Note: This guide is meant to help new Surviving Mars players understand the fundamental principles that are at work behind the game. Hence it is not meant to be a tutorial showing how to build a solar panel. Rather, it explains WHY you should build solar panels; and why you sometimes shouldn't.
The Mars Commander Primer
Colony management is fundamentally an exercise in engine-building and resource management. You start with a pile of resources, which you convert into things (e.g. power plants or extractors) which extract or produce more resources. Keep feeding and repeating this engine, and you will achieve a "virtuous cycle" wherein your produce exponentially more and more resources to the point you enter the state of permanent surplus. At this point, the sky is the limit with regards to what you can build and achieve.
However you should also be careful to avoid a systems collapse. This can occur if your consumption of resources - particularly the maintenance of buildings - exceeds your production or importation capabilities. Should these deficits be left unattended for too long then a situation can occur wherein you are no longer able to acquire key resources needed to make the rest of the system function - effectively putting yourself in a deadlock situation. Fortunately, deficits can often be corrected to bring the system back into a state of surplus as long as they are identified and corrected before the deadlock state occurs.
Advanced Sidebar: That said, very large colonies (1000+ citizens) may soon find they are literally using up all the resources in the map and have to stick to some target size that can actually be supported by the game's handful of infinite resource production methods (mainly Wonders)
In short, Surviving Mars is in many ways a business simulation. You start with a pile of capital (resources and money), and you must earn a profit by building stuff that produce more resources. These "profits" allow you to grow further and gain even more profits, whereas deficits can cause the entire system to freeze up and the business to go bankrupt.
With this in mind, it's important to realize that Surviving Mars has three distinct phases:
1) Early game exploration - which is defined by the period BEFORE you land your first colonist and you develop your overall plan.
2) Establishment of your first Dome - which is defined by creating your first "profitable" manned settlement that produces a surplus of resources.
3) Expansion - which is basically replicating your early successes and / or exploring new ones.
====
Exploration:
One of the unique mechanics of Surviving Mars is the fact that you are NOT forced to start sending colonists immediately. You instead start off with an unmanned mission - consisting of various rovers and drones - who are supposed to explore the area and build your initial settlement.
In this regard, it is important to remember these key principles:
1) You are NOT required to build on the first "revealed" sector. You do not even have to land there. If the resource mix on the initial scanned site is poor, you can land somewhere else; especially on spots that are noted as likely having the deposits you want.
2) Your rocket, after landing, needs to be refueled. Otherwise it will stay on Mars and be unable to bring you more stuff in the future. Fortunately, setting up a refueling system is really easy using prefabricated buildings - just remember to bring a Moisture Farm and a Fuel Refinery on your first trip. Build them beside your rocket, and build some solar powers or wind turbines to power them, and your rocket will be refueled in a few days and will be ready to use again. You should setup this refueling system right from the outset since it's independent from any on-site resources beside metal for Solar panels.
3) You don't have to bring an orbital scanner to find "better" spots. It is generally cheaper (and better long-term) to land and build Sensor Towers. Bring some electronics, and build a sensor tower on your initial landing spot to scan it and the surrounding area. Eventually, you will want to bring in a second RC Rover and a Transport to travel beyond your starting location and build a network of sensor towers all over the map.
4) The most consistently profitable "business" in the early game is selling rare metals to Earth. Some sponsor combinations may generate money in other ways that allow for more flexibility - Europe being a particular standout as they earn money from research. However, rare metal export works for all sponsors and indeed some combinations have no choice but rare metal export. Hence, your primary goal in the early exploration phase is to find a good rare metal source - preferably of "average" quality or better (as this affects how fast you can mine it).
5) Though the "exploration" phase will typically be over after a few Sols (or be done immediately if your starting tile has a good rare material source), you should continue doing step 3 until you have fully scanned the map; as the information you gather will be vital for the expansion phase. Scanning the map also reveals anomalies - which can be scanned using an Explorer Rover for research bonuses and more technology.
Your First Dome:
Do not aim for self-sufficiency with your first Dome.
I repeat: Do not aim for self-sufficiency with your first Dome.
