Infestations

[tirramissu]

Either superior firepower or cooking insect insides.

Hello!
How do you manage not to kill own animals in such position?

[ahowe42]

- insects don't like light, they prefer to spawn at dark areas.

Sorry but this is not correct, or at least does not match my experience.  I almost always use mountain bases, and every time I get an infestation, it's in one of my colonists' bedrooms.  Wood-paneled and well-lit.

Andrew

[GiantSpaceHamster]

- insects don't like light, they prefer to spawn at dark areas.

Sorry but this is not correct, or at least does not match my experience.  I almost always use mountain bases, and every time I get an infestation, it's in one of my colonists' bedrooms.  Wood-paneled and well-lit.

Andrew

Out of curiosity, do you have dark rooms inside the mountain? They can still spawn if you don't, but I have found that they do tend to spawn in dark areas more often than lit ones. Beyond that it seems to be that they are drawn towards larger rooms but that may just be a side-effect of larger rooms having more tiles that can proc a spawn.

[KevinHann]

I don't know if this was changed in Alpha16 but I found infestations ridiculously easy to handle in 15. Just dug a huge room far away from my mountain base. They always spawn there. I actually don't bother them at all, spent the last 6 or 8 years with a 30 hive colony living on its own. Of course they often collapse the roof with their constant digging and sometimes the game spawns a new infestation event before the crushed hives are recovered to the maximum - and guess what, the newly spawned hives are... in the very same room as the old ones.

I even built another route to my base that goes through the insect cavern. At the moment there are more than 100 bodies from raiders and allies trying to help plus over 20 incapacitated centipedes there.

The only thing that bothers my colony of 7 is sappers, not that we don't handle them but they are annoying. Arguably the greatest challenge we had to handle is producing enough hay for those bloody animals.

[metheviewer]

Like everything in Rimworld it's just something I've adapted to. All my mountain bases are now planned with airlocked sections which can be closed off and burned down if required. This is my go-to strategy for dealing with them. Recently it happened in my main workshop so I just drafted all my pawns (about 8 and 2 dogs) and they managed to kill all the bugs without getting killed, only 2 light injuries.

Once I made provision for them in my playstyle it ceased bothering me so much.

[Daguest]

Learn about infestations !!
- insects don't like light, they prefer to spawn at dark areas.

Not accurate. I play mostly in large hills, and used to re-purpose the starting shelter/mined part into a barn. Despite using lights, the insects were almost guaranteed to spawn there (3times out of 4), killing my animals without me being able to do anything.
After several of those incidents, my barns are now on the outside.

Which led me to believe it's related to dirtiness. Since barn are always the dirtiest part of the base, no matter the cleaning done due to the animals.
I think light play a role, but much less than dirtiness.

[zandadoum]

Learn about infestations !!
- insects don't like light, they prefer to spawn at dark areas.

learn not to make shit up like that.

this is not true at all...

tell me, is there anything brighter than a sun lamp (except the real sun ofc)? no, right? then why are insects always spawning in my underground greenhouse, hm?

[ChimpX]

I would like to see a researchable technology like a 'seismic detector' or 'ground-penetrating radar' that would give you a bit of advance warning that the bugs are coming.

But otherwise I think the infestation mechanic works pretty well with the state of the game at present.

[Don-Cooper]

To add time pressure on the colony:
1. Munching.
Gradually, insects will bite a bit from captured colonists. Arm, leg, eye etc until he is dead.
2. Alien infestation
Classic chestbuster hatchery. Colonist is being used as a hatchery and must be saved and then operated to extract insect larvae.
3. Brood
Colonists are placed in suspended state and wait until a brood of insects will hatch. If not saved in time brood of small insects will appear devour them.
4. Drones
Upon capture colonists are injected with parasite\venom which makes them a slave, tending the hive. They can be either docile or agressive when protecting the hive. Curing is either operation or waiting until subjugating venom will wear off.

I love this idea, this would certainly make hives more interesting, and require the player to put more thought into what they are doing, as well as up the pressure!

