Since the latest version, now each faction has their own new victory condition, giving different gameplay depending on your faction. I’ve wrote a Mars walkthrought about a year ago. It’s still relevant to get your planet to habitability & paradise, but if you want extra tips for each faction this article is for you.

Horizon

I think Horizon is probably the easiest faction, if all you want is to achieve victory, all you need is 1 billion credit and independence. You can achieve it without terraforming the planet or even turning it into a Venusian Nightmare has long you get 20 culture points to achieve independence and 1 billion credit.

On Easy & Normal: start with getting a least silver and start mining. If you don’t mind spending GP you can get extra cash to research Palladium and even Rhodium. Once you got enough cash you can research to get spaceport so you can get easy credit and access to all the satellite (normal).
Probably get the orbital surveyor to make your mining easier and buy Palladium and Rhodium mining research when you can. From there you to increase your culture point to get independence.

Either make the planet habitable since it easier to get population grow when the planet is habitable or try to get by with only hab dome.

Expert:
No satellite and spaceport don’t give any credit, but you still need them if you want to intercept those killer asteroid. Minning is the way to go and basically that mostly what you will do until you got a good amount of credit in the bank. Getting habitability still useful to get culture point via population growth, but not required.

Son of Hephaesthus

The Son of Hephaestus is probably the faction that the gameplay changed the most. Since version 5, you need to keep to planet habitability the same. However, since culture point are achieve via your population it can be very difficult to do on some planet or very easy on other.


On mars your best option is probably to take a look at your starting pressure (it’s 600) and reduce it to 0. Why? because that way o2 won’t build up in the atmosphere. This will allow you to build tons of hab dome and increase your population to 2-3 million and have enough culture point to achieve independence. Once there you can try to stabilize you o2 before bringing back your pressure to 600 or you can be a savage and close all those domes, once you’ve done that just raise the pressure to 600 and you get victory.

Daughter of Gaia

The Daughter of Gaia is probably the faction that the game play haven’t change that much since the last version. You need to get independence and paradise.

Normal:
You can just follow my previous guide or you can skip mining and go straight to spaceport and Coral Reef. Once you get habitability, you can use your biosphere to generate money with the cash crop, beautiful and delicate trait. Note that to achieve victory, not only you need to achieve paradise, but all your metric should be stable. If temperature, pressure, O2 or water is still moving you won’t get your victory screen.

Expert:
Again on expert mining is key since you don’t get credit from your usual source (spaceport and coral reef). Once you get habitability, you can use your biosphere to generate money with the cash crop, beautiful and delicate trait.

United Nation Space Administration (UNSA)

To win with UNSA you need to get 500M, getting that much population you need to get habitability. UNSA is my least favorite faction, because it’s so hard to get cash (credit) and at the beginning it’s all about spending credit to get more credit (research, mining, building) and the population growth bonus is pretty useless if your planet is not habitable. Your first culture point could even go to reduce that population growth in favor of increasing your revenue.

Normal: Go for spaceport it will increase your planet pressure and give you a good chunk of credit. If your playing with biomass on Coral Reef is pretty good to since it will give you credit and biomass. Follow the previous guide to get habitability and if your using biosphere build microorganism to generate credit (see biosphere guide). At some point your cities will be generating most of your revenue via spaceport and coral reef. Once you achieve that, you can forget about mining and you will later use the extra space for more cities instead.

Expert: This one is a grind since your best way of getting credit is mining, but your output is so low it’ll take forever. Using GP to mine Palladium and Rhodium can be interesting. I usually use a few culture points to increase my revenue input, either reduce research speed or population grow. From there your goal is to get habitability and a planetary defence network since those asteroid really hurt. Once you get habitability microorganism from your biosphere help you generate credit (see biosphere guide).


For more info, check out my main Mars Walkthrought guide for the exact blueprint to get your planet to habitability & paradise.

Screenshot_20180715-123648
Mars has a cold climate, with almost no atmosphere and zero oxygen.
But because it has frozen water at its poles, it makes it a prime candidate for terraforming.
Raising the temperature of the planet melts the ice and causes sea levels and water levels to go up.
However, there is not enough water in the ice caps to form an ocean.
Oxygen and Pressure will have to be made artificially, and you need a boost for the water, so be sure to research everything about water as well.