While a lot of streamers have advocated this, it's good to step back, do some math and realize how profitable (cash-wise) rare metals actually are. A small deposit of just 300 metal for instance, selling at $20M (the minimum), would generate $6000M once fully consumed. This exceeds the initial funding of all the "hard" difficulty sponsors. Even if you spent everything to build that first colony (and you wouldn't) you'd still make $2000M profit and have a whole bunch of stuff you can reuse (e.g. fueling depots, and no-maintenance drones + rovers).
It is in fact "okay" to import stuff like machine parts and polymers early on to fulfill your maintenance needs, and food is so cheap at $10M per 5 units that having hydrophonics is really unnecessary. Just make sure your supply of parts or food will not dry up before the arrival of the next resupply rocket, and make sure you don't over-order. Indeed, importing stuff for a low upkeep mining settlement and waiting for the ability to build your own factories via technology might be more profitable than importing prefab factories.
When actually building your Domes, remember the following:
1) Domes require cement, metal, and polymers to build - plus generally more cement and other stuff to build structures inside of it. Cement can be produced using an extractor. Metal is best acquired by sending an RC Transport to collect surface metal. Polymers must be imported. Hence from a cash perspective Domes are actually "cheap" - as only the Polymers and the machine parts for the concrete extractor are imported.
2) Domes then require power, water, and oxygen. Power is best supplied by either Solar panels (with a battery for night) or wind turbines. You then need 2 water - one for the Dome, and the other to feed the Moxie oxygen-generator. This water can be provided by a deposit if one conveniently nearby, but don't be shy about importing two Moisture Farm prefabs if it's not.
3) A mining Dome only requires living room and services (e.g. Grocer, Infirmary, etc) inside of the Dome, and mines outside of the Dome. When starting out however, prioritize ONE living quarters and the services. This is because you won't be allowed to send more colonists until 10 days after the first batch, unless a child is born in your colony before then. Prioritizing services increases comfort which increases the chance of a birth occurring.
4) When the birth happens you can then "fill out" the colony. Make sure to just bring in enough people (and import food) to match the actual number of work slots you need; and indeed having a little extra tends to be a good idea (it's okay to have a few unemployed). Make sure that your buildings are also working multiple shifts - buildings often default to just a single shift and that's a very inefficient setup, as it means your structure isn't making you money for 2/3rds of the day!
5) Regularly send a rocket with resupply materials (food, machine parts, and polymers) to the colony to pick up exports. Refuel it using your original fuel refinery - simply transfer fuel using RC Transports to your colony if it's in a different location, and keep an RC Rover near the said refinery to keep it operational (Drone hubs cost maintenance and are bad for this).
Congratulations, you should now be making your first profit!
Expansion:
Now that you are making money, you can now turn to building more stuff and having a more diverse colony. Just remember to make sure you remain within the virtuous cycle of ever-increasing surpluses, and not fall into the trap of over-building deficits which can result in collapse. Here are some final ideas you could use to guide your expansion.
1) Generally continue to specialize your domes. Managing them is easy if you simply make a Dome "prefer" a specific set of specialists. For instance your first mining colony should be made to prefer Geologists. They should not reject other specialists however - because you might not have Geologists around to fill out all your slots and you don't need Geologists to man services.
2) Agriculture Domes are generally not viable until you have farms, as Hydrophonics and Fungus tend to eat up power and other valuable resources in addition to being less productive than farms. Agri Domes however do need quite a bit of water, so they should be built near a water source. Once built however, a single Agri Dome with just 3 farms can easily feed a hundred colonists, and with improved crops of various types it may push closer to 200. Later in the game, the water consumption issue all but vanishes with the addition of a water reclamation spire; at which point they stop really needing the water source and can rely on Moisture Farms againn.
3) A science-focused Dome will generally produce more research than your starting sponsor rate, but labs requires electronics for maintenance which are the most expensive type of import. On the other hand, you can simply spend money outright to get research through Outsource. Long-term Science Domes are generally desirable and should be built, just make sure you can support them and do consider just Outsourcing in the meantime. Unfortunately a previously available "business model" - wherein money is generated by researching patents - has been nerfed so building a lot of science Domes to make money is less viable.
