New Feature: Challenges
Challenges are a new game mode where you have to accomplish a specific objective within a time limit. Mission parameters, game rules and colony coordinates are predetermined and unique for each challenge. A total of 24 challenges are now available.

Self-sufficient Rovers
Rovers no longer have batteries and there’s no need to recharge roves from Power cables. We reevaluated this mechanic and decided that the amount of micromanagement it required was more tedious than actually presenting a meaningful challenge. We are removing it as part of our initiative to reduce the unnecessary micromanagement in the game and allow the player to focus on more important tasks.

Rover Command AI tech now enables automated mode for Explorers and Transports.

Changes to Concrete Deposits
We have reworked the Concrete Extractor to work more in line with other extractors. Concrete Extractors have to be placed in the vicinity of the concrete deposit marker and no longer take into account the specific patch of terrain they cover. This way concrete deposits can be fully exploited even with a single extractor.

Changes to Maps
Due to the changes in concrete deposits, as well as other fixes to the random map generator, all maps have been generated again and will look different than previous versions. Environmental variety of maps has been improved.

Changes to Research
The randomization of research (both order of techs in the research tree and breakthroughs discovered from anomalies) is now tied to the random seed of the individual map. This means that techs are always the same on the same map but different between different maps. This change allows players to compete for score on even terms on the same map coordinates and to have the same experience with techs when attempting Challenges.

Changes to Messages
Popup messages will now arrive first as blinking notifications, which will pop up after some time has passed. This way popups will not interrupt your current actions like placing or managing buildings. Some important messages will still pop up without a notification.

Controller Support for the Infobar
"Resource Overview" buttons are removed from the HUD for both mouse and controller interfaces. The Infobar can now be navigated using controller. Rollover highlights have been added to the Infobar in the controller version of the UI.

Balance Changes

Reduced Mega Trigon Dome construction and maintenance costs
Trigon Dome now requires Polymers for maintenance
Dust generated from Building and Rocket sources has been increased

General Fixes and Improvements
Crystals in “The Philosopher’s Stone” mystery should now work properly
Resource deposit markers are now aligned to the building grid
Increased the range in which the Transport Rover looks for Transport Route resources to 25 hexes
Fixed the sound effect of the Artificial Sun
Rockets no longer require cargo to be launched towards Mars
Meteor Storm epicentre now moves during the disaster
Improved Pipe placement logic, related warnings and cost predictions
Price of Pipe segments placed over non-buildable or rough terrain is now properly calculated
Landing Pads are no longer being suspended by disasters
Deep scanning progress for sectors is now properly reset after surface scanning
Sub-surface Heater & Mohole Mine are now protected from freezing
Endless Supply game rule now disables achievements
Fixed the game not launching on some Linux distributions
General performance improvements

UI fixes and improvements:
Dust radii of Extractors and Rockets are now shown on placement and selection
New auto pin settings in Options > Gameplay, that allow customization of pinned objects
Key-bindings now properly appear in rollover hints
Added key-bindings for passages and passage ramps
Added warning sign over buildings that lack input resources
Settings for Photo mode are now properly saved
Added Reset button to Photo mode
Fix for Photo Mode, which removes black artefacts appearing on some buildings
Fix for the "Build Menu" shortcut to work as a toggle button instead of only opening the build menu
Various encyclopedia texts have been updated to reflect Sagan changes
Added description text for Health lost due to the "Infected" trait
Reworked the early warning notification for disasters to be more informative

Hello and thank you for checking out this shiny new dev diary dedicated to the upcoming update, codenamed Sagan. While our previous update (Da Vinci) catered mostly to our players that like to focus their efforts on city-building in Creative Mode, Sagan's main feature is targeted towards our more hardcore survivalist crowd. It introduces a new game mode meant to test your colony building skills as well as your mastery of not just surviving under the alien conditions, but being fast and efficient while doing so.

