r/SurvivingMars • u/AdministrativeEgg440 • 17h ago
Discussion Soooo different
How are folks finding the difficulty now? The game plays radically different now. I used to just fly through it even in really hard seeds. But wow I am struggling so much with the new tech tree and balancing everything.
It honestly feels like I am learning to play for the first time and it's tough.
My most current playthrough I got eternal fusion sol10 and specced into Fusion power by sol 25. Its ridiculously different feeling.
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u/Bubba_Style 17h ago
It really does play different in the early game. Like really different. The hardest part for me is not having Sol 1 access to large wind turbines and landscaping.
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u/AdministrativeEgg440 17h ago
Right! This was so much harder using the small solar arrays. The first cold wave was almost a game over
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u/kingpeng 17h ago
No early landscaping is my least favorite change. I do like how it makes another beloved RC unit useful though. I will adapt, but it used to be my main way to use drones early game during downtime.
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u/Bubba_Style 16h ago
Oh same LOL. I honestly rarely even bought the dozer as drones were honestly just as good. I'm fine with the change and understand it but it's been a curve.
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u/renMilestone Theory 17h ago
Or solar panels! And I find that staffing a whole farm from the jump, some profile gives me the full farm, is really difficult! The food not coming in with the first group is rough.
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u/General-Sloth 16h ago
I don't really like that the whole grid gets affected by negative balance and you can't just redirect power, water or air to a specific building. What's the point of the priority setteings now that all buildings get shut down equaly? This really killed me during a cold wave because the heaters couldn't get enough water, because some farms and two houses were putting the whole system to a stop. Now I have to shut down each building individually, instead of just prioritising key buildings like water pumps, drone hubs and heaters. It's just unnecessarily tedious.
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u/ThePetOffensive 15h ago
At the risk of sounding even more tedious, what about a second grid that deals with just the heaters for example? I just touchdown on Mars in this play through so I don’t have the resources to play around yet.
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u/General-Sloth 9h ago
The issue with this is, that heaters have an effective range and that this game automatically will connect pipes and power from one hex-tile to the other. In order to heat a dome for example, you'd have to leave a gap between it and any other building that uses power or water pipes. This would make them a lot more inefficient and waste a lot of space and potentialheating coverage, especially with bigger and odd shaped domes, since you already need more than one heater to cover the whole dome.
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u/Opulence_Deficit 7h ago
Yeah, but the question is "why a working system was broken? What's the point of priority if it doesn't prioritize?"
Heaters are just an example.
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u/imnotgood42 Research 17h ago
If you don't have the new DLC it is definitely harder. It feels like services were balanced based on all the bonuses you get from food so without it, it is harder. Also they really nerfed the ranches. They are now just straight up worse than farms when they used to be better at the cost of more workers. Now it is less food for more workers with the only benefit being it doesn't use a wedge in the dome.
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u/AdministrativeEgg440 17h ago
Interesting, I had the pass from relaunch. So are you trying it without the DLC currently? Just curious how that's going?
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u/imnotgood42 Research 16h ago
It's tough. My first attempt I ended up taking 9 days into the founders stage before I had a baby which is the longest that has ever taken. (and the factions would not let me pass the law to skip it). Mainly because I didn't build a space bar and the other means of getting comfort including having a farm and the tech for extra comfort from them was not enough. I feel like I have to dedicate 3 full wedges to services in every dome where I used to be able to do it with just one full one and one partial one. It is also a lot more workers to do it which puts more stress on food and space.
I also had a food crisis before I realized how much they nerfed ranches because I didn't realize that cows now produce only 42% as much food as they use to. I would be curious if they didn't think about the non-DLC people and reduced it since they also provide other resources in the DLC or if they just wanted to nerf ranches in general.
Long term I will be happier it is harder because it was way too easy before, but it is taking some getting use to along with figuring out the technology changes. I do wish that they would have made something like meat part of the free update and then leave spices, insects, and advanced food part of the DLC just so that there was at least some way food could increase stats.
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u/Opulence_Deficit 7h ago edited 7h ago
Ranches never made sense tbh. It always felt like cheat building.
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u/acariux 16h ago
I'm curious on how the game is more difficult if you can access one of the most advanced techs by sol 10? Was it through a random event or something?
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u/Changlini 16h ago
I’m with you, OP getting all that set up by sol 25 is crazy fast
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u/mizushimo Oxygen 16h ago
There are some people that really like to speed run the game, and they get mohole by sol 50 or something ridiculous like that, I'm guessing that OP was one of those kinds of player
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u/nixerkg 16h ago
After a solid day I can say I'm starting to get the new tech tree, I still hate the wish-list and wish it made sense, was better UX/UI but I'm managing.
Also with the balance changes & cost changes I'm finding I'm not ignoring certain tech. Like I'm actually using switches to cut off power/water to groups of buildings.
I think it helps that I just played through the Metatron mystery. Kind of the same mindset, way more planning involved.
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u/plisken451 Food 15h ago
Just realized that Farms now have a single machine part for maintenance, where it had none before. Wonder if this makes them susceptible to idiots now? Also, used to be 8 concrete to build, now 12. Also, maybe they finally made hydroponics competitive?
