New AI storyteller events

[ousire]

Currently it feels like there isn't enough random events for the storytellers to draw from. After a while all the Cassandra-ish storytellers have escalated the difficulty to the point where it's just wave after wave of raiders and wild animal attacks, while occasionally blowing up your stuff with electrical issues and solar flares. Phoebe doesn't have enough "friendly" sort of events to give your colonists, the only non-damaging events being limited to stuff like dropping resources or people, or the wandering travelers. Even the wacky Randy Random runs out of tricks after a while and feels bland with all the repetition you see after a while.

More random events would really help liven things up after a while, either rare or dangerous disasters to shake things up, to really useful events that could help you or add new resources, to even just random things that help the world you're living on feel a bit more alive outside of your little square level area. Here are some of the events I've thought of so far:

Animal Migration: A group of animals (Probably muffalo) travel across the map during the course of their migration. This would act similar to the wandering traveler event, a group of animals spawn at one edge of the map, and travel towards another edge of the map and despawn. They might break down walls or machines in their path, or accidentally trample electrical wires underfoot. This could be very damaging to a colony if a distant field of solar panels is accidentally cut off or broken down by the muffalo, or it could mean nothing at all if they pass by without much harm, or it could even be a boon, providing a sudden increase in huntable animals for your colonists to eat if you're short on food.

Muffalo Breeding Season: Muffalo are normally pretty passive animals. They won't really bother you, even if you get right up next to them, and won't really fight even if you start shooting at them. This would change that temporarily. During the breeding season, the herd would draw close together and stay near each other. Baby muffalo would spawn in the area during this time, giving you extra animals to hunt eventually. But, any people who get too close to the herd during this time would be attacked by angry muffalo trying to protect their children. A threat to any colonist trying to walk past them to collect resources, but pretty amusing if a party of raiders got trampled by angry cow beasts.

Traveling Merchants and Beggars: It seems a bit odd that the only people you see on the planet are murderous raiders, or wandering travelers. Sometimes, traders would spawn on the edge of the map, and travel to your colony to offer goods. This could be a whole group of people, with perhaps a wagon of goods they carry with them. They go to your colony, and would act basically just like the merchant ships. Of course, since they're on the surface, you could try to kill them and steal all their resources, but you'd need to be careful, since they would likely arrive heavily guarded. To deal with issues for pathing, you would likely need to build a structure equivalent to your comms console for them to travel to. A Trading post, or something similar. Otherwise, they could possibly path towards whatever you've marked as your home region, as a way to designate the area as having arrived "at the base"

Alternately, sometime you might encounter lone travelers who ask for assistance from your colony. A single person spawns in the same way the wandering drifters do, except a notification pops up where they ask for a trade. These would be small, simple things, not the menus where you exchange resources like with traders. Basically the traveler says "Please help, my gun broke and I need a replacement. I'll give you [insert X amount of resource] for your [insert randomly selected gun your colony]" or "I need more food to safely reach my destination. I'll give you my weapon for [insert x amount of food]!" You can agree to the deal, or turn them down and send them on their way. You might be able to try and haggle with them, based on a social skill or something like that, and if you succeed you get a better deal, but if you fail they leave and you loose out on the trade. Or possibly even attack you, if they're desperate enough. To keep players from trying to get free stuff by just attacking the traveler, they shouldn't drop their offered resources when killed or arrested.

Wild Animal Famine: The local animal population has accidentally overeaten the wild grass and plants they normally eat, and have started to starve. A group of animals will attack your colony, though instead of attacking colonists like when they go mad, they'll charge in to try and get to your crop fields, where they'll eat every plant they can reach. They'll eat all the food from your fields, leaving them barren, and will try to get to any food stockpiles they can reach, even breaking down doors to try and get to them, clearing out stockpiles of raw food and prepared meals, and even breaking filled food hoppers or nutrient paste dispensers. Once they've eaten their fill they'll leave peacefully, but your colonists may starve if you don't try to fight them off. This COULD be very destructive for a colony, or nothing more than a minor hassle, depending on your level of food and defenses against hungry animals.

