Surviving Mars News

Hello fellow survivors!

We’re back with another dev diary for Green Planet. Today we will be discussing the awesome free update, which is going to be released together with Green Planet and Project Laika DLCs. We’ve added a bunch of new content and Quality of Life improvements in this update, the most notable new feature being landscaping. All owners of Surviving Mars will get new Special Projects, events, research UI, multiselect, rover orders queue, and new buildings as well.

The Armstrong update is going to add a new section in your Build Menu: Landscaping. This new section contains the following new tools Flatten terrain, create Ramp, Change Surface texture and an option to construct Small Rock Formation or bigger Rock Formation.



The Flatten terrain tool allows you to select a flat surface on Mars and protrude it, leveling the terrain where it passes. It allows you to fill craters, extend plateaus or clear rough terrain for construction. Once you select an area to flatten, the tool will create a new landscaping project which is visualized with a construction hologram on your display. Each landscaping project evaluates the underlying terrain and calculates how much soil is needed and if excess soil is present. Then your drones will deliver or remove the Waste Rock as needed to complete the project.



The Ramp tool works similar to the Flatten tool but it allows you to connect two flat surfaces with different elevations, creating walkable ground between them.



The Change Surface tool marks an area, which will be gradually reworked by your Drones. They will break the rocks to make sand, or replace sand with rocks.



Additionally, you can use your excess Waste Rock to construct various Rock Formations. These are purely decorative combinations of rocks, which can be placed on flat surface. They were created for those moments when you have made Mars too Earth-like and want to bring back some natural Martian landscape.



The Armstrong update comes with 3 free Special Projects: Capture Meteors, launch High-Speed Comm Satellite and Launch SETI Satellite. They’re marked on the Planetary View with blue icons and become available as soon as the first batch of Planetary Anomalies gets discovered. Usually, this happens at Sol 10-15.



The Capture Meteors mission tasks one Rocket to go and divert meteors towards Mars. The Meteors then fall as Meteor Storm, leaving Metals and Polymers deposits. Just bear in mind that the storm may hit your colony.

You can construct orbitals by sending a rocket loaded with resources to deploy either a High-Speed Comm Satellite or SETI Satellite. HSC Satellites grant you daily sponsor research, while SETI Satellites grant additional funding.

The Armstrong update comes with 20 new events, scripted specifically for the early days of your colony and will grant you various benefits that will boost your expansion early on.

We’ve added 2 new buildings in the Build Menu as well: Large Dumping Site and Rocket Construction Site. The Large Dumping Site allows you to store more Waste Rock in a tight area and you can now construct Rockets the same way you construct Rovers. But you’ll need to research Advanced Rocketry to construct Rockets.



As part of our on-going efforts to redesign Surviving Mars’ UI, the Armstrong update comes with a flashy new Research UI, better suited for our everlasting modding community.



Last but not least, the Armstrong update is going to introduce 2 long-since wanted features: multi-selection and rover orders queue.

You can now drag select colonists, drones or rovers and then assign them the same task. Relocating all colonists of a Dome to another one has never been quicker!

To queue orders, select a Rover and then hold Shift while clicking on various points of interest. You can now task your Explorer to scan all anomalies on the map in a given order and then return back to the safety of the colony.



The Armstrong update is coming with a long list of QoL improvements, optimizations, balance changes and bug fixes. Stay tuned for our next dev diary, which is dedicated to the ultimate goal of the terraforming initiative, making Mars hospitable for life outside of the dome.

Ivan Grozev,
Lead Designer,
Green Planet

https://store.steampowered.com/app/952890/Surviving_Mars_Green_Planet/
Hi Everyone!

We’re back with another dev diary for Green Planet. Today's topic is disasters, how to avoid them and how to cause them. We'll be discussing the new Special Projects in more detail, as well.

In Green Planet the climate gradually changes as you improve the atmosphere, temperature, and water levels of Mars. The raising global temperatures make the cold waves shorter and less likely to occur, the denser atmosphere burns more meteors before they hit the ground. Eventually, the once severe disasters become a thing of the past, but other ones arise.



