What kind of future content would you like to see?

[Yukiya-kun]

To begin with, your colony needs a purpose. Your sponsor needs a reason to invest the colossal sums required to carry out such a project and your settlers need an incentive to take the risk of settling in such a remote and hostile place.

This! This quote right here. Every sponsor shouldn't have "goal" they should have agenda. What do they want out of this red planet?

For example, China and India. Their terrestrial holding can no longer accommodate all the population and it is causing friction in the country therefore necessitate going to mars and build colony to off-load these less unfortunate people, highly educated people... or just those unfortunate enough to get a lottery to the star. These resulting in more colonist but also create tension where if you cannot off-load these colonist in-waiting the government will start cutting support or cause diplomatic problem. You as a commander of this mission will either have to jeopardise the mission as to not incur thhe wrath of your colonial master or find someway else to fund your mission if they decide to abandon you.

Maybe Europe want to use Mar as a major research faculty, they want you to continue improving your research output weekly or else they'll start cutting the fund.
Or USA want to expand into Mar as another holding, they want you to keep expanding and exploiting Mars.
Or maybe Terraforming Inititive want you to terraform Mar fast, no matter the cost (They send you nuke to use on ice cap, else they use it on you instead.)
Sponsors need to be both incentivize to and penalize player to certain extend.

Next is about colonial stress and needs. Each sponsor would have different colonist background. Something like, Japanese is highly specialized, mechanized society. However, they're not space hardened, so Japanese colonist might receive specialize bonus but malus when work outside the dome. They have mechanized mining facilities but it is less efficient.
And also, to add change into each sponsors, a specialise tech tree. So maybe Japanese have a tech to allow them to mine precious metal with automatic, mechanized facility and then another one to remove their malus when working outside, maybe by increase efficiency for these mechanized mining facility to play into their "Playstyle".

All of these should be optional though, and also should be alternative way to play. Maybe when finish research sponsor tech it gives you event where you can choose how to play your style. Maybe I want to play Japan but I don't want to use mechanized mine so when I'm done researching for way to remove the malus, it gives me option to remove the malus to outside facility outright and not give me auto-mining effeciency.

Something like this, with high moddability, is going to be very nice.

 

[BamBamtheDestroyer]

Random Musings

• I definitely want more radio stations. I've loved almost all of the radio stations on Surviving Mars. Also, please put them on Spotify. They are wonderful.
• I want more ways to obtain $$.
• I'd like secondary sponsors and tertiary sponsors.
  • A secondary sponsor would be something you pick at game start that would give you extra bonuses, but not as strong as your primary sponsor. i.e.
    • Launch Consortium: Start w/ +1 rocket
    • Mining Guilds: Start w/ asteroid lander
    • Tech Concern: Start w/ 2 research prefabs
  • Tertiary Sponsors would be in-game objectives, like quests. i.e.
    • Corpo wants you to make an operational rare metal extraction, and will reward.
• Build stations in orbit.
  • Stations in orbit could serve many purposes: tech, shield from asteroids, rocket stop point to fuel, etc.
• More sponsors. MOAR.
  • UAE: Medium difficulty. Gain increased capital from Tourism. Gains special spire, Mega-Arcology, which is higher capacity and quality. Has Viewing Shuttle, per normal shuttle but entertains while in flight
  • North Korea: Hard. Can build Weapons program, which makes other colonies more likely to say yes to your requests for resources. All rovers are slower. Has the Armed Rover, lower capacity Transport rover that can shoot down asteroids.
  • South Korea: Medium.
  • Sub Saharan Scientific Federation: Hard. Lots of Applicants. Passenger rockets are filled at random.
• More Out-Dome alternatives.
  • Out-Dome tech lab.
  • Out-Dome entertainment.
• In dome structures.
  • Backup Systems: Can support a dome's life support for some time when charged. WIll not be discharged for any reason but to support the dome.
  • Residental complex: 30 hex residential structure with huge capacity.
• Politics?
  • I don't want Tropico-esque cutthroat stuff. More like Estates in EU4, where groups grant different bonuses that you can select.
    • Financialist's Guild, can enact stuff related to $$
      • Loans
      • Increased Rare metal prices
    • Martian Autarky , wants your colony to be self-sufficient
      • Can increase factory productivity

 

[Rob of the Arctic]

I would probably like DLC that modifies the shuttle's ability to distribute resources and the ability to distribute colonists. I know the system is in the game, but it's either horribly complicated or not explained enough.

