Some people like me like very adverse conditions, and boy, is this someone you get when pushing difficulty to the absolute top. Playing a game with the PDS sponsor, at 44N 112W (if someone has found harder coordinates, I'm interested! 
), I was ready to fly a rocket back from Earth to populate my freshly built dome, close to a lucky patch of rare metals, with every structure ready for the exact allotment of workers coming to service it, and that lone rocket ~50% of the way towards Earth. Meanwhile, I was keeping a close eye on a RC explorer scanning an anomaly on cold ground when the notifications explode with malfunctioning cables, ruptured pipes and buildings not working.
The first WTF moment having passed, I jumped back to my proto-settlement, to be greeted by a screenful of "outside of drone service range" notifications (those blasted little yellow icons) hovering over everything I had - and an electromagnetically charged dust devil just leaving my lone drone hub and the adjunct structures (a moisture vaporator servicing a fuel refinery, and the two Stirling generators powering them). And by "leaving", I mean doing a little spin and continuing to wreck my concrete extractor, circling around and hitting another vaporator and two wind turbines elsewhere on the grid before it finally (mercifully?) dispersed.
Alright, nobody panic - when drone hubs don't work, you can always order drones manually. Drones were of course in short supply, a result of having invested in two Stirling generators to save on maintenance considering I had rather scarce metals, and of having had to buy more vaporators to service the dome itself - the closest water being five tiles away from my starting position... I already have extra electronics and machine parts, even if the conditions are bad and I got hit by a really unwelcome ~2.5 Sols dust storm, but I'm stocked enough to last until the rare metals pile up in sufficient quantity to pay the continued existence of my settlement.
I'd have thought one drone, at least, would be left around capable of repairing the hub and, in turn, get the whole colony fixed. Nope, no such luck, all 9 drones down, clogged with dust. Oh, and the RC transport used to scrounge more metals from the poor environment? Down as well, also malfunctioning because the storm went further and hit it too. It's a good thing I have a RC Explorer - oh, lucky! (while I was surveying the disaster, I got the breakthrough allowing extractors to run without staff). Now I should be able to bring it back and... I didn't pause in the game while looking at what was going on, did I? It's not getting back home with the little battery it has left, is it?
Oh.
I finally paused the game, looked at the base and how many repair icons were flying on top of the out-of-service ones, and checked on what part of my infrastructure was left running - sure enough, half of it was clogging with dust (thanks, dust storm!), including every still-running power generator except the one Stirling generator left, meaning I knew all but 10(20) of my power generation was about to require maintenance or stop worki- "Cold wave approaching."
Come on, game! :angry: I'm going to have to defrost the whole base and pay full maintenance for everything but 1 generator on top of having to get the settlement restarted?
... yeah, ~+250% difficulty terrain does exactly what it says on the label...
Well, at least I have a breakthrough I could get in 7 days after I get my RC explorer back and running (2000 breakthrough for 300RP/day 100 + 100 social tech + 100/rover tech), which gives me accumulating money for a while - and apparently I no longer have a while. I have $40M, a settlement ready for colonists if it were supported by a working infrastructure, enough parts to repair the whole thing a little over once, and a rocket just about to reach Earth.
... huh...
...
...$40M...
...
...
$40M
I reorder the research around to get that automatic extractor tech first, unpause for a few seconds and buy the little drone that could and, after the cold wave had passed, did Hurray, critical infrastructure restarted!
It took another 25 Sols before the first colonist set foot on Mars, I had to cannibalize quite a bit of infrastructure to bridge the gap before the automated extractor could bring in enough of a loadout to get back on track, but I wasn't game-overed. I was $20M away from it, but I survived.
And it felt damn good to Survive Mars.
), I was ready to fly a rocket back from Earth to populate my freshly built dome, close to a lucky patch of rare metals, with every structure ready for the exact allotment of workers coming to service it, and that lone rocket ~50% of the way towards Earth. Meanwhile, I was keeping a close eye on a RC explorer scanning an anomaly on cold ground when the notifications explode with malfunctioning cables, ruptured pipes and buildings not working.The first WTF moment having passed, I jumped back to my proto-settlement, to be greeted by a screenful of "outside of drone service range" notifications (those blasted little yellow icons) hovering over everything I had - and an electromagnetically charged dust devil just leaving my lone drone hub and the adjunct structures (a moisture vaporator servicing a fuel refinery, and the two Stirling generators powering them). And by "leaving", I mean doing a little spin and continuing to wreck my concrete extractor, circling around and hitting another vaporator and two wind turbines elsewhere on the grid before it finally (mercifully?) dispersed.
Alright, nobody panic - when drone hubs don't work, you can always order drones manually. Drones were of course in short supply, a result of having invested in two Stirling generators to save on maintenance considering I had rather scarce metals, and of having had to buy more vaporators to service the dome itself - the closest water being five tiles away from my starting position... I already have extra electronics and machine parts, even if the conditions are bad and I got hit by a really unwelcome ~2.5 Sols dust storm, but I'm stocked enough to last until the rare metals pile up in sufficient quantity to pay the continued existence of my settlement.
I'd have thought one drone, at least, would be left around capable of repairing the hub and, in turn, get the whole colony fixed. Nope, no such luck, all 9 drones down, clogged with dust. Oh, and the RC transport used to scrounge more metals from the poor environment? Down as well, also malfunctioning because the storm went further and hit it too. It's a good thing I have a RC Explorer - oh, lucky! (while I was surveying the disaster, I got the breakthrough allowing extractors to run without staff). Now I should be able to bring it back and... I didn't pause in the game while looking at what was going on, did I? It's not getting back home with the little battery it has left, is it?
Oh.
I finally paused the game, looked at the base and how many repair icons were flying on top of the out-of-service ones, and checked on what part of my infrastructure was left running - sure enough, half of it was clogging with dust (thanks, dust storm!), including every still-running power generator except the one Stirling generator left, meaning I knew all but 10(20) of my power generation was about to require maintenance or stop worki- "Cold wave approaching."
Come on, game! :angry: I'm going to have to defrost the whole base and pay full maintenance for everything but 1 generator on top of having to get the settlement restarted?
... yeah, ~+250% difficulty terrain does exactly what it says on the label...
Well, at least I have a breakthrough I could get in 7 days after I get my RC explorer back and running (2000 breakthrough for 300RP/day 100 + 100 social tech + 100/rover tech), which gives me accumulating money for a while - and apparently I no longer have a while. I have $40M, a settlement ready for colonists if it were supported by a working infrastructure, enough parts to repair the whole thing a little over once, and a rocket just about to reach Earth.
... huh...
...
...$40M...
...
...
$40M
I reorder the research around to get that automatic extractor tech first, unpause for a few seconds and buy the little drone that could and, after the cold wave had passed, did
Hurray, critical infrastructure restarted!It took another 25 Sols before the first colonist set foot on Mars, I had to cannibalize quite a bit of infrastructure to bridge the gap before the automated extractor could bring in enough of a loadout to get back on track, but I wasn't game-overed. I was $20M away from it, but I survived.
And it felt damn good to Survive Mars.
