Surviving Mars continues to receive great updates, and a sizeable one has just dropped called the Spirit Update - bringing with it a lot of changes to the game.

We've got the details on the Surviving Mars Spirit Update below along with all the notable updates in the Patch Notes from Haemimont and Paradox Interactive, including their tribute to Stephen Hawking.

Check out our full Surviving Mars review!

Surviving Mars Spirit Update Details and Patch Notes

You can find the full Patch Notes for the Spirit Update here. There's a lot to unpack there, and Haemimont/Paradox haven't called out the more significant changes, so let us do that!

Major Changes

• Science Institute renamed to Hawking Institute in tribute to Stephen Hawking

• Added Birth Control Policy in domes. You can now set births to allowed or forbidden (Ctrl + LMB sets birth control policy in all domes)

• Increased max zoom out distance (before going to a full area view)

• Optimized the way colonists pick workplaces. Colonists should now pick the best workplace for their specialization correctly and much faster

• Added "Reassign All" button to drones which reassigns all drones from this commander or orphaned drones in the area

• Colonists will no longer try to walk kilometers on foot to resettle resulting in them dying from lack of oxygen

• Rover Command AI tech now removes the batteries of all rovers

• Added a keybinding (default: i) that hides/shows resource & anomaly icons on the map

• Rovers are more likely to effectively use tunnels, and their pathfinding is improved

• Added free camera option in Photo Mode

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Mod Support

• Added cheats menu to mod editor

• Mod editor now loads a map with a prebuilt colony

• Allowed renaming of mods

• Added support for PNG files in mod cover images

• Easier way of adding technologies, research points and applicants from mission sponsor and commander profile mods

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Gameplay Updates

• Extended the range rovers need to be in to recharge from cables. The RC Transport looks for cables in the start and ending point of transport routes automatically

• Lowered the chance for idiot flaw to appear in the colony and applicant pool

• Reserved residence slots are released if the colonist can't reach the dome during resettlement

• Colonists that fail to reach a dome won't constantly try to reach it again and again

• Fuel Refinery now has the Factory AI upgrade

• Colonists are now immune to Earthsick when playing with IMM sponsor

• Colonists no longer reserve residential slots in faraway domes if shuttle hubs are not operational (e.g. during a dust storm)

• Triboelectric Scrubber no longer scrubs buildings inside domes

• Colonists can now be manually assigned to training (School, University, Sanatorium)

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UI Updates

• “Research complete” notification now shows the tech description in question on rollover

• Added option to rename buildings

• Shuttle Hub now shows information about shuttle load across the colony

• Changed dome quarantine button to Immigration Policy control

• Merged the "Assign Workplace", "Assign Residence" buttons for colonists into a single button "Assign to Building"

• Allowed rebinding of camera zoom in/out and camera tilt keybindings

• Drone workload information added to RC Rover

• Added an error message when trying to overwrite a save during upload to cloud

• Added salvage button to the info panel of pipes, valves and switches

• Excess fuel caused by Advanced Martian Engines is now unloaded from rockets before take off

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Other Patch Notes

• Domes no longer get constantly dusted. Only domes that are turned off or not working are dusted.

• Children now play around in the school (visualization only)

• Glass decals and grass are removed when the dome is destroyed

• Recharge stations no longer turn their light off when a drone visits them

• All adult colonists now have the same walking speed

• Various performance and stability improvements

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There was also a little hotfix after this with the following updates:

• Fixed an issue where sometimes after Dust Storms, rockets won't be able to launch from Mars

• Fixed an issue with some buildings not getting any workers

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