Surviving Mars - Start a Colony on Mars, from Haemimont Games/Paradox Interactive

[jztemple2]

The base game is free for the next few hours on Steam.

[Stefan Stirzaker]

If you miss it free on steam, it's 75% off on GoG and EPIC for the next few days too.

[Lordnine]

I'm finding the Surviving Mars: Mars Lifestyle Radio DLC to be a disappointment. Apparently all instrumentals (I've been listening an hour and haven't hear a song actually sung) and not very inspiring. I was hoping for something like The Free Earth Channel but it's not in the same league at all. I've requested a refund. I've canceled my refund request because I'd have to start my game over again . Oh well, maybe the channel will grow on me

All the new DLC is getting hammered pretty bad on the forums. Seems like this might be a misfire. Disappointing because I loved Surviving Mars with the terraforming expansion. I was looking forward to hoping back in. Maybe once some of the bugs being reported are fixed.

[jztemple2]

I can definitely report that there is a serious bug in the cabling construction feature. You'll lay out the desired cable construction and then come back a while later and the blueprint is just gone. Very annoying. However, once a cable is built it seems to be stable.

The underground stuff isn't thrilling me. I'm trying to lay a cable down this section of underground but even though it shows I can lay it the cable doesn't get built. Apparently there are a lot of issues.

[jztemple2]

Yup, the Below & Beyond DLC is a buggy mess. The update breaks the existing game mechanics as mentioned about. The asteroid mining doesn't work for me since after several saved game reloads and retries my asteroid lander was never able to launch from the asteroid so all the work I did there was wasted. The underground clearing is bugged. Overall a lot of the problems also include that there is no clear tutorial that actually shows how to do things. I've requested refunds on both DLC but since I've gone over two hours on them I don't know what will happen.

[Montag]

Thanks for the report. This was my first refund request. I did keep the other DLC fluff with the dome buildings and music. I hope they do fix it. I think I am ready to touch this again as a meditative play through.

[jztemple2]

Since I'd played both DLC more than two hours Steam declined my refund requests, but at least I'm on record in case Paradox decides to authorize refunds for the DLCs. It also make me more inclined to go to the Epic store if there is any deal there since Steam is going to be so strict on their rules.

[jztemple2]

The first Hot Fix has been released to try to fix the hot mess that Below & Beyond brought to the game. The patch notes are in the spoiler tags:

Spoiler:

Below & Beyond: Hotfix #1 - Patch notes
Game version: 1007874

Gameplay Improvements
• The lander rocket now loads items in increments of 1 instead of 5.
• Moved the cave-in clearing tech earlier in the tech tree, now appearing between position 5 and 8, instead of as the 13th tech.
• Change the order in the cargo screens, grouping buildings of the same type together.
• Rebalance rewards for recurring Recon Center discovery events.

Bug fixes
• Fixed colonists and drones getting stuck in food stockpiles. Attention: the fix requires the rebuilding of depots and food production buildings that display broken behaviour!
• Show the Lander Rocket immediately amongst the pinned items on Mars when it does its last second launch as an Asteroid goes out of range.
• Lander Rocket now properly loads all drones when launching at the last second as an asteroid goes out of range.
• Lander rocket now only starts loading drones, rovers, crew and prefabs if everything is available.
• The “died in orbit” trigger will activate only if the crew actually dies.
• Removed colonists that died in orbit.
• Cave-ins can be reached more easily by drones to clear.
• Fixed issue where elevator cargo could get lost if both sides of the elevator requested the same resource.
• Fixed issue where elevator cargo could not be updated after the initial request.
• Fixed vehicles cannot be transferred through the elevator using right-click.
• Ancient Artifact spawns the correct amount of drones.
• Auto explore of the RC Explorer no longer reveals hidden anomalies.
• Added missing icons for pinned surface passage and underground passage.
• Correctly updated pin dialog when transporting RCRover.
• Fixed incorrect game over condition when colonists died on Asteroids while there were still alive colonists on Mars or the Underground.
• Fixed issue where cables and pipes were created on the wrong map.
• Workshifts now properly update while on another map.
• Prevented refabbing landing and trade pads while they're in use.
• DLC buildings will be accessible on a new game after loading an old save.
• Fixed missing Passenger Rocket UI in the resupply menu on old retail save.
• Cheat panel improvements (available in creative mode only on Windows, Mac, Linux).

And several other underlying code fixes that were presumably causing bugs, especially to save games from before the update.
Platform-specific fixes
• Fixed startup crash on certain Windows 7 installs.
• Removed the assert window on Linux.
• Disconnecting controller issue.

Known issues
• Dome births cannot be controlled.
• The game crashes when a lander rocket is departing with drones in cargo while the asteroid moves out of range.
• Youths, adults, and seniors occupy child-only buildings.
• Same anomaly events are found multiple times on the surface, breaking the game balance.
• There is no warning about an unloaded cargo when launching a rocket back to Earth.
• Crash related to Inner Light Mystery on old retail saves.

I will post below the Known issues. These are things that worked before the DLC, so I'm still not going to go back to playing the game till they tell me that everything is working like it should.

Known issues
• Dome births cannot be controlled.
• The game crashes when a lander rocket is departing with drones in cargo while the asteroid moves out of range.
• Youths, adults, and seniors occupy child-only buildings.
• Same anomaly events are found multiple times on the surface, breaking the game balance.
• There is no warning about an unloaded cargo when launching a rocket back to Earth.
• Crash related to Inner Light Mystery on old retail saves.

[jztemple2]

There's a new DLC out for the game, this one created by two modders, called Surviving Mars: Martian Express

[Daehawk]

Nice.

Im still haunted by Mars because of.......

[Lordnine]

Now there is one I haven’t heard of in a long time. Was Outpost winnable? I remember always losing after about 30 minutes regardless of what I did.

[Daehawk]

I think on first release it was just broken.