Occupy Mars: The Game

.

I had been enjoying this game off and on for more than a year, however the 1.0 release just ruined it. The newly added Chemistry branch of the tech tree adds nothing of value, and only throws in more hoops to jump through for an already ill-conceived tech tree system. Not only do you have to earn points in each the (now) 5 tech tree branches, but progress up the tech trees were hamstringed by having to go out and find tablets in the ruins of other bases. These tablets would provide a random set of options to choose 1 to unlock. Often times, the choices offered would not be for the one thing that I desperately needed to unlock, but for technologies well beyond that low level tech that I needed just to get a foothold and start building up my base. The tech tree also wasn't very well thought out. For example, you can 3D print 'Electronics' from the start, with just some aluminum and silicon ores, yet 'circuit boards' are much further down the tech tree, but often needed, even early game. It seems like 'circuit boards' should be an earlier stage item than 'electronics', because what the heck are 'electronics' made up of, if not circuit boards? There are only 5 types of ores to mine in the game, and formed the basis of all components (at least prior to the 1.0 update and addition of Chemistry); aluminum, calcium, iron, and silicon. Prior to the chemistry update, I had been willing to give this a pass, because I thought that it was a small indy project, and I could see the justification for keeping it simple. However, for all the time that was spent implementing the Chemisty update, they would have done better to improve the basics. In the real world, aluminum is not a particularly good conductor for electronics. They would have done better to add copper as a needed resource for electrical components. Silicon, while definitely useful for electronics and synthetic rubbers and the like, is also used in the game for planting soil, which isn't realistic. You are going to grow anything in sand. Again, I had been willing to give it a pass, but instead of doing this worthless chemistry update, they could have added some other elements or a process for mixing planting soil. Calcium is abundant in the game, but not used for much of anything other than cement. However, cement is easily obtainable by dismantling the abandoned bases you'll be out scavenging. Even though the game is set at least a hundred years in the future, fuses are still used for some reason. Even though fuses have been outdated technology in buildings since the 1970s. The electrical distribution system is also never really explained. You'll be going along, building your base, and then suddenly get a burnout. You replace the fuse, and it immediately burns out again. There's no explanation of "you can only have so much energy connected from this input/junction" or anyway to know how much electricity is being drawn and when it's too much. There's a system for repairing damaged circuit boards, but it's never explained how to do it, and after more than 300 hours of gameplay, I was never able to figure it out. I would always end up just saving damaged circuit boards to through into the ore crusher when I unlocked it, to salvage their base materials. Yeah, this 1.0 release has just left me utterly disappointed, and things I had been willing to overlook are no longer getting a pass from me, if this is what they're going to waste their time implementing.