In Mars Horizon, you take control of a major space agency, leading it from the dawn of the space age through to landing astronauts on Mars. Guide your agency through the space race and write your alternate history of space travel - any of the agencies can be the first to land on The Moon if you make the right choices. Manage the numerous challenges faced then and now:
Create your base with launch pads, research labs, astronaut training facilities, and much more
Construct your own custom vehicles from hundreds of combinations
Launch satellites and crewed spacecraft to explore the Solar System
Run mission control as you solve the various challenges of turn-based missions to earn scientific advancement and public support
Explore an extensive tech tree and compete or collaborate with other agencies to plot your roadmap to Mars
Choose from five unique space agencies, each with their own traits, base, vehicles, and spacecraft
Create your own custom space agency
You’re in charge of every element of the journey into space: success rides on your decisions.
Will you push to stay ahead of the other agencies, or focus on testing and research? There are multiple ways to ensure the first person on Mars is under your command. Every choice matters: will you invest in the most advanced technology or take risks in the rush to the red planet?
Using actual events and missions as inspiration, can you handle the challenges faced by real space agencies?
Management is a vital aspect of Mars Horizon. You'll need to design and build the right spacecraft, hire and train the crew, and make strategic decisions as mission control to survive the journey to Mars.
Enter into diplomatic partnerships with other agencies to share the rewards of space exploration, or risk going it alone to gain greater prestige. Construct the ideal rocket from historically-inspired vehicle parts. Hire contractors to construct vehicles and use their unique benefits to gain a key edge over your competitors.
Launching a payload into space is only the first step. In assuming the role of Flight Director of mission control, you'll need to manage your spacecraft's resources and solve strategic challenges in turn-based missions in order to succeed. But beware: space is a very unforgiving environment.
These are the critical moment-to-moment decisions of mission control; do you spend power to fix a malfunctioning antenna or save it in case of an oxygen leak? Perhaps risking that extra three months of mission planning could have avoided this issue?
Mars Horizon has been made with the input and support of the European Space Agency (ESA) and the UK Space Agency.
We’ve collaborated with numerous experts in space exploration from the ESA in creating Mars Horizon. From engineers developing the technology used in Mars programmes, to those designing the next generation of missions, bringing an unprecedented level of authenticity, realism and legitimacy to the gameplay and its scenarios.
Dig deeper into the game via our podcast, including discussions with staff from the European Space Agency and UK Space Agency. Check out the podcast in the Steam forums or the main site.
Tried the demo and was pleasantly surprised how well done it was. I expected some asset flipped mess, but nope. The art direction is simplistic, but at least consistent.
You compete against other space agencies for "being the first" from the start of the space race. In the demo it covered the first "era" of space exploration, and it was already quite in-depth. You could be the first to launch a rocket into orbit, first to put up a satellite, first to orbit the Moon, first to send back satellite imagery, first to send up an animal, and the first to send up a human.
You have to manage how risky you want to be with your launches. The more you use a certain rocket type the safer it becomes, you can also set training methods to raise reliability while waiting for the launch date, certain dates are more risky than others, and to top it off, the weather can also raise the risk, forcing you to delay. If you want to be first at something, you need to take some risks.
Obviously nowhere near to KSP in terms of building cool rockets, it's a full management game instead of a "physics sandbox with a bit of management".
Comes out this Tuesday, but the demo is already available. Should keep me busy for a week.
3 hours in, and love it. No point trying to be first in everything, that's never gonna happen, but if you focus on certain goals, you'll be able to achieve it if you start going for it early enough. I'm sure min-maxer gurus will find an absolute best way to be first at everything on max difficulty, but right now, just go with the flow.
Making the final preparations for the first moon landing as Japan right now. Was first at Mars flyby and orbit, so fingers crossed for first landing too.
And what's amazing right now is the depth. As I said I'm barely at the point where I can start thinking about planning a Moon landing, and I can already see space station missions, several inner and outer solar system missions, etc later down the tech tree, while Mars landing is nowhere to be seen.
Only learned about this game a couple days ago when YTers started uploading sponsored LPs, and now I'm thinking this just might tide me over until CP2077.
Really wish it was a bit more...flashy. The launch sequence is a bit bare bones, they don't even show stage separations.
The payload minigame gets more and more complex as the game advances. At first it was just signal and data points. They soon added navigation as another resource, and where I'm at right now I often also have to deal with overheating, or getting enough boost to my speed, etc.
When the payload reliability is high, it's usually a breeze, but when the failure rate is above 25% it can be rather tricky to achieve the bonus objective even with extra starting energy.