For example, if you put a shuttle hub in two different locations and set a minimum amount of resources in storage, it basically bugs out and they are able to fly back and forth.

The colonist example, thumbs up and down are not explained enough because sometimes the game goes crazy and you'd rather turn that filter off everywhere because otherwise it doesn't do what it should.

I would also like you to fix bugs in the underground, like rocks that can't be removed because they are in the air.

Me too. I wonder if there’s a way to set depot priority (in order) plus a max and min number of each resources.

I’d love to be able to set a depot with absolute highest priority, above all others. Or to be able to draw a line on the map and input an instruction e.g. ‘send electronics this way’.

When I’m low on resources & on hard difficulty, I often experience a storm which will take out my drone hubs, and then whichever hub is still working doesn’t have electronics to get them back online.

obviously there are ways around this - overlapping depots or hubs, but it would be great to be able to handle this with better handling of resource distribution.

 

[Rob of the Arctic]

Before Below & Beyond was out I wrote about what I’d like to see…. I have more thoughts since Below & Beyond, so I’ll try to take a stab at writing a new response this weekend.

Please check out my old ideas,
Many of which are to do with the endgame:

Suggestion: Campaign Mode, Transportation and Mega-Structures

I love Surviving Mars, and I’m so happy you’ve taken it up to continue development. To me it always felt like half a game. It’s great, and a real challenge, but then it feels like there is no endgame. Green Planet gave me more to do, but it still...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

I really love the ideas in Below & Beyond, and I really hate the implementation - it’s just so buggy I stopped playing the game altogether - a game I played a lot and one which I have all the dlc for.

I feel like the implementation of trains is the same - great idea, poor execution. Or really a half-hearted implementation. A total disappointment. I would have rather you just announced:

“Trains are a great idea from the community, but really the way the game is built doesn’t allow any meaningful implementation of this idea. We will definitely put it in Survivng Mars 2, and meanwhile we have these great ideas which we can implement.”

At least that way you wouldn’t have further damaged our trust after Below and Beyond.

After stopping playing entirely after Below and Beyond, I went back just a week or so ago & it seems like nothing has changed - it’s still full of bugs & poorly implemented. Needs an overhaul and returning to the wonderful balance of the original.

I will definitely return when it’s sorted out.

Anyway, I have many ideas, particularly around balance and the endgame. I’ll hopefully have time to write at the weekend.

I’d love you to return my trust in you and deliver a fix and some worthy new content. But really I have lost so much trust in Paradox following Below & Beyond. I feel really let down.

If you produced a large and meaningful dlc that came off the back of a free ‘rebalance and fix’ offer, then I would happily spend $30 to $50 bucks on a new large addition.

I would want meaningful endgame.

And I think you would have to fix the game first so that I could trust the new content was worth it.

I do not want to pay money for something that further breaks my game. And really, how do we know you’re trustworthy? I think the only way would be action - if you went and fixed the problems. And I mean genuinely fixed them, in a way that makes them not crash the game, not have rockets get stuck places, or vehicles abandoned in space, and makes the game enjoyable to play once again.

I can not believe what Abstraction did, and what you, Paradox, allowed them to do. It was misguided and trust-breaking. I would love to see Haemiont return.

You could even admit the foul and allow us to completely reset the game to before Below & Beyond, when it actually worked.

Anyway, fix the foul, and I will happily pay good money for a big addition of content.

It’s a great game, great atmosphere & very imaginative & it used to be very enjoyable to play. I could think of many ways to improve it and add enjoyable content.

Apologies for the rant, I am sure this was a headache for you too. It is a great game, and you did great work the first time round. I trust you can again.

 

[Rob of the Arctic]

Hey folks. We're doing some surveying to see what kind of future content the community would want for Surviving Mars.

Although we do regularly keep track where we can of the community's wishes, now's a good time to share any ideas you have, no matter how big or small. Please try to keep it limited to future content rather than general feedback & suggestions. We'd love to hear your thoughts!

