So, about a week and a half into the game's release, I think I've played around with it on various maps/difficulties/sponsors/commanders to have a good grasp on the game. Personally, I find that the game falls flat the most insofar as its not really about actually surviving on Mars, but managing your colonists' recreational activities on Mars. Once you get your infrastructure up and running (and that can be challenging on the harder settings), the underlying systems are a bit too rudimentary and simplified for the game to be truly rewarding. Its still fun, don't get me wrong, but not in the "I've managed to get a self-sustaining colony established on Mars!" sense, but "These domes look pretty cool, and man is it need to see everything chugging along nice and smoothly" sense.
Of course, I wouldn't be making this thread if I didn't have some ideas. First, some elaboration on the problems.
1: Supply Chain
Simply put, the current supply chain is way too simplified, making construction and life support far less rewarding than they should be. Lets consider two things: First, it is far easier to build photovoltaic solar panels in-game than it is to build wind turbines in-game. Second, all your domes need in the way of life support is water, oxygen, and power.
It seems to me that wind turbines (a technology that is, more or less, close to two millennia old) should be a little easier to construct than solar panels, particularly photovoltaics. Obviously, there's reasons for these simplifications, in-game, but it speaks to the overall lack of depth to the supply chain system. Literally your very first action upon landing on a new planet can be to build a solar panel out of raw metal ore. Beyond that being wildly optimistic from a scientific standpoint, it also makes it a little less rewarding to have built something on Mars. Your first rocket really should be loaded up with almost nothing be prefabs. Prefab drone hubs, prefab solar panels and wind turbines, prefab batteries and extractors, prefab everything. It should be a (small) accomplishment to actually start utilizing in-situ resources in-game, and turning metal ore into a fully functioning (and tracking!) photovoltaic panel should require something in between.
Second, man oh man, living and farming on Mars should be so much harder. Setting aside whether or not domes are a plausible way to house your initial population (interesting how we go from 'first human to step foot on Mars' to 'People are permanently living in Earth-like homes and shopping at a grocery store on Mars' in the span of time it takes your colonists to get from their rocket to their dome), all you have to do is hook up that dome to water, O2, and power, and you're good to go.
Of those three, I would expect domes to require an initial reservoir of O2 and water before they could be habitable - they could, in some way, be treated like storage tanks, particularly for O2. All that empty space above their heads in the dome is filled up with something, isn't it? As far as farming is concerned, we're missing some key elements. Nitrogen is in very short supply, and you should have some way to produce nitrates for your farming operations. Perchlorates are also a major problem, but we'll assume dealing with that is represented by the 'soil adaptation' tech.
Beyond the initial materials for life and farming, we're still missing another crucially important aspect of life-support: waste management. As is, your colonists are apparently just dumping out their solid liquid and gas waste, given that their O2 and water consumption is entirely steady per-dome, varying only due to agricultural operations.
2: Human-Cyborg relations
Cute allusion aside, there really isn't much interaction between your robotic workforce and your humans, except insofar as each has their designated work roles, determined relatively arbitrarily by the game and whatever automation techs you happen to unlock in the breakthrough chain. This is a missed opportunity for one major plausibility reason: running an entirely robotic system when your communications time-lag is 3-21 minutes long is quite difficult, and one of the many reasons why our existing rovers are pretty cautious in all their activities. Unless their so autonomous that they don't need super vigiliant monitoring from ground control, this should be represented in some fashion (in which case, they really should be autonomous enough to do everything represented by the breakthrough automation techs). Also, speaking of autonomy, they should be able to conduct some minimal farming prior to humans landing on Mars, given how much your drones currently can do (to bring us back to the 'they're able to smelt iron ore into photovoltaic panels' point).
So, my proposed solutions:
1) Much more robust supply chain. Nitrates, bio waste, CO2, processed and unprocessed ore, etc. Load us up. Make your processed resources like electronics harder to produce. Electronics really should be more than just rare metals, they should require multiple inputs (oddly, polymers are the most demanding processed resource, even though they're the only one that is naturally-occuring in game). As an example, 1 unit of electronics could require 1 unit of rare metal, 1 unit of metal, and 1 unit of waste rock (to represent silicon). As a corollary, there should be some additional buildings to work with this more robust supply chain (doesn't need to be said, but safer to say it than not).
2) More prefab dependence, early game.
3) Colonists should be interacting with your robotic workforce more. I propose that, prior to landing humans on Mars, your rovers and drones should operate at reduced capacity, to represent the lack of instantaneous human oversight (throw a breakthrough tech in there to mitigate that if you want). Drone hubs could then have work slots open to allow your colonists to staff them and ensure the drones can work at max efficiency (similar to how automated extractors work at 50% efficiency).
4) To compliment point 3, there should be some pre-dome living options for your colonists, small habitats (like the Ares 3 hab in The Martian). Domes should be the reward for managing to get your inhabited colony self-sustaining, not the starting point.
5) Autonomy techs shouldn't just be 'hey, this building works without colonists now' but 'drones can fill worker slots now.' This still makes those breakthroughs super rewarding, but not 'this game is now on easy mode' rewarding (and means that missing them is not as big a 'hell, this map sucks, I'm restarting' moment of frustration).
6) Some sort of connectors between your habitats (this is just every players perennial request, so I'm repeating it here).
