Hi all,
It's Lyubo, Lead Designer over at Haemimont Games. This time, I want to talk about something less flashy than rockets or domes, but something that's close to my heart as a designer: balance. It is a topic we have largely left untouched since release, and it is overdue for some honest attention.
Since launch, Surviving Mars has gained a lot of features and quality-of-life options, and almost all of them have made the game a little easier. We have never followed up with a serious balance pass, and it shows.
The result is a difficulty curve that runs backward. The game is hardest in the opening hours and then falls away to nothing once a few key techs and production chains come online. Concrete and Metals are the clearest symptom: in the early game, they have become so easy to acquire that they barely factor into your decisions anymore.
Our first step is direct: we have raised the Metal and Concrete construction costs of buildings. These changes are already live in the closed beta, and we are watching your feedback closely.
My own impressions have been great. Suddenly, I had to think about Metals again - where they come from and how to keep them flowing. I leaned on Capture Meteors and pushed out to asteroids to keep up. Those reactions were exactly what we had hoped for. What I did not expect was how much the higher costs reshaped early-game logistics: my usual drone hub layouts fell apart under the extra courier runs, and I found myself placing hubs far more deliberately and ordering more drones than I ever used to. A simple cost change rippled out into genuinely new decisions.
The reworked research system lets you rush toward a specific tech very quickly - and when that tech is a Wonder, it creates a balance problem. To address it, we have increased the advanced-resource cost of several Wonders, while adding new technologies that bring those costs back down. We have also tuned down the base effects of Wonders, with further techs to build them back up. The net effect: reaching the point where a Wonder used to break the game now takes meaningfully more investment.
Infrastructure in its current state works well enough mechanically, but lacks believability and does not support the player's fantasy. It simply should not be the case that a high-tech factory costs only two Electronics to build. These things need to feel like real undertakings. Getting there will take serious work, not just on the numbers but on the systems that support the whole economy: logistics, resource flow, production, and consumption chains. The changes discussed earlier in this diary are the beginning of that journey, and more will follow in the coming updates.
The game is called Surviving Mars for a reason. We want you to feel like you are up against a cold, unforgiving world - planning ahead, preparing for contingencies, and building in layers of safety so your colony can weather whatever Mars throws at it.
Balance may not be the most glamorous topic, but it is where a lot of our effort is going to live. We would love to hear from you: where does the game feel too easy, and where does it feel just right? Tell us in the comments.
Keep your colonists safe and your colonies growing until you hear from us again!
The Haemimont Team