4) Manufacturing Domes can produce multiple types of advanced resources - because they're all reliant on Engineer specialists. That said, electronics factories tend to require much more manpower than machine parts or polymers, so it may be better to leave them in a separate Dome due to manpower concerns. Indeed, I suspect a lot of the manpower issues lies with how people try to cram all three types of factory in a single Dome - resulting in too much labor demand and not enough workers.
In addition, make sure your supply of raw materials exceeds your manufacturing capability. There's no point in being able to produce 10 electronics per day if your rare metals production is only 3!
5) Have a specialized Dome for training specialists once you unlock the university. Make sure the university always works all shifts (there is no penalty for education buildings) Set it to prefer non-specialized adults and reject any specialists. That way non-specialists go into the university Dome and are kicked out as soon as they get skills. Name it after some famous real-world university town like say Heidelberg. That's part of the fun of the game
.
6) Eventually your Domes will become "clogged" by Seniors and children, who do not contribute to the work force but prevent vital factories from being manned. At this point, a "retirement" Dome and a "children's" Dome might be in order.
However, unlike "specialized" Domes which prefer certain specialists, you must do the reverse: To create a Senior's Dome, you must select all other Domes and have them reject Seniors. The retirement Dome then prefers Seniors but does not disallow other age groups (except maybe children).
This is because seniors will not automatically migrate to the "retirement" dome unless their parent dome rejects them. Meanwhile, you still want the retirement dome to have a few working-age people (to man the services).
Apply the same logic to create a children's Dome, albeit the children's Dome should be full of nurseries and include schools to educate the next generation of Martians; similar to the university Dome.
7) Rely more on single-resource depot than universal ones, as this allows you to more easily set transfer routes between Domes using your RC Transports. If you do use universal depots then make sure to disable resources that are not needed in that Dome (e.g. fuel in a spot where the rocket never lands). Shuttle technology is also something to beeline for if you're having difficult micromanaging everything, though RC Transports remain the best and most efficient method of bulk transport.
Finally, place power lines around the said depots; and make sure to have the RC Transport's unload spot be on one of the cables. They will recharge automatically if you do so.
Anyway, that's all for now. Good luck, commanders!
The Mars Commander Primer
Colony management is fundamentally an exercise in engine-building and resource management. You start with a pile of resources, which you convert into things (e.g. power plants or extractors) which extract or produce more resources. Keep feeding and repeating this engine, and you will achieve a "virtuous cycle" wherein your produce exponentially more and more resources to the point you enter the state of permanent surplus. At this point, the sky is the limit with regards to what you can build and achieve.
However you should also be careful to avoid a systems collapse. This can occur if your consumption of resources - particularly the maintenance of buildings - exceeds your production or importation capabilities. Should these deficits be left unattended for too long then a situation can occur wherein you are no longer able to acquire key resources needed to make the rest of the system function - effectively putting yourself in a deadlock situation. Fortunately, deficits can often be corrected to bring the system back into a state of surplus as long as they are identified and corrected before the deadlock state occurs.
Advanced Sidebar: That said, very large colonies (1000+ citizens) may soon find they are literally using up all the resources in the map and have to stick to some target size that can actually be supported by the game's handful of infinite resource production methods (mainly Wonders)
In short, Surviving Mars is in many ways a business simulation. You start with a pile of capital (resources and money), and you must earn a profit by building stuff that produce more resources. These "profits" allow you to grow further and gain even more profits, whereas deficits can cause the entire system to freeze up and the business to go bankrupt.
With this in mind, it's important to realize that Surviving Mars has three distinct phases:
1) Early game exploration - which is defined by the period BEFORE you land your first colonist and you develop your overall plan.
2) Establishment of your first Dome - which is defined by creating your first "profitable" manned settlement that produces a surplus of resources.
3) Expansion - which is basically replicating your early successes and / or exploring new ones.
====
Exploration:
One of the unique mechanics of Surviving Mars is the fact that you are NOT forced to start sending colonists immediately. You instead start off with an unmanned mission - consisting of various rovers and drones - who are supposed to explore the area and build your initial settlement.
