Where the hell those Scrather came from ????

[Doc.Volteer [Fr Pt]]

Ok for some reason there a bunch of big black alien who are massacring my damn station How on earth there come from ?

[Kroezensjtern]

Check the bottom of the page "Who's who" on this website.
http://www.rakrent.com/rtsc/rtsc_startopia.htm

[Mickmane]

Or in short, you have garbage lying around, memau eat that, peeps pet them, get infected with alien-kinda thing that bursts out of their chest and starts demolishing things and peeps.

Could be the infected came in with a medical emergency, too, there might even be a mission with that, not sure. :)

[Doc.Volteer [Fr Pt]]

Thank you both of you. Not only I know were those Think came from I know how to avoid them

[TrueGlory]

As Mickmane mentioned previously, memaus are a problem. A memau initially is not too big a problem, they are not infectuous until they eat enough litter. Non-infectuous memaus can actually be quite beneficial, but the moment they become infectuous, anything that pets it has 200 seconds before it becomes a Skrasher.

As such, in the beginning phases of the game; ensure that all litter is binned, disposed of or recycled; as that will be your biggest security threat early on.

As Mickmane also mentioned, there is also a medical emergency that brings on Alien Spawn infected patients, I believe it's the one with an "SOS" message. Unless you have incredibly robust medical facilities to take care of all the patients in about a minute, always deny this request. Either that, or recruit a large enough army to combat any outbreaks.

Besides these two things, it is possible, though rare; that an Alien Spawn patient arrives outside of the emergency, however your medical facilities should be able to solve this issue fairly easily.

[TrueGlory]

Originally posted by FilthyManhorse:

As Mickmane mentioned previously, memaus are a problem. A memau initially is not too big a problem, they are not infectuous until they eat enough litter. Non-infectuous memaus can actually be quite beneficial, but the moment they become infectuous, anything that pets it has 200 seconds before it becomes a Skrasher.

As such, in the beginning phases of the game; ensure that all litter is binned, disposed of or recycled; as that will be your biggest security threat early on.

As Mickmane also mentioned, there is also a medical emergency that brings on Alien Spawn infected patients, I believe it's the one with an "SOS" message. Unless you have incredibly robust medical facilities to take care of all the patients in about a minute, always deny this request. Either that, or recruit a large enough army to combat any outbreaks.

Besides these two things, it is possible, though rare; that an Alien Spawn patient arrives outside of the emergency, however your medical facilities should be able to solve this issue fairly easily.

On top of this, if you do not have Z-Ray scanners in your medical facilities, absolutely do not attempt an SOS mission.

[[R] Nerva]

If you recieve a message from an alien that uses Gray voiceclips and mentions it is an "SOS from a Nostro-class lifeboat" do not let it aboard unless your medical bay is hilariously well-staffed and equipped. We're talking at least four doctors with maxed skill, with replacements ready in case one of them decides to go on break, each with their own diagnosis unit, dispenser, medi-bed and z-ray scanner, placed for easy accessibility. Anything less, and you will quickly find your station overrun with Skrashers.

Also, make sure you have a healthy supply of Kasvagorian security officers (seven is a good number to shoot for) and that your salt hogs are working nearby. Chances are good that even with the overkill-and-a-half medbay, you may still wind up with at least one Skrasher and you want to make sure that weapon-equipped station staff are on hand to kill it, immediately. Remember to throw a Security Scuzzer in front of the Skrasher to soak hits - it's better for it to wreck an easily-replaced robot than to risk killing one of your highly-trained doctors. I've learned to build the security hub right next to the medbay, and the medbay as close as possible to the docking port, for this very reason.

Other than that, avoiding Skrashers is mostly just a matter of keeping your Memau population litter-starved and under control, as other posters have explained. Tourist ships tend to bring Memaus aboard, so if you have an uncontrolled litter problem, you can minimize the Memau population by refusing tourist messages. You'll still get regular station visitors regardless. Make sure you have at least four litter bins surrounding every Dine-o-Mat and at least two in front of every Commodity Store, regardless of variety. These are the only two station facilities that produce litter, and once Memaus find them, they tend to hang around next to them and eat garbage before your Scuzzers can get to it. On that note, make sure you've got a healthy Scuzzer workforce. Get Mk III Scuzzers researched in your lab as soon as you can, and mass-produce them in your factory to save some energy credits.

