Mars Horizon News

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• Adjusted the difficulty of “Hard” and “Very Hard” modes - these changes are as follows:
  
• Modified AI behaviour so that they’re less aggressive in Eras 1 and 2 on Hard/Very Hard
  
• Increased AI research costs on Hard / Very Hard
  
• Reduced AI mission rewards on Hard / Very Hard
  
• Reduced AI funding on Hard / Very Hard
  
• Increased Player funding on Hard / Very Hard
  
• Decreased the build cost of the Medium and Large launchpads.
  
• Restyled the “Auto-resolve” button so that it is more clearly interactable.
  
• Added background music to the Moon Landing cinematic.
  
• Optimisations to the Base Scene cursor performance.
  
• Improvements to the Pluto textures.
  
• Increased weighting for Modular Space Station request missions so they appear more frequently.
  

• Fixed an issue where the Vehicle construction approval popup would display the wrong completion times for a reusable Vehicle.
  
• Fixes for Mission Gameplay tooltips not displaying correctly in languages other than English.
  
• Fix for a “Modular Space Station” event spawning too early.
  
• Fixed issues that prevented some achievements from being unlockable.
  
• Fixed an issue that could prevent AI difficulty from changing mid-game.
  
• Fix for Venus Orbit rule variations.
  
• Some minor fixes to the Mission Payload reliability rolls.
  
• Several fixes for German, French, Spanish localisations.
  
• Fix for a typo in Spacepedia.
  
• Fix for the “Milestone Challenge” displaying broken text.
  
• Fixed an issue where an empty notification popup could block your progress.
  
• Fix for the “new” icon remaining after viewing request missions.
  
• Fixed an issue where Crew could get stuck in a “cannot be assigned” state.
  
• Fixed an issue where the Moon was referred to as a planet in a narrative event.
  
• Fixes to Building removal validations.
  
• Fixed an issue where certain Vehicle combinations would not find the correct Vehicle preview texture.
  
• Fixed an issue where the game some devices would conflict with game input.
  
• Fix for rotating Buildings not correctly updating the UI.
  
• Fixed an issue that could prevent localisations from loading correctly.
  
• Fixes for keybindings.
  

As my plucky yet oddly interchangeable astronaut plants the ESA's flag tall and proud on the moon's surface, I can't help but afford myself a smile. This is cool, and after a lot of hard work and a tense series of challenges to get my people to and from our celestial neighbour, I feel a real sense of achievement.

I'm also very aware of how hard it can be to capture the magic and wonder of space exploration. Mars Horizon, a turn-based management game about running a space programme and leading humanity to the stars, tries to strike a delicate balance between accessibility and visual splendour; and you can tell it's having to work to do justice to both.

When talking about developer Auroch Digital's own take on space exploration, it's impossible to ignore the elephant on the launch pad, Kerbal Space Program. The comparison is inevitable because there aren't many games that share their premise: space exploration, as defined by gritty hard science and engineering rather than the space fantasy of a Mass Effect.

Read the rest of the story...

RELATED LINKS:

Kerbal Space Program 2 is far off, but Mars Horizon will take you to the stars today

Mars Horizon is basically Kerbal Space Program Tycoon, and it hits Steam in November

Mars Horizon will hold a beta next month, and you can sign up now