Changelog for the Armstrong Update of Surviving Mars
Thank you to all of our beta testers, you have been amazing.
FREE Update Section
New Features:
- 5 Landscaping tools/buildings - Flatten terrain, create Ramp, Change Surface texture and construct Small Rock Formation or medium Rock Formation. They're available since start and do not require research. The Flatten and Ramp tools consume a lot of drone time and require or produce excess of Waste Rock. The Rock Formations are constructed with Waste Rock. The Change Surface tool consumes drone time and damages the local soil quality.
- 3 Special Projects - Capture Meteors, launch High-Speed Comm Satellite and Launch SETI Satellite. They become available when the first batch of Planetary Anomalies gets discovered (Sol 10-15) and do not require previous research. These three act as alternative sources of raw materials (Capture Meteors), sponsor research (HGS Satellite) and funding (SETI Satellite).
- 2 new buildings - Large Dumping Site and Rocket construction site. The significantly larger dumping site is because we're now producing and consuming far more Waste Rock. The construction of Rockets was added as an alternative to the buying of Rockets, which is not possible when you lack Funding. The Large Dumping Site is not locked via research, the Rocket requires Advanced Rocketry to be researched. (Advanced Rocketry is a vanilla tech that now enables the construction of Rockets, as well.)
- Self-sufficient dome - you can now place a Basic Dome with minimal life-support buildings. You only need to connect it to a power source. Once constructed, the structures will act as independent buildings. International Mars Mission has a free prefab of the self-sufficient dome.
- New event chains - 19 for the base game, 1 for modding purposes, 9 for Space Race DLC
- New research UI with vertical flow replaced the old research UI
Other Fixes and Improvements:
- Added order-queuing for Rovers
- Added multi-selection of units for mouse and keyboard and hybrid control schemes. You can use lasso or double-click over a unit type to mass-select nearby units of the same type
- More informative reasons for unavailable diplomacy options
- Fix for proper show/hide behaviour of hex ranges of domes for outside workplaces
- Build Menu: Rovers are moved to separate sub-categories
- Added conditions where colonists can change dome regardless of home availability in other domes
- Double click or Controller Button (X) on items in the build menu, which require known but non-researched techs now open the Research UI
- Trade rockets to rivals are not automated by default
- New Photo Mode effect added - Motion Blur
- Added "-nomods" launch option, allowing to start the game without mods. To set this option, you need to open the game PROPERTIES from the menu in Steam (left-click on the game in Steam Library). In the first tab GENERAL open SET LAUNCH OPTIONS. A small popup window will open where you can enter text. You need to enter: -nomods
Special thanks to our closed-beta testers who helped us with this change! And also with the Modding-related fixes below
Modding-Related Fixes and Improvements:
- Documented the Lua loading procedure, mod versions and dependencies, creating mods for DLCs and other minor documentation updates
- Added a filter for mods compatible with the game version
- Build menu subcategories are now presets, which can be easily added with mods
- Added a set of mod items that add easily modifiable options to your mods
- Fixed 'copy from' field in building template mod items and mission logo mod items
- Unused tech field icon property removed
- Mod dependencies show if the mod they depend on is missing or incompatible (outdated)
- Added a sample story chain
- Improved mod upload - it provides status update, better UI flow, feedback about report upload problems
- [PDX modding] Fix to enable auto-update of mods from PDX modding backend
- [PDX modding] Fix for re-uploading mods to PDX modding backend to keep their dependencies entered in the web interface
Green Planet DLC
- New resource and global parameters which track terraforming progress
- New terraforming buildings in a separate build menu section
- New special projects with global effects
- New tech field – Terraforming – which unlocks buildings, resources, special projects
- New breakthrough techs focused on terraforming
- New disasters – Toxic rain and Marsquake
- Vegetation on Mars – plant it, watch it thrive or wither and die
- New main menu background video and updated Surviving Mars logo
- New Green Planet wallpapers
- New terraforming milestones
- 10 new achievements / trophies
Project Laika DLC
- Pets are coming to Mars: 25 different pets of 10 animal types will start living alongside colonists after Founders stage is over, there are enough colonists and comfort is high enough. Pets include cats, dogs, penguins, platypuses and more.
- 2 New buildings for in-dome and outside-of dome animal husbandry produce Food for the colonists
- Domesticated animals are coming to Mars too: 4 types of animals for each of the new buildings will provide different options