Escaping Prisoner/Slave: It seems odd that the only raiders you see in the game just appear from nowhere in the middle of your map to attack you. It'd make sense to me that there would be other bases scattered around the planet, and other raiders already planetside. Sometimes, a group of raiders would spawn on the edge of the map, along with one civilian they're chasing after. The civilian would likely be unarmed, and already injured to some degree, and would likely run towards your base, or the opposite side of the map. If you kill all the raiders chasing the running prisoner, they would be extremely likely to join your colony as thanks for saving them.

Dust storms: A heavy wind kicks up in the area and sends a huge cloud of dust into the air. While the dust storm is active, all humans (colonists AND raiders) would move slower, and their maximum range and accuracy would be reduced. After all, no one can aim or hit right when there's heavy wind and dust obscuring everything. Crops growing outside or in unsheltered locations would likely grow slower or have a chance of dying in these conditions, and any machines like turrets or solar panels may be damaged. Colonists will likely get negative thoughts from being outside in weather like this. Solar panels would either not work during the storm, or work with lowered efficiency.

Rain storms: Similar to the currently existing rain and lightning events, but much much more forceful. It would likely cause  a similar slowness / visiblity debuff like the dust storm, but probably not as strongly. The rain is so strong that standing water would pool on the ground, causing huge risks of electrical damage, and possibly washing away whatever items were in the tile, knocking them around and generally making a huge mess to clean up, having to resort everything and forcing colonists to clean away the mud once the storm ends. Any plants that get flooded by water might die, but any that are growing outside would likely get a huge growth buff. There would be a lot more lightning strikes, causing a higher risk of fires, but since there's so much rain the flame likely wouldn't be able to spread as far. Long story short, a variant of the dust storm that likely causes more electrical problems, but at a chance of getting a LOT more food out of it. It would also be pretty nice if you could research and build lightning rods, to help protect yourself from the storms. Lightning would have a higher chance of hitting the rod instead of the ground, avoiding wild fires, and giving you a quick boost of power if it was attached to your power system.

Tornadoes: One of the rarer, but very dangerous events that could occur in the game. A tornado sweeps through the area, causing huge damage to whatever is in the way. Any plants would likely get uprooted, walls could get smashed down, and any structures would likely suffer heavy damage or be straight up destroyed. Items left laying outside would probably be sent scattered around the map or vanish entirely as they get sucked up, and any living creature would want to get out of there asap. The tornado could do anything from sending people and animals flying, either winding them or damaging them if they hit structures, or even killing them by smashing them into things or sending them flying into the air, with very low chances of survival. Hiding inside your tunneled bases would likely be the safest way to survive the tornado, as it couldn't hit anything protected under the thick rock roof of the mountainside.

A note on storms and tornadoes and such: These events, and any other weather-based events, it stands to reason that your colonists should be able to detect them. After all, storms don't just appear out of nowhere usually, do they? You see them on the horizon as they come in! If these are added to the game, I feel that a new tech should be added to research, called "Weather Prediction", which would give your colonists an advance warning when they occur. They would be rare, but very dangerous, so any preparations you could get would be good. Without the tech, the events would occur with no warning, or very little warning at least. But once unlocked, the alerts will change, instead you would get a message warning you of a coming storm/tornado several hours  (in-game time, obviously) in advance, giving you time to prepare, and then a second warning when the event actually occurs.

Earthquakes: This one I'm more iffy on than some of the other ideas I've listed. This might be unpredictable, or you might be able to build some sort of seismometer to give you a warning in advance. When an earthquake occurs, the screen shakes violently for a few moments. Any of your tunnels built into the mountain would get filled with random patches of gravel and dust that need to be cleaned up, and there's a risk of stone rubble falling from the ceiling. The larger the space dug out, the higher the chance of debris falling, similar to the cave in system already in the game. Solid stone might fall that would need to be dug out again. Any buildings underneath falling debris would be broken, and any people hit would be knocked unconscious and hurt, if not straight up killed. Any player built walls would have a chance of collapsing from the shaking. I like the idea of tiles in the mountainside being broken, cracks opening up, but this would likely look pretty terrible given enough time and earthquakes occurring, so that part probably should be skipped over.

