Mars Horizon
Cheat Codes:
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Submitted by: David K.
Tricks of the Trade: Gameplay Tips/Techniques:
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Written by Nick Christie
1. It’s okay to skip Milestones (It’s actually necessary). Don’t feel you
are a failure if you don’t do all the Milestones one-by-one. Skip around
with rewards/bonuses, but also skip around with ‘Roleplay’ i.e. imagine
you are an Agency with limited money and time, and you can only do so much.
This is realistic, but also crucial to making progress in the game and
leaping forward through the years a quick rate of success.
2.The Moon Landing. Probably ‘skip this’ on Hard or Very Hard Difficulty
unless, for you, the Cool Factor of Moon Race is what you want to do as a
roleplaying Agency Director. If you calculate the dollars and science
required for the Landing (particularly to achieve in the 1960s), it is
staggering. If you want to race forward (and win some First Place milestones
on Hard settings and set up getting to Mars ASAP) you should prioritize
sending unmanned (i.e. small satellites) missions to Venus and Mars, rack
up the science and support and catapult forward to ISS Space Station or
other third era goals. If you ‘want’ to race for Apollo Mission to the
Moon? Sure, go ahead, but it will slow down your end-game substantially.
(Note: New Patches may adjust the Moon Balance).
3.Ignore the Outer Planets, unless they are the ‘cool’ factor you really
want to explore. Similarly to the Moon landings, going to Jupiter and
Beyond is very inefficient. The mission rewards are not sufficient to
compensate for the time needed to complete a mission (and the time for
which they are hogging a precious mission slot). If the Roleplay element
of your agency includes Voyager? Do the Grand Tour, maybe. But with the
game’s current balances, sending multiple missions into Jupiter and
beyond is fine if you are experimenting, but bad if you want to finish
the game faster or race the Very Hard AI.
4.Know your Buildings and learn ‘Timing’. You need buildings to allow
your cycle of accomplishment to snowball. You need Mission Controls (and
expansions) to go from doing just one mission at a time to several (which
is particularly crucial for missions which take many, many years to plan,
build, and execute). You need Research expansions (to get guaranteed
beakers each month). You need Robotic Lab (to cut down a whopping 25% on
all Mission Techs). You need Back-up Generator (to cut down on all payload
costs by 20%). But there is a balance and a trick to figuring out ‘when’
to spend that hard-earned science and cash on Base Building and when to
race for a mission and delay the Base. Rather than spell out that timing,
I just urge a player to focus on learning concepts of Timing, particularly
in the opening 15 years, i.e. from 1957 through the early 70s.
5.Understand Milestone Challenge Bonuses. These can be crazily massive if
utilized to full effect (i.e. planned out to reap maximized bonus).
Sometimes you need a five-year plan. Not step by step, but conceptually
to earn a staggering amount of success. A milestone bonus can be ‘an extra
25 to 50%’ off one branch of research for a limited 6 month window:
Mission, Building, or Vehicles. This, if planned with some skill, can be
the equivalent of 5+ years of missions gained in just six months. You can
‘half-research’ a tech (allocate 5k of science to a 10k technology) and
then store it there for years. You can half-research a great many things
(there are era limitations) and then in the six months research 3-6 techs
once the costs get halved. You will want to delay (or push) milestone
achievements to match your own internal preparation. Milestone rewards
are one example, by the way, where going to Jupiter can be worth it,
but only if the rewards line up.
6.Money: It’s Essential, so learn to Store it. There is no ‘bank’ to
build to improve your money, so you can only do lucrative missions to
earn it. And if you spend money without any increases in support bonuses
(i.e. your monthly income, which really only inch up $30-50k each month,
i.e. no quick infusion of millions)… you’ll be stalled. The lucrative
missions are mostly randomly presented (a few are guaranteed as
milestones). As you play, and build Mission expansions, you may wish to
save a slot for money. You may need ‘lots’ of tactical flexibility, i.e.
to abort a mission (even after paying for a payload) to quickly claim
a Lucrative mission before it disappears. Learning how to collect money
adds to the ‘fun’; being money unaware makes the game super frustrating.