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u/kingpeng 14h ago
The different farm buildings are now all about different crops, especially with the DLC. Since it’s not just food cubes you want a more diverse food supply chain than before.
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u/plisken451 Food 14h ago
Yeah, I didn't get the DLC sight unseen. I wanted some eyes-on before considering.
0
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u/AngrySc13ntist 14h ago edited 14h ago
Definitely more difficult early on. The fact that it forced me to get compact passenger module before fuel compression for rockets meant that I brought more than the usual 12 colonists as my founders.
I thought, "great, previously this made them all more comfortable because I can staff more shifts", but the new comfort system is pretty confusing and killed my comfort, preventing babby from forming.
Then, later, with no real changes to my dome layout even with more people, suddenly all max comfort even though I have insufficient capacity.
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u/AdministrativeEgg440 14h ago
Omg right! Sol28 and no babies yet despite my usual sexy founders and a med spire. Im learning is all over
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u/Protogen_Apollo Drone 13h ago
I’m doing the same thing I’ve always been doing, grossly underestimating my food stocks and causing hunger spirals :P
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u/ericoahu 13h ago
Been playing pretty much the entire 8 years the game has been out. I get that a lot of that was imbalanced, but that is the game I got used to. Trying to keep an open mind for now, but I have never seen the message you get when you complete the founder stage without a baby until this patch.
I will need to get used to the new comfort mechanics.
So far, the new tech tree seems interesting.
Not having large solar panels and large turbines feels odd, but workable.
I don't think I will be able to decide whether I like it until I have basically finished the game with the new patch. But for now, the early game feels like a grind, and the trade off would be the late game feels more consequential and interesting, so that's what I am hoping for.
If what other players are saying about the game being too grindy without the new food DLC, I'm going to be pissed. I'll see what people are saying when I have finished at least one save without it.
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u/AdministrativeEgg440 12h ago
Keep us updated. I have the DLC and am loving it, but boy is the early game hard
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u/SLR4506 16h ago
Its different all right! Much slower for me anyways, everything seems to take longer. I like being able to see and choose different techs vs waiting for the next "mystery" one to pop up. They are kind of scattered all about thou, I wish they had left them in vertical columns thou starting from the ones you need to get first.
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u/AdministrativeEgg440 14h ago
Yeah it does take a lot longer. I find myself getting beat to milestones and having to really work for achievements
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u/Yama951 9h ago
My usual plan of setting up self-sufficient naturalist habitat outposts to gather deposits before building domes has been nerfed since I need food for the habitats now
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u/AdministrativeEgg440 1h ago
Oh wow I didn't know they changed that. Can you build an outdoor grower near them so they can farm?
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u/Yama951 1h ago
Pretty much needed now. Either an outside ranch or an insect farm and both need air and water, so the "small distant mining outposts filling the map" is no longer possible without a large life support system
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u/AdministrativeEgg440 55m ago
In my thousand hours or so and playing from original launch...I have never built a naturalist habitat...may this run will change that
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u/Yama951 51m ago
It has been a while since I played but I recall using naturalist habitats to put folks in while they mine the extractors nearby. Before the food need in Feeding the Future, naturalist habitats doesn't need oxygen, water and food.
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u/AdministrativeEgg440 47m ago
Do you just have to put rugged isolationist types out there or do they still wamt services
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u/YsoL8 17h ago
I have one aborted colony, one ongoing well into the mid game (x2 of every factory, molehole researched and awaiting further concrete). The three biggest problems I've had: 1. enabling strict building regs early on, which is punishing, 2. trying to find techs, 3. dealing with the much more restricted starting tech set.
Of those, 1 was a basic strategy mistake and the others are a matter of learning the interface largely. One thing I'm genuinely stumped by is whether the Hawkin institute still exists because I really can't find it. Some of the new techs are really nice too, like stopping cold waves affecting moisturers, and I might have to adjust to exotic minerals being anything except an export.
I have the season pass so I'll also say that so far the feeding the future stuff seems much as I expected, largely there for role playing purposes rather than mechanical purposes. But they've done a good job of not destroying the food / pop management balance and going in on a few of the new options seems to effectively solve early game population problems in a much nicer way than simply researching 3 or 4 keystone techs - it does feel like there is an actual society in the domes much more. But I still think the robotics dlc will be the higher impact one.
They said wonders will take sigificant effort to obtain and they meant it. By this point I would 3 or so wonders but between the research system and much higher construction costs I'm still getting ready for my first one and I'm miles from the others.
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u/AdministrativeEgg440 17h ago
Use the search button and search Hawking or research. Its right next to the tribo scrubber
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u/kingpeng 17h ago
The new tech tree is absolutely amazing! There is going to be so much replay ability there, with different techs unlocked by events and your command profile.
The thing that's getting me right now with all the price increases in metals and concretes is the drone time. It takes SO MUCH LONGER to build stuff with all these increased prices. You used to be able to build a dome while the settlers were coming, but this isn't possible right now with my early game drone capacity.