7) Anything inhabited should have a reservoir of O2 and water that needs to be filled up and kept full for it to be fully usable by your colonists. Domes, extractors, fusion plants, external factories, everything. Let your colonists still work them without life support, but reduced efficiency, to represent the fact that they'd be running them in space suits.
8) Some sort of connectors between your habitats.
Those are my thoughts on a morning where I got up a few hours earlier than I needed to. I have more, but thats a good starting point.
Of course, I wouldn't be making this thread if I didn't have some ideas. First, some elaboration on the problems.
1: Supply Chain
Simply put, the current supply chain is way too simplified, making construction and life support far less rewarding than they should be. Lets consider two things: First, it is far easier to build photovoltaic solar panels in-game than it is to build wind turbines in-game. Second, all your domes need in the way of life support is water, oxygen, and power.
It seems to me that wind turbines (a technology that is, more or less, close to two millennia old) should be a little easier to construct than solar panels, particularly photovoltaics. Obviously, there's reasons for these simplifications, in-game, but it speaks to the overall lack of depth to the supply chain system. Literally your very first action upon landing on a new planet can be to build a solar panel out of raw metal ore. Beyond that being wildly optimistic from a scientific standpoint, it also makes it a little less rewarding to have built something on Mars. Your first rocket really should be loaded up with almost nothing be prefabs. Prefab drone hubs, prefab solar panels and wind turbines, prefab batteries and extractors, prefab everything. It should be a (small) accomplishment to actually start utilizing in-situ resources in-game, and turning metal ore into a fully functioning (and tracking!) photovoltaic panel should require something in between.
Second, man oh man, living and farming on Mars should be so much harder. Setting aside whether or not domes are a plausible way to house your initial population (interesting how we go from 'first human to step foot on Mars' to 'People are permanently living in Earth-like homes and shopping at a grocery store on Mars' in the span of time it takes your colonists to get from their rocket to their dome), all you have to do is hook up that dome to water, O2, and power, and you're good to go.
Of those three, I would expect domes to require an initial reservoir of O2 and water before they could be habitable - they could, in some way, be treated like storage tanks, particularly for O2. All that empty space above their heads in the dome is filled up with something, isn't it? As far as farming is concerned, we're missing some key elements. Nitrogen is in very short supply, and you should have some way to produce nitrates for your farming operations. Perchlorates are also a major problem, but we'll assume dealing with that is represented by the 'soil adaptation' tech.
Beyond the initial materials for life and farming, we're still missing another crucially important aspect of life-support: waste management. As is, your colonists are apparently just dumping out their solid liquid and gas waste, given that their O2 and water consumption is entirely steady per-dome, varying only due to agricultural operations.
2: Human-Cyborg relations
Cute allusion aside, there really isn't much interaction between your robotic workforce and your humans, except insofar as each has their designated work roles, determined relatively arbitrarily by the game and whatever automation techs you happen to unlock in the breakthrough chain. This is a missed opportunity for one major plausibility reason: running an entirely robotic system when your communications time-lag is 3-21 minutes long is quite difficult, and one of the many reasons why our existing rovers are pretty cautious in all their activities. Unless their so autonomous that they don't need super vigiliant monitoring from ground control, this should be represented in some fashion (in which case, they really should be autonomous enough to do everything represented by the breakthrough automation techs). Also, speaking of autonomy, they should be able to conduct some minimal farming prior to humans landing on Mars, given how much your drones currently can do (to bring us back to the 'they're able to smelt iron ore into photovoltaic panels' point).
So, my proposed solutions:
1) Much more robust supply chain. Nitrates, bio waste, CO2, processed and unprocessed ore, etc. Load us up. Make your processed resources like electronics harder to produce. Electronics really should be more than just rare metals, they should require multiple inputs (oddly, polymers are the most demanding processed resource, even though they're the only one that is naturally-occuring in game). As an example, 1 unit of electronics could require 1 unit of rare metal, 1 unit of metal, and 1 unit of waste rock (to represent silicon). As a corollary, there should be some additional buildings to work with this more robust supply chain (doesn't need to be said, but safer to say it than not).
2) More prefab dependence, early game.
3) Colonists should be interacting with your robotic workforce more. I propose that, prior to landing humans on Mars, your rovers and drones should operate at reduced capacity, to represent the lack of instantaneous human oversight (throw a breakthrough tech in there to mitigate that if you want). Drone hubs could then have work slots open to allow your colonists to staff them and ensure the drones can work at max efficiency (similar to how automated extractors work at 50% efficiency).
4) To compliment point 3, there should be some pre-dome living options for your colonists, small habitats (like the Ares 3 hab in The Martian). Domes should be the reward for managing to get your inhabited colony self-sustaining, not the starting point.
5) Autonomy techs shouldn't just be 'hey, this building works without colonists now' but 'drones can fill worker slots now.' This still makes those breakthroughs super rewarding, but not 'this game is now on easy mode' rewarding (and means that missing them is not as big a 'hell, this map sucks, I'm restarting' moment of frustration).
6) Some sort of connectors between your habitats (this is just every players perennial request, so I'm repeating it here).
7) Anything inhabited should have a reservoir of O2 and water that needs to be filled up and kept full for it to be fully usable by your colonists. Domes, extractors, fusion plants, external factories, everything. Let your colonists still work them without life support, but reduced efficiency, to represent the fact that they'd be running them in space suits.
8) Some sort of connectors between your habitats.
Those are my thoughts on a morning where I got up a few hours earlier than I needed to. I have more, but thats a good starting point.
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