It's a shame you can't set Security Pylons to just frag the little cretins preemptively. There's no way to get rid of a Memau unless it infects a peep, or it's so starved for litter than it leaves the station of its own volition. As a result, every one of those things is a ticking bomb, with the timer dependent on how well you can control litter.

[Fantastic Fwoosh]

You can also press F1 (or if you're using a laptop with 'fn' keys fn + F1) to inspect nearly everything in the game including skrashers & meamau's for more often amusing context.

[LadyAquanine735]

Skrashers are part of what's called "Alien Spawn." According to the main website and the game itself, Alien Spawn have 3 stages in their life cycles, all three of which I've seen in the game.

Stage 1 - Memau: These a cute little 6-legged alien cats that are mostly harmless unless you have a lot of trash lying around your station. If they eat too much trash, they become infected with a virus and become dangerous for workers who pet them. Any workers who are foolish enough to pet an infected Memau bring on the next stage.

Stage 2 - Skrasher Maw: These are terrifying creatures that spawn from Memaus and require an alien host to grow (a nod to the Alien movies). It takes only one minute for the Skrasher Maw to grow to its full size inside the unfortunate host, whose body explodes and dies in the process. Skrasher Maws resemble large black beetle monsters with huge "fists" or "pincers" that they use to hit and smack around any unfortunate aliens nearby, and their armor makes it difficult to kill them. Usually it requires a ton of hits by laser weapons before the beast finally dies.

Stage 3 - Mystery: There was one case where I had willingly taken in a Nostro Class lifeboat because I had a whole army of aliens ready to shoot whatever came out of the clinic, in addition to security columns. What I didn't anticipate, was just how many Skrasher Maws would come out. One of them escaped the fray and while the others were being killed off, and the escapee ran around attacking for a few minutes, before it suddenly disappeared into a little puff of white smoke. It's said that this is the unknown, third stage of the Alien Spawn life cycle, and nobody really knows what happens during this stage, whether the spawn died, or turned into something else. Either way, the beast was gone and my station was better off.

[fuchsjo]

The last stage is reprodution. The Skrasher turns into multiple Memaus,

General tip: never build Snack-O-Mats on the industrial Deck. Memmaus by deafult will not leave the indutrial deck so keeping the any litter producing things in deck 2 can save you a world of hurt. A Memau needs three items of trash to become infectious. Time a peep has left is determind by his health at the Start of the infetion. 200 s is the theoretical ideal, which will almost never be reached.

Removing the Waste generation on Deck 1 will not help if the infected Peep wanders to another deck or the skrasher and reaches phase three reproduction.

[tattooofhername]

Originally posted by fuchsjo:

General tip: never build Snack-O-Mats on the industrial Deck.

I've been playing since I was sixteen - that's nearly fifteen years of this game - and I never thought about this as a way of dealing with the Skrasher problem. You are a genius!

[fuchsjo]

Also never let nostro nostro class shuttles board, you will get up to 10 scrasher infected patients
who have to be treated with all the devices in the sichbay by a skill 5 grey with 200 seconds only left if they came aboard with full health

[Black Jesus]

When Memaus eat (I believe it's 5 pieces of litter) they become infectious the next resident or guest that pets them is implanted with an alien spawn embryo if that is not treated and cured within 200 seconds the spawn bursts from the now dead alien's chest and becomes a heavily armor space beetle of death.

Skrashers also come as part of the alien spawn distress call. It'll say something like SOS Nostromo which is funny since that was the name of the cargo freighter from the first Alien movie where Kane was impregnated by a Facehugger and was killed later by a chestburster exploding from his chest.

Also even without Memau and SOS calls Skrashers are a random occurance. When the game generates a new guest to bring aboard the game gives each alien an x% chance to come aboard with an alien spawn in them. This can be checked in the game files I have no idea how to change it. I think it's like 1% or something low like that.

[Black Jesus]

Also I have had great success by NOT placing Dino-O-Mats and Lavatrons on the engineering deck. Once I stopped doing that my Memau problem went away. Memau can't leave (or at least I never saw them do so) the Engineering deck by not placing them on the Engineering deck you take away the only trash producing structures normally down there.

It's not optimal from a performance viewpoint but I'd rather everyone take a few minutes to eat and relieve themselves then have a armored super beetle rampage through my station. I don't know if Comodity Stores produce trash maybe they do I never really pay attention to them but Lavatrons definitely produce litter. Which is why I throw down so many bins outside of both facilities.