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["I told you this wouldn't work!"]

"I told you this wouldn't work!": 1-2 wounded space marines/assassins/vatgrown soldiers enter from one side of the map and run for the other, trailed by a group of raiders after they failed to kill the local raider king. Killing or chasing off the raiders will give you a relation bonus with whoever sent the assassins, and the guys you save might join the colony.

Slim Pickings: A deep space miner/colony settler stops by your colony and asks permission to mine some of your minerals. He sets up camp somewhere and mines for a couple days, paying ten cash for every unit of scrap he mines. (A normal 30-stack of scrap from one tile will give a 300 cash payout, for example).

A Sign From the Heavens: A ship in orbit ejected a magazine before it exploded. The magazine crashes on the map, dropping scrap metal, slag, and missiles. The impact detonated a couple, causing explosions and setting fires.

Humanitarians: A group of psychos/wild animals have developed a peculiar taste. They run in, grab some bodies from the ground/graves, and run out with their new-found lunch, fighting if challenged by your colonists. Causes a happiness drop/fear increase, more severe if colonist's bodies were stolen.

Tinkerer: A bright spark begs you for food and medical supplies after he was robbed by raiders. He says he can improve one of your guns, making it more accurate, giving it a longer range, or increasing the damage.

Specialist Raids:

• Terrorists: A few raiders and their guards enter the map and start burying mines/planting bombs against your walls. Once they're finished, they flee the map and the bombs detonate. Now it's your job to find those mines before someone steps on one.
• Hitmen: A particular assassin/con artist of yours has drawn the wrath of a powerful leader. A few skilled raiders with high-end weaponry attempt to sneak into your colony and kill a specific member before fleeing.
• Spy: A raider posing as a passing traveler enters the map. If arrested, he breaks out of the prison and plants bombs on key targets (batteries, geothermal generators, comms console, nutrient paste dispenser) before attempting to escape.

Vatgrown con artists, for sure. I get one per game, at least. I usually keep these guys in reserve once the raiders come and send them out to grab wounded raiders/colonists. No loss if they get sniped.

Melee weapons would be fun. Drop your gun and bust out the brass scrap knuckles/cheap spear/power sword and work over your enemies. Could be useful inside your base or suicide charging a sniper's cover, but would probably end poorly if used on a mass of raiders with M16s.

Turrets become almost totally useless very quickly, at least in my experience. A couple of raiders armed with pistols can slag a turret by themselves with maybe one of them being killed, and after that they just become short-term bullet magnets. Especially when the raiders pack multiple M24s per attack, then it just becomes hilarious. I use one or two in the early game when colonists are in short supply, then scrap them and go with a nearly full-colonist defense aside from some minefields placed in spots I can't spare the soldiers to cover in a fight. If you're going for how long you can survive, by day 200 Cassandra Classic will be sending gargantuan mobs of raiders armed with M16s and M24s that will break any colony in half, so I like to use a bunch of bombs to thin out the hordes before we clash.

When I first played this game, my first multi-raider attack had me going "Holy shit! This is amazing! They spread out and take cover tactically!" The enemy AI and cover system is something you won't see in many base-builders like this, for sure. I like it a lot, and my bases make good spots for pump shotguns and fistfights. Turrets, with their scrap cost, range that is useless against later raiders, and the amount you can fit in a space before they start blowing each other up, aren't terribly helpful. Bombs are something else, though, since it takes two to kill 10+ raiders for 70 scrap.