In this regard, it is important to remember these key principles:
1) You are NOT required to build on the first "revealed" sector. You do not even have to land there. If the resource mix on the initial scanned site is poor, you can land somewhere else; especially on spots that are noted as likely having the deposits you want.
2) Your rocket, after landing, needs to be refueled. Otherwise it will stay on Mars and be unable to bring you more stuff in the future. Fortunately, setting up a refueling system is really easy using prefabricated buildings - just remember to bring a Moisture Farm and a Fuel Refinery on your first trip. Build them beside your rocket, and build some solar powers or wind turbines to power them, and your rocket will be refueled in a few days and will be ready to use again. You should setup this refueling system right from the outset since it's independent from any on-site resources beside metal for Solar panels.
3) You don't have to bring an orbital scanner to find "better" spots. It is generally cheaper (and better long-term) to land and build Sensor Towers. Bring some electronics, and build a sensor tower on your initial landing spot to scan it and the surrounding area. Eventually, you will want to bring in a second RC Rover and a Transport to travel beyond your starting location and build a network of sensor towers all over the map.
4) The most consistently profitable "business" in the early game is selling rare metals to Earth. Some sponsor combinations may generate money in other ways that allow for more flexibility - Europe being a particular standout as they earn money from research. However, rare metal export works for all sponsors and indeed some combinations have no choice but rare metal export. Hence, your primary goal in the early exploration phase is to find a good rare metal source - preferably of "average" quality or better (as this affects how fast you can mine it).
5) Though the "exploration" phase will typically be over after a few Sols (or be done immediately if your starting tile has a good rare material source), you should continue doing step 3 until you have fully scanned the map; as the information you gather will be vital for the expansion phase. Scanning the map also reveals anomalies - which can be scanned using an Explorer Rover for research bonuses and more technology.
Your First Dome:
Do not aim for self-sufficiency with your first Dome.
I repeat: Do not aim for self-sufficiency with your first Dome.
While a lot of streamers have advocated this, it's good to step back, do some math and realize how profitable (cash-wise) rare metals actually are. A small deposit of just 300 metal for instance, selling at $20M (the minimum), would generate $6000M once fully consumed. This exceeds the initial funding of all the "hard" difficulty sponsors. Even if you spent everything to build that first colony (and you wouldn't) you'd still make $2000M profit and have a whole bunch of stuff you can reuse (e.g. fueling depots, and no-maintenance drones + rovers).
It is in fact "okay" to import stuff like machine parts and polymers early on to fulfill your maintenance needs, and food is so cheap at $10M per 5 units that having hydrophonics is really unnecessary. Just make sure your supply of parts or food will not dry up before the arrival of the next resupply rocket, and make sure you don't over-order. Indeed, importing stuff for a low upkeep mining settlement and waiting for the ability to build your own factories via technology might be more profitable than importing prefab factories.
When actually building your Domes, remember the following:
1) Domes require cement, metal, and polymers to build - plus generally more cement and other stuff to build structures inside of it. Cement can be produced using an extractor. Metal is best acquired by sending an RC Transport to collect surface metal. Polymers must be imported. Hence from a cash perspective Domes are actually "cheap" - as only the Polymers and the machine parts for the concrete extractor are imported.
2) Domes then require power, water, and oxygen. Power is best supplied by either Solar panels (with a battery for night) or wind turbines. You then need 2 water - one for the Dome, and the other to feed the Moxie oxygen-generator. This water can be provided by a deposit if one conveniently nearby, but don't be shy about importing two Moisture Farm prefabs if it's not.
3) A mining Dome only requires living room and services (e.g. Grocer, Infirmary, etc) inside of the Dome, and mines outside of the Dome. When starting out however, prioritize ONE living quarters and the services. This is because you won't be allowed to send more colonists until 10 days after the first batch, unless a child is born in your colony before then. Prioritizing services increases comfort which increases the chance of a birth occurring.
4) When the birth happens you can then "fill out" the colony. Make sure to just bring in enough people (and import food) to match the actual number of work slots you need; and indeed having a little extra tends to be a good idea (it's okay to have a few unemployed). Make sure that your buildings are also working multiple shifts - buildings often default to just a single shift and that's a very inefficient setup, as it means your structure isn't making you money for 2/3rds of the day!
