Flavor texts warning of impending major events

[Zanzibar]

I'm not sure how the game events are coded, so this may be an impossible thing to introduce, but I thought I'd suggest it anyway.

One thing that's been incredibly annoying to me when I play, is the lack of any sense of warning before an event happens. By the way events work, it feels like the "AI" is just rolling a die, and whatever that die lands on, it instantly triggers.

It'd feel a lot more immersive if many events had warnings ahead of them. Bits of flavor text to warn experienced players about what's to come. So I have a bunch of suggestions for that:


Volcanic Winter:
Text examples: Distant rumbles echoes over the land. Wild animals are more skittish than normal. (May include a few random manhunter animals triggering.)
Visual example: Screen starts twisting a bit. Earthquake. (But with no real permanent harm done from that.)

Infestation:
Text example: "PAWN NAME" complains about unusually large ants in her bed. (Minor mood debuff included?)
Text example: Scratching sounds come from below the ground. Almost as if someone's digging.

Raids:
New building: Radio receiver.
                    Purpose: Can't send messages and requires only a small amount of power. Allows you to snap up other conversations in the local area/space above you. This would allow you to hear the "radio chatter" of more advanced attacks, such as from raiders with guns, pirates dropping in and mechanoids. Tribal attacks aren't affected. They could even be ambiguous, not always letting you know if it's trade or combat on the horizon. As the name implies, you can't use the building for communicating with them, only to snap up warnings.

Text example: "Captain to Sword. X Pods on target in X hours."
Text example: "We're almost at the colony. Should only be X days out."
Text example: 0100000101110100011101000110000101100011011010110110100101101110011001110010000001110100011010000110010100100000011011010110010101100001011101000110001001100001011001110111001100100000011010010110111000100000010110000010000001101100011011110110001101100001011011000010000001110011011011110110110001100001011100100010000001100011011110010110001101101100011001010111001100101110

Blight:
Text example: "Pawn with highest growing skill" reports that leaves are turning oddly yellow in farming areas.

I'm sure some of you creative folks can think of more interesting warnings to give!

[Barazen]

-Pawn with highest shooter skill / nearest to edge of map- Thinks they saw someone/a group on the horizon!
-raids/trades/vistors/passerbys etc

-hunter with highest relevent skill- tells stories of their prey behaving oddly lately, what are they afraid of? -manhunter pack?-

-Pawn has lived in colony at least 1 year- If last year was any indication, an eclipse is due in ( x days give or take 5 for inaccuracy) days time.

-Pawn has lived in colony at least 2 years- If last year was any indication, an eclipse is due in ( x days give or take a day for inaccuracy) days time.

Something like that? Maybe more like, information and warnings are rewards for taking preventative measures or managing to survive long enough?

[Shinzy]

Oooh these could be really nice

I don't know about the ease of implementation for something like those
but barazen's post made me think the warnings could be chance+skill based

like coming weather effects would have very high chance of being spotted before they happen if you've got pawns outside or cloudwatching or whatever

but I don't think you should get warning from all of the events all the time
a bit of surprise chaos is fun :p
but then again so is the impending doom feel

[CrazyCoco]

Oooh these could be really nice

I don't know about the ease of implementation for something like those
but barazen's post made me think the warnings could be chance+skill based

like coming weather effects would have very high chance of being spotted before they happen if you've got pawns outside or cloudwatching or whatever

but I don't think you should get warning from all of the events all the time
a bit of surprise chaos is fun :p
but then again so is the impending doom feel

I'm not sure either, but the game does seem to have a timer until the next event, no matter what. So like you get a raid, and load a save before it, and then it's a different event (like maybe an infestation).

(warning: i have no knowledge of how well this would actually work) - just make that timer decide what the event is, then trigger it's relevant flavor text, and then in X hours, trigger the actual event with a red letter.

[Zanzibar]

Oooh these could be really nice

I don't know about the ease of implementation for something like those
but barazen's post made me think the warnings could be chance+skill based

like coming weather effects would have very high chance of being spotted before they happen if you've got pawns outside or cloudwatching or whatever

but I don't think you should get warning from all of the events all the time
a bit of surprise chaos is fun :p
but then again so is the impending doom feel

I'm not sure either, but the game does seem to have a timer until the next event, no matter what. So like you get a raid, and load a save before it, and then it's a different event (like maybe an infestation).

(warning: i have no knowledge of how well this would actually work) - just make that timer decide what the event is, then trigger it's relevant flavor text, and then in X hours, trigger the actual event with a red letter.

From some experimentation in game, I#m 90% certain that it doesn't track the time to next event in that way. Unfortunately.
If you force-quit the game, through task-manager for example, it will spawn events at the same time when you load, but the type of event can be wildly different. (Raid replaced with a cargo drop. Or manhunter animal. Or literally anything else.)

I don't think the "AI" plans in advance at all. It just seems to roll a dice on a table of potential events, where the state of the colony potentially making a difference for how the odds are weighted.

[nccvoyager]

It is true that the AI storyteller pretty much chooses a random event scaled to your colony size.
That does not preclude this type of an option, however.
The storyteller does "track" the time between events.
This type of a system would have the storyteller "choose" an event that will happen later, at some time before the event actually does happen.