The journey for Surviving Mars, a Martian city-building simulator developed by Haemimont Games and published by Paradox Interactive, has been anything but a straight shot into orbit. Released in 2018, Surviving Mars' blend of Jetsons futurism and hard sci-fi has enjoyed a surprisingly lengthy lifespan through many updates and DLC, from Project Laika to the Green Planet.
However, after Abstraction Games took over development of Surviving Mars, the course of the game has grown uncertain. Its most recent DLC, Martian Express, added train lines that players have been requesting for years. However, in its current state of limited options and janky mechanics, this content pack for Surviving Mars could use another pass.
Martian Trains Aren't Great in Surviving Mars
In Surviving Mars, the player's colonists live within massive domes that contain their homes, workplaces, and services. Domes can be connected via passages, allowing colonists to use services outside their home dome, bringing the game up-to-par with similar city-building games that require clever management. There are also out-of-dome buildings like metals extractors that must be operated by colonists, thus being close enough to domes to get accessed safely. This often results in resources being spent to build new domes with new services just to reach a distant deposit of vital metals.
Trains can solve this tedious and costly problem by allowing workers to extend the distance they can travel, carrying both colonists and cargo between domes or directly to a worksite outside the domes' radius. This is especially useful in underground maps where moving Martian colonists between domes can prove difficult in narrow tunnels. However, while trains work well enough on flat surfaces, they are incapable of changing elevation.
Most relatively flat maps of Surviving Mars still have multiple peaks and valleys, which makes building on different altitudes difficult. Ramps and tunnels can be built for rover access, but shifting colonists between domes at different heights is a massive hassle prior to unlocking Surviving Mars' shuttles. However, despite the purpose of trains as an early alternative to shuttles, because they cannot change elevation it leaves shuttles the only real way to set up a transport network between different heights. This is understandably frustrating to players who see the potential value of this DLC reduced by a lack of functionality.
Abstraction Could Fix Martian Express
Whatever coding or engine barriers there are to fixing the issue of train elevations, Abstraction Games should focus on overcoming them if it wants players to spend $6.99. It should not assume the task of resolving these issue falls to a passionate modder who fixes their game's trains, especially when the solution should theoretically not be that difficult. That said, pipes and electrical lines are already hard to lay down on ramps, so it is reasonable to assume laying down tracks for a train would be even harder.
However, the existence of tunnels proves that mechanics are in place for moving vehicles between elevations. If a new type of tunnel was made specifically to bring trains from one side to the other, the problem would likely be fixed. Large train stations already allow for switching between lines, so even if a new instance of the train has to be spawned in the system, it could work without overhauling the game's code.
After four years, Surviving Mars has proven it has considerable staying power. Ambitious SpaceX missions offer some hope for a potential future on Mars, which has been well-captured in the game. Abstraction has inherited a strong legacy from Haemimont, and with a bit more polish, its latest DLC should be worthy of that legacy.
Surviving Mars is available on PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
