Paradox Interactive and Haemimont Games has announced that the Curiosity Update for Surviving Mars will be released on 28th May for PC, Mac and Linux, with the console update coming on 12th June if all goes to plan.
The latest developer diary for Surviving Mars has giving us a lot of information on what the Curiosity Update contains, including several new domes, a new Command Center toolset, a new Info Bar that shows research progress and a tutorial to help you get started in the game.
Here's some of the highlights from the developer diary, but you can check it out in full here.
Are you just getting started in Surviving Mars? Come and check out our list of The Best Surviving Mars Mods!
Surviving Mars New Domes
Curiosity introduces five new Dome types to the game. These are not skins or variants of the old Domes, but entirely new models with new shapes, functionality and costs. With one exception, they do not require new techs to be researched. Each of them is unlocked together with one of the old Domes, potentially by an existing tech. This means that many of them may be directly available even when you load a savegame created before the Curiosity update.
Micro Dome - a very cheap triangular Dome available at the start. No capability to host a Spire. Can be very useful when space or resources are limited or as an extension to an existing Dome when connected with passages.
Barrel Dome - an alternative to the Small Dome, available at the start. It provides more usable space but has no capability to host a Spire.
Trigon Dome - similar to the Medium Dome and made available at the same time. Cheaper to build, but provides less habitable space.
Mega Trigon Dome - similar to the Large Dome and made available at the same time. Cheaper to build, but provides less habitable space. The triangular shape can be kinda tricky to position on some places of the map with a Dome that big.
Diamond Dome - this is the only new design that requires a new tech, more specifically a breakthrough, so it will not be available in every playthrough. It is a rhombus-shaped Dome that has the capability to host two spires. We want to keep the "two spire" Dome configurations special and somewhat exclusive but with the new design, we are increasing the chance that you get at least one of the two available configurations during any of your games.
Surviving Mars Command Center
The Command Center is a handy new 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 - view historical data for various colony metrics for the last 50 Sols
Buildings - inspect and manage buildings, work shifts, workers and upgrades
Domes - inspect and manage Domes and Dome Policies. Check average dome stats, as well as homes and jobs at a glance.
Colonists - inspect Colonists and compare their stats, traits and interests. Locate problematic colonists quickly.
Transportation - inspect and manage Drones, Shuttles and Transporters. Check Drone/Shuttle load at a glance and reassign Drones without hunting individual controllers in the normal view
Surviving Mars Info Bar
I've said it before, but it bears repeating - I love mods! Not only they empower the players to expand the game and make it cooler, but we can also cherry pick the ideas that we like best and shamelessly add them to the official game.
One such mod that has been particularly popular both with the community and here, at Haemimont Games, is the Info Bar mod, created by Waywocket. We liked Waywockets' info bar so much that we decided to add an Info Bar of our own to the game. As you can see in the screenshot, our Info Bar shows research progress but is otherwise very similar to the mod that inspired it. Thanks for the great idea, Waywocket, may your nickname live forever in our credits!
The full Patch Notes will be released on Monday, and we'll update this post to let you know when those are available.
