blooooood flowers

[Lil brekky]

Man! Blood Flowers. What a concept!

This obstacle is a bit infamous. But I'm rubbing up against a mechanic, or lack thereof, that I think makes this event a lot more difficult than maybe it should be or was intended to be.

the standard line of play against blood flower/living matter is to fully stock food production output, then fire food staff to "hide" a stockpile of food where the flowers cannot reach it. then you can just rehire a worker to transport the food, either dripfeeding it to hungry colonists, or saving it to feed everyone after the blood flower is solved and the food-disappearing act goes away.

I have a blood flower going right now on p20 and it has ripped through all the food in the warehouse. I was waiting to "free" my hidden stockpiles until near the end of the event, but I was staring down 8/14 hungry villagers, a storm, and -12 resolve for my highest population species, so I liberated 20 porridge from my field kitchen for people to eat.

in 60 seconds, not a single bowl of porridge was eaten by a colonist. not a single one of these allegedly hungry fools decided to take a break perhaps the only time in my ATS career I have WANTED them to take a break. I'm only posting about it because the same issue applies to every possible solution other than instantly buying all 70 roots from Sahilda or something to outpace the debuff. quickly gathering raw food doesn't help. stockpiling food doesn't help unless you can make it more than ~100 and release it waves in the hopes that some hungry guy might take a break in time. and I've surely had blood flower encounters in the past that were perfectly manageable. this one felt a little unfair.

I guess my critique is that, as far as I know, nothing in-game, outside the encyclopedia, and besides the coffee cup symbol, actually communicates break schedules. if I don't know when which guy is breaking, or can't forcibly send people to their breaks, then I can't articulate strategic decisions.

[Bukkfrig]

I'm quite sure the intended way to handle it is just to start extra food production and soak the losses. And then to get (partially) compensated by the extra event loot. I was never a fan of any of the strategies people came up with to prevent losing food by giving the appearance of no available food, and the massive disruption to the workforce it causes.

[Hauw2x]

Tough game, tough situation. I can only hope RNGsus will be more kind to you

I recall similar situation where I was forced to save scum to learn of the game mechanics. It was when I tried to tear down a Leaking Cauldron. The game tooltip simply does not provide enough info, I thought it was 1 cyst every 20 food produced during event. NO IT WAS TOTAL FOOD PRODUCED and I saw hilarious number of cyst spawned

[Lil brekky]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Hauw2x:

Tough game, tough situation. I can only hope RNGsus will be more kind to you

I recall similar situation where I was forced to save scum to learn of the game mechanics. It was when I tried to tear down a Leaking Cauldron. The game tooltip simply does not provide enough info, I thought it was 1 cyst every 20 food produced during event. NO IT WAS TOTAL FOOD PRODUCED and I saw hilarious number of cyst spawned

That one got me good a few days ago. I took every worker out of my cooking buildings, but apparently planting crops counts as producing food

[koboldlord]

I don't think the hiding food technique is particularly intended, although I have no idea whether it's deemed important enough to fix at some point. It only works for post-event recovery, though. If you still were working the blood flower during the storm you must have started it pretty late in the year; it only takes something like 5:30 even with the prestige penalty and no bonuses, and you don't need to carry any input goods to start working it.

The blightrot cauldron should only be making cysts for food produced while working it. Maybe you were producing food from woodcutting? If you have a meat or mushroom bonus in the relevant biomes you can end up getting quite a few procs just from clearing out trees.

[DG]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Hauw2x:

I recall similar situation where I was forced to save scum to learn of the game mechanics. It was when I tried to tear down a Leaking Cauldron. The game tooltip simply does not provide enough info, I thought it was 1 cyst every 20 food produced during event. NO IT WAS TOTAL FOOD PRODUCED and I saw hilarious number of cyst spawned

It is not total food produced. It is food produced during the event. Taking off your food harvesters, cooks, and farmers should keep it down. Other gatherers might get up to 20 food through the secondary production, the byproducts, but those cysts can be managed. If you have 10 cysts for the prestige penalty (every third year), plus 4 cysts from the cauldron, plus another 1 from rainkpunk maybe, you're still at 15 which should be possible for a blight station to handle.

[Hauw2x]

Ursprungligen skrivet av DG:

It is not total food produced. It is food produced during the event. Taking off your food harvesters, cooks, and farmers should keep it down. Other gatherers might get up to 20 food through the secondary production, the byproducts, but those cysts can be managed. If you have 10 cysts for the prestige penalty (every third year), plus 4 cysts from the cauldron, plus another 1 from rainkpunk maybe, you're still at 15 which should be possible for a blight station to handle.

If that's the case, how is it possible that I get 20 cysts immediately after I press Investigate button? Game wants me to lose that bad huh 🤣🤣🤣🤣

[Hauw2x]

Ursprungligen skrivet av DG:

It is not total food produced. It is food produced during the event. Taking off your food harvesters, cooks, and farmers should keep it down. Other gatherers might get up to 20 food through the secondary production, the byproducts, but those cysts can be managed. If you have 10 cysts for the prestige penalty (every third year), plus 4 cysts from the cauldron, plus another 1 from rainkpunk maybe, you're still at 15 which should be possible for a blight station to handle.

OMG!

After 20 prestige levels now I understand why the game spawned 20 cysts!
So it's clear 4 cyst per 20 food, but the game counts complex food as well! And not the "charge" amount, but total. So I made pickled goods, IIRC probably with Zhong's that DOUBLES IT!

I've no access to the save, and I was frankly shocked, but now I learned!

[koboldlord]

It's a pretty scary event. If you are in marshland with the mushroom explosion cornerstone, you might not even be able to keep woodcutting while it's running.

[Dervish19]

If that's the case, how is it possible that I get 20 cysts immediately after I press Investigate button?

I think you confuse it with Infected Drainage Mole event.

[RonEmpire]

Yea I would like a colony details list so I can micro manage each worker too.

Some games have this that let's you get a list of everybody. Figure out where they are and adjust tasks as needed.

Some times I watch to see who is walking to the heart and then release small amounts of food during blood flower so it gets consumed. It had worked a few times.

Would be nice to get production indicators on the worker overlay.

[Spacesuit Spiff]

I've felt the lack of break schedules in some places, idk if it's worth adding something like "days" in frostpunk when the game works so cleanly without it. That said I've never been convinced that the different races having different break schedules is necessary, since it's invisible power that's hard to appreciate. There could be little notches around the season timer where everybody took their breaks at the same time, but that feels like the sort thing the devs absolutely tried and moved away from for whatever reason (like the villagers actually using their houses).