To my shock, it was up and running. Fully powered and I could even refill my oxygen tanks on it. There was even a bed on board. I had myself a fully functional moving mini base and I was going to use it.

I had put it off long enough. That giant vehicle I'd been ignoring was no longer going to be left alone. I fully expected to need to at least make some kind of repairs on it. To my shock not only did I not need to power the thing. There was nothing wrong with it in the first place.

I did lack the proper skills to take full advantage of the vehicle in the first place. From my best guess, there was a way to drill and collect rocks using it. Along with hauling some cargo around.

I was however more interested in using it as a mobile base. Despite how large my solar panel array was getting. My base was still not making it through the night without running out of power. That might have also led to the first attempt of growing corps to finally die during on early morning.

There were several alerts I was getting about far-away events. From asteroids crash landing to probes. I was hoping the probes were supplies. Instead, they were rockets that had a pen drive on them that allowed me to unlock some technology requirements. Not the worst thing ever. However, I was hoping for so much more.

Along the way, I ended up finding a rover while out exploring. I could not work out how to control it and I did not want to attempt to drag it back to my base. So instead, I dropped a marker down in hopes I'd return one day to save it.

As it turns out there is a remote-control skill in one of the skill trees. I might even be able to drive the rover from my base at some point. That is however quite far down one of the tech trees. One that I won’t be getting any time soon.

Since my character was more than well-rested, I decided to drive through the entire night. It was kind of nice to use up some of the extra resting bonus I got from my character sleeping away almost half a day just waiting for it to be warm enough most days. While there is a cap on that resting bonus my character would need to get sleep the next day.

Driving during the nighttime was sometimes a challenge. While I did have some powerful lights I could turn on. My field of view was quite limited. I would sometimes find myself stuck in a massive rock cropping. These things were almost like land mines. Even more so since the vehicle I was using is quite big it had trouble fitting through some areas.

I ended up arriving at quite a few different abandoned buildings. Some of them were quite small enough that I made a mad dash in the freezing night to quickly loot them. That was till I got to something quite bigger in size. I decided to wait a couple of hours till the heaters in my space suit could keep me warm enough to do a proper search and salvage some items for parts as well.

I did press my luck a little bit and went out an hour or two before I should have. I knew my character would be cold but I did not have to worry about freezing to death. I was kind of hoping taking shelter in the building would have provided some kind of benefit. It however did not.

This building ended up having a second floor that was filled with things like monitors. I even found a couple of units of processed food. Along with the usual building supplies I've been collecting from breaking down things like aluminum plates, steel plates, and motors.

I then opened up my map and zoomed around on it a bit looking for another place to raid. This one almost looked like it was some kind of warehouse at one point. Lots of creates and I even found a first aid kit along with quite a few other things.

I also started to notice that all of these locations were a tablet-type device. Each one allowed me to unlock a requirement the higher tech tree skills had. Sometimes it felt like I was getting requirements as I needed them. Other times I was just getting stuff I would not be training for anytime soon.

With all of the salvaging I was doing, I ended up getting a few different skill points. It was only a shame I advanced to the point I could no longer spend those points while out in the field exploring. I had to return to my base and build special computer systems to then train each of the different skill trees further.

After hitting up a few more sites night had fallen again. This time my character was far too tired to keep going on. I was even getting some kind of warning as if not getting enough sleep daily had some kind of risk of death. Thankfully there was a bed to rest in for the night and I'd be safe from any weather storms that would end up rolling in.

The next day I ended up noticing I was out quite far from my base. So, I opened up the map and found some sites I could hit up for salvaging while taking quite a long way back to base.

Final Thoughts

By the time I made it back to base, I started to install a few more solar panels. I also expanded out my power bank array. I had hopes I was not producing and storing enough power to make it through a full night.

While in the short term, I'd have enough energy to last a full night. As I started to expand my base time again and again, I soon fell quite short on meeting such requirements. I’d need to be going out on quite a few more salvage operations and even pick up my mining game to meet my energy consumption requirements.

Information

Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Occupy Mars: The Game.

Disclosure: A review copy of the game was received for free.

Disclosure: This game was in early access when I played it.