Have you ever let an infestation develop?

Started by PatrykSzczescie, June 02, 2022, 01:27:50 PM

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PatrykSzczescie

Have you ever let an infestation stay on your map, trying to take an advantage of it?

My current colony is settled in large hills with caves. I built a wall chunk on the corner of the map and an infestation occurred in the place I wished to spawn. The infestation expanded until there were 30 hives then stopped spreading. Insectoids mine chunks from time to time causing roofs to fall. I'm managing a colony leaving the infestation on the corner not letting my colonists or animals go near there without my supervision. This type of gameplay has many benefits:
- When a raid occurs, I can construct walls so raiders pass through the infestation cave, dying to insectoids.
- Caravans passing through the infestation cave will also die to insectoids without goodwill penalty, sometimes leaving some precious loot on the map, eventually letting me rescue some for goodwill boost.
- Insectoids sleep during the night, letting colonists grab some items from caves such as jelly, caravan loot or the base yield of mined resources.

The issue is, though, that when an insectoid is provoked, all insectoids on the map assault the colony if they're not occupied by their enemy. They calm down after a short period of time when not being attacked so the distance and walls keep the colony safe. Each colonist, tamed intelligent animal, raider, hungry predator, trader, passing through traveler or fire (let me know if they are more causes) may result in insectoids running to the colony - it accumulates if they're keep being attacked to the point that they may reach the walls and break through, especially after they calm down and mine walls instead of attacking them, causing more damage to them than skilled builders would be able to repair. This also can be problematic during the night - when they calm down, they may decide to sleep outside instead of returning all the way to their cave, being closer to the colony, which is detrimental to the colony if another accident happens such as incapacitated enemy waking up.

And now I got into this problem when I accepted refugee quest while there was a caravan on the map and it caused raids to trigger insectoids that attacked single walled base (should've built thicker walls). In the end, I forced my colonists and intelligent animals to leave the map. The colony is quite numerous but they settle elsewhere nearby without anything except for dishes. I left plenty of pen animals, high quality medicine, devilstrand (no apparel made yet), warm clothes (it's cold snap on both maps right now and half of colonists don't wear winter apparel) armor and fuel in the base. I want to settle back but there are a few of insectoids inside the base that feed on prisoner corpses, stuff in freezer and I don't know what else - I can easily kill them but it'll make the whole infestation move to the base and I don't want to fight the whole infestation. Any ideas?

Ark

I once tested something like that. Infestation in one corner, small base in another. After a couple of years the perfect storm happened and the insects completely destroyed the base.
Launched drop pods from another colony, loaded with boom animals, incendiary shells and chemfuel, burned the hives. I suppose you could use flammable tainted clothing as extra tinder.

iller

I agree very much that just because the Insects are hive-minded.... that shouldn't mean they're also magically Telepathic and able to transmit distress/aggro back to the entire Hive through overhead mountain & Solid walls that not even solar flares or 5g Cell phone signal could penetrate