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Platinum_Vice

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I knew there would be a bug or two, given the history of the game but didn't expect it to be this bad.  Seen a lot of reports of colonists and drones getting stuck on depots when grabbing food and then starving to death, bricking your playthrough.

 

Apparently there is a hot fix being deployed Monday 13th on all platforms so will be interesting to see what that fixes!

 

Just make sure the if you encounter a bug you bring up the issue on the bugs section of Paradox Plaza and hope there are some swift actions

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2 hours ago, DaaneS97 said:

I haven't played the game yet but I planned to buy it soon because it looks very appealing to me, now I'm worried though..

Does it affect the base game even if you don't own the dlc? Like could I plat the main game first and then buy the dlcs to avoid any problems?

 

As I read it appears to affect the most basic functions.

 

If you purchased a disc you could prevent updates and not purchase any DLC.

 

Fixes for the new bugs aren't guaranteed. The publisher has a habit of tasking a room of chimps to take over games that the developers have left to move on to new things. Other games from this publisher still have unobtainable DLC trophies from employing this tactic.

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* Impossible to build elevator because 1 waste rock unit is stuck on its position

* Occasionally time advancing controls just stop responding, shooting a strange white effect that reveal the entire underground map

* Trying to send a normal rocket to an asteroid crash the game

* Many unbuildable stuff now, even pipes and electric lines, even on clean site

* No calamity at all and too dark night even for me

 

I tried taking this DLC now because I really like the game but it's a real mess, I just hope every trophy is still achievable (and looking at unlocked ones I think they luckily are).

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On 16/09/2021 at 0:53 AM, gafpiratehook said:

* Impossible to build elevator because 1 waste rock unit is stuck on its position

* Occasionally time advancing controls just stop responding, shooting a strange white effect that reveal the entire underground map

* Trying to send a normal rocket to an asteroid crash the game

* Many unbuildable stuff now, even pipes and electric lines, even on clean site

* No calamity at all and too dark night even for me

 

I tried taking this DLC now because I really like the game but it's a real mess, I just hope every trophy is still achievable (and looking at unlocked ones I think they luckily are).

 

Looks like another bug fix patch went out today but doesn't address everything yet.  I think I'm going to sit it out another month and see what happens.  They at least seem pretty active on bug fixes

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  • 3 months later...

An update from Jan 2022:

The base game seems to be fine (though I'd not played it until about 10 days ago), but the Below and Beyond DLC is still something of a mess

 

  • The underground automated transfers are buggy and will count resources that aren't accessible (e.g., they were found in an anomaly way off in a corner somewhere) towards the target. This can easily lead to resource starvation (and sometimes literal starvation of your colonists)
  • Asteroid mining is frustrating and tedious because you can't really automate it. You can tell the rockets to take off automatically when full, but you can't have one cycle from the asteroid to Mars and back on its own without having to manually fiddle with it each time. It's a really terrible interface.
  • Exotic materials, as a concept, are awful because of the previous two. You can pretty much only get them from asteroids, but they are mostly only useful underground. This means you have to deal with both the buggy underground resource transfer and the tedious asteroid mining process at the same time.
  • Drones underground will bug out and not do anything. I've got two drone hubs well within range of each other and they refuse to repair each other for no obvious reason.
  • Navagating the underground is really frustrating with the controller. Sometimes the game will randomly decide to pan very slowly or suddenly speed up. Perhaps the worst bit was that I somehow managed to cause the camera's "angle" to go down. This made it completely impossible for me to navigate the caves or to place structures. Luckily, the game supports keyboard controls, so I could hook up a keyboard and use it to alter the viewing angle.
  • The narrow passageways of the underground are terrible to deal with. Sometimes the game will let you place wires/buildings in them, but sometimes you have to use the "clear rubble" option first. The "clear rubble" option, in turn, will only let you start on "flat" ground, which is often hard to find, you then have to keep the "clearing area" highlighted over the whole section.
  • The "no lighting" in the underground is incredibly frustrating. Yes, you can eventually build lights, but it is incredibly easy to miss passages because they are poorly indicated, or you think that you're at a dead end when you aren't.
  • Cave-ins are really common obstacles in the underground and you basically always want to clear them, but you have to manually tell the game to clear each one. I should be able to check a box somewhere to "always clear cave-ins within range of my drones". 

 

I really liked the game until Below and Beyond.

Edited by guyblade
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Fair assessment @guyblade

 

Any idea how to unlock:

 

Will they hold?
Prevented 100 Cave-ins from Underground Marsquakes

 

I haven't had a single cave-in yet and I'm worried that there may be a rediculous grind over multiple colonies. Do you know if it can be achieved in one colony and/or whether the game tracks how you have prevented a quake?

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On 9/12/2021 at 4:17 AM, DrewSol450 said:

I knew there would be a bug or two, given the history of the game but didn't expect it to be this bad.

 

Very strange. I played the game at launch, literally launch day, and wrapped up the platinum in a couple weeks and ran into virtually no issues. I find it odd that the game has gotten buggier over time.