Challenges
How can you measure the skills of a player in a sandbox city-builder? Even in a survival-oriented one, like Surviving Mars, the difference between a very good player and merely a competent one is often in the efficiency and game time they need to accomplish their goals. While the existing Score system tries to evaluate this to some degree, it is far from perfect, and there is really no fair way to balance it for all possible play styles and game rules.

Challenges are meant to be our answer to this problem, introducing a new way to test your skills. Each Challenge presents a single objective before you that may be as simple as "complete the Founder stage" or more complex like "research all technologies". All Challenges are time-limited, so you have to optimize your approach and be efficient to pass the test.



You can read the dev diary in full here.

New Feature - Creative Mode
Creative Mode features a set of new game rules that allow you to enjoy a simpler playthrough with endless resources and everything unlocked. Added a Creative Mode option in the main menu which has these game rules on by default.

• Easy Maintenance - Buildings don't malfunction due to lack of maintenance
• Easy Research - Start with additional 3000 Research per Sol and all base techs revealed
• Fast Rockets - Rockets travel ten times faster
• Fast Scanning - Sector scanning is ten times faster
• Free Construction - Buildings don't require resources to be constructed (they still have construction time)
• Iron Colonists - Colonists can't lose Health or Sanity below 50 and they cannot become Earthsick
• More Applicants - 500 additional applicants
• Overfunded - Start with $100,000 M Funding

Some of the new rules disable all Achievements.

New Feature – Desired Amount in depots & storages
You can now set a desired amount in storages and depots. Drones will try to keep at least the desired amount of resources in depots and storages taking resources from other storages if need be.

• New UI – reworked the UI of depots and storages to allow the enabling/disabling of resources in depots more easily. The player can also enable/disable resources in all depots of the same type via Ctrl + Click

Changes to Power Networks
• Adjacent power producers & consumers will now connect to each other without the need for a cable.

New Feature – Follow Camera for vehicles and colonists
Follow camera is activated from the selected unit infopanel. Follow camera removes all UI until deactivated.

Balance Changes
• Reworked default initial rocket cargo for all sponsors to include a Stirling Generator prefab and more drones to allow for faster starts
• Reduced the construction cost of many buildings to reduce the amount of resources being carried by drones and improve game pacing
• Increased speed of drones by 20%, techs that increase speed of drones have their effects slightly reduced
• Drone battery capacity increased to reduce how often drones need to recharge. Initial battery of drones randomized to avoid having all drones run out of battery at the same time
• Reduced fuel needed to refuel a rocket to 50 (30 with tech). Paradox sponsor is down to 80(60 with tech)
• Shuttles require less fuel to operate
• Reworked applicant generation so the starting pool of applicants is of greater importance. Sponsors with larger starting pools will continue to have more applicants down the line.
• Increased the effects of the Celebrity and Genius trait but they now have requirements – Genius colonists will grant research points if their Sanity is high (in the green); Celebrity will grant funding if their comfort is high (in the green).
• Electronics Factory now requires maintenance of 2 Machine Parts instead of 3 Electronics
• Increased power consumption of Polymer Plant & Electronics Factory to 10
• Reduced maintenance of Smart homes
• Outsourcing is now limited to five orders at one time
• Tourist trait has been reworked - it now grants 10M funding when the colonist arrives. The tourist stays for 5 Sols and then leaves (on the next rocket to Earth). When the tourist leaves Mars they generate 2 new tourist applicants.
• Working medical buildings provide birth rate boost bonus for the next 24 hours.
• Added new commander profile: City Mayor – 2,000 M additional starting Funding; buildings require upkeep less often; bonus tech: Mars Nouveau (building costs in Metals & Concrete are reduced by 20%).
• Added new game rule – Increased Production – base production of all resources is doubled
• Endless Supply game rule now lowers difficulty by 200 (instead of 25)
• Chaos Theory game rule now lowers difficulty by 50 instead of increasing it

