Surviving Mars
80 Achievements
1,750
0-2h
Mirror, mirror...
Completed Mystery: Spheres
20
18.96%
How to unlock the Mirror, mirror... achievement in Surviving Mars - Definitive Guide
GibGirl
TrueAchievements
TrueAchievements
It's recommended that you *do not* do the final step of those three to activate the sphere until you're ready - read below about the effects, as they do threaten the livelihood of your colony if you're not prepared for the effects.
Once the sphere is activated, it will start floating around the map, and will begin draining energy from various buildings and facilities. It will cause a localized cold wave below the sphere, and will do radiation damage to any colonists until you complete the first piece of research.
As the spheres gain energy, they'll start to replicate. Eventually you'll get access to build Energy Decoys to trap spheres, as they proceed toward an "Event". This event will result in a full-map cold wave - be ready with sub-surface heaters and enough energy for the increased cost, as this can destroy your colony.
You'll eventually get another technology to research, which will allow you to use the Energy Decoys to decompose the spheres. Each sphere decomposition will result in the Decoy and Sphere being replaced with 50 of metals, rare metals, or polymers, depending on your choice. This can make it viable to take your time getting rid of the spheres if you have enough energy and heaters, as the resources earned can be nice.
You complete the event when the last sphere is decomposed. You're awarded a technology, the cold wave ends, and the achievement.
Actually, you only do any one of those three things to activate it.
Komrade_Dusty
TrueTrophies
TrueTrophies
I would recommend pairing this with your USA playthrough since the research base you set up for that will help immensely in this mystery. Don't be like me and pair it with your Russia playthrough only to be relying on the 8,000 units of water in storage tanks which freeze during the mystery and make your problems much worse.
Once you get to 100 colonists a pile of dirt with an anomaly near it will appear. You need to actively begin this mystery by analyzing the anomaly. It will not begin without it.
Once you have analyzed the anomaly you will need to do three things to progress. Scan the anomaly with a sensor tower, try to excavate the anomaly with drones, and try to charge the anomaly with a power accumulator. From my experience the accumulator literally needs to be touching the mound for that to work, and the sensor tower needs to be in range of the mound, so you need to build a drone hub, power source, accumulator and sensor next to it. You can get away with the rover for the excavating, but given the other needs you're better off building a drone hub.
To make the next section less painful build a few power accumulators around your base.
The sphere will emerge from the mound and start flying around freezing buildings underneath it. It will do this until it draws enough power to split into two spheres, which goes much faster if there are accumulators for it to draw from.
At this point research protection from the spheres so you can basically just sit there and let them beat up on you until you can research purpose of the spheres and build the power decoys.
At this point build enough decoys to capture all the spheres. You'll probably have 6-8 by this point.
There will be a countdown going which you can't do anything about. Once it hits zero the entire map will freeze until you research Xeno-Terraforming and dismantle all the spheres.
Once all the spheres are dismantled the mystery will successfully end.
yewjhin
Pick “Spheres” mystery when you start a new game. The mystery triggers when you analyse an Anomaly with the "eye" icon that will appear sometime after Sol 30. There is only one single outcome, and you must deal with all events to complete the mystery and unlock the trophy.
Recommendations:
1) Have lots of spare power capacity
2) Prepare for Cold Waves
At the site of the Anomaly is a Sphere that seems to be embedded in a pile of rocks. You'll need to select the Sphere with 
and perform 3 actions: (1) Use a RC Commander to pierce the shell, (2) Build a Sensor Tower nearby and attempt to communicate, (3) Build some power generators and a power accumulator nearby.
When you have completed all 3 actions, the Sphere will break free and fly to your Colony for the next event, which requires you to research "Sphere Protection". Do that quickly or a few of your Colonists will die. Build a couple of power accumulators and make sure you have some spare power available to charge them, then just wait until an event prompts you that the "Purpose of the Spheres" research is available. Research that and build the Power Decoy building from the Infrastructure tab, it'll trap one of the many Spheres.
By now if you've noticed, the Spheres tend to convert the areas below it into 'Cold Areas', similar to the Cold Wave disaster. This is a prelude to the next event, where a prolonged Cold Wave event will happen, and thus electricity consumption of all buildings will increase by 60% and water in storage tanks will freeze.
As preparation, build Subsurface Heaters near your production buildings and Domes to heat up the area and counteract the cold effect. Once the next event triggers, quickly research the "Xeno-Terraforming" research that appears which costs a hefty 20,000 points. Once the research is completed, you can then dismantle any Spheres that you have captured with the Power Decoy buildings into Polymers, Metals or Rare Metals. You must capture and dismantle all Spheres to unlock the trophy.
Manoha
stratege.ru
stratege.ru