[Cimanyd]

This thread has been posted probably 100 times and its' always the same complaint.

The people that have this problem are digging into the mountain too early. You CANNOT colonize and mine into a mountain and set up hospital and bedrooms early game if you want to survive. In fact, never put your hospitals in a mountain.

I think I've finally figured out my problem with this. This trailer was probably most of the reason I bought RimWorld.

0:15 to 0:41 did a great job showing the feeling of starting from scratch with 3 people and slowly making a colony... by digging into a mountain. So that's what I always did, until infestations showed up in A13.

The stated purpose of infestations was to balance mountain and non-mountain colonies. Instead, after my first few experiences with infestations, it's just made me go "no more mountain colonies, not worth the trouble/risk." The advice in this thread is not convincing me otherwise. At least sieges have some warning time when they show up, walk to the place they want to set up, and build their mortars and sandbags.

The "growing colony" part of the newer trailers (here's the current one) starts out in the open, like you're saying, and then expands, but shows rooms that get dug a little bit into the mountains as it expands. This seems like the normal thing to do, but is really a newbie trap, since unless you painstakingly check each space to make sure you have no overhead mountain, you'll have infestations pop up in that room, and since most of the room is not under overhead mountain, it's vulnerable to mortars and infestations.

[LordMunchkin]

IMHO it's not a fun mechanic at all. There's nothing you reasonably can do to mitigate or prepare for it besides just not build into mountains. It wouldn't be so bad if melee fighting was balanced but it's just not (pretty much suicide for even my best melee fighters to fight against the warrior bugs). Mines can work well if you design your entire base around closing off hallways and lacing them with the things but it's a pain and expensive.

[Hieronymous Alloy]

Infestations would be manageable if the insects were either much more brittle OR didn't do as much melee damage as quickly OR gave you more time to react.

As it is, it's like facing a 100-raider pod-drop every time.

[Sirportalez]

How about that:

- Hives spawn with creation of the map inside mountains aka closed caves
- when you dig near that cave you get a message and the event Investion starts (bugs spawning inside the cave, intensity maybe depends on your colony strenght)
- if there are too many colonists near it, bugs get aware and start targeting you by digging straight to the trigger point
- in default mode bugs (when they were spawned) just dig around and maybe they breach your base but they don't get that aggressive like near their hive (the shouldn't be able to dig anything else than stone!)

additional thoughts:

- alien eggs, where more and more bugs spawn if you let them
=> closed alien eggs give jelly and biopolymer, opend give biopolymer only
=> biopolymer could be used for cool new stuff, I don't know
=> maybe you get more biopolymer from opend eggs because it's more fun

- rare minerals/elements (jade, gold...) inside the cave to mine

- you can only get jelly by destoying hives or eggs

- bugs can plant special white mushrooms like ants do for food
=> they are non-edible for humans and animals (maybe mechs like them, don't know, didn't ask them)
=> they can be used for cool new stuff, not necessarily like devilstrand
=> they don't need light, just bug-poo

- the ground of the cave is infestated as well like in alien, so it's covered with green bubbles or whatever
=> the triggering zone around the cave when you mine a rock is coverd as well, so you have an optical warning besides the message

- for security you can install seismic sensors that creates a message if a bug digs too close to your base

All in all what you get:

- threat of infestation is still there if you dig too much, but it's more controllable
- noobs get a warning and don't get raped anymore
- two awesome new materials
- ???
- loot (profit)

[taha]

Loads of stuff...

I have no idea what are you smoking, but you really should change the dealer.

What you really get is a spawn point at the start of the game, in other words the potential to make the game unplayable in less than 1 game year due to increased number of creatures. Adding extra worker actions (planting / harvesting) increases the script load and eats CPU cycles. Also useless extra materials. More load for

Bleah, why am I even trying? Now if I come to think a bit I realize you sound like a 14 yrs old who saw too many movies. It's great, kid, unleash your creativity. What else do you have in mind?

[dosemeter]

I think Infestations should take place everywhere on the map....not just mountains.