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9 hours ago, GonzoWARgasm said:

Any idea how to unlock:

 

Will they hold?
Prevented 100 Cave-ins from Underground Marsquakes

 

I haven't had a single cave-in yet and I'm worried that there may be a rediculous grind over multiple colonies. Do you know if it can be achieved in one colony and/or whether the game tracks how you have prevented a quake?

 

They seem to happen somewhat frequently, but I hit Sol 200+ without it popping despite having dozens of support pillars. I think part of my problem was the whole "drones not doing repairs" bit, so the pillars weren't always functioning (since they needed to be repaired).

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  • 1 month later...
On 12/1/2022 at 10:33 PM, guyblade said:

 

They seem to happen somewhat frequently, but I hit Sol 200+ without it popping despite having dozens of support pillars. I think part of my problem was the whole "drones not doing repairs" bit, so the pillars weren't always functioning (since they needed to be repaired).

I provided every pillar with two triboelectric scrubbers, this way the three block doesn't require to be ever repaired: a longer process due to extra resorces needed but good to advance in underground without going back.

Edited by gafpiratehook
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  • 4 months later...
On 9/14/2021 at 8:42 PM, Platinum_Vice said:

Fixes for the new bugs aren't guaranteed. The publisher has a habit of tasking a room of chimps to take over games that the developers have left to move on to new things. Other games from this publisher still have unobtainable DLC trophies from employing this tactic.

 

On 1/12/2022 at 4:14 AM, Komrade_Dusty said:

 

Very strange. I played the game at launch, literally launch day, and wrapped up the platinum in a couple weeks and ran into virtually no issues. I find it odd that the game has gotten buggier over time.

 

Platinum_Vice is correct; the original developers, Haemimont Games, the minds behind Tropico 3-5, developed the base game for Surviving Mars. In my opinion, they are brilliant developers who work with less-than-ideal publishers. Haemimont Games left Kalypso Media to produce Surviving Mars with Paradox Interactive. Kalypso, who owned the Tropico rights, tasked developers Realmforge Studios and Limbic Entertainment to make Tropico 6, which devolved into a soulless update of Haemimont's games.

 

Paradox Interactive is repeating Kalypso Media's mistake. Instead of ending the game with Haemimont's work, Paradox is trying to milk the Surviving Mars IP with a new developer, Abstraction. Haemimont focuses on the strategy/sim genre, and they excel at it. In comparison, Abstraction is a PC-focused company that is all over the place in terms of genre and products; console gamers are not their target market, and strategy/sim/survival games are not their genre focus. Haemimont built a name for themselves by focusing on one genre and refining their process; Abstraction has spent the last fifteen years throwing every genre and product at the wall and seeing what sticks. I'm not saying they are a bad company, but Abstraction is a bad fit to carry on Surviving Mars. They lack the experience with both the genre and PlayStation consoles to pull this off. You can see Abstraction's library below:

 

https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Company:Abstraction

 

In short, I hope things get better for Surviving Mars: Below and Beyond with Abstraction, but I'm not holding my breath. Fixes could take awhile; hopefully they happen at all. 

 

Edited by poetic_justice_
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5 minutes ago, poetic_justice_ said:

 

 

Platinum_Vice is correct; the original developers, Haemimont Games, the minds behind Tropico 3-5, developed the base game for Surviving Mars. In my opinion, they are brilliant developers who work with less-than-ideal publishers. Haemimont Games left Kalypso Media to produce Surviving Mars with Paradox Interactive. Kalypso, who owned the Tropico rights, tasked developers Realmforge Studios and Limbic Entertainment to make Tropico 6, which devolved into a soulless update of Haemimont's games.

 

Paradox Interactive is repeating Kalypso Media's mistake. Instead of ending the game with Haemimont's work, Paradox is trying to milk the Surviving Mars IP with a new developer, Abstraction. Haemimont focuses on the strategy/sim genre, and they excel at it. In comparison, Abstraction is a PC-focused company that is all over the place in terms of genre and products; console gamers are not their target market, and strategy/sim/survival games are not their genre focus. Haemimont built a name for themselves by focusing on one genre and refining their process; Abstraction has spent the last fifteen years throwing every genre and product at the wall and seeing what sticks. I'm not saying they are a bad company, but Abstraction is a bad fit to carry on Surviving Mars. They lack the experience with both the genre and PlayStation consoles to pull this off. You can see Abstraction's library below:

 

https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Company:Abstraction

 

In short, I hope things get better for Surviving Mars: Below and Beyond with Abstraction, but I'm not holding my breath. Fixes could take awhile; hopefully they happen at all. 

 

Abstraction and Realmforge Studios have botched so many ports over the years, it's not funny :(.

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6 minutes ago, HuntingFever said:

Abstraction and Realmforge Studios have botched so many ports over the years, it's not funny :(.

Sigh. Yeah. This is my first exposure to Abstraction, but Kalypso Media and Paradox Interactive's greed is also playing a part in this. I understand that for a business to survive, it has to produce a product. However, when you know the product is garbage, you have the ability to change it at the design level, choose not to, and shove it out on an unsuspecting public, it breaks trust. I used to trust Kalypso, and I was on the fence about Paradox. The way Tropico 6 and Surviving Mars have been handled leaves me skeptical about both publishers. 

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