Hi all,
It’s me, Lyubo! (Lyubomir Iliev, Lead Designer for Surviving Mars: Relaunched), and I’m excited to kick off this new series of Haemimont Diaries. In these diaries, we’ll dive into what we’ve done since launch and share our plans of what to come.
This will be a recurring series, and our goal is to be more transparent about what we’re working on, share our thinking along the way, and a way to involve the community by gathering your feedback and insights to better understand what you would like to see coming to the Red Planet.
So, let’s get into it!
What we have done since launch.
Since the release of Surviving Mars: Relaunched, we have been actively listening to your feedback, and we have recently released Version 1.0.6. Based on your main feedback, we have been working on improving the stability and the overall gameplay experience, and here are some of the improvements we made:
The problems with Asteroids and Asteroid lander that were present on release
Reworked the UI for transferring resources to and from Asteroids
Improved Elevators to better connect the surface and the underground - colonists will properly pick domes to live underground, the electrical and life support grids are truly connected, resources are shared as if through a storage
Problems with trains not carrying resources as expected
Problems with track connectivity (we are still hunting the remaining issues there)
Issues with how colonists decide where to live and work causing Unemployment and Homelessness
Added some extra laws to give you more option in the late-game
Improved the stability of the game (crashes and freezes)
You can see the full list of changes here and here.
As always, if you encounter a problem with the game, you can always write us a bug report by using the Bug Reporting Tool by pressing (Ctrl+F1) - This helps us greatly, as it allows us to see the exact situation and makes it much easier and faster for us to investigate and fix the issue.
Expected timeline and our plan moving forward
It is time to start looking ahead (while still fixing pesky bugs), so we are going to start sharing our plans for the immediate and not-so-immediate future.
This is the first of a series of regular Haemimont Diaries where we will update you on what we are planning to do and some progress updates as well.
Right now, we are working on one more update before we shift our attention to Feeding the Future DLC which will be accompanied by a Free Update that will be available to base game owners.
Plans are always liable to change, but for now, here are some of the changes we will be working on in the coming months (we also have plans for the longer term, but we will share them later).
Without further ado, here's what we are planning to do.
What we are planning to do
Update 1.0.7 will include:
We are currently looking at some of the features and changes planned for the free update, and we want to hear what your thoughts are!
Rockets
Having both normal rockets and Asteroid Landers limits the usability of asteroids and creates an undue burden on you as players. We will allow ordinary rockets to travel to asteroids and gradually retire the Asteroid Landers.
Another major change planned is to allow the automated mode for rockets to be used in more situations, including when travelling to Earth. This means you will be able to automate your imports (for example for Food).
In the long run, we want to tweak the trade with other colonies and make it easier to use and more intuitive.
Asteroids
Asteroids have more potential and we want to further explore it. For that to happen we need more space, so expect the usable space on Asteroids to increase. We will do this by both changing the asteroid maps and by making less but bigger deposits (thus having less space blocked by them).
Another planned change is that Asteroids will no longer expire (as if the "Capture Asteroid" Breakthrough has been researched). We feel this will make the asteroids less stressful and ultimately - better. This means we will need to retire the Asteroid Catcher building but we think that we can make something else that is cool with that building down the line.
Our ultimate goal is to have Domes that are buildable on Asteroids (probably not all Domes though). The Domes on Asteroids will probably function differently but I will share more about that when we have the details ironed out.
Free Update accompanying Feeding the Future release will include:
Domes and Services
In the original Surviving Mars, Domes were not connectible and a lot of the design decisions following colonist and Dome logic are based on the idea of Domes as closed communities with minimal intermingling. With passages and trains, this is no longer valid and the game needs to change to reflect that.
We want to change how services work so that they are more transparent as a system and function in a more predictable and logical way (I am looking at you Founder colonists looking for Gambling on your first day on Mars). This is a big change and it will have many other systems as well.
To make Dome connectivity easier, we will also overhaul passages (a feature that has been requested since the introduction of passages). The plan is to have passages connected to the Dome wall and not take up space inside itself.
We will reveal more about the upcoming free changes in the future journals.
Feeding the Future - Our First New DLC
It's not a secret that the next DLC will be focused around food. We plan to make changes to Food production and services (including for those that do not own the DLC) that focus more on the different strategies you can use to feed your colonists. We will not get into more detail yet - expect more information closer to the release of the DLC.
We only scraped the surface of what to come, and we will share more in upcoming Haemimont Diaries.
Final words
As you see, the plan for the coming months is very ambitious and we are doing our best not just to fix but to improve the game. We would love your input on these changes. What do you want out of the game? What is your vision for the future of Surviving Mars: Relaunched?
Keep your colonists safe and your colonies growing until you hear from us again!
The Haemimont Team