Starting Stats:

Temperature: 218,027mK (28 retained by atmosphere)
Pressure: 600Pa
Oxygen: 1ppm
Water: 17,615cm (82,384 frozen in ice)
Biomass: 0

Disclaimer

Before we start keep in mind that depending on what setting you pick, the facilities won’t have the same effect.
Example: The hab dome give biomass when you selected biomass at the start of the game, but give oxygen instead when your playing with biosphere on.

Most of this guide is for playing normal with biosphere, but they will mostly hold true for other difficulty.  I don’t recommend playing at the easy level because you won’t have access to those sweet satellite.

Phase 1: Let’s start

Horizon or Son of Hephaestus

Choose either Horizon or the Son of Hephaestus has starting faction, you need your buildings to build fast and your mines to overflow with money (credits). You can later modify all the value in the culture section with using culture point once you build the Lagrange Academy satellite.

Start getting the Iron and silver research to start mining them right away.

Then go build your free colony and an outpost.

Pick a high elevation for your colony. For the outpost, its depend on your long game. I usually build them in altitude, but sometime I build some near expected sea level. Why ? So that in the late game the rising water will destroy them preventing me from paying to close them.

Go to your outpost, you should have around 3M now.

Build 4 silver mine and maybe 1-2 iron if you can’t get more silver in the green-yellow range when you scan. Increase the level of all the mines to 3 or 4. This way you will get more credits per minute and the mine will deplete faster. A depleted mine is a good thing because you can remove it for cheap and build another mine of better mineral (like Palladium) at a lower price.

Here you probably spent all your money, but generating around 50k/minutes (25k if you didn’t watch ads for the 200% boost)

When your cash is high enough you can either start researching Hab Complex or children creche.

I usually go for the children creche to rush to get the spaceport. The spaceport is probably the best add-on you can add to your colony. Its generate credits, its allow you to build super satellite, colonize mars moon and it’s drawback is actually a plus on mars since it’s slowly increase your pressure.

Hab complex is to rush to hab dome which generate water and biomass if your playing with biomass on and oxygen and water if your playing with biosphere.

Why rush for the Hab dome then if spaceport is better ?

I prefer getting the spaceport first, but the hab dome is really useful to have quickly too, it will allow you to have more population which means more facilities can be built on all you colonies and it will increase your culture point faster.

While your researching you can take a break and come back later or use genesis point to rush research or/and get more credits.
Once you comeback you might have enough to research palladium and build another outpost, in that case do it but mine only palladium and maybe 1-2 silver it you don’t get enough good palladium spot.
Research transport and wait a bit again. Once it’s done (or rush with point) you can research the spaceport

Once you finish the starport research build one in your colony and research hab complex to get a hab dome ASAP.
You can build multiple startport in your colony combine with some Hab dome to generate more population grow.
Once your got the Hab Complex and the Hab dome research, we can start to be creative.

Phase 2: Let’s fix Mars

Barren Mars
Option 1: let go all in on the mining. Then we terraform Mars.

Here what you want is to get all your mining research and build the Orbital Surveyor satellite. It’s half price if your playing Horizon.

Its take almost a day to build so you have to be patient, but once it’s built its allow you to see where the mineral are the most abundant and getting your outpost to generate 250k/m each.

With all that money you can build all the satellite and upgrade you colonies and jump to option 2.

Option 2: Let focus on terraforming Mars, we’ll figure out the money part at the same time. 
You can enter in the lets terraform the planet phase.
Since Hab dome are generating oxygen and water and spaceport generate pressure, you might start researching facilities that counter those increase.
Temperature is not a issue if you in normal or expert mode. The Soletta satellite will take care of it for you, but water will become problematic once the temperature increase.

