Crashed ship parts
Crashed ship parts drop as part of a map Event. A crashed ship part, accompanied by small fires if the surrounding tiles support fire, lands at a random unroofed location when the event triggers. These ship parts carry one of two negative effects, "psychic" or "defoliator" (see below).
In order to remove the effect, the ship part must be destroyed; but, predictably, it's not just as simple as that...
Mechanoids
Upon landing a group of mechanoids will be surrounding the ship to defend it. The size of the group is dependent on colony wealth and storyteller difficulty (see raid points). They will spawn in a "sleeping" state, and will awaken only if they or the ship take damage, or if a player-built structure is placed too close to the ship part. Unless pursuing nearby targets, they will only move about 30 tiles away before returning to the ship part, and not all will move as a unit to chase a threat. Once the ship part's health drops too low, however, all mechanoids will simply charge your colonists like a normal raid.
As long as nothing is damaged or built too close to the ship (see next), colonists can freely move and work among the sleeping mechanoids, and can even fight the fire if they are not designated to "Flee" from danger.* Note that mechanoids are extremely resistant to the level of fire that open areas support (though not to extreme heat in closed areas), so these initial fires will not damage or wake them.
- (* A non-drafted colonist either "Flees", "Ignores" or "Attacks" when they see "danger" depending on a setting in the colonist's Info Panel, top-right, in the middle of the row of icons there. To fight these fires without waking the mech's, you want "Ignore".)
The "no build" zone is a bulged rectangle, with a base size of {14 wide × 9 high} plus an extra 1×6-tile row along the top/bottom of the ship part and an extra 1×3 column along each side. Placing any item or structure within this radius, such as a wall, sandbag or spike trap, will trigger the ship and mechanoids as if it had been fired upon. Objects placed or built outside of this radius will not affect it, so, if the threat is not immediate (i.e. the negative mood or plant-killing can be endured for the time being), the colony can build defenses prior to triggering the ship. IEDs and spike traps can also be placed around the ship to instantly damage any mechanoids that emerge.
Because of defending mechanoids' tendency to stay near the ship part, pawns equipped with sniper rifles can "kite" the defenders from a safe distance. This is done by advancing to fire at mechs around the ship part, retreating before they come close enough to shoot back, and advancing again once they return to the ship part. This is particularly effective against the slow-moving centipedes, whose firing range of 27 tiles pales in comparison to the 44.9 tile range of sniper rifles.
Waiting for passerby traders or raiders to engage the ship may be a viable strategy for colonies without access to stronger technologies such as mortars. However, the mechanoids must be woken up first by damaging the ship or building in the ship's vicinity.
Loot
When destroyed, either variety of ship part leaves:
- 60 steel
- 10 plasteel
- 1 component
- 1 advanced component
This is in addition to any parts you can salvage from shredding defeated mechanoids.
- Minor bug: When the ship part is selected, there is a greyed-out "Deconstruct" button that, when mouse-hovered, states "You must defeat a mech cluster before you can deconstruct it" (sic). This is misleading, as you cannot "deconstruct" a Crashed Ship Part, and there is no deconstruction return defined in the game code.
Psychic ship
Crashed ship parts
This ship part contains a hostile AI persona core that emits a psychic drone that negatively affects the mood of all humans on the map. This drone begins at a "low" -12, but grows progressively stronger the longer the ship part remains, therefore it is advisable to destroy the part as quickly as possible. A colonist's psychic sensitivity traits may worsen or lessen the effect of the drone.
The AI is also capable of emitting concentrated bursts of psychic energy, driving one colonist to an immediate mental break, or a localized blast that drives all animals in the immediate vicinity insane.
Psychic drone stages
| Psychic drone (level) | Onset | Mood effect | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Low | Initial | -12 | It's like a scratching at the back of my mind. A voice, whispering. I can only make out a few words, and I don't like them. |
| Medium | 2.5 days | -22 | I feel like someone is always just out of sight, speaking to me. The voice changes but the message doesn't. I'm supposed to hurt people. Make it go away! |
| High | 5 days | -30 | The voice is unbearably loud. It's hard to concentrate. I find myself talking back to it, yelling at it. But it just keeps shouting! |
| Extreme | 7.5 days | -40 | My heart pounds and I'm sweating. All I can think of is hurting and suffering and all these enemies around me. They're my nightmare, my nightmare, my nightmare... |
Defoliator ship
Crashed ship parts
Relatively harmless compared to the psychic ship, this ship part slowly poisons an expanding radius of ground around it, destroying any native flora and cultivated crops. This ship will also kill the anima tree
.
The effect has a maximum radius of 100 tiles; the current area of effect can be seen by clicking on the ship part. If your crops are beyond this range and the mechanoids are not awakened, a defoliator ship can be safely ignored indefinitely.
- Note that this event was once called a "poison ship", and references to that may still be seen in the game or this Wiki.
Version history
- NOTE: As of the 1.1 update, mechanoids now immediately spawn in a dormant state around the ship, as opposed to previously when they would spawn only as a result of the ship taking fire. Other than triggering a "Flee" response in your (non-drafted) colonists if they get too close, everything else, including previous strategies for combating them, appears to remain the same since the Mechanoids stay in that dormant state until provoked.
- Some version ? prior to 25 July 2020 - Poison/defoliator ship no longer generates snow in the poisoned area.
- Version 1.1 or prior - poison ship renamed to defoliator ship.