Do you work for Paradox? Does this mean you/they are considering further work on the game. I can’t tell if this is an official ask, or one from the community…

 

[Galatian]

One element that would IMO fit S:M really well is a food satisfaction/variety mechanic. It could be implemented by adding buildings that converts regular food into different types of luxury meals; colonists could get a comfort bonus or slight malus depending on how many types of these meals they have access to.

It would be great to have an incentive to combine different types of farms and other food sources.

This. Came here to post something just like that. Like in Planet Base where you need different foods to prevent malnutrition. I mean we already have different plants implemented and meat in the Project Leika DLC. I would also love some more love for the hydroponic farm. Maybe use algae as the primary source for oxygen and put the MOXIE deep into the tech tree like the water evaporator.

 

[Morcar_Leofricson]

I have also expressed a similar idea before, so, to quote myself:

Feeding its population would be one of the most important challenges to any extraterrestrial colony, and I agree that this aspect is rather simplistically modelled in SM. The ranches in particular have been poorly implemented IMO. They should not be available from start but locked behind a mid to late game tech (typically Gene Adaptation) and consume large amounts of base food to produce small amounts of luxury food...

I'll add that as veganism is already represented in the game, going full vegan could also be a political option. In practice, this could be achieved by modifying some clone vats to grow synthetic meat instead of viable individuals. A bit unsettling when you think about it, but in reality we already have evolved technologies and social norms that would have been deemed bizarre, if not outright shocking by our own ancestors. Extrapolating this to a futuristic setting would be interesting.

The gradual transition from a frontier outpost to a more established settlement could also be modeled by having your citizens' standards of comfort and dietary diversity increase as milestones are reached. After a while, they'll get bored of eating mushrooms at every meal!

 

[liquidnuke]

I would want meaningful endgame.

The main issue is:

• that the endgame is reached pretty much as soon as the threat of failure is removed from the colony
• that the threat of failure is mitigated by key technologies, especially the Mohole Mine.

So the answer to "what content you want" is something (anything) that will extend game play past its current inevitable endpoint.
But while we're at it, these would be nice too:

Fixing existing problems game have.
Such as:
- A LOT of worthless and useless tecs
- Etremely tedious and disbalanced terraforming.
- Resource balance - some gme meachanics completely axe the very need for some resources
- Colonists rebalance - you can have entire game without officers for example.

and the music (which is awesome). I would buy more.

 

[AxoCat_]

The ability to disable any DLCs

 

[Sca7ha]

I would like to see better communication with the people in charge of SM.

 

[Culaio]

I would like to see us go further after finishing of terraforming, yes planet is terraformed, so where we can go from there ? why not build orbital ring space station around the mars at which we could build some new stuff, possibly related to space travel but not only.

Other possibilties, do something with mars moons: Phobos and Deimos, they could be colonized and even possibly being "terraformed", well not truely terraformed but instead "paraterraformed", Also known as the "world house" concept, para-terraforming involves the construction of a habitable enclosure on a planet(or in this case the moon) that encompasses most of the planet's usable area. The enclosure would consist of a transparent roof held one or more kilometers above the surface, pressurized with a breathable atmosphere, and anchored with tension towers and cables at regular intervals. The world house concept is similar to the concept of a domed habitat, but one which covers all (or most) of the planet. Seems that something like that would be much easier to achieve on small moons instead of large planet, so I believe Phobos and Deimos are perfect for this.
Alternatievely Phobos and Deimos could be slowly bombarded with astroids to slowly increase their mass so they could become much larger round moons around the mars, though doing that would increase risk of them possibly "falling" into mars so maybe before we could do that we would need to land on the first and build some special projects on it to prevent that(it would make sense storywise, seeing how Phobos is already doomed to fall into mars eventually, so for sake of mars that has to be stopped any way).

 

[Nicklthr]

Hello,

First of all I love Surviving Mars it is for me the management game that suits me the most! I only wish there was richer and more regular content like for Stellaris!