Came out of nowhere and I love it so far.
Last edited by zmed on Tue, 17th Nov 2020 19:11; edited 1 time in total
What are the unique features (buildings? Rockets?) each nation has?
Playing as the USSR, the starting rocket is better than the tier that follows so super easy to get first in all the first era's missions.
Building placement is a real bitch though, so many mountains...
There must have been a door there in the wall, when I came in.
Truly gone fishing.
As far as I could tell the only thing unique to the nations is how the payloads and rockets look. A Sputnik should be the same as an Explorer satellite and I bet the Mir will function the same as Skylab (I assume the first Russian station will be the Mir).
I play as a customized Japan, and all my payloads are European, and the rockets seem to be a kind of mix between NASA and ESA vehicles. The weights and such may vary, but my guess is that they worked around it with the rocket weight capacities so it's balanced.
Speaking of which, the first couple rockets will only get you so far, once you start playing around with heavier payloads that need to go beyond low earth orbit those glorified bottle rockets won't get you beyond the Moon.
And yeah, placing buildings can be a pain. My suggestion is to only remove trees if you have to, try to Tetris around the rocks until you unlock the Era bonus in the buildings tree that gives a 50% discount for removing them (the one you get for researching every tech in that era).
I made the mistake of starting on Easy. Thought it was the good approach to learn the game... but since it was like crack, I got too far in my first play that I don't feel like restarting.
One thing I expected a bit more diversity in was the payload mini-game. Sadly its all the same puzzle. And a bit overpowered since it gives you quite a lot of resources and anyone with a functioning brain won't struggle with it.
Still its a nice casual game if you aren't in the mood for Buzz Aldrin's game or others that have a bit more complexity.
I never failed a payload minigame, but with some low-reliability missions I got close a couple times. Once you are millions of dollars away from being the first at something, and the only side-mission that gives enough money soon enough has a big payload reliability penalty (experimental payload I think) it can be a bit tough. Especially if you're flying to Mars with several stages of this minigame spread throughout the mission (the Moon landing had at least 6 sessions of it, reach orbit, translunar injection, orbit the Moon, landing, rendezvous with the orbiter, and atmospheric re-entry). Can be a bitch.
Although I'm only playing on medium, I bet it's way harsher on hard.
Ok, it took me about 14 hours to reach the point where I could launch the final Mars mission. The amount of minigames in series is nerve wrecking.
At this point it makes every stage of the mission into a minigame. Orbit Mars, rendezvous with the lander, dock with the lander, un-dock with the lander...that's where my attention slipped and allowed the temperature to slip outside tolerances. No freaking idea how many more stages it will throw at me. I'll find out tomorrow.
Speaking of the mini-game, at this point the amount of mechanics present can be quite challenging. Apart from carefully balancing the 4 resources that you need to gather insane amounts of (comms, data, navigation, and thrust), there's also temperature that you need to keep between two numbers, or the entire mission is bust, while the game adds random amount of it every turn. Then there is the alignment, another balancing act, and another thing that gets a random number added to or subtracted from it. But wait, there's more. Then there's radiation. You get a certain (random) amount of radiation every turn, and you have to use specified actions that subtract it, and if you don't remove every point, the payload reliability takes a hit and you'll have worse roll chances for the rest of that stage. Oh yeah, and of course you cannot bank thrust points, certain stages will give you either a constant drain of it every turn, or just a blanket "reset to zero" so you'll have to make sure you do your boost action all together in the last turn, making sure you have enough of the other resources saved up so you can spend them without going below the requirement.
The overheat alarm constantly blaring whenever the temps get close to the upper limit don't help with the stress either.
So it's kind of a hectic series of colours flying at you non-stop, trying to balance them the best you could while the game does everything to break your concentration.
And I love it. They managed to fill the mini-game with obstacles that perfectly fit with the setting, and they introduce them in perfect moments. Atmospheric re-entry is obviously kinda hot, perfect place to put in the temperature gage, and Jupiter is known for its heavy radiation, so the first place you encounter this mechanic is there.
I cannot even imagine how stressful it could be to do this last big mission on the hardest difficulty.
Really hope the game is moddable, giving it a graphics overhaul with high-res textured models and proper lighting and shaders would be amazing.
Now I know why my last mission is so damn hard. Apparently I added a bugged crew member. He supposed to give me 2 energy instead of one whenever I try to recharge my batteries, but the game counts it as two actions, and my last queued task does not trigger on those turns. Yeah, back to the launchpad and will replace that Chinese saboteur.
It's a small miracle I managed to get as far as I did with this bug.