Meteor Shower: Because this is a sci-fi game, and no sci-fi setting is complete without meteors. Sometimes, meteor showers will occur, which are harmless, but give any colonists who are outside during the storm a minor happiness boost for getting to watch the shower occur. It'd be a cute touch if you could see faint lights flashing around on the ground during the night, to represent the meteors moving across the sky. These events likely wouldn't last long, but would give a small amount of happiness that could last a few days for getting to wish on a shooting star, or something similar. Absolutely no threat, and a nice way to get a bit of free happiness.

Meteor STRIKE!: I hope you didn't think that meteors were all fun and games and happy wishes! Hah! Because this is a sci-fi game, and no sci-fi setting is complete without meteors. And sometimes these meteors are angry and wish to ruin your day.  These would be very very rare events, where a meteor was large enough to survive entry to the planet and smack into the ground. A large amount of rock debris would be scattered around the impact site, and the whole area would be set on fire. These could hit anywhere not shielded by thick rock walls, potentially smashing into any buildings constructed outside, or landing in the middle of the field. Obviously, any living thing in the impact site would be instantly killed, and likely would leave no corpse behind, incinerated in the impact. Left behind would be a large irregularly shaped ball of natural stone and ore walls. These may have a chance of having rarer minerals contained within them, like uranium, a valuable prize to collect once the fires and destruction have been cleared away.

Pleasant Weather: Sometimes, a day is just nicer than others. Sometimes, the weather around your colony will be especially nice, giving a constant happiness buff to everyone outside during the time. An especially nice and sunny day might make daylilies bloom better, or cause daylilies to randomly bloom out in the wild, where they would last for a few days before wilting, making your potted lilies give off a slightly stronger happiness buff, and helping make the entire area slightly prettier. These could last for anywhere from a day to a week or more.

Sometimes a nice refreshing and gentle rain would happen, not like the violent thunderstorms we sometimes get. Gentle nice rain would have a very low chance of causing electrical problems, and would give a minor boost to your outdoor crop growth, while giving some colonists happy thoughts for the refreshing rain (some colonists may in fact be turned off by this sort of weather, based on their personality, and get a small happiness loss for the duration of the rain). After the rain clears, you may even get a rainbow across the sky!


More events will be added as I think of them, and any of your ideas are welcome too. But what I would REALLY like to know is, is it possible to mod in new random events into the game by this point (Alpha 2)? I would love if someone could add in at least some of these events into the game if it was possible, I'd be willing to take a shot at it myself if I knew the first thing about modding XML for this game

[Kirid]

Very detailed about features that will be added to some extent I assume. I agree a major problem right now is a lack of random events. The more we get, the rarer each one becomes individually. I really hope this opens up for modding soon.

Variation in the events themselves- Some tornados might only cause minor damage, while others might take out your walls. Some dust storms just get everything dirty, while others blind everyone and can wind burn or suffocate colonists. An animal migration of 1-30 muffalo. Semi-nice days and perfect days. Keeps the player on their toes, not only expecting something random to happen, but for it to happen randomly.

Smaller effects as well- Dust swirls, tumbleweeds, "Smoke coming from the east" before a raider attack

Dreary Days- Everything is rather drab and grey. Some light rain and mist. Everyone moves just a tiny bit slower..

Drought- Food grows slowly and tends to die alot, otherwise not at all. With rimworld they could come up with all kinds of tech solutions. Maybe when water exists. This may be overkill, a dead colony is no fun.

[ousire]

All of those would be great to see, exactly what I had in mind. If it's possible to add in new events in Alpha 3, I REALLY hope someone adds in new events. I might even take a crack at it myself