunction near Extractors and rocket landing sites.
It is time to wrap this up. Please, share your favorite challenge and best time when Sagan comes out! And stay tuned, something big is on the horizon!
Challenges
How can you measure the skills of a player in a sandbox city-builder? Even in a survival-oriented one, like Surviving Mars, the difference between a very good player and merely a competent one is often in the efficiency and game time they need to accomplish their goals. While the existing Score system tries to evaluate this to some degree, it is far from perfect, and there is really no fair way to balance it for all possible play styles and game rules.
Challenges are meant to be our answer to this problem, introducing a new way to test your skills. Each Challenge presents a single objective before you that may be as simple as "complete the Founder stage" or more complex like "research all technologies". All Challenges are time-limited, so you have to optimize your approach and be efficient to pass the test.
Each Challenge is set on specific map coordinates, with a particular sponsor and game rules. If you are attempting a Challenge, you are playing under the same basic conditions as any other player. As a side effect, specific Challenges encourage you to try combinations of sponsors and game conditions that you would likely not experience otherwise. No Mysteries are active during the challenges, because we don't want any distractions to get in the way of pursuing the challenge objective.
Each Challenge has a time limit to be "completed" - you will fail if the objective is not completed during this time. If you manage to finish a challenge exceptionally fast, in another, much tighter time frame, it will be considered "perfected". While completing some challenges can be a significant feat on its own, perfecting them is balanced to be a challenge. Even our most dedicated players here at Haemimont had to learn new challenges and rethink their approach more than once while pursuing perfection. And if you are really adventurous you can try to set your own record - how quicker than the perfected deadline you can finish a challenge? We expect to discover new ways to play our own game more efficiently once we see what the best players can do.
We have created three different Challenges for all sponsors, except Paradox Interactive, since we wanted to avoid exclusive challenges locked behind the bonus sponsor. Challenges vary in playtime greatly - the shortest can be completed in just a few Sols and are ideal for a quick play session that still puts your skills to the test, while the longest can take hundreds of Sols. Each sponsor offers three Challenges spanning different time frames.
If you particularly enjoy a given Challenge playthrough, you are free to continue playing the map as a normal sandbox game after the Challenge has ended, even if it was failed.
Maps
We've made some pretty significant changes to our maps in Sagan with two main goals in mind - to guarantee that players playing on the same map encounter the same technologies in the same order and to increase the overall visual variety of the maps. The accumulated changes will make sure that all maps in the game will be different than the maps on the same coordinates that you've visited pre-Sagan. On the upside, they should remain significantly more stable in future releases.
To guarantee an even playing ground for the Challenges and for the players that like to compare their score and accomplishments while playing on the same map, randomization of technologies and possible breakthroughs is now map dependent. This means that if you are playing on the same coordinates the technologies in the research screen will always appear in the same order and encountered anomalies will tend to yield the same breakthroughs. If you are lucky to get a particular breakthrough or technology early, keep in mind that all players playing on the same map will also be able to do so. The one exception is the "Chaos Theory" game rule that will offer a true randomization of technologies, even on the same map just for the players that enjoy a completely unpredictable experience. Of course, technologies added in future updates will also shake the status quo a bit.
Revisiting the map generation logic, we noticed that several sets of environment objects and map themes were underused, resulting in many maps ending much more visually similar to one another than our artists and level designers intended. We tweaked the map generation algorithm and you should see more radically different maps from now on. Check out the screenshots below for some beautiful landscapes from the new maps.
Self-sufficient Rovers
Managing battery power of your Rovers almost never provided real survival challenges, but was an annoying source of frustration, especially when managing multiple vehicles at the same time. As part of our initiative to reduce tedious micromanagement and focus your attention on more important mechanics, we removed the batteries from all Rovers and made the vehicles self-sufficient. Drone batteries and Charging Station still work like they did before and we are quite happy with them.
We also redesigned to Rover Command AI technology that previously removed Rover batteries as part of its effects. Currently, in addition to increasing Commander Drone capacity as before, it provides a much needed automated mode to Explorer and Transport functionality. This handy feature was inspired by some of the most popular mods out there - thanks, Mod creators, keep being awesome!
Patch highlights
As is tradition, I will end with some highlights from the patch notes. Feel free to check the complete list when it comes out (which will be very very soon!).
- Concrete deposits have been reworked to work more like other existing deposits. Their functionality now depends on the deposit marker, instead of the exact coverage over the yellowish terrain patch. Concrete Extractors can now easily exhaust nearby markers without the need to place extractors to cover up the whole patch, a feat that was practically impossible in many previous cases.
- Popup messages were getting a bit too intrusive, so most of them now appear minimized as a notification and do not interrupt gameplay. They will be maximized automatically if you don't pay attention to them for a while, but generally are less likely to interrupt you. We were happy to find out that players tend to pay more attention to messages when they are opened manually instead of automatically.
- Dust effects of buildings and rockets are now visualized by building placement and selection, making this process more transparent. It is now more obvious why buildings tend to malfunction near Extractors and rocket landing sites.
It is time to wrap this up. Please, share your favorite challenge and best time when Sagan comes out! And stay tuned, something big is on the horizon!
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