If you push on for early milestones at all costs, and do not have mission
slots open when the cherished lucrative missions materialize (and they
can only be claimed and planned for a limited 6-12 months before they
disappear)… you will spend the game stalled and add years, decades even,
to your progress.
7.Diplomacy. Allied agencies give you a 5% bonus to Science (2% when
friendly) so that’s obviously great. But they also can help by providing
access to powerful Contractors, which when unlocked help you lower costs
on your vehicles (if the allied agencies are US or Japan), or push up
Launch reliability a crucial 10% (the ESA). All agencies have the potential
to offer you joint missions, and the more missions that are offered, the
more rng is there to give you the missions you most want to do: Lucrative
satellites or high science rewards for smaller investments. I often choose
Team Player as a trait and I definitely prioritize building the Diplomacy
Office, as both of these increase the speed (and therefore the variety) of
Joint Missions offered. If we return to the Set-up screen, you can choose
to Begin the game ‘Allied’ to a faction, and doing so (particularly with
NASA or Japan) will make the game easier. For Role-playing a range of
options can work: starting Allied can make some sense, but so too can
starting at ‘neutral’ for all factions and then having to earn that
Allied status through many joint missions. I earned the Space Federation
Achievement (become Allied with all agencies) on a Custom Very Hard set-up
while starting at absolute neutral, and that was a lot of fun.
Ahead of the Curve Achievement:
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Written by dimm_ddr
Simple guide for Ahead of the Curve achievement: placing Artificial Satellite
before October, 1957.
-=Agency=-
USA or Japan. Only they have time to build of 1 month for both buster and
upper stage.Everyone else will spend too much time to build first rocket. I
guess it is possible to be lucky and get -x% build time after you complete
loadout but you will lose your sanity trying to get it.
-=Traits=-
There are 2 essential traits:
Pathfinders: -25% research cost for mission research tree
Leap first: Invalid launch window become suboptimal launch window
Without first you will spend too much time researching satellite mission and
without second you would not be able to launch in September. And I did not
find a way to launch in August so it is pretty much your only option.
Anything else - up to you. Taking Unknown entity for -1 trait point and Launch
proficiency I is a strong choice, can save you a bit of time starting from
scratch if you get screwed by random at the launch.
-=Difficulty=-
Very Easy. Did not check for just Easy but it is impossible to get all research
on Normal before the deadline.
-=Actual Strategy=-
Do not start test launch mission. You don't really need to complete it and it
will mess with your timings. Real life lesson right here: you can cut on time
if you skip testing (no, not really).
Instead of starting test launch you should go and start researching Artificial
satellite directly. Then its payload. After payload research will be completed
you must start to build it. Research booster and upper stage while your engineers
assemble the payload, you should complete second one exactly at the same time
when payload will be completed.
If you did everything right it will happens in June.
Start to build rocket itself, with Japan and USA it will also take 2 month and
it will be completed in August. At the same time you will need to research and
then build small landing pad, 1 month for research and another one for building.
So, if you are lucky enough and did not get any +x% building time traits on payload
then you will be able to schedule launch at September, last date before the deadline.
Do it and pray to RNG god to not blow your rocket at launch. You don't really care
about perfect launch, small penalty for mission itself on very easy should not
give you any trouble since you have more than enough turns to complete it no
matter what.
-=What's Next?=-
Well, you basically already won this game, really. On very easy with giant boost to
your support from early satellite launch you can do whatever, there is no competition
(well maybe for test launch if you manage to fail it or forget about it).
For achievements it is a decent idea to go for other time based achievements: Test
Pilot for launching a human into orbit before April, 1961 and One Giant Leap for
completing the Crewed Moon Landing mission before July, 1969.
No real strategy needed on that difficulty setting though, just try to not forget
about them doing other stuff.
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