5) Regularly send a rocket with resupply materials (food, machine parts, and polymers) to the colony to pick up exports. Refuel it using your original fuel refinery - simply transfer fuel using RC Transports to your colony if it's in a different location, and keep an RC Rover near the said refinery to keep it operational (Drone hubs cost maintenance and are bad for this).
Congratulations, you should now be making your first profit!
Expansion:
Now that you are making money, you can now turn to building more stuff and having a more diverse colony. Just remember to make sure you remain within the virtuous cycle of ever-increasing surpluses, and not fall into the trap of over-building deficits which can result in collapse. Here are some final ideas you could use to guide your expansion.
1) Generally continue to specialize your domes. Managing them is easy if you simply make a Dome "prefer" a specific set of specialists. For instance your first mining colony should be made to prefer Geologists. They should not reject other specialists however - because you might not have Geologists around to fill out all your slots and you don't need Geologists to man services.
2) Agriculture Domes are generally not viable until you have farms, as Hydrophonics and Fungus tend to eat up power and other valuable resources in addition to being less productive than farms. Agri Domes however do need quite a bit of water, so they should be built near a water source. Once built however, a single Agri Dome with just 3 farms can easily feed a hundred colonists, and with improved crops of various types it may push closer to 200. Later in the game, the water consumption issue all but vanishes with the addition of a water reclamation spire; at which point they stop really needing the water source and can rely on Moisture Farms againn.
3) A science-focused Dome will generally produce more research than your starting sponsor rate, but labs requires electronics for maintenance which are the most expensive type of import. On the other hand, you can simply spend money outright to get research through Outsource. Long-term Science Domes are generally desirable and should be built, just make sure you can support them and do consider just Outsourcing in the meantime. Unfortunately a previously available "business model" - wherein money is generated by researching patents - has been nerfed so building a lot of science Domes to make money is less viable.
4) Manufacturing Domes can produce multiple types of advanced resources - because they're all reliant on Engineer specialists. That said, electronics factories tend to require much more manpower than machine parts or polymers, so it may be better to leave them in a separate Dome due to manpower concerns. Indeed, I suspect a lot of the manpower issues lies with how people try to cram all three types of factory in a single Dome - resulting in too much labor demand and not enough workers.
In addition, make sure your supply of raw materials exceeds your manufacturing capability. There's no point in being able to produce 10 electronics per day if your rare metals production is only 3!
5) Have a specialized Dome for training specialists once you unlock the university. Make sure the university always works all shifts (there is no penalty for education buildings) Set it to prefer non-specialized adults and reject any specialists. That way non-specialists go into the university Dome and are kicked out as soon as they get skills. Name it after some famous real-world university town like say Heidelberg. That's part of the fun of the game
.6) Eventually your Domes will become "clogged" by Seniors and children, who do not contribute to the work force but prevent vital factories from being manned. At this point, a "retirement" Dome and a "children's" Dome might be in order.
However, unlike "specialized" Domes which prefer certain specialists, you must do the reverse: To create a Senior's Dome, you must select all other Domes and have them reject Seniors. The retirement Dome then prefers Seniors but does not disallow other age groups (except maybe children).
This is because seniors will not automatically migrate to the "retirement" dome unless their parent dome rejects them. Meanwhile, you still want the retirement dome to have a few working-age people (to man the services).
Apply the same logic to create a children's Dome, albeit the children's Dome should be full of nurseries and include schools to educate the next generation of Martians; similar to the university Dome.
7) Rely more on single-resource depot than universal ones, as this allows you to more easily set transfer routes between Domes using your RC Transports. If you do use universal depots then make sure to disable resources that are not needed in that Dome (e.g. fuel in a spot where the rocket never lands). Shuttle technology is also something to beeline for if you're having difficult micromanaging everything, though RC Transports remain the best and most efficient method of bulk transport.
Finally, place power lines around the said depots; and make sure to have the RC Transport's unload spot be on one of the cables. They will recharge automatically if you do so.
Anyway, that's all for now. Good luck, commanders!
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