You land alone, with a pod and a suit. Mars does not care. Turn regolith into iron, iron into machines, machines into an industry that covers the horizon - one belt at a time.
Not a skybox. Not a level. The entire planet at 1:1 scale, streamed live from real NASA MOLA/HRSC elevation data. Walk out of Gale crater, drive the length of Valles Marineris, put a mining outpost on the polar ice cap - it is all there, at true size.
A full Martian sol: 24 hours 39 minutes of sun, computed from your real longitude and season
Simulated weather: dust storms that swallow your base, morning frost, seasonal change
The night sky is real - stars, and the sun with no atmosphere in the way to tame it
Drills feed belts, belts feed smelters, smelters feed assemblers. Wire it all to a solar grid with batteries for the night - and watch the brownouts teach you humility. If you have ever whispered "the factory must grow", you are home.
Burner and laser drills, smelters, assemblers, splitters, storage
Power that behaves like power: solar output follows the actual sun, batteries carry the night
Fluid networks: water drilling, electrolysis, and methane synthesis via the Sabatier reaction
When belts are not enough, lay rail. Stations, schedules, and wait conditions work the way factory players expect - name your stops, set the conditions, and let battery-electric trains haul ore, goods and fluids between outposts while you build the next one. Or take the rover and leave tracks in dust nobody will ever sweep.
Oxygen runs out. Water runs out. Night gets cold and storms cut your solar to nothing. Every trip away from base is a calculation - and every machine you automate is one worry that never comes back.
Craft science packs, grow your lab, and climb a tech tree that takes you from hand-mining to laser drills, railways, rovers, jetpack upgrades and industrial chemistry. Everything persists: your factory keeps its state, your footprints stay where you left them.