Changes to Disasters
• Cable faults and Pipe leaks now happen only during dust storms or as a result of dust devils and meteor strikes. Their effect has been increased but the repair time is much quicker.
• A popup message describes the effects of disasters the first time they trigger in each playthrough
• Solar Panels are now disabled during Dust Storms and automatically close down
• Buildings left without power during a Cold Wave now freeze 3 times slower (after 24 hours, was 8 hours)
• Health and Sanity damage, suffocation, dehydration, and freezing effects from disasters are now randomized– colonists will now die or have a sanity breakdown gradually during an emergency rather than all at the same time when time runs out.
• Lightning Strikes during Electrostatic Dust Storms have been fixed and will now disable buildings for 24 hours rather than 4 hours. They will also drain power accumulators they hit.

General Fixes
• Added new construction colorization of building placement cursor - orange - to indicate possible placement of a building outside drone controller range
• Autosave Count and Interval settings added in Options > Gameplay
• Buildings inside a Dome are turned off when the Dome is turned off
• Colonists can now eat from stockpiles in connected domes when starving
• Night shift Sanity loss introduced for training buildings
• Fix for passages not returning resources when salvaged
• Terrain is properly restored after demolishing a Geoscape Dome
• The Stirling Generator will no longer take more dust than intended
• Funding is now properly modified by global modifiers
• Large Water Tank now freezes and defrosts for the same time as the basic water tank
• Constructions in Domes are no longer affected by cold areas
• Fixed the Renegades counter in Infobar
• Supply grid now properly reconnects through a Passage
• Fixed unintended disabling of some buildings by Ion storms

UI
• GDPR notice removed. Rejoice!
• Fixed various scrolling problems. UIs are now scrollable instead of using pages
• Added new keybindings for tilting the camera up and down - F, G
• Clicking on icons in the Info Bar now cycles through stored resources, free jobs, free residences, unemployed and homeless Colonists
• Wind Turbine production boost during Dust Storms is now indicated in the info panel
• Command Center graphs timely update
• Renegade morale no longer visible in Command Center
• Trait selection in Schools fixed
• Yellow decals no longer remain stuck on the martian surface
• Added "Low Storage" notifications and removed duplicate other notifications
"Domes without Life Support" notification replaces separate notifications about dome problems
• Added list of problematic buildings as rollover of the "Buildings not working" notification
• All ground vehicles are collectively called "Rovers". The old "RC Rover" is now named "RC Commander"
• Changed displaying of Collaboration loss in Research buildings
• Power percentage is no more visible for pinned Rovers after Rover Command AI gets researched
• Fixed Ctrl+click not setting desired specialization in all Martian Universities
• Added resource conversion ratio in the infopanels of Factories
• Added Queue first option in the Sector scanning queue
• Added Disabled residential slots stat in the Info Bar
• The Info Bar now lists the different sources of Funding for the last Sol and how much Funding was gained from them
• Added space communism

Mods
• Added Radio Station ModItem and related documentation

Greetings from the red planet! Our Dev Diaries are back, and we have a new free update coming out hot from the pipeline for you. Codename: Da Vinci. That's right - we changed our naming convention because we were starting to run out of Mars missions and we are planning to support Surviving Mars for a good long while. From now on we are naming updates after great persons such as scientists and space explorers. The reason we chose Leonardo as our patron is that he seems like the best fit for the major feature of this patch - Creative Mode.

You can read the full Dev Diary here.

What it fixes:

- doesn't submit Steam/GOG user IDs to our Mantis
- several ways for the game to hang, popular with the community
- submit game difficulty to telemetry (which we regrettably forgot to include in the initial release)

As always, if you encounter bugs please report them on the Surviving Mars bug forum! Thanks!

Hey everyone,

If you, unfortunately, happen to encounter any bugs in the game, please report your bug on the Surviving Mars bug forum.

This way we can get the devs to deal with it as quickly and efficiently as possible. It also helps give us an idea of how many people are affected.

