Some things I feel the base game needs, and some ideas for possible future DLC

[Zatetic]

Something else the base game needs, units need to prioritize using the tunnel to get from point a to point b IF there is a over ground route that is accessible. As it stands currently, transport trucks will not use tunnels unless manually instructed to and will prefer to drive across the land from base to base. This is inefficient, illogical and a waste of battery.

 

[Lt Loco]

Build rockets on Mars, rather than just buying them. Late game option for those of us with too much time on our hands.

 

[Turin the Mad]

Something else the base game needs, units need to prioritize using the tunnel to get from point a to point b IF there is a over ground route that is accessible. As it stands currently, transport trucks will not use tunnels unless manually instructed to and will prefer to drive across the land from base to base. This is inefficient, illogical and a waste of battery.

You are absolutely right about that.

 

[CHOAM]

Another thought I've had, after poking around my late-game colony some more - with especial regard to the mega-domes, the current biggest size, there are inevitably some buildings you have to double up on because most of them have a very limited capacity to serve colonists (5 or 10 at a time - the spacebar is the worst here, it takes up a whole wedge and only servers 5). For higher pop domes, this becomes an issue that drags down the comfort level overall because even though you have the right buildings to service their needs, the colonists just can't use them because they're always full. Thus, it would seem logical to introduce building "levels", perhaps locked behind dome population or perhaps simply a technology, whereby you can upgrade an existing building to essentially have a higher capacity for servicing colonists (and which would also of course employ more colonists too).

This would partially solve the massive unemployment problem I alluded to in my original post, where I mentioned that my colonists just keep on having babies (3k population is within sight now) and I've been building extremely housing-heavy domes as fast as I can to try and alleviate it - which end up needing multiples of certain buildings, as I've said - but even so, what employment buildings I need to add to the dome end up being woefully inadequate in soaking up workers, to the point where I spam out-dome buildings like fusion reactors and polymer factories, not because I need them, but because there's nothing else I can do. I've even had a bunch of techs that can reduce the workers needed in certain buildings that I've never ever made use of as it's literally the opposite problem I have.

So, building levelling options that increase the number of colonists served at a time, the number of colonists employed, and cost that bit more to maintain - in retrospect it seems such a no-brainer that I'm not sure why it's not something I thought of to begin with.

(PS - I like a bunch of the other suggestions so far in this thread, by the way!)

 

[Nero616]

On the topic of independence, I hope some inspiration is taken from The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. If you haven't read it, do so now. Literally now. Stop what you're doing, go and buy it, read it when you get it (or listen to it, if you do the audiobook thing).

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is also a great example of why Democracy and Dictatorship are not a wide enough variety government types to cover all independence scenarios (not gonna spoil why though).

I googled the book today and read the Wikipedia page. No Idea how to integrate Anarchy and Monarchy into the Concept I thought up.
In Dictatorship, I include both Fascist and Communist ones.
The Game as it is has a version of Mike with Number 6.

 

[Lt Loco]

I googled the book today and read the Wikipedia page.

This does not count as reading the book.

EDIT: For those like me who can listen to books while at work, this audio version is my favorite.

 

[Nero616]

This does not count as reading the book.

EDIT: For those like me who can listen to books while at work, this audio version is my favorite.

Well, I asked at the bookstore across the street, but they didn't even have it in the catalog. All they could find on their Computer was an Audiobook that was scheduled to be released in 2015 but never actually did. I suppose this is due to it being an old book that never became popular in my country. Why waste storage space and computing power for something no one ever even cares about? If it wasn't for you, I would have never found out this Book existed in the first place. Don't blame me for reading the Wikipedia page, because that is the closest thing to actually reading the book I can get, other than leaving the country and buy it with a different currency in a Language I bareley speak. Like French for example.

 

[Lt Loco]

Well, I asked at the bookstore across the street, but they didn't even have it in the catalog. All they could find on their Computer was an Audiobook that was scheduled to be released in 2015 but never actually did. I suppose this is due to it being an old book that never became popular in my country. Why waste storage space and computing power for something no one ever even cares about? If it wasn't for you, I would have never found out this Book existed in the first place. Don't blame me for reading the Wikipedia page, because that is the closest thing to actually reading the book I can get, other than leaving the country and buy it with a different currency in a Language I bareley speak. Like French for example.

I am sorry for your loss. If you ever travel and get a chance to buy it in a language you can speak, put it on your "to-bring-back-home" list.

Doing a quick google, I ran into a couple .pdf versions you can download and this, which is an online "library copy". It's English, or at least, as English as the original - Heinlein uses fragments of other languages in the book to try to give the feeling of an amalgamated society from all corners of the Earth.

 

[Nero616]

Thank you

 

[Whitecold]

One option to solve the employment issue would be to have office/administration buildings, which take up increasing numbers of your workers as your colony grows. 12 people don't need any big administration, a few 1000 will need some form of civil service.

 

[TheDarkMaster]

The population explosion sounds to me like it's the game mechanics not scaling well to the late game. By that point the game kinda needs to completely change it's structure and scale since you're no longer micromanaging at the small scale. You'd either need some sort of macro economy system of production lines to make it interesting (optimize the transport routes to make your industries as effective as possible) or some sort of macro scale goal that's basically just about increasing your score (send 1000 people and a bunch of resources to found another city).

As is, you probably should just start a new game once it gets to that point with a different setup or map. The game simply can't challenge or keep things interesting anymore once you get to that level of stability and growth.

 

[Elden]

As the game develops and expands I'd love to see it eventually tackle full on terraforming rather than domes being the only way to survive.

 

[Turin the Mad]

Hitting a population of 1k could be a "accomplishment wall" required to unlock expanding into other sectors of Mars, using your colony as its Sponsor/supplier...

 

[Lt Loco]

Honestly, the easy solution to overpopulation that I can't try out at all seems to be to deprive your colonists of comfort. If they aren't comfortable, they aren't going to get busy and your colony will grow slower. And if you're using heavy work shifts to accomplish that lower comfort, you will get more resources to expand faster.

A lot of the problems of exponential growth seems to be a problem of satisfying too many colonist needs. MORE DYSTOPIAN COLONYS!

 

[spannbeton]

The easiest solution is gender segregation obviously. A feminist utopia, only the upper class is allowed to reproduce...

 

[Deathofrats624]

I love all of these DLC ideas.

What I really want for this game is the ability to build some kind of Mars ecosystem to sustain your colonists. I'm thinking of Kim Stanley Robinson type ecosystems. I think that your idea for tenting small areas of Mars would be PERFECT for that. If we could tent an whole canyon or something and develop mini-ecosystems inside it to sustain our colonists as a kind of late game structure that would be a ton of fun.

 

[sresk]

Another idea to solve the late game unemployment would be office buildings. Allow your colonists to shift from a manged economy to a free market. Give them buildings that allow them to become self employed. Rather than producing raw materials the buildings would make a small amount of money.

 

[Turin the Mad]

Mars Street Stock Market Exchange? The comm lag time would make interplanetary economics ... interesting for both Earthlings and Martians ...

 

[CHOAM]

Rather than spam the place up with another thread, here are my thoughts on the game as it is at launch:

 

[TheDarkMaster]

Thanks for posting. I thought there where a lot of useful bits of information in there to consider about buying the game.

As for the pre-order stuff, I'd say that even if you were 100% certain that the game would be the best thing you'd ever experience you should not pre-oder. As long as people pre-order any game regardless of quality, we aren't going to be able to get the bad stuff to stop. There's no way to allow the good devs to do pre-orders, but not the bad ones.