In Green Planet your actions have global consequences, remember this the next time when you schedule a rocket to nuke the North Pole! As you pump greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and increase its temperature, you're creating the perfect conditions for ice to liquefy, evaporate, and then fall back to the ground as toxic rain.



Initially, toxic rains will pour for multiple sols, erode the soils, and potentially cause lichen and other wild plants to wither and die. Wide toxic pools form on the ground which will kill all vegetation and render the local soils unstable for construction of new buildings. Once the rains have ended you can send drones to clean the area. Making Mars' atmosphere, temperature, and water levels more Earth-like will result in less toxic rains and more normal rains. The clean water will improve the soils and it helps for the spreading of wild vegetation throughout the colony.

Occasional marsquakes will tremble the ground and destroy buildings near their epicenters. Marsquakes are direct consequence of the colony's efforts to create stronger magnetic field and they strike near Magnetic Field Generators. Endure the marsquake and then send your drones to fix the damaged buildings. Keep your Magnetic Field Generators away from vital infrastructure and remember that more MFGs equals more marsquakes.



Recurring toxic rains and marsquakes will happen as direct consequence of the on-going terraforming of Mars, but there're other ways to trigger them, like the Import Greenhouse Gases special project.



The Special Projects are new points of interest on various locations throughout the planet. They are visualized with special green or blue symbols on the Planetary View. The green ones are special terraforming projects and directly affect the overall progress of the terraforming initiative. There are 7 Terraforming Special Projects, listed below:

The Capture Ice Asteroids project dedicates one rocket to find and pull ice asteroids towards Mars. The melting ice increases the water levels of the planet.

As long as Mars can support liquid water and normal rains, the Cloud Seeding project triggers massive rainfalls, which improve the local soil quality and help plants to grow.



During the Import Greenhouse Gases mission, one rocket gets refurbished and sent back to Earth to collect greenhouse gases from its atmosphere. The compressed GHGs are then released on Mars, which can cause severe toxic rains.

The Launch Space Mirror project requires one rocket to be dismantled in orbit and turned into a highly reflective surface. The mirror focuses sunlight on the face of Mars and increases its temperature.

The Launch Magnetic Shield mission installs an artificial shield between the Sun and Mars, which counteracts the solar winds and decreases the loss of Atmosphere over time.

When Melting the Polar Caps, remember that this may cause prolonged Dust Storms. You can nuke the polar caps as many time as you wish, adding water vapors and greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. But each successive nuking of the shrinking polar caps will grant less terraforming progress. The release of heat during this special project will temporarily stop the cold waves.

Finally, when feeling ready to make Mars green, send Rockets full of Seeds to Seed Vegetation. They will carefully spread their cargo in the atmosphere and increase the vegetation coverage of the planet.



To enable the 7 Special Terraforming Projects on the Planetary View, research the related techs in the Terraforming field of the Research UI.



There are another 3 Special Projects, visualized with blue icons on the Planetary View, which do not require research and will be available when the first planetary anomalies are discovered on Mars. They are part of the free update and we will be talking about them in the next dev diary, which is dedicated to all the cool stuff we're giving away for free.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/952890/Surviving_Mars_Green_Planet/

Hi Everyone!

We’re back with another dev diary for Green Planet, this time focusing on the greener aspects of the expansion – plant life. So far we talked about global vegetation and the need to import, produce and spread huge amounts of seeds to cover the planet in flora. We briefly mentioned the Forestation Plant as the main way to engage with local forestation and the Open Farm as a way to produce food and seeds by planting various crops on a larger scale. It’s time to dig deeper into vegetation!

If I was to summarize what we did to make Mars green, I would have to use the phrase “we went crazy!”

The original vision for the surface of Mars was a silent, barren place, where the only objects that dotted the landscape were old, eroded rocks with otherworldly appearance. We imagined that the rocket you land and the vehicles that scurry around it would be the only thing that moves – aside from the occasional dust devil. Later you would construct domes that vastly contrast with the reddish sands with their lush green and bright lights during the night, which would appear as if someone placed a piece of Earth on the planet.



