How To: Disasters

[Tellaris]

Disasters are always enabled by default and they always occure in colony games and the campaign game.   But how do you manage with these annoying events?   Here are some possible ways of doing this.

Reserch:
Reserching specific technologies will give you early warnings on disasters.   The warnings, while not very long, allow you to move units out of the way and idle structures in the path of the more dangerous disasters.   Doing this also prevents loss of life, saving your people and your morale.   The first technology is Seismology.   After that, Vulcanology, Meteorology, Severe Atmospheric Disturbance, Meteor Detection (Plymouth Only).   In the above order, they give Earthquake warning, Volcanic Eruption warning, Electrical Storm warning, Vortex (tornado) warning, and the final one gives meteor warning, which is available to Plymouth only, as they do not have Observatories.

Satellites:
Only one satellite type will give you disaster warning.   The Edward Satellite, once launched, will begin to give you even more warning to such events, as well as survey every beacon on the map.
There are Three levels of disaster warning.   No warning (It tells you something like "Warning, Vortex detected!" with nothing before.)   Iminent warning ("Caution, Seismic Event imininet"), and Whatch warning. ("Caution, Vortex whatch initiated.")
To get the Whatch warning, you must have a combination of the technology reserched and the Edward Satellite in orbit.   If either is lacking, you only get Iminent warning.   Both are needed for the third level.
The only exception is with meteors.   Plymouth gets detection of these events through reserch.   Eden must have an observatory built and active to gain the third level for meteor warning.   The Edward satellite will still detect meteors in absence of a Observatory (only 2nd level warning is given)

DIRT: (Disaster Instant Response Team)
These buildings are useful for protection against all disasterous events except large meteors, which destroy anything in their immediate vincinity, and Vortexes.   They do, however, still help in these cases.   Try to have under 100% protection for your buildings.   This gives you the full 25% damage reduction.   This prevents damage caused by disasters and reduces the time that EMP weapons are in effect.   They also reduce damage from weapon fire.

Idleing:
Always idle buildings in the vincinity or in the path of every disaster but the Electrical storm.   All the other disasters are capeable of destroying any building in a very short period of time.   Idleing structures reduces the amount of damage a structure takes, and it also prevents loss of colonists, saving your morale.
*Note: Idle buildings in advance of a disaster, there is a short delay for the workers to leave the building.   If you idle it just as the building is going to be destroyed, the people inside will still be lost.

Meteor Defence and the Observatory (Eden)
Meteor defence is the best way to defend against meteor type disasters.   An observatory must be active for meteor defences to work.   They also have the added ability of destroying EMP missiles.

[BlackBox]

I might want to add:

If you see a disaster coming, idle your structures ahead of time. This also is true for attacks on your structures.

There is a "delay" and it takes a little bit for the colonists to "leave" the structure.

If you idle the structure just as it's about to be totally destroyed, the colonists in it still die. So try to do that ahead of time.

Also, I think your morale decreases if you get hit by an EMP missile (it's counted somewhat as a "disaster" in the game, though it works differently)

[Tellaris]

It does as it results in structures being disabled, added to the disasbled bldg. ratio.   So it indirectly causes morale loss.

[Hooman]

Hmm pyschological warfare? Take that agridomes! Take that residences! Take that nursery, university, and GORF!

... rinse and repeat. Hey, you might even be able to starve someone to death.  


I'd also like to point out that many maps have set disaster areas. I've seen maps with a "Tornado Ally" (literally named that in the code) and siesmically active areas. Volcanos are of cource a no brainer inclusion to this rule. There are also usually some random disasters that will be spread out all over the map, just to ensure everything is covered by disasters.
 

[Tellaris]

The way Sierra does it, is to specify certain areas for specific, frequent disasters, as you might see on Earth.   For example, while Earthquakes are present elsewhere, they may occure in a fairly local area (IE techtonic theory where the plates are rubbing against eachother)
Same with the Tornado Alley (such an area does exist accross North America)
Their version of random disasters arn't really all that random, from what I've seen.   There is an almost total random disaster code set up, by both Eddy-B and Zigzag.
In addition, late reply again, and I have not added this to the wiki either!   Might be good idea!

[Leviathan]

Just gave me a idea for WD. It would be cool to creata custom maps just for WD and some maps in one area could be in a tornado or earthquake zone

[CK9]

You should also note that in the colony games where the computer plays eden, you can take out all attack units, then the obsevatory and meteor defence.  Doing so will allow plymouth spiders to capture convecs with an obsevatory kit and a meteor defense kit (I did that a few times, :heh: )

[zigzagjoe]

yeah, once i did something like that, got a load of trucks and eden combat units. ya gotta let them build somewhat to get some variety, tho.

[Mcshay]

Is it possible to capture a Command Center, Agridome, Tokomac, Common Ore Smelter, Structure Factory, trucks, and a robo-miner in that Plymouth mission when you steal Eden scientists? If so, can you create a fully functional base?

[Leviathan]

You can only capture units in op2 with spiders.

[TH300]

Is it possible to capture a Command Center, Agridome, Tokomac, Common Ore Smelter, Structure Factory, trucks, and a robo-miner in that Plymouth mission when you steal Eden scientists? If so, can you create a fully functional base?

Sounds interesting. I'll test it when I reach that mission. (I think, I have a savegame from the end of plymouth6 that I can start from)

A limitation might be the menu that is not quite complete in unit-only-missions.

[zigzagjoe]

Its a unit mission, (no pop, food, etc),so the answer is no, you cant. you may be able to capture the kits *maybe* but you cant do anyhting with them b/c of no pop.

[TH300]

Its a unit mission, (no pop, food, etc),so the answer is no, you cant. you may be able to capture the kits *maybe* but you cant do anyhting with them b/c of no pop.

Of course. How could I forget that.
Would be fun though.

[CK9]

actually, an interesting note on that.  I once captured a tokomak kit and several guard post kits in that mission.  Functional base? never.  gaurding your way out with structures? easy.

[Eddy-B]

is this a "how to" thread on disasters, or another "i can do it better" mission-discussion ?

------------------------
Anyway; for the coders:

How-to (take a quake for example):

Code: [Select]

SCRIPT_API void Quake()
{
   TethysGame::SetEarthquake(57+TethysGame::GetRand(90),1+TethysGame::GetRand(100),1);
}

This code comes from one of my missions, so i'd like to argue with Baikon, that i don't set regions for my disasters. It creates a random quake in the region MAP_RECT(57,1,147,101)  -> in game coordinates (26,0,116,100).
Call this procedure from a random-timed trigger, and you have a completely random quake set up for a map region.

Code: [Select]

// Create random quake every 40-60 marks:
CreateTimerEvent(1,0,4000,6000,"Quake");

[Hooman]

Technically, that IS a region set for disasters. Granted, it's a fairly large region, but it does cause the disasters to appear in that specific area, and not just anywhere on the map.

But yeah, some of the built in missions have much smaller areas defined for certain disasters.

Btw, that's kindof a cool idea having certain disaster regions for WD.