The bug forum can be found here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?forums/surviving-mars-bug-reports.1003/

Thanks!

Surprise! We are releasing Mysteries Resupply Pack today on PC and tomorrow on Console.

It is a totally free DLC that basically resupplies your mysteries!

Below is some information about the new mysteries contained in the pack:

St. Elmo's Fire - Colonists find it hard to get a good night’s sleep, especially when mysterious lights begin appearing where they have no reason to be. What is causing these unexpected apparitions and is it connected to the confusing changes in the water supply?

The Philosopher's Stone - Encounter beings that are a far cry from the fleshy bags we call carbon-based life when the colony stumbles upon entirely crystalline entities. Are they here to be of assistance or only out to protect the family jewels?

Metatron - Colonists look to the sky agape as a great floating monolith has parked itself directly above the fledgling colony. Does it come in peace or is it even sentient? Either way, it is certainly blocking the views from the dome!

We hope you have fun unravelling them.

New Features:

Five-part Tutorial - Comprehensive tutorial separated into five thematic sections, introducing the core gameplay concepts in the different stages of Surviving Mars.

New Domes - Curiosity introduces five new Dome types. These are entirely new models with new shapes, functionality and costs. With one exception, they do not require new techs to be researched. The smallest domes do not allow Spire construction

Infobar – Provides general overview of all the resources of the colony, including research progress

Command Center - The Command Center is a handy new UI toolset that provides historical data for the colony and the ability to inspect and manage multiple buildings, colonists or vehicles without selecting them individually. It has been developed as part of our effort to reduce the micromanagement and to provide a more informative overview interface for certain gameplay aspects. The Command Center currently offers five different tools: Graphs, Buildings, Domes, Colonists, and Transportation.

Important changes and fixes:

- New Game Rule: "Endless Supply" - the first Universal Depot you place will automatically fill with resources each Sol.
- Removed "Request maintenance" button and related functionality
- Vehicle pin icons now indicate battery level
- Added "Home dome" to colonists infopanel
- Updated Mouse pointer/cursor texts for Rovers, drones, and colonists
- Added rollover about colonists to Resource Overview
- Added stored food in service buildings to Resource Overview
- Added ticks to completed mysteries in pre-game menu
- Clicking on the HUD pause button toggles between pause and last used game speed
- More detailed cursor messages when trying (and failing) to place passages and ramps
- Fix for "Reassign all" button to no longer reassign uncontrollable drones (dead, disabled, embarked, rogue)
- Added new photo mode filter, "Orton" - dreamy and saturated
- Added frame rate cap in options
- Fix for reborn colonists (Project Phoenix) to keep their traits, including their specialization
- Fix for biorobots specialization to allow college education
- Ctrl-click on drone prefab buttons converts five drones at a time
- Fix for colonists to properly select new home when current residence is turned off
- Fix for Psychologist commander profile to properly provide 5 Sanity boost
- Added Simplified Chinese language

Other changes and fixes:

UI:
- GDPR-related changes to Privacy Policy and Terms of Service, and in case you have been living on another planet the past two weeks, it is related to the mandatory EU regulation of the same name.
- Fix for Research UI to shield scrolling instead of pressing Outsource or Close buttons
- Controller: Workslot rollover now properly updates after firing a colonist
- Controller: Fix to go back in the Encyclopedia hints section with the "back" button
- Controller: In-game menu now handles safe area margins better
- Photo mode: Hide UI fix
- Fix for Rover infopanel to hide battery when "Rover Command AI" tech is researched

Mysteries:

- Added check to avoid spawning an anomaly inside dome
- Black Cubes: Fix for some remaining single Black Cubes, now properly collected
- Spheres: Fix for wrong positioning of sound sources when Spheres make cold areas

Passages and related issues:

- Fix for Passages and Ramps to return resources when demolished
- Tweaks to job selection logic in the presence of Passages
- Updated dome warning/error messages to work better in the presence of passages
- Fix for Passages to light up only if at least one of the connected domes has power
- Fix for a bug where colonists became suspended in the air and walk in place

