Per Aspera: Tips & Tricks (Beginner' Guide)

Per Aspera is a massive planet-sized city builder and terraformer. Before you begin your journey on Mars, take a look at these tips and tricks we wish we knew before beginning the game!

Out of power?

If you’re stretched for power due to overexpansion or lower solar efficiency, try turning something off! It’s likely you have a structure or two that isn’t as crucial immediately. While you get back on your electrical feet, flip a few switches and let the other buildings rest. They’ll be there when you need them again. Another tip: build more surplus power! You can almost never have enough power.

Think before you build: what do you need?

You’ve just unlocked a new factory and you need it NOW. Before you plop down that shiny new building, take a moment to look at its dependencies. What kind of mines or factories does this new structure need? Make sure you actually have the resources to put it to use! We suggest building those dependencies up first before getting carried away.

Get your priorities straight.

Have an urgent need for more Electronics? Running out of Parts? Use the Priority button on structures and your Workers will, you guessed it… prioritize that building! Once the urgency passes, don’t forget to deprioritize these when you’re done! Blue lines indicate the status and location of the pending resources.

Get the lay of the land with Aerological Scanners.

Your future self will thank you if you build several Aerological Scanners early on! It might be hard to believe, but eventually your colony will stretch across the entire surface of Mars. You’ll need to diligently scan the land ahead of time… unless you want to discover that you’ve built your newest buildings on top of crucial resources you need!

Give your buildings some TLC!

The Red Planet is well-known for its frequent dust storms. Those gritty particles are not good for your buildings; the dust covers vital machinery. Between that and the radiation, it’s absolutely pivotal that you build maintenance facilities. Without maintenance drones repairing your colony’s buildings, production levels will plummet. In the worst cases, they may crumble into inoperable rubble! Build these facilities near each other and they’ll connect, allowing drones to move freely between facilities and help out wherever they may be needed! (Blue lines in the Maintenance Lens indicates connections)

Don’t overload your sectors!

Look at your traffic lens to evaluate your transportation’s efficiency. A red sector is a loaded sector – and it’ll suffer in the productivity department. This can harm the flow of resources or even result in your base slowly falling apart. Ensure you have enough populated worker hubs to mitigate this issue.

Be kind to your humans.

Colonists will leave unless you meet their needs. A human with food and water is a happy Colonist and happy colonists provide valuable research. If they run out of these essential resources they’ll pack their bags and head back to Earth. If too many colonists leave, it can severely hamper your research time!

Speed up large Special Projects with multiple Spaceports and Space Elevators.

Special projects like Colonist Migration from Earth, or importing GHG can be done an infinite amount of times. You can have multiple Spaceports working on the same project at once, which greatly increases efficiency or volume. By not limiting yourself to a single spaceport or space elevator, large projects which require multiple launches can be sped up massively.

Use the structure tab to display info about all of your buildings!

In the beginning of the game, you can manage each structure individually… but that won’t be true for long. Eventually you’ll have over a thousand buildings! Use the structure tab by clicking the building icon in the lower left of the screen. This tab helps you quickly review information about all of the structures in your colony. This can be handy for implementing upgrades or shifting priorities. You can also quickly locate a specific building or group structures by type (e.g. terraforming or military.)

Lenses are your Friendses

Lenses provide invaluable information about your base and Mars. Try them out! There are views for traffic, power, maintenance, aerological scans, weather, and even combat. Get to know them and remember to check in periodically!

Be wary of Natural Disasters

Sandstorms, Dust Devils & Meteors are only some of the threats you’ll face on Mars. From inhibiting solar power generation to transforming your buildings into rubble, disaster could be looming around the corner. Consider building batteries to compensate for lower power efficiency or prepare to repair a collapsed building if it’s in an impact zone.

Terraforming Mars takes time

Nobody said this was going to be easy, or fast. Use the time controls to speed things up or down as needed. Just make sure you don’t zoom past anything crucial!

Reduce your commute: improve your infrastructure!

Does it take a long time to travel across your colony? Improve your infrastructure! If you find yourself waiting on resources for too long, especially after prioritizing a building or building more work hubs, it may be time to improve your infrastructure! Hyperloops are especially useful for connecting far flung landing sites together. They allow your workers to move across Mars in the blink of an eye and connect your colonies together

Plan your tech tree.

Not being able to construct new buildings of spaceports because of ISA Tech limits can be a burden, so plan ahead and research in advance which area you need to expand most. If you want to prioritize research, look into expanding the Biotech’s enhanced colonies. Want to beeline it to space elevators? Then plan to research the Space tree. Our recommendation is to think about which areas your colony is struggling in and find tech that alleviate your pain points!

Take a deeper look at your colony’s resources!

You can examine each resource’s production, demand, and stocks by clicking directly on them in the bottom of your screen. You can also allocate what you’d like to use that resource for. For example: is there a colony water shortage but too much oxygen? Consider increasing the food manufacturing and lowering the oxygen release manufacturing!

Never stop expanding.

Running out of resources can be a pain. Always look to the horizon for new resources and build new mines often. Once a mine has finished extracting all of a resource, it’s time to scrap it and move on. Hasta la vista!