Spies! Damn spies!

[CheckSix]

I can't help noticing that when you are raided by other tribes that the members of the raiding party have visited your colony previously as a friendly "visitor". It seems obvious that they are "casing the joint" - spying on you, observing your defences or lack thereof, checking out whatever you have that isn't hidden.

Is there any way to prevent this? I guess if you are dug into a mountain, they can't check out your facilities, but can they "see through walls" and know what's in your orbital trade beacon dump etc. When you are contacted by "traders", do they pass this information on to other tribes? Should we avoid all contact with "pirate traders" who see your "wealth", become envious, and send a raiding party? I just want to avoid everyone, and survive on my own. I guess that means you won't get any upgraded weapons, but if no-one comes to raid, we don't need them. I could always play on "Base-building" difficulty, but I do want to be challenged a little. Maybe not as challenged as I am in my current colony.

[Kegereneku]

I know someone who will jump on this...

The solution depend to what you really want :
- If you don't want raids as a major events, as you say there's Phoebe Basbuilder, myself I suggested Themed Storytellers.
- If you want a game-mechanic that allow you to prevent/reduce raid-occurence, we could use for more Diplomacy in later Alpha, or "strength demonstration" and else to decrease the risk of an attack.
- If you want actual concealment, it's a dead-road. As long as someone saw where you lived and spread the words there is no way one can't guess your level of wealth even dug in a mountain.

You could kill a hypothetical 'pseudo-scout', someone appearing far outside the base and who would prevent the next raid (regardless when it happen) if killed (but the event would still be replaced by something nasty).

In the end, the best solution I see would be to get much more events of all variety so that raid become rarer and less important (unless you will it so with a Storyteller).

[lusername]

You're just projecting. There's no actual system of factional "knowledge", and even if there was, the spies would have reported home already. What you're really just seeing is probably just name-reuse of fixed backer names. I'm not even sure the game is retaining specific individual characters, they might very well vanish completely when they deinstantiate upon leaving the map.

[Lady Wolf]

Compared to the very real mechanoid spies that can lurk among your colonists, these kinds of spies are nothing to be overly concerned with. 

It would be neat to see though if you manage to force a raid into a retreat and some get away they will spread the word of your might and no more raids from that faction will occur for x # of days. (Same thing if you release a prisoner after a raid. ) It would give a benefit to letting some escape and freeing members of pirate groups.

[lusername]

It would be funny if there was an option like in the old versions to inspire FEAR by impaling the corpses of the previous raiders out before the colony on spikes, so raiders would have to pass this grisly sight on the way in. I'm sure raiders would have second thoughts after witnessing the gruesomely impaled bodies of the previous bunch on the way in. It worked for Vlad the Impaler!

[Devon_v]

My first colony had a massive graveyard on the approach.  It was not where my fallen were buried. They never got the hint.

[lusername]

Yeah, but having them dead and buried there doesn't quite convey the same message as having then barely alive, dying in agony on stakes.

[Devon_v]

Perhaps not viscerally, but there comes a point when just counting the people who have perished assaulting the fortress before you should give you pause.

Then again if the stories told by the survivors didn't stop them from coming that far...