Mods:

- Added Building Entrance Path to entities
- Documentation fixes and additional details
- Removed obsolete texture channels from Blender exporter
General fixes:
- Fix for proper calculation of Sponsor effects in launch UI
- Shielded case where it was possible to accept legal agreements while in Steam offline mode
- Fixed certain cases of stuck drones, coming from reporting unreachable destinations
- Colonists can no longer eat from Rockets
- Colonists now wear space suits when exiting Rockets in all cases
- Pathfinding: fixed a bug where passage entrance/exit may be inaccessible
- Fix for missing palette when changing skins during dome placement
- Fix to prevent rovers from going into another rover that is uncontrollable (e.g. broken)
- Fix for Automated mode rockets to wait their inbound cargo to be fully unloaded before taking off
- Fix for Rockets takeoff, happening without refuel
- Fix for proper demolishing of Automated Depots
- Self-maintenance buildings are excluded from maintenance resource overview calculation (caused negative values)
- Drone controller load notification now displayed only for working Drone controllers
- Fix for in-dome sounds to be more prominent when in-dome or when a dome is selected
- Fix for resources not displayed on the construction depot when placing a building on a pile of resources
- Fix for Triboelectric Scrubber to stop resetting its cleaning cycle every time it is selected
- Fix for a pathfinder bug leading to drones stuck near dome entrances
- Fix for better handling of unreachable buildings by drones
- Drone reassignment and packing/unpacking streamlined; added to RC Rovers and their infopanels
- Malfunctioned and dead rovers block other units' movement
- Fix for anomalies and surface deposits which blocked constructions around them in a too wide radius
- Fix for assigning of workplace/residence with right-click
- Fix for colonists to stop going outside domes when food depots are empty
- Fix for drones getting stuck in Rockets in some rare circumstances (yet again)
- Fix for flickering elements of construction hex grid
- Fix for meteor cycle button notification
- Fix for the negative resource amounts in depots
- Fix for a water production bug happening when upgrading a Water Extractor with Fueled Extractors
- Fix for proper effect of Storage Compression tech for water tanks
- Numerous fixes for to RC Transport right-click actions
- Fix for negative water consumption of farms in certain cases
- Fix for Dome working state leading to "x" icon on Dome pin
- Fix for yellow grid appearing under domes
- Fix for Rocket alignment when landing
- Fixed a Rocket launch condition which led to take off in automated mode during dust storms
- Fix for misaligned cranes when rotating mechanized storage depots
- Fix for a non-refreshing infopanel re. electricity
- Clicking the Hints button now opens the Encyclopedia on the last dismissed hint
- Fix for colonists to look for workplace considering specialist filtering
- Gamepad: "Invert look" option now properly applies to zooming in and out
- Fixed scaling of Space Elevator rope
- Fixed missing launcher icon on some Linux installations
- Fix for mod radio stations to work properly on some Linux installations
- Fixed double click on Linux
- General performance improvements
- Sound fixes and improvements

Opportunity changelog

New Features and Buildings:

Passages
You are now able to connect your domes together by constructing Passages. These transportation tunnels allows colonists
to move freely into adjacent domes and utilizing the workplaces and services available there.
- If one Dome has no power, oxygen or water for over a Sol, all passages leading to it are disabled until the problem is
resolved. This will cause workers being fired from their workplaces as if the passage has been destroyed.
- These passages are fragile, and your Colonists may die if hit by a meteor while in the Passage
New Buildings & Related Changes
- New high-end automated storage building which can take over 4,000 units of separate resource is available for your
Colony.
- Added 3 new workshop buildings. Workshops allow colonists to work their vocation providing more employment for the late
game.
- A new Landing pad makes sure the Rocket lands at the designated spot and eliminates the dusting effect of the
surrounding structures
- A new Large Water Tank, storing up to 1,000 units of Water is available to suit the needs of your developing colony
- Added new Milestone related to workshop buildings to reflect achieving post-scarcity vocation-oriented society
- Added new Technologies, which allow construction of Workshops, Automated Storage and Large Water Tank

Game Rules
You can now choose brand new options during game setup to activate additional rule-sets for the mission that will impact the
difficulty, making the mission easier or harder.