Set up a system of sub-resources for food :

- Pharmacological plant (usable in medical centers or the cloning tank)
- Algae (to produce polymers or rocket fuel or CO2 for terraforming)
- Vegetables and fruits for food product

Specific buildings for its sub-resources :

- Algae tank outside the dome
- Dome structure producing algae
- Outdoor greenhouse
- Exterior hydropic system

Set up a waste management system for settlers but also CO2 for oxygen and dirty water for water) :

- Waste recycling building (e.g. produces polymers)
- Wastewater recycling building
- Building to recycle CO2

A penalty system if the colony becomes unsanitary to settlers.

Set up a medical crisis system (contamination by virus, bacteria or pollution) :

- A quarantine center
- A medical treatment drone for settlers
- Stop the contamination before it kill all the colony

More sponsors with unique building but also the possibility to ally with a rival colony and share their unique buildings

Orbital station to produce food, technology or set up a shipyard with the possibility of sending settlers to live there or even start a game with settlers in orbit while preparing the future colony on the ground.

 

[Beetle-Bottle]

Hey folks. We're doing some surveying to see what kind of future content the community would want for Surviving Mars.

Although we do regularly keep track where we can of the community's wishes, now's a good time to share any ideas you have, no matter how big or small. Please try to keep it limited to future content rather than general feedback & suggestions. We'd love to hear your thoughts!

I would like to see more mysteries, the current one's are getting boring, also more colors for the droids.

 

[Maroen2]

I had my content i enjoyed, it was removed so i decided to stop playing the game till i get a PC
Then i will not need the content anyway, Silvas mod was the best but with PC no mod is needed
Enjoyed the game and its concept and look forward to playing it and Stellaris again

 

[fsantoianni]

What about finding life on Mars? The consequences of that should go way beyond a bit extra funds or colonists. It should unlock a whole new tech tree and some related wonder, to say the least.

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

If they can't do it already : trains connecting to tunnels so that you can have your train network work on a multi-level map.

Having a way to just tell your research to pick the cheapest remaining option, for when you're filling out the remaining research choices you didn't take on the way down the list - or just have the two recurring funding techs left,

Other repeatable techs that can improve production, improve comfort, or otherwise enhance your colony so that when you've completed the tech chart your research doesn't feel like a waste of time, especially as at that point you don't usually need the money from the repeatable funding techs.

 

[PreachMan]

Hey folks. We're doing some surveying to see what kind of future content the community would want for Surviving Mars.

Although we do regularly keep track where we can of the community's wishes, now's a good time to share any ideas you have, no matter how big or small. Please try to keep it limited to future content rather than general feedback & suggestions. We'd love to hear your thoughts!

I am enjoying the game. I do get frustrated when Mods are suddenly disabled. So, either let Mods mod, or don't, but the one again-off again for Mods is disappointing.

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

I am enjoying the game. I do get frustrated when Mods are suddenly disabled. So, either let Mods mod, or don't, but the one again-off again for Mods is disappointing.

Would you rather that we never get updates for the core game?
Because it's updates to the core game that end up *temporarily* breaking mods until the mod authors catch up.

It's essentially inevitable.

 

[Picard 359]

I would like to see more realistic approach realistic to colony development in begin game should start with, should small habs without domes as bases and then after bit of time and research get access to big buildings and get ability to build domes also get option to build bases underground also in first bases should be only small number of personal who will do mostly research and exploration.

watch National Geographic TV series MARS

Mars (TV Series 2016–2018) ⭐ 7.4 | Adventure, Drama, Sci-Fi

1h | TV-PG

www.imdb.com

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

I would like to see more realistic approach realistic to colony development in begin game should start with, should small habs without domes as bases and then after bit of time and research get access to big buildings and get ability to build domes also get option to build bases underground also in first bases should be only small number of personal who will do mostly research and exploration.

watch National Geographic TV series MARS

Mars (TV Series 2016–2018) ⭐ 7.4 | Adventure, Drama, Sci-Fi

1h | TV-PG

www.imdb.com

The early domes *sort of* cover that "small hab" niche, since they're just about large enough for a small amount of housing, farming to support them, and the basics needed to get the colony up. Your starting dome could well be one block of housing, one farm, one research station, and you're running out of personnel from the first landing.

You *can* build underground, but it takes some focus and the right DLC. It's not an easy approach to take.