Great game. Definitely got my moneys worth. No bugs that I can think of and it's pretty simple. Good thing that those side missions I can auto resolve as those minigames are a chore.
So my first normal difficulty playhtrough took me 16.8 hours. That includes about 1.5-2 hours of frustrating save-scumming the last mission because of the bug I mentioned before. After I reverted to a save before launch and replaced the saboteur it was just barely harder than regular missions. Regardless, it was enjoyable all the way through, and they even managed to keep the payload minigame kinda fresh by introducing new mechanics regularly.
For £13.49 it was a damn steal. I'll let them iron out a few balancing nitpicks and minor bugs for a few weeks and I'll jump back in, maybe after I'm burned out on CP2077.
I hope it's moddable enough for some model and texture replacement mods. KSP looks downright pretty with a pimped out Realism Overhaul, would be great if something similar could be achieved here as well.
Still on my first playthrough, as Russia So far, I won all first places, except for the initial 2 Mars missions (lost flyby & orbit to China). Landed on the moon in '69, Japan was 2nd and only managed to in '73 (USA only 3rd, also in '73).
Still convinced Russia is easiest, at least for the first 10 years or so. Having only 1 rocket & payload to research, gives you an advantage in the mission research, to gain some distance over other factions, which lasts for a long time.
I saw some discussion on the Steam forum about the AI rubberbanding the research/missions, but I haven't noticed this so far.
Also playing with custom perks;
Failure not an option (double penalty for failed missions, which almost never happens anyway)
Volatile boosters I (-5% launch reliability, which is not a big deal)
These 2 -1 negatives allow for 3 +2 positives;
For the glory (double support bonus for top 3)
Frontier science (25% science bonus for top 3)
Operations specialists (+1 mission slot)
The latter one is, I guess, the best perk in the game, as it's basically a free mission control building from the start, which makes a huuuuge difference. Especially now that I'm on the outer planets, with missions that take 3, 4 years, having 4 mission slots is simply a must have.
There must have been a door there in the wall, when I came in.
Truly gone fishing.
Look for money side contracts, and if there's none just go for low-cost launches so you're still getting research and support. A constant influx of support is pretty important, that's what gives the most amount of money in the long run after all.
Never ever leave a mission slot empty, even if you fill it with jobs barely giving anything, because that minimal reward is still more than zero.
Still convinced Russia is easiest, at least for the first 10 years or so. Having only 1 rocket & payload to research, gives you an advantage in the mission research, to gain some distance over other factions, which lasts for a long time.
I saw some discussion on the Steam forum about the AI rubberbanding the research/missions, but I haven't noticed this so far.
Just checked out the Russian rocket tree. It's virtually the exact same as the western one, except it replaces distinctly US rockets like the Saturn V or the SLS with Soviet/Russian equivalents with minimal differences in carry capacities. All the rest of the models are generic rockets like Titans, Deltas, etc. And if I had to guess the payloads are tailored in such a way that you need to research the same exact slots on the tree as the US/ESA if you want to do the same missions the same way.
As for the rubberbanding, the devs said that the AI sets a launch date the moment it starts planning a mission (before building the payload/rocket), while a player does it as the very last step before the actual launch.
Look for money side contracts, and if there's none just go for low-cost launches so you're still getting research and support. A constant influx of support is pretty important, that's what gives the most amount of money in the long run after all.
Never ever leave a mission slot empty, even if you fill it with jobs barely giving anything, because that minimal reward is still more than zero.
Yea, that is what I've been doing. Colaboration missions are nice because the cost is cut in half usually.
Still convinced Russia is easiest, at least for the first 10 years or so. Having only 1 rocket & payload to research, gives you an advantage in the mission research, to gain some distance over other factions, which lasts for a long time.
I saw some discussion on the Steam forum about the AI rubberbanding the research/missions, but I haven't noticed this so far.
Just checked out the Russian rocket tree. It's virtually the exact same as the western one, except it replaces distinctly US rockets like the Saturn V or the SLS with Soviet/Russian equivalents with minimal differences in carry capacities. All the rest of the models are generic rockets like Titans, Deltas, etc. And if I had to guess the payloads are tailored in such a way that you need to research the same exact slots on the tree as the US/ESA if you want to do the same missions the same way.
As for the rubberbanding, the devs said that the AI sets a launch date the moment it starts planning a mission (before building the payload/rocket), while a player does it as the very last step before the actual launch.
Yeah, apart from the first rocket research, the rest of the research tree is pretty much the same.
The second run is going to be with ESA, it seems their map is a little less... rocky
There must have been a door there in the wall, when I came in.
Truly gone fishing.
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