Paradox Interactive announced a number of things for Surviving Mars today! We have new details about upcoming expansions (yes, more than one) and a release date for them too.
Firstly, Surviving Mars: Green Planet, the one with the Terraforming will be launching May 16th. It was announced previously but now we actually have a date—hooray! However, they've also announced the Project Laika "content pack", which will allow you to put animals on the red planet which will launch at the same time.
They also haven a new feature breakdown video going over some elements of both:
YouTube videos require cookies, you must accept their cookies to view. View cookie preferences.
Direct Link
Direct Link
For an overview of what to expect for those who can't watch the video, see the details below.
Green Planet will include:
- Terraforming: Terraform Mars and make the hostile planet habitable for humanity. Each decision you make while managing your colony can affect the Terraforming Parameters, which includes Atmosphere, Temperature, Water, and Vegetation, and ideally brings them closer to habitable levels. Monitor your progress on a planetary scale with the Planetary Overview UI. Once you’ve made the atmosphere breathable, open the domes and let your colonists breathe Martian air!
- Green Mars: Seed the surface of Mars with various lichen, grass, shrubs, or trees and watch as they begin to turn the Red Planet green. Low maintenance plants like Lichen can improve the soil quality to help more complex plants grow while Trees produce high seed yields for your colony to harvest. Be sure to monitor your soil quality levels to keep your plants healthy and growing.
- Special Projects: Take on seven challenging Special Projects like melting the polar caps, capturing ice asteroids, launching a space mirror, and more to begin shifting the Terraforming Parameters. Be careful, these projects will have a lasting impact on the planet and will trigger natural disasters!
- 7 New Terraforming Buildings: Construct seven new buildings that can help you terraform the planet or capitalize on the changes. Use the GHG factory to release greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, the Forestation Plant to boost vegetation production, the Water Pump to fill a man-made lake bed, and more.
- Climate Calamities: Terraforming a planet can have unexpected consequences. If you release too many greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere you can trigger acid rain which reduces soil quality, or if an asteroid slams into the planet it will cause a Marsquake that can disrupt your colony’s production.
Project Laika will include:
- Animal Farm: Breed up to eight different farm animals in the Martian Pastures including Cows, Chickens, Pigs, and more. Farm animals can be raised for food in the new In-Dome Ranches or Outside Ranches, depending on their size, and consume more water than crops.
- Martian’s Best Friend: Animal Pack features 25 different pets, ranging from your usual suspects like cats, dogs, and rabbits to some unexpected critters like llamas, penguins, platypuses. Once you terraform the planet enough, pets will go outside to explore nearby bushes and trees.
Green Planet will be $19.99 at release and Project Laika will be $5.99, with Green Planet pre-orders now up but it seems you can only do so on the Paradox Store (not that we ever recommend pre-ordering anything!). The actual release will be across the usual stores like Humble Store, GOG and Steam on May 16th.
I'm incredibly happy to see Surviving Mars continue to expand, although it's a little odd to have two different packs come out at the same time like this. I'm assuming it's due to different teams working on different things and supporting games long-term does need funding, especially when it's bigger stuff like this. Personally, I think it all sounds pretty great.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Some you may have missed, popular articles from the last month:
The comments on this article are closed.
TheRiddick Apr 25, 2019
Quoting: ColomboWhat do you think happens with low quality corn or grain that is unsuitable for human consumption? You could throw it away, or you could sell it with a discount to animal farms.
You can make bio-fuels or turn it into fertiliser/compose also. But in reality plants would be grown via hydroponics on Mars, the martian soil is likely going to have nasties in it that kill plant growth and certainly would kill animals. (radiation anyone?)
It be a whole lot of work, likely a colony even super advanced one would stick with hydroponics and synthetic meats indefinitely. Even if by some miracle you converted the atmosphere to breathable, doesn't fix the soil.
0 Likes
Quoting: TheRiddickCows eat 1200 pounds a day btw!
That's how much they weigh, not how much they eat. They eat between 28 and 32 pounds of hay per day.
Source: https://beef.unl.edu/cattleproduction/forageconsumed-day
0 Likes
TheRiddick Apr 25, 2019
I corrected it so people don't keep coming back 400 years from now telling me I'm wrong. Some articles suggested 25kg per day so there is variability depending on quality of food and breed of cow.
0 Likes
Quoting: ColomboIf there's a city on it, we don't "have" it for agricultural use. And just because we're doing dumb things with our land doesn't mean we have a major surplus. You can tell there's a lot of pressure on the available land because so much marginal land has been brought into cultivation and so much land that probably shouldn't be cleared for agriculture is constantly being cleared. Sure, part of the reason is there's a lot of inefficiencies, but there are always a lot of inefficiencies; saying "we would have enough X if we were 100% efficient in its use" is very different from saying "We have enough X".QuoteRight now on earth, with a huge population and an agricultural system that relies on artificial fertilizer, our big limit is arable land, so you want to maximize food value per unit of land and we get lots of very sound arguments about reducing meat.
You are wrong here. We got plenty of arable land. We are often building cities and factories on prime soil.
Quoting: ColomboProblem with the arable land that we currently have is its management, erosion and the fact that some agricultural methods are not sustainable, both with respect to nutrients in soil and water management.Those are certainly big problems, I have no argument there, but not the only ones.
Quoting: ColomboSo I disagree about reducing meat consumption being problem. There are huge efficiency problems that needs to be solved soon, like transporting food over vast distances or other stuff. Meat is marginal problem. And even then, the rotation of produce works on large scale as well, not just only on small farms in past. What do you think happens with low quality corn or grain that is unsuitable for human consumption? You could throw it away, or you could sell it with a discount to animal farms.Again, I have no argument with a lot of that stuff--all those problems you're talking about, I'm totally on board with you.
But apparently one third of all croplands worldwide are dedicated to livestock feed production (and in the US, it's actually two thirds), so I wouldn't say that was marginal. Worldwide a lot of livestock graze on land that couldn't be used for farming crops anyway, so there's no point getting rid of that, but the first-world intensive feedlot operations are pretty unsustainable stuff--and they don't use the kind of leftovers you're talking about, they use purpose-grown feed. The kind of leftovers you're talking about mostly do get thrown away, which is another problem for sure.
Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 25 April 2019 at 5:55 pm UTC
0 Likes
Patreon
PayPal
See more from me