Vehicles & Drones

Learn how to control Rovers and Drones in Surviving Mars. This guide covers manual control, semi-autonomous tasks, service areas, and maintenance for your vehicles.

All Rovers in Surviving Mars are manually controlled via their Infopanels. You can issue orders to move to a specific map location or interact with map objects like Anomalies or Surface Deposits.

Drones operate semi-autonomously, queuing tasks within their designated Service Area. However, you can take direct control of a Drone when necessary. You can customize your preferred controls and mappings in the Options menu.

Buildings require maintenance over time. When a building's maintenance bar fills, a drone is dispatched to service it. Failure to supply the required resources within a Sol will result in the building ceasing operation. Buildings outside of Domes are more susceptible to deterioration from Martian dust and disasters. Extractors, dust geysers, and rocket activity can spread dust, increasing maintenance needs for nearby structures. Drones can also break down due to dust exposure, but Recharge Stations clean them during charging.

The map is divided into Sectors that must be scanned to reveal resources and Anomalies. You can queue sectors for scanning from the Map Overview. Sensor towers speed up scanning for nearby sectors and offer a smaller global bonus. For rapid exploration, Orbital Probes can be purchased from Earth to instantly scan a chosen sector. Building in unexplored sectors risks placing structures on top of undiscovered resource deposits. Probes can be deployed using the left mouse button or the 'X' key after selecting the option.