Surviving Mars: How to Get Human Colonists

How to Get Human Colonists in Surviving Mars

Surviving Mars is the latest and greatest from Paradox Interactive, a developer known for their intricate strategy games. Starting out in Surviving Mars, you begin with limited resources and just remote controlled drones and no humans. This being a game about Martian colonization and all, you’re probably wondering how on Mars you get your humans over to the red planet. It’s not hard, but it can be a little complicated until you get it right for the first time.

First, you’ll need to build up your colony to the point where you’re able to produce water, oxygen and power, those are the three basic resources you need to have a functional dome, in addition to living quarters built within the dome to actually house the colonists. Also, you’ll need metals and polymers to actually construct the dome itself. All of that needs to be put together before the dome is ready for humans.

Build power producing buildings such as solar panels and windmills and use power lines to run power into the dome. Read our guide on how to get power if you need assistance with the basics of generating power and running lines.

Next, build a Moisture Vaporator to generate water from the atmosphere. If you’re starting a basic game, you usually come equipped with one prefabricated Moisture Vaporator to get your first dome up and running. However, you really are going to either need a second, which can be brought up via a rocket resupply, or locate and build up on natural water sources using Water Extractors if you’re lucky enough to have them near by. Like power, you’ll need to run a line (this time with pipes, not cables) from the water generating sources, to your dome.

Finally, do the same thing with Oxygen. Create a couple of MOXIEs and run generated oxygen via pipes to the dome. Oxygen is a little easier to obtain as you can build MOXIEs pretty easily without needing any prefabricated buildings or natural resources.

Keep in mind for all of these cable and pipe lines that you’re running, that you’re dragging a clear line from resource producing building or storage to the dome and you get the message that it is connected to the building via one of the access points on the dome (marked by the blue and yellow symbols around the dome). If something is blocking the way, or the ground isn’t suitable for a pipe/cable to run across it, it won’t be properly connected and won’t be functional.

Once your dome is finally all set up and you have living quarters and some kind of food producing mechanism ready to go in the dome itself (all accessed via the build menu), you can begin preparations to launch some human colonists.

Click the rocket tab on the bottom left(marked by a rocket symbol) and choose to launch a passenger rocket. From there, you can select what kind of applicants you’d like to recruit, and then review all the people who are applying to live in your colony. Select as many as you can fit, and then choose to launch the rocket. You’ll need to wait a little bit, and you can check the progress on your menu bar at the bottom middle of the screen. Once the progress reaches 100%, you can click it, and choose where you want to put it. You don’t have to place the rocket down right away if you still have some finishing touches to make on your dome, but keep in mind there is a time limit (which you can check by hovering over the tab for your passenger in the middle menu bar), and if you don’t place it before that time limit expires they will die.

Place the rocket within walking distance of your dome (the game will notify you if you’re within the proper distance), and if all goes well, they should walk on over to your dome and begin their new lives as colonists in your Surviving Mars colony. If something is wrong, the game will notify you quite urgently to fix something, otherwise they will die.

That does it for how to get human colonists in Surviving Mars. For more Surviving Mars guides, and FAQs answered, be sure to search Twinfinite.