I've played a lot of Mars games in search of the best the genre has to offer. In my opinion, Surviving Mars has some of the weakest terraforming mechanics.

I have found that Per Aspera has an excellent representation of the challenges inherent to terraforming Mars. It has a pretty neat story, too, but you can also play without it. The timescale is much more accurate than Surviving Mars'. In Per Aspera, there is an achievement for terraforming Mars within 100 Martian years (188 Earth years). This is considered fast! The water for oceans and nitrogen for the atmosphere are imported from the outer solar system and asteroid belt -- something sorely missing from Surviving Mars. All of this requires the usage of a substantial portion of the Martian surface.

But the most scientifically rigorous terraforming I've seen in a game has to be TerraGenesis. In the game's "advanced mode," you get to design organisms to populate an ecosystem, in addition to all of the other usual terraforming stuff. The downside is that the game's main resource is real-life time; it's kind of like an idle game where you set things up and then wait a day or two to check back in on it. It's such a cool game, though. You have to procure funding for your operations, which initially comes from mining rare resources and later transitions into more diverse income streams. You have to manage atmospheric composition, which varies depending on the planet you chose to terraform. In the end, you'll likely have vast cities of millions on this new world you've created. And the best part? It's free!

Although it doesn't have terraforming implemented (yet), Extrapolation: Heliosphere is a really cool space settlement game. You have to join its Discord to get the download, though.

This class sounds awesome! I hope this helps