Occupy Mars: Exploraton Update! news

Greetings, Mars Enthusiasts! 🚀🌟

Welcome to the Sol #218 since our landing on Mars!

Long time no see, but we've kept up with the Occupy Mars project, and we're working hard on fixing bugs, adding new features, improving the already existing ones, and the game's overall development. Curious about what changes were made in the major Exploration Update and the other, smaller updates? Let's have a look in the infographic and trailer below:

What we've been up to:

First of all, we needed to update the game's engine to avoid texture limit and - as a pleasant side-effect of the aforementioned - improve the overall game performance along with some graphics quality enhancements.

We know that this is something that used to concern our players a lot. The good news is that we were able to track the issue down and solve it - the culprit was system language and culture settings. Fortunately, this won't bother us anymore. Phew!

Now the most exciting thing - new content and features! Yay!

We focused on adding the content planned in our Kickstarter Roadmap including but not limited to: New Vehicles, Heavy Suit, Wind Turbines, and much much more. Below you will find some sneak peeks of those features:

🚲 Motocross Bike - an electric motorcycle that enables fast movement across the planet. Riding it requires advanced skills, but experienced Martians will undoubtedly appreciate the joy of riding it. To construct it, a blueprint and building materials will be necessary.

🛻 Pickup Truck - the truck is an extremely versatile vehicle. Depending on your needs, you can transport ATVs or motocross bikes, and you can also manually load rocks onto the truck that can be dumped on the crusher. Additionally, it provides protection from the cold at night, has 5 slots in the cargo inventory, and solar panels on the roof to recharge its battery. The front cargo area accommodates space for an electronic board controller, inventory control screen, and a place for an extension battery.

🚛 New types of rover trailers - for transporting fair amounts of water, oxygen, and methane - especially useful for long exploration expeditions.

There are now more possibilities to store your inventory including inventory boxes and circuit boxes for storing circuit boards. Who doesn't like to have more storage space to collect their exploration trophies? 😉 🏆

Much more effective than solar panels which depend on, well, solar energy, which means they produce power only during the day. ☀️ Wind turbines work also at night, they don't require being cleaned from dust, and they benefit directly from weather conditions, meaning they produce insane amounts of energy during dust devils or tornadoes.

It allows you to carry large rocks more easily and makes you more resistant to weather conditions. 💪

Besides adding a battery rack for batteries and power expansion charging, you're now able to manage your electricity and devices available in the base because of the fuse boxes. You can now easily cut the devices off the circuit with just by one click. Be eco, save power! 🌱🌍 Even on the Red Planet.

And many more! For a full list of bug fixes and features check our devlogs available on the Steam community!

What we're focusing on now?

🎯 I. Balance and Quality of Life Improvements 🎯

Based on your feedback sent via the F4 reporting system, eracolonisthelp e-mail, Steam forums, and Discord threads we are prioritizing hotfixes for issues that affect current gameplay the most. We are going to release a series of patches and hotfixes to address the most commonly reported issues and suggestions.

🎯 II. Further Performance Optimization 🎯

We know that there's still a lot to do in terms of performance optimization. Thanks to upgrading the engine, we now have better tools to track down bottlenecks in this regard. It's too early to know if we can guarantee concrete results, but we are deeply analyzing possible solutions to these performance bottlenecks, and we will keep you updated as soon as we achieve some results.

🎯 III. Further Technical Upgrades 🎯

This point includes additional Language versions, rework on the animation system, improved graphics and lightning, and online Co-Op Multiplayer (first tests have just begun!).

🎯 IV. Additional Planned Content 🎯

Below you can see a list of features which are next in our plans for future updates (in no particular order):

🚧 Construction (Vertical constructions, Grid buildings, Decoration system, Furniture)

🤖 Robotics (Spotty robot companion, Drone Harvesters, Automated Extractors)

🧪 Chemistry (Chemlab workbench, Substance crafting, Chemistry Techtree)

☢️ Nuclear (Uranium refinement, Centrifuges, Kilopower reactors)\

👪 Online CoOp (ability to play with friends)

It's too early to estimate the exact dates of each of the updates mentioned above, however, this is a reminder of our plan of continuous expansion of this game. Stay tuned, we think that it's worth it!

If you encounter any bugs or you have any suggestions about next updates, please remember that you can email us at eracolonisthelp@gmail.com, this will help to track down the issues faster. ❗

And for those of you who have just recently joined us on our adventure, we have gathered all the useful links together to make your start a little easier. Feel free to take a look at them below:

📌 (Video Guide) How NOT to die on Mars

📌 Colonist FAQ: How to Survive on Mars

📌 Game Troubleshooting FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions

📌 How to Start by Tzemaru

📌 Occupy Mars: The Game — Roadmap

📌 Occupy Mars — Wiki

Still not enough for you? Glad you asked, come and check our ✨Discord channel✨ where you can chat with other players, both rookies and skilled ones, exchange knowledge and experiences, share tips, rate each other's bases, or just chill!

Take care,
OM team