Infestations kill me

[andz]

I am playing Phoebe Chillout on rough in 354days (no save scumming), and I just got handed 40 insects in my sleeping quarters during night (20 giant spiders). My base has 11 pawns, 3 of them non-violent and 3 carried sniper rifles(=useless). It is an impossible challenge and ended my game instantly. I have all floors smooth and lights in all rooms, except sleeping quarters. Very sad    It feels like there is nothing I could have done and it feels so randomly. All other challenges were very enjoyable, even the 7 giant mechworms with rocket launchers that escaped from the toxic ship wreck behind my turret line. The game was very much fun, but with events like that I feel it is not worth investing another 12 hours in  the next round if it can end so fast even on reasonable difficulty levels.

[amodchecker]

you just got very unlucky, very very unlucky, it will be different next time im sure, next time it will be something like manhunting hares that do you in (yes, there are manhunting hares, and there not the craziest thing ingame)
if you haven't done so already check out the mods section of the forum, theres lots of very fun mods in there some of which are almost essential (depending on your playstyle)
also, there is a speed up button in game if you don't want to go along at minimum speed

for some fun id get EDB prep carefully and go with my tried and true start of 3 colonists each having 2 specialties: research-growing, medicine-social, and mining-construction with all 3 having some interest in shooting, melee, mining, construction, and growing, skip the silver and instead pack extra steel and survival meals plus components, live fido behind and use a megaspider or 2 for the "pets" (they seem to have gotten weaker in b19 but there still a nasty surprise for unwelcome guests) chain shotguns are good weps, 12,500 points are about avg for randomly generated pawns and a good limit to use to have (mostly) balanced pawns


not sure what you mean by "i have all floors smooth and lights in all rooms", as far as i know that doesn't effect the chance of an infestation, just makes the place more beautiful and lets your pawns move and work at full speed, any base thats built under a mountain, even one tile will still have to worry about bugs


give rimworld another try or 4,  its a lot more fun then you might think (also a lot more insane at times)

[Shurp]

A few thoughts:

1) Don't build bedrooms under overhead mountain.  Use the "roof" button to identify roof types; removable roofs are bright green, while overhead mountain is dark green.

2) You have autosaves and old manual saves you can use to bring your colony back from the dead.

3) You can also use Devmode to incinerate any critters that have wiped out half your colonists and are about to wipe out the other half.

[Canute]

andz,
welcome at the unfair world of Rimworld !
You made a mountain base, easy to defend against outside dangers.
And because of these reason the dev's add these infestations.

Since you know about it now, you can plan your next base a bit better.

Basicly there is no way to pretend an infestation, except you made all rooms -30C so no bugs spawn.

[krampe]

The best strategy that worked for me so far is to make an infestation spawn room.

(You can activate the infestation spawn probablity overlay in devmode)
There are certain things that affect the probability:
1. The Area has to be mountainous aka. deep in and surrounded by mountain.
2. No light, light reduces the spawn chance
3. It has to be warm, the area needs to be above -17C°, better around zero.
4. The area has to be big enough

That in mind, dig out a bigger room deep in the mountains, with a very long tunnel sealed off by triple stone doors. Fill up the tunnel with lots of burnable stuff, either wood floor, stools, carpet or my favorite, dead mans clothing. As soon as an Infestation spawns, and they will, torch the fuel and get out. The area will heat up quickly and as soon as the temperature reaches dangerous (for the bugs) levels they will go berserk, attacking the exit and any other reachable wall to get out. Running to the doors they will probably catch fire themself speeding up the process. then just wait until everything is burned and vent the area. BE CAREFUL: The heat can overheat your own base quickly if you don't have any unroofed tile in the vent corridor or lots of coolers.

[andz]

Thank you for the replies. I have no problem with infestations in general to make mountain bases weaker. The problem is just there is no hard counter once it occurs. You can build turrets outside against raiders and traps. You can space out your crops because of blight. You can build batteries for solar eclipse. You can build anti-fire foam things against wire failure. But insects? Not really. I would love to see some kind of really expensive floor, so you can put a defense is at least some parts of your base. Or a building  that needs power and can attract insects on purpose (like a ground stomper). But as it stands currently infestations are the only thing that falls out of the pattern in the sense that there is no hard counter against it. Even a ground sensor would help that gives you a grace period to get the pawns out of the beds in time.

[the_red_kraken]

You can build a defensive room in the middle of your colony with turrents and sandbags. When the infestation occurs, try getting there and fighting it. Its better if the room is kept at -18 celsius so the infestation wont spawn there.

[b0rsuk]

-18*C is very comfortable for colonists in decent apparel (cotton is enough). You might only suffer a work speed penalty. It's doable to keep most of your base permafrosted, and the few critical areas like hospital can be under thin roof.

[Dashthechinchilla]

Everyone has an event in game that drives them into a salt rage. Mine is infestation, and I have taken to disabling the event. Zzzzt is also famous for being rage inducing.

[lowdegger]

The game was very much fun, but with events like that I feel it is not worth investing another 12 hours in  the next round if it can end so fast even on reasonable difficulty levels.

Have you tried The Sims?

[kclace]

Did you ever think of just evacuating the base? I bet if you had acted quickly you could have pulled out and rebuilt on a new tile.

[andz]

I have read that animals and colonists that can not fight count full points in calculation infestation strength. Is that true? I think here is the problem why I did get so many bugs.
I had about 21 labradoodles, but none of them "release" trained, and 10 of them puppies or juvenile (dead after one bite) and then 3 colonists that refuse violence (out of 11). So all these things were counted? (but useless)
I will try a new game with this: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1542424263&searchtext=    and check out if the infestations are still imbalanced in terms of (2 giant spiders + 1 medium bug) vs 1 colonist that can fight, as before.