User:Hordes/Events
Events are driven by the currently selected AI storyteller.
Most events that occur create a Letter, an envelope icon on the right side of the screen. Other events will pause the game and pop up a window where the player must make a choice. Usually, the color of the envelope will suggest the severity of the event; blue envelopes are good events, grey is neutral, yellow is bad, and red denotes direct threats.
All event title portions in parentheses below are variable. They can mention location, pawn and faction names, specific buffs or debuffs, or even have countdowns for the time variable events.
Major Threats
Major threats can appear from Base Builder difficulty onwards. They mostly consist of direct attacks to your colony. Their size depends on the raid points mechanic; generally increasing with wealth, colonist count, and difficulty.
Enemy attack
Commonly known as a raid, this event comes in several types. It is possible for multiple raids to happen at the same time, even of opposing factions.
Arrival methods
Tribal-level factions can't use drop pods, so are limited to assaults.
- Assaults: Arrive at the edge of the map, either by walking or by drop pod. They may assault the colony immediately, or stage for a time before launching their attack, giving you time to prepare.
- Center drop: Raiders arrive via drop pod, centered on of one of your colonists. 40% to drop on an unroofed orbital trade beacon if one is present. Drop pods can go through constructed and thin rock roofs, but not overhead mountain.
- Scatter drop': Raiders arrive via drop pod, which have gone "hay-wire" and will disperse throughout the map.
Types
- Unusually clever: Will try and avoid traps and turrets.
- Sappers: Sappers will try and mine or break walls to create the shortest route to a colonist's bedroom.
- Breachers: Appears with breach-type raiders, such as tribals with breach axes or termite mechanoids. Breachers will attack walls indiscriminately, as opposed to sappers having a target. The rest of the raid acts as normal.
Siege
Sieges are a special type of raid. They arrive in drop pods, along with supplies. They will construct sandbags and mortars, and will continously be supplied with food and mortar shells. They will fire at colonists, colony structures, and other pawns they are hostile to. Sieges will directly assault the colony after a long time (a few days), if their mortars are destroyed or unbuildable, or after sufficient casualties.
It is possible to steal a critical material (like components) and prevent them from completing construction. This is largely possible with psycaster using both Invisibility and Skip, with enough heat capacity to cast both 2-3 times in a row.
Strategies to force sieges to attack include the sniper rifle (watch out for other snipers), a psychic animal pulser, or your own mortars.
Infestation
Infestations come with hives and insectoids. Hives will produce insect jelly, but will rapidly create insects, too. If you don't want it to infest the whole area, muster your forces and destroy it. But beware - the bugs will defend their hive.
In order for a regular infestation to spawn, there must be an open area with the overhead mountain roof, within 30 tiles of a colony structure, and a temperature above -17 °C (1.4 °F). Light, and temperatures below -8 °C (17.6 °F) reduce the chance of infestations.
Too Deep: Infestation
Alternatively, insectoid infestations can spawn when actively digging from a deep drill. Insectoids, but not hives, will pop out around the drill's area. These do not have the overhead mountain requirement like regular infestations. However, they are often smaller in number, and are unable to reproduce due to the lack of hive.
Manhunter pack
A pack of scaria-infested animals have arrived, hunting for human flesh. A manhunter pack has 40% more points (i.e. 40% more "raiders") than a regular raid. When killed, scaria has a chance to instantly rot a corpse, which makes them inedible and creates rot stink. A single animal can arrive and the event will still be called a "pack".
Manhunters will roam the region, attacking any human they can path to. The animals can't enter doors, but if they see a colonist run behind a door, they will attempt to beat down the door. If left alive, they will congregate around your base for anywhere from 24 to 54 in-game hours before they all leave.
Mad animals
Immediately drives local wildlife insane, becoming manhunter. Unlike a manhunter pack, these animals were already on the map, so won't instantly rot like with scaria.
Crashed ship part
A large piece of an ancient ship crashes nearby, along with a pack of mechanoids. The mechs will generate dormant, but will awaken when they or the ship part are attacked. While the ship part is still active, they will activate an intensifying negative effect on the map.
Defoliator ship
A crashed defoliator ship kills all wild or domesticated plants in an expanding circle, eventually reaching the entire map. The poison kills crops randomly, including plants grown in Hydroponics basins. The affected areas will ultimately have dramatically reduced chances of maturing simple crops, and slower crops will end up nearly impossible to grow.
Psychic ship
A ship part containing a hostile AI core lands on the map, and projects a psychic drone that negatively affects the mood of all humans on the map. It begins low and grows progressively stronger the longer it stays. Therefore, it should be destroyed as quickly as possible. Colonists with psychic sensitivity traits may benefit or suffer more from its effect. The ship's AI is also capable of emitting psychic pulses that can drive a colonist to an immediate mental break, or nearby animals to madness.
Drone intensifies
If left alone long enough, the drone emitted from a crashed psychic ship will get worse as time goes on. Every 2.5 days the drone gets stronger, from -12 mood at the beginning up to -48 after 7.5 days.