Then the ideas behind Green Mars came forth. We envisioned a completely different planet at the end of the process, a place where the previously contrasting borders between the lush-green domes and the outside world are blurred or non-existing. Dense forests dominate the horizon and lush-green grass spreads everywhere, with only the largest of rocks still remaining as an effigy of an age past.



And we wanted you to do all of this without melting your GPU… Praises to great programmers and their magic!

We started with a bunch of statements like “each hex of the colony could be populated with wild plant life”, or “plants should grow and wither according to terraforming progress” and “soils are important”, and then we worked on them until, finally, we had a working forestation system.

In the beginning there were the soils… We were inspired by “The Martian” and the possibility to sustain Earth vegetation on the seemingly barren sand. We did our research and designed the system. The soil quality of the original Martian soil is set to 0%, and the most fertile soil you can create is denoted as 100%, a rich Earth-like soil. This calculation is made for each hex of the colony every hour and is displayed on the screen as a Soil Quality overlay - the greener the hex the better the soil.



Now that we had the concept of soil, we needed to add factors that change its quality. So, the idea of rains and toxic rains was born. Of course, we all want rains to spread nutrients and meliorate the soil, but unless the planet has stable atmosphere, the falling rains would be toxic. They reduce the soils quality and create toxic pools that harm the growth of nearby plants.



As you add more water to the atmosphere, the toxic rains gradually end and clear water rains begin. They increase the local soil quality via erosion, create subterranean waters and water the plants. Additionally, artificially constructed Lakes leak water into their surrounding ground, improving significantly the local soils.



So, what can you plant on Mars?

Initially the soil quality is so low that you can only grow lichen. Lichen are famous for being very resistant and able to survive almost anywhere on Earth. You’ll be able to plant lichen pretty much from the start of the game. They do not require terraforming progress or soil quality and they improve the local soil quality over time. However, they will easily die during toxic rains.



As the terraforming initiative progresses, you will unlock other types of vegetation: grass, bushes, pine trees and mixed trees. Grass grows quick and also improves the soil quality, but it’s not as efficient as lichen and trees. However, it’ll spread on its-own over time, so it does some of your work on its own. Bushes grow slower but can be harvested for seeds, while Trees grow the slowest, provide the most seeds, and stabilize the local soils a lot.

Grass, trees, and bushes will spread on their own over time. The speed with which they spread is directly affected by the amount of vegetation around the colony and the global Vegetation coverage. The spread is initially slow but speeds up over time.



Vegetation booms will occur at certain terraforming thresholds. During vegetation booms, a lot of seeds are carried away by the winds and wild plants get seeded around the colony.

You’ll also be able to plant various crops in the Open Farm. These require good terraforming conditions, a lot of water, and high soil quality, but yield huge amounts of Food. Most crops significantly decrease the local soil quality, while others increase it. These crops do not spread on their own and are harvested by Drones to free space for new plants.

As mentioned, planting of crops or wild plants require some seeds to be spread around. The Seeds are a new resource in the game, which is initially imported from Earth and later produced in farms on Mars. They’re measured in tons and used as base material for the creation of substantial plant life on Mars.

This pretty much summarizes the basic principles of the vegetation system in Green Planet. See you next week, when we’ll be discussing the new Special Projects and disasters in more details.

We're also presenting Part 2 of our Feature Breakdown video, where you'll be able to hear from Haemimont and Paradox employees about the upcoming expansion: Green Planet!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bkzCLJb8yQ

Mark your calendars for the release of Green Planet on...

Terraforming, new buildings, vegetation, and more are coming to Mars. Transform the planet into a new home for humankind, a Green Planet

https://store.steampowered.com/app/952890/Surviving_Mars_Green_Planet/

PDXCON2019 is coming and we couldn’t be more excited to meet our community at the event - which takes place on October 18th - 20th, 2019. Tickets go on sale on May 7th, but we’ve got a secret to tell you…

If you head over to the PDXCON 2019 website at https://pdxcon.paradoxplaza.com/ you can sign up to the mailing list. Anyone that signs up will be given 8 HOURS early access before the public availability of the tickets to buy before everyone else! Sign up now and keep your eyes on the news we’ll be sending out because tickets will sell out.