Screenshot_20180715-083936
Pressure don’t grow that fast either, but since you might build more spaceport (since they generate money too) it might not be a issue at that point.
Your research in the background should be to reduce 1-water 2-oxygen 3-pressure and the occasional biosphere facility, if you’re playing with it. If your playing with biomass on, the Hab dome will do the work for you to increase biomass.
Have some water reducing facilities in your colonies and start building the Soletta. You can check how much water is frozen in the icecap in the water screen (top left)
Now build facilities that will tend your increase towards 0 so once your at you sweet spot nothing increase anymore. At this point Mars should allow microbial and plant life.

Phase 3: Microbial and plant life.

If your using biomass this part is actually really easy. Use your sweet cash you made earlier and build the sky farm satellite and your colonies won’t use all that biomass and it will grow to the amount needed to. It’s even half price if your playing with the son of Hephaestus.
If you’re using the biosphere I will write a guide on that topic, but here are the basic.

Microbial life


misunderstood-bacteria-v-2-png_orig

Microbial life don’t need support so you can use gene that say need 50% more support without the penalties, which allow you to build microbe that give more support for the next group.
If your planet is not stable yet you should play around the biosphere yet, but it you really want to you can always create super resistant life form while you’re stabilizing your planet.
However, these lifeforms tend to give less support for the next group. I will write more about it in my biosphere guide.

Plant Life

If you want to “finish the game” you only need to get to 2 plant support to make your planet habitable. So focus on getting these kinds of plants. The trick is to build many type of plant that give a lot of support.

Phase 4: Mars is habitable.

 

You’re almost there, with all your spaceport your colonies will be booming. With that population explosion u should have enough culture point to declare independence.
Once you do you will have a victory screen and it will unlock Venus.
You can continue to play, but if you leave Mars I recommend that you to pause the game. If not at least be sure that water, pressure and oxygen are growing at +0.
This will prevent Mars from growing while you are colonizing other planet, and it will prevent it from going barren again.

Other tips:

  • If your using Horizon, you might want to increase the research speed because it’s pretty abysmal in the beginning.
  • Note if your playing with biomass, try getting the sky farm satellite once you are in the habitable phase or just before. This will prevent your colonies to use all your biomass.
  • Except for easy mode, you can basically ignore the temperature since you will just need to build the Soletta satellite to fix it.
  • Resit the urge to spend culture point and since with this build you will be overflowing with money always refuse the credits in exchange reducing your independence movement.
  • Like we said in phase 4, be sure that water, pressure and oxygen are growing at +0.

Let me know if you like this long format walkthrough. I might make one for Venus in the future.

 

 

not related to Terra Genesis

TerraGenesis is not the new console from SEGA, it’s a space sim where you terraform planets in order to build human colonies. The game uses actual NASA data (in case of the planets of the solar system only) in order to make the game more immersive and real.

The game is free to play, you can either buy individual planet or buy all the planet of each system in bulk. If you don’t want to pay a dime you can unlock other planet when you successfully colonize one. You start with the choice of colonizing either the moon or Mars. Successfully colonizing them will unlock the other inner planet Mercury (the Moon) and Venus (Mars)
Screenshot_20180702-195505

Once you chose your planet to colonize your need to setup a small colony and start mining to get some cash, which will help you pay for research, add module to your colony and build satellite.

The module part is where you build module to slowly terraform your planet. You’re on Mars and need to start having an atmosphere, you need to build a thermal dust plant to increase pressure, you’re on Venus and want it to go down build a bunch of hydrogen processor to drop that pressure to earth level.

Once you start modifying your planet don’t forget to check it once in an awhile or you end up like me and going waterworld on Venus (Kevin Costner would not be happy)

WaterVenus_20180614-191219

This is where I was a bit annoyed, I went to sleep while I was terraforming Mars and ended up putting to much o2 in it because I left it a +100 for the night. Same thing happen on Venus, but with the temperature. I’ve built the Soletta, a satellite that helps you adjust the temperature on your planet surface, but when it was built I had so much water build up in the atmosphere that it’s flooded the planet. Also, known has “the great flood” in the Venusian Holy Text.

So after that, I went all Tamagochi on my Venus, checking every time making sure everything was rising carefully, turning them down or up as needed. It’s like a feeding a little monster instead it’s a planet and it needs to be feed differently depending how it’s going.

