Camping

Camps are temporary, playable maps set up by caravans on the world map. This creates a playable map in which colonists can eat, stabilize, and regroup when someone’s bleeding out, starving, or sick. Camps can also be formed when a caravan would be considered “lost” (like everyone becoming incapacitated from food poisoning), giving the player one last shot at survival. However, a few days after setting up camp, the campsite will be raided.

Summary

Caravans are able to set up camp while on the tile that they are on provided that is not already occupied by a settlement/faction base, quest location, including a work site, or another campsite.

Like a quest site, caravans can be reformed instantly without having to wait for colonists to gather items, animals, and colonists, and traveling to the edge of the map.

When a camp site is abandoned, it will leave behind an "abandoned campsite," preventing the player from settling or setting up a new camp on the same tile. However, the abandoned campsite will disappear from the world map after 30 in-game days, allowing the player to camp in that location again.

Additionally, the campsite map generation uses different map generation parameters compared to settlement maps, minimizing the amount of mineable resource veins generated in mountains, although it will still retain all map features specified for the tile.

Camps can also be converted into settlements from the world map if the player wants to keep the camp map and any structures that they've built on it.

When camping on landmarks and other locations of interest, leaving that location will result in a permanent Abandoned landmark site which cannot be revisited.

Analysis

Camps allow a caravan to gather more food than default foraging would allow. Every campsite generates a new set of animals to hunt and foragable plants like berry bushes, so it is possible to camp on a tile, leave, move 1 tile, camp on that tile, and repeat. Camps also allow caravans to do certain other actions that wouldn't be available, such as surgery and different types of recreation.

Compared to temporarily settling and abandoning the tile, camping allows the caravan to reform instantly like a quest map, and camping can be done after the maximum colony limit has been reached. Abandoned camp sites also reset after 30 days, while abandoned settlements are permanent, making camps better on a frequently traveled trade route.

Because camp maps are generated with less resources, it is not advisable to settle on a camp map. Instead, the player should decide to settle on the tile from the get-go. Map generation parameters when creating a camp map are different from when creating a settlement map, so the maps generated from each may be wildly different.

History

• 1.6.4494 - Abandoned camps now disappear after 30 days.
• 1.6.4518 - Added to stable.