Small Changes to Events & new events (suggestions)

[spatula]

Going to try and avoid walls of text here and really narrow down to strongest ideas.

I was thinking about how the events all take place- it can get annoying with too many eclipses/solar flares, and all seems random and less interesting through repetition (factions helps immensely for keeping raids fresh). Thought up some changes that might be easy for someone to implement and add to gameplay:

- have eclipses happen on regular intervals (more realistic, can expect and prepare)
- have the "randomness" of eclipses be the duration/frequency (ie. some planets have frequent short eclipses, some longer infrequent ones)
- create "solar cycles" making solar flares less/more intense or common/uncommon during longer periods
-  add a research tree or item that allows you to get a countdown in the HUD to the next eclipse/solar flare
- during raider attacks, increase likelihood for neighbor visits and vice versa (more chaos)
- if eclipses are regular, increase likelihood for other events (raids, psychotic waves, etc) during eclipses, making planning for eclipses and predicting them more important to gameplay (think pitch black- when the darkness comes, shit goes bananas)


And I'd love to see more diversity in the events:
- random humorous/comedic (even just text based) events (ie. You throw a small party and it goes overboard quickly after Darkeye spikes the punch. Leonard throws up in the pantry after eating all the potatoes.)
- weird/strange events
- events that happen regularly VS semi-regular events VS rarer events
- events tied into specific higher-level tech items (ie. no risk of nuclear meltdown if you don't have a reactor)
- events that are both negative AND positive (a ship of raiders and resources has crash landed)
- risk/reward events (ie. Darkeye has found a landmine- attempt to disarm for metal?)
- events that give you a lesser of two evils choice (ie. Darkeye wants to execute the prisoner or will leave the colony)


More specifically, on some new events:
-Trade ship convention (an event where trade ships of every type congregate)
-Muffalo Stampede
-Research breakthrough (500+ research points)
-Earthquake (localized, knocks down walls/roof)
-Alien Abduction (colonist missing for 3 days and then returns naked and confused + green light)
-Cactus invasion / invading weeds
-Mole! (recently recruited colonist from a faction turns hostile, power goes out, raid occurs)
-Day of the Triffids (local vegetation emits a strong pollen cloud, any colonists passing through fall asleep)
-Siege!  (raiders camp the edges of the map and continuously spawn and invade for days)


I hope some modders do something like this soon!

[maxfire]

well then, nice eclipse stuff you've suggested.
About displaying in HUD: there's an joy object - telescope. It could be used to make an observations (like a job), which could be done at night time, and had some error (+/- few days), which could be minimised by another observations and, say, rely on research skill, defines threshold of errors. And predictions could be shown in telescope info tab. And during day time colonists could observe solar activity...