Custom Start Options

[Limdood]

Playing a hard game, finally got everything going, then you get hit with a combo of Heat wave and solar flare?  There goes your food stockpile. 

Or maybe you're playing in a very cold biome, your initial stockpile is running out, you're looking to go out hunting to get enough food to last until your internal gardens produce or bulk goods trader arrives.  Oops, now there's a toxic fallout and you're stuck in your base for the next 2 weeks...and starve.

I'm sure the hardcore out there LOVE these situations, and it makes a heck of a dramatic game.  Some people, obviously, wouldn't love this though.

As Tynan has mentioned he wants this game to cater to as wide a range of people as possible. 

This very well may already be planned, but what about a colony start up screen with a checkbox for events.
Say you HATE HATE HATE solar flares *whistles innocently*  you could uncheck solar flares and ta-da! you now have a complete game that will never have solar flares.  You could even implement a slider instead of checkbox for frequency.  Maybe you could move solar flare from "occasional" to "very rare."

It might even be possible to flag good events like "rare Thrumbos" or certain tradeship types.  Reduce or increase their frequency. 

As far as catering to as wide a range as possible, This seems to cover the whole gamut: hardcore players could turn off some good events or increase bad events.  More casual players could do the opposite.  Specialist players could even cater to their psychopathic/psychically deaf/cannibal colony by increasing raids, Wanderer joins and pirate merchants to "frequent."  Basically, whatever you want to make the game fit you...OR just leave it with cassandra classic or robby random and play the default game.

I'm not a coder, i know jack-all about game design, but I suspect that it wouldn't be horribly hard to set the new game menu to include that.   

[Mrred1]

Your idea sounds very awesome! I hope the all mighty Tynan implements this.

[quxzcover]

I agree that this would be a amazing solution to alot of problems colony's have. all colony have there weak points and by turning those off you get the relaxed gamers having fun compared to the hardcore gamers with more of a challenge. I really do hope this happens so i can turn the dreaded toxic fallout off so I don't have to clean up 200 animal corpses.

[Alitaria]

+1
I really like this as an idea.
While I personally wouldn't use it all too often. It would be really nice to be able to should I decide I want to inflict as much pain on 3 people as possible. Nothing says "I love you guys" like almost constant heat waves in a desert with frequent plagues and toxic fallouts.