Weird ~100sp aoe panic attacks out of nowhere.

[Kairax]

Anomalities i have: ppodae,one sin,old lady (constantly ignored), bloodbath,Snow Queen,Der Frei,Scorched girl, Void dream, and latest is Army in Black.

SO now that we established that i don't have aoe panic or department panic. HOW THIS KEEP HAPPENING TO ME TWICE?
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1621073183

First time i thought that maybe something happened and i missed panic attack, but now it looks like 100sp explosion happened in department out of nowhere...

[Kairax]

From usable i have Theresia (7:30 on clock, ignored), Shelter from 27 march (after forgetting few guys there i ignore it, 3:59 on clock), Behavior Adjustment (not in department i got panic attack)

[CarThief]

Hm, weird. Doesn't seem like any of those abnormalities can cause those types of panic attacks... Though there is a panic reaction where employees just go into a sort of shock, just stand there, and after a while just rip off their head, causing department-wide SP damage, which can be quite damaging for sanity. Employees can also just go mad, run around, and spout nonsense damaging SP, but that probably shouldn't deal so much SP damage instantly.

Either it's a weird (but rare) bug, or there's a unusual mechanic at play... It could be that an employee encountered an ALEPH level abnormality, and totally freaked out on the spot, eventually resulting in that, and technically, Army in Black is an ALEPH i guess?
(The game gives SP penalties to employees of low-levels encountering high-level abnormalities. I mean, can't blame em when all of a sudden Things Man Was Not Meant To Know burst through the door of your hallway/room and tries to kill/eat you, or my favourite, the local giant shape-shifting "meatman" who can cleave even the most hardened employees in half and seems nigh-unstoppable in how durable he is. The game aint joking when they say all you can do when it walks on two legs, is pray!)

Hm... Hard to pin down what the cause is, could very well be a bug, too... Just keep an eye out for abnormalities who's abilities involve dealing area-of-effect SP damage then, maybe you missed one who can do so?

[Kairax]

After few ingame days where i gave up on leveling people (by point i got Army i had like 10 lvl 5 Employees and 2 newcomers). And that seems to fix problem. I don't farm skills, i don't get to noon ordeal (cause it might kill office workers and trigger army, which i can't pacify at all), just plow through new abnormalities to get HE/WAW/ALEPH gear for future and unlock bullets.

As about this 100sp bug i'm having i have an idea of what could it be. I had shelter that can decrease counter to 0. Both time panic happened in control room. Army ability when it escapes is to go to main department rooms and explode as white damage.

SO maybe army got bugged, and randomly done it's final white explosion in one of the rooms, causing massive sanity damage without actually escaping?

[Kairax]

And yes, Army is weird ALEPH but i had pretty much beefed up employees (well, except gear, out of all of 12 people only 2-3 could interact with army without depleting all sp and when i tried to suppress it i couldn't beat even 1 heart, not talking about 3 others)

[Elucidator]

From what I recall, there are many reasons why your employees can take sanity damage. If a member of a department dies, the rest of that team will temporarily feel it. If it happens in front of them, it will happen louder. Actually, they will take sanity damage when someone dies in front of them, which stacks upon the sanity damage they took from the abnormality (should there be one escaped and in front of them.) This damage is percentage based.
If an employee that takes sanity damage is of a higher level than others, the lower level employees will respond to it, more severely as the level difference is greater. As such if a higher level employee dies, lower level employees will respond heavier than when a lower level employee dies.
The whole panic system is what makes the game 'difficult' as all of the Shock/Fear damage stacks upon one another. It can quickly drain their sanity because it is %s SP damage based on their max SP.
Level V employees feel relaxed (no damage) often, they're basically immune to most Fear/Shock related damage, but should one die, your other employees may not be so relaxed.

After waking up from a shock, they might again SP damage from the escaped abnormality. (waking up from a dream reaction I guess) Anyway, yeah, it can lead to a chain reaction where, if employees are too grouped all of them can start to panic.

Employees that scream and run around are the most dangerous considering this. Their innitial scream will cause a 'fear damage' reaction to employees. As long as they scream and run around everyone in the rooms they run through will take continues SP damage.
The thing is, panicked employees can also cause fear/shock damage, so when you have a group of panicked employees, you better have an army of higher levels with SP healing damage weapons ready, or you may need to start the day over.

edit: You really need to carefully read the effects of the abnormalities, including the tool abnormalities. A lot of them will play on the employee's SP.

[Kairax]

Well after that day it stopped, so i really think it was heart/bunker interaction.

[CarThief]

Hm, never heard of THAT system before, where low-lvl employees freak out more then high-lvl employees because someone died. Kinda like the rank system of good ol X-Com from the DOS ages, huh? Some rookie dies and everyone's on edge but able to fight, but the captain guy dies and OH BOY, all the rookies lose their freakin' minds!

As if X-Com wasn't hard enough, with the "world's best soldiers" being unable to hit the broad side of a barn most of the time, seriously, where do they get these guys!? Either X-Com has like, no budget for proper soldiers, or they're just enlisting various criminals with next to no fighting skills so they get out of death row or life/long-term jailtime, in addition to being cheap labour.

Hm, now it makes me wonder somewhat... Since just about every abnormality has a sort of check where seen by an employee, said employee loses some SP, but that's it then and they don't recieve another penalty from the same abnormality until they either go mad and recover or the abnormality escapes AGAIN... Then i wonder if encounting multiple abnormalities would have cumulative SP damage, hm...

Might explain the one time i was on day 48, and passed by "her" to a certain sharply-fingered fellow, and people just kinda freaked out, it was a whole group of people, too. Like, all employees (although by then most where lvl 4 or 5). Guess two ALEPH's may be too much for their sanity (if you can even class those two as ALEPH, they deserve an even higher tier, really), and some went mad causing SP damage to everyone else, probably, even damaging the lvl 5's.

Sure is a pain to catch the run&scream employees, though, they move even faster then they would normally do, God help you if you wanna catch em when they got Justice 5, only a Slow effect and your longest-range SP damage weapons will fix them, then. Or some lucky usage of (risky) tool abnormalities.