Screenshot_20180625-173321

I have some nitpicking on that flood thing, it’s weird that your colony can support the initial Venus atmosphere, but add a little water on the ground and everything falls apart. We (NASA) have (like today) base underwater so building cities underwater is probably feasible with current technology, but with our current tech we cannot build anything on Venus surface. So why the hell the whole colony get destroyed when the 1m of water above sea level when the damn dome can support about 90x earth pressure and a temperature that f**king melt lead.
Screenshot_20180626-000727

Other than that TerraGenesis is a great game, I’ve managed to terraform the moon, Mars and Venus (twice), but the Tamagochi nature of the game got me and annoyed a bit my wife too. Constantly checking if your little planet is doing fine get tiring at the end. Another thing I didn’t like it’s how mining work. However, you can make it less annoying by building satellite that detects the concentration of each mineral on the ground. On the Android version there seem to have some bugs. Some of them seem to have been fixed since I last played, the game is still slow when you start having many late stage world to handle.

Give it a try and let me know if you like it.

If you’ve liked my previous entry about Buzz Aldrin space program or you’re a big fan of Kerbal Space program or you dream of setting foot on mars and managing everyone then the Initiative: Red Dawn project on kickstarter is for you.

Initiative: Red Dawn is an "Elon Musk simulator". It’s a game about building and growing your aerospace company and making human life interplanetary. More than 30 people at NASA, SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin, etc, are already part of the game as technical advisors and content creators, and they’ll also be represented in-game as hirable NPCs (Talents).

Apart from that, Initiative will allow you to:

  • Reshape the future of mankind by becoming the first to establish a self-sustainable colony on Mars
  • Become a famous strategic and political leader by leading our ladder system
  • Steal technology, sabotage buildings and even poach other player’s Talents
  • Discover advanced technologies to build rockets and planetary modules
  • Mine asteroids from your Moon outpost and perform advanced experiments on your space station

At the time of this writing, they are halfway to the 55000$ mark of making the project, give them a hand and contribute to the project before the kickstarter campaign end on September 22. You can get beta access, early access to the game and other goodies.

Gave it a look

 

Space game are a hot commodity so I though bringing some space title

Cosmonautica

I’ve talked awhile ago about Cosmonautica, Pewpewchewchew made a nice video to show you the game play.

Related:

Let’s play Cosmonautica

Battlefront Mars

You want to feel like Elon Musk but don’t have the time nor the money to build spaceship to get to mars and colonize it. You’re in luck Battlefront Mars on Facebook let you build a Mars colony and harvest the planet resources. You need to defend your colonist from invaders and pirates to so you cannot just harvest the planet. Gameplay in Battlefront Mars focuses on the collection of to resources iron and water because you know that the only thing you need in a space colony. Harvesters gather water and iron continuously over time and with these resources are used to accomplish most tasks within the game. This includes everything from recruiting new military units to upgrading and building additional structures on the base. You can receive extra water and iron by finishing mission or destroying enemies base.

New unit can be build by building certain building (like in Starcraft) like the academy. Your military unit will help you defend against the invaders or attack and destroy their base. Has player level up the game unlock more mission and allow multiplayer (PvP) combat. The PvP look a bit likes clash of clan, spy the village then if you attack it you are warp there.

These facebook game are not my cup of tea, you have to wait to stuff to complete or use the premium currency (gold) there in app purchase, the units are hard to move but at least they can move automatically. With 10k monthly user you should be able to get some decent PvP action.

Battlefront Mars is available to play for free on Facebook.

Related:

Battlefront Mars: Build a Base and Command an Army on Facebook

Buzz Aldrin’s Space Program Manager

The game is coming out soon on iPad and Android tablets on October 31st. I didn’t had any luck with a early access but the folk at Pocket gamer gave a excellent review so you can get the full review there.

The game come with a Space Race plot set in the cold war you got to go to the moon before the Russian. There also a sandbox mode where you just play without the political pressure.

Related:

Official site

Buzz Aldrin’s Space Program Manager (Pocketgamer)