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Hello fellow survivors!

We’re back with another dev diary for Green Planet. Today we will be discussing the awesome free update, which is going to be released together with Green Planet and Project Laika DLCs. We’ve added a bunch of new content and Quality of Life improvements in this update, the most notable new feature being landscaping. All owners of Surviving Mars will get new Special Projects, events, research UI, multiselect, rover orders queue, and new buildings as well.

The Armstrong update is going to add a new section in your Build Menu: Landscaping. This new section contains the following new tools Flatten terrain, create Ramp, Change Surface texture and an option to construct Small Rock Formation or bigger Rock Formation.

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The Flatten terrain tool allows you to select a flat surface on Mars and protrude it, leveling the terrain where it passes. It allows you to fill craters, extend plateaus or clear rough terrain for construction. Once you select an area to flatten, the tool will create a new landscaping project which is visualized with a construction hologram on your display. Each landscaping project evaluates the underlying terrain and calculates how much soil is needed and if excess soil is present. Then your drones will deliver or remove the Waste Rock as needed to complete the project.

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The Ramp tool works similar to the Flatten tool but it allows you to connect two flat surfaces with different elevations, creating walkable ground between them.

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The Change Surface tool marks an area, which will be gradually reworked by your Drones. They will break the rocks to make sand, or replace sand with rocks.

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Additionally, you can use your excess Waste Rock to construct various Rock Formations. These are purely decorative combinations of rocks, which can be placed on flat surface. They were created for those moments when you have made Mars too Earth-like and want to bring back some natural Martian landscape.

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The Armstrong update comes with 3 free Special Projects: Capture Meteors, launch High-Speed Comm Satellite and Launch SETI Satellite. They’re marked on the Planetary View with blue icons and become available as soon as the first batch of Planetary Anomalies gets discovered. Usually, this happens at Sol 10-15.

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The Capture Meteors mission tasks one Rocket to go and divert meteors towards Mars. The Meteors then fall as Meteor Storm, leaving Metals and Polymers deposits. Just bear in mind that the storm may hit your colony.

You can construct orbitals by sending a rocket loaded with resources to deploy either a High-Speed Comm Satellite or SETI Satellite. HSC Satellites grant you daily sponsor research, while SETI Satellites grant additional funding.

The Armstrong update comes with 20 new events, scripted specifically for the early days of your colony and will grant you various benefits that will boost your expansion early on.

We’ve added 2 new buildings in the Build Menu as well: Large Dumping Site and Rocket Construction Site. The Large Dumping Site allows you to store more Waste Rock in a tight area and you can now construct Rockets the same way you construct Rovers. But you’ll need to research Advanced Rocketry to construct Rockets.

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As part of our on-going efforts to redesign Surviving Mars’ UI, the Armstrong update comes with a flashy new Research UI, better suited for our everlasting modding community.

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Last but not least, the Armstrong update is going to introduce 2 long-since wanted features: multi-selection and rover orders queue.

You can now drag select colonists, drones or rovers and then assign them the same task. Relocating all colonists of a Dome to another one has never been quicker!

To queue orders, select a Rover and then hold Shift while clicking on various points of interest. You can now task your Explorer to scan all anomalies on the map in a given order and then return back to the safety of the colony.

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The Armstrong update is coming with a long list of QoL improvements, optimizations, balance changes and bug fixes. Stay tuned for our next dev diary, which is dedicated to the ultimate goal of the terraforming initiative, making Mars hospitable for life outside of the dome.

Ivan Grozev,
Lead Designer,
Green Planet.
 
Looking good, however, the High-Speed Comms Satellite could stand from informing the player that the research gain is not a one-off but a sponsor research increase ... in the UI. Presently, it reads like a one-off +400 research points (Yes, it says it increases the sponsor research in the text - but the actual "tooltip" reads a totally different way).
 
Looking good, however, the High-Speed Comms Satellite could stand from informing the player that the research gain is not a one-off but a sponsor research increase ... in the UI. Presently, it reads like a one-off +400 research points (Yes, it says it increases the sponsor research in the text - but the actual "tooltip" reads a totally different way).
Yes, you've a point there.
 
Another point/question, if I may: how exactly does the multi-select work? I mean, if I were to drag the selection over an area containing colonists, drones and rovers all at once, what gets selected first/what happens? Are there ways to manipulate this selection behavior (such as using modifier keys - "shift", "alt", "ctrl")? I can see it becoming very annoying very quickly if it's not very discriminatory by virtually never being able to drag-select either colonists or drones in a bigger colony.

Thank you in advance :)
 
Another point/question, if I may: how exactly does the multi-select work? I mean, if I were to drag the selection over an area containing colonists, drones and rovers all at once, what gets selected first/what happens? Are there ways to manipulate this selection behavior (such as using modifier keys - "shift", "alt", "ctrl")? I can see it becoming very annoying very quickly if it's not very discriminatory by virtually never being able to drag-select either colonists or drones in a bigger colony.

Thank you in advance :)
The first selected unit defines what will be selected. So, if you start dragging near a drone, drones will be selected.
 
Wouldn't it be great, if you could alter the terrain a bit more? I miss things like: Raise/Lower terrain. Also I would love to see some kind of water in the "Change surface" UI. This would of course not only change the texture of the surface, but require also a swimming animation vor drones, colonists, rovers,...
I could also imagin, that the water surface has 2 levels, like normal and deep water. In both, you could build up your buildings, like submerged domes, shuttlehubs where only the topmost part stands out of the water.. that would be a great addition, in my mind.
Should be of course only get available, if you have aquired liquid water.. otherwise, it could be snow/ice areas. :D

I am sorry.. I am dreaming. ^^
 
The first selected unit defines what will be selected. So, if you start dragging near a drone, drones will be selected.

What happens, if I select a colonist first, so it shows up in the right menu, after this, I drag a box around a certain area, starting next to a drone. I basicaly selected a colonist in advance, will it mark all colonists then, or the drones?
 
What happens, if I select a colonist first, so it shows up in the right menu, after this, I drag a box around a certain area, starting next to a drone. I basicaly selected a colonist in advance, will it mark all colonists then, or the drones?
You'll select the drones. The multi-selection is initiated when you start drawing the selection rectangle and the first unit that falls in it is the drone, so only drones will be selected.
Ah, I see somebody likes clean pipes ;)
True, true.
 
You'll select the drones. The multi-selection is initiated when you start drawing the selection rectangle and the first unit that falls in it is the drone, so only drones will be selected.

This could be a problem, if you want to mark a bigger, high crowded area. How to make sure, that the thing, you want to mark, is at a given moment at a certain point (without pausing the game)?
 
If I want two RC Rovers to cross the map, it will sure be nice to drag-select the two of them and send them off together. :)
 
Will Green Planet need a new game?
 
Excellent news!

While you're tinkering with the research screen, can I propose something? As a newbie player, one of the necessary sources of difficulty is that I never know if the new buildings I'll unlock will require workers or not. The tooltips already indicate how much the new buildings will cost to build and operate, could they also tell us how many workers they'll require?
 
could they also tell us how many workers they'll require?
They already do:
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Any building that requires workers can be set to 1 worker per shift (right-click the little heads in the shifts sections).