Available Game Rules:
- Prefab Colony: Begin with free prefabs for all buildings necessary for a small colony.
- No Disasters: Disables all disasters (excluding those coming from mysteries).
- Hunger: Can't import food from Earth.
- Inflation: Import prices increase over time.
- Long Ride: Rocket travel time to and from Mars is three times longer.
- The Last Ark: Can call a Passenger Rocket only once.
- Amateurs: No specialist applicants.
- Rebel Yell: Colonists periodically become renegades. Crime is more severe.
- Chaos Theory: Tech fields are fully randomized.
- Winter is coming: Cold Wave rating set to a new Max level for all locations on Mars. Cold waves increase power
consumption even more.
- Armageddon: Meteor rating set to a new Max level for all locations on Mars.
- Dust in the Wind: Dust Storm rating set to a new Max level for all locations on Mars.
- Twister: Dust Devil rating set to a new Max level for all locations on Mars.
Other fixes and improvements:

Balance:
- Added upgrades to the Mohole Mine and the Excavator to increase production

UI:
- 3 new notifications: for busy drone hubs, busy shuttle hubs, out of fuel shuttle hubs
- Better alignment for traits in school
- Added on-screen notification for split Power/Life support networks (by player actions or meteorites)
- Colonists with special traits, coming from a rocket, will no longer be pinned for colonies with over 100 colonists
- Fixed overlapping of deposits (from random map generation and anomalies)
- Storages and Depots are divided in subcategories of the Build Menu
- " Milestone failed" message alignment fix


General Fixes:
- Fixed air producers (wrong) production in some cases
- Fixed calculation of challenge bonus in milestones
- Fixed Triboelectric Scrubber not rotating after first clean
- Fixed TOS to no longer reappear when changing language
- Fixed a bug where more than the maximum number of colonists in a Dome can have homes and/or work
- Fixed an issue with unemployed statistics in Dome not updated when moving a Colonist
- Fixed a bug where turned off/malfunctioned supply storages (incl. Batteries) would reconnect to grid after modifying any of their storage props
- Fixed upside-down positioning of shuttles
- Fixed an issue where colonists became starving from eating uncooked meals
- Androids now have no initial specialization
- Marsgate Mystery: Fixed Rover Command AI tech to not affects hostile rovers
- Marsgate Mystery: Fixes for hostile rovers to prevent them from salvage after battery drain
- Fix for Autonomous sensors to not show "outside drone control" icon after Autonomous Sensors tech is researched if sensors are build prior research completion
- Beyond Earth Mystery: Fix for saves swarmed by trade rockets, causing infinite loop from pinned rockets
- Fixes on Polymer Factory production (now depends on its workers)
- Fix for some edge cases of automated routes for Transport Rover
- Fix for chance for crime prevention (capped at 50% when Security Officers outnumber renegades 3 to 1)
- Fix for Waste Rock production to now properly depend on the grade of Concrete, Metals and Rare Metals deposit used
- Fix for colonists and drones to stop going through Spires
- Improved estimation of the load of the drone controllers (Hub, Rover, Rocket)
- Buildings are now considered to be in dome range if one of their hexes is inside dome range
- Updated University description
- Clarified immigration policy texts
- Various performance optimizations
- Various stability improvements
- Various sound FX tweaks

Mods:
- Documentation for Effects - building blocks for Mission Sponsor, Commander Profile and Game Rule mod items
- Added "GlobalEffects" mod item
- Default mod preview image format is set to PNG
- Kept backward compatibility with mods that use the old tags system

Change:
- Fixed an issue where rockets sometimes would not take off on older save games