Do we need people on Mars?


Well certainly that is the goal -- a new planet to enjoy and perhaps take care of better since it will have taken a lot of work to get it both habitable and comfortable. But what if we could completely build that new world without the help of humans?


That is the question and this is the diary of the test. Hopefully it may give newcomers and even some old timers something to think on.

This test is being done on the default new game settings of the International Mars Mission. Leader and rocket payload are the defaults. The only changes I have made is NO MYSTERY and NO POLITICS and those choices should you use them will of course add to the random nature of the game. The locale is in the mid range of difficulty.


Day 1 - Welcome to Mars

My default scanned sector showed a concrete deposit as well as an anomaly (pretty standard). The probes from my rocket's cargo when launched around that area showed a rare metals deposit and a water deposit (very lucky). Landing the rocket in the area with the water and rare metals was the path chosen. The concrete and metals despot (one of two at the beginning) was north in the original sector. The commander and drones watched over the start of concrete making with the transport vehicle out on metal retrieval.



By day 25 there were two rockets on Mars; one a cargo rocket with machine parts, electronics, polymers and SEEDS.

The base consisted of robot hub, sensor tower (to speed scanning around the area) , a GHG factory (heat for terraforming) and aforestry building (spreads seeds), There is one wind turbine for the robot hub and a cluster of solar panels. Solar panels take almost no resources in upkeep (one metal) and while they take up space they certainly save on supply runs. Note that if you are not in a hurry as in this test you could omit the power collection batteries and run just half the time. Doing this however gets the lady AI nagging you constantly; hence collectors.

A similar set up is at the concrete area north but at this time it was being taken care of by a commander rover and a few robots. Throughout the days the explorer gathered intel and research points on anomalies and the transport gathered metal. The research tree was kept up to date with the focus being on robotics------ as our long term goal at the moment is to set up the MOHO.


DAY 44

By this time (above) the two fuel buildings have made plenty of fuel, there has been a second cargo run (seeds etc.) and there is a lot of concrete and metals. You can see the terraforming plants showing up and Mars is getting warmer. There is a second depot of concrete and metal in the north area.

When scanning had progressed enough (about 25 percent) to see resources a second commander was ordered via landing pod drop. Since shuttles were available (Rocket Scientist leader) a transport wasn't necessary but if you are playing with another commander and haven't found the shuttle choice on the research tree you will need some way to get goods to the new OUTPOSTS that will be popping up all around the map. So the rover transporter fits the bill.



(above) landing pod delivery of the commander and the (not really needed here but you might) transport vehicle.

Along with a sensor tower the same buildings at the main hub are placed along with a landing pad (to find the spots easily on the world map).

DAY 44

It is probably important to those of you that are new --- Surviving Mars is in part a "rouge" (random) game. Not all abilities will show up in the research lines an Breakthroughs are also random. So you CAN work your way through a complete category and not find the ability that you are looking for. Alas.

By SOL 51


Terraforming is now in two areas and the next step will be to continue with the process of outposts, scan anomalies, gather metal and make concrete


No idea where that ten food came from. I am guessing I hit a wrong area when ordering :D.


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Somewhere around 75 - 80 SOLS I could see that I was spending too much on terraforming. After all I would need to buy 300 machine parts since I had no machine parts factory to produce them. So I turned off my terraforming buildings. That saved on both seeds and other resources. I continued making outposts -- often by a concrete deposit but eventually I had a LOT of concrete and so made it more simply.

HINT: If you are going to be strapped for cash (playing a harder game at the start) then I think the BEST bet it to set up your posts with commanders. This saves all the resources needed for the drone huds. As long as you keep your areas small that works well. And you can move the ommanders if needed abandoning the outpost for awhile with no loss of life :D.

CEMENT

The SIMPLEST form of a concrete outpost would include the excavator, A handful of solar panels (more here than needed in case of meteors or other issues) and a commander rover. If needed you could transfer some drones to a busier (main" area. Be sure and have plenty of METAL (for solar panels) as well a plenty of resource pads and waste rock areas. You can't see it well in this shot but I have the commander parked on top of a power cable that I added just for that purpose. I have yet to have a rover die in this new game but they do seem to lose power in that you can no longer click across the map and get them to go. So a simple thing to do to make sure (hopefully) that they are ready.


INTERIM

Along the way to getting the MOHO up and running, I added a handful of outposts some with concrete processors and some with just resource pads, landing pads, and sometimes a sensor for the deep scanning process. These will be used for terraforming post in the future.

I had some good luck (meteor showers with polymers and the rocket scientist leader who saved a full rocket from destruction) and some not great breakthroughs which will never get used. As the clock ticked down with my resources (mostly machine parts and electronics) I shut off my fuel plants as I had TONS of fuel. A lot of fuel is needed for some terraforming runs but that is far in the future and getting the MOHO working is THE important thing at this point.

The MOHO

And I did get it going in time with about 3K in funding left. On the way to the big moment I decided on the placement, flattened the land where needed, Placed two outposts nearby and filled them with concrete and metal. I ordered machine parts early and had them ready to go on nearby pads when I finally finished researching.

WASTE ROCK PROSSERS

Once the MOHO was in and running I set a rocket to return trip and the drones automatically loaded the rockets and it takes off building up the coffers again. I have no use for rare metals yet since I have no electronics factory -- for now anyway. All good.

Next up with be making another fuel depot near the MOHO and what will eventually be the instantaneous transfer of goods via the Space Elevator. I will also be turning on the terraforming buildings already in place and working the research tree. My terraforming at this point has risen to the level where water can be on the surface so lakes can happen when that option comes up in the list.

AT THIS POINT it would be perfectly logical to start bringing in colonists. I continued on as I wanted to have the map more or less green before humans set foot on Mars.


Once the Space Elevator was in life got much simpler. It took a bit of time before exports moved beyond paying for necessities from Earth (polymers, electronics and machine parts mostly) but once I had a good cushion of support dollars the rest became easy. I continued to work on adding Forestry Buildings with varying types of plants. Note that the Forestry buildings progress for the terraforming parameters ( upper right hand numbers inside circles) is capped at 40 percent.

Even though we won't be using rockets for imports and exports we will still need plenty of fuel for planetary missions -- and of course to run the shuttles and some advanced factories.


BUSHES AMIDST THE INDUSTRY

There are still plenty of things to do while working on terraforming which takes a long while. I added four outdoor farms run by robots, a smallish lake (I don't think they are a great terraforming value but they are pretty) and eventually had tons of food as well as harvested seeds.

By the time I completed terraforming I had 100K seeds (which kept growing along with the trees and grasses) and had all the metal and cement, seeds and food I would need for a VERY long time. I had to reorder polymers, machine parts and electronics fairly regularly so those will need to be the factories I add to the now open "domes" in order to become self-sufficient.


TERRAFORMING

I continued terraforming even after all the perimeters were at 100. Once the planet began to really look green I brought over the first colonist. All has gone well with the two main domes almost maxing out on green. No need to import or export any longer and a large storage of most resources.

Again, this is just one way to approach building your colony. While it was (for me) much faster getting the land terraformed than previous games (about 25 percent) -- it is not a fast method overall. Hopefully some of you will find a tip or two here -- especially the new folks.