How to actually play the game, aka understanding Chaos

This guide outlines how the chaos mechanics of Emergency 2023 works, which makes the game a lot easier to deal with, beyond trainee shifts.

Understanding chaos

So as many people have noted, this game isn't really like other Emergency games, normally you control the scene, you win the game.

With this game, there is an overarching element called chaos, in order to beat a shift in the game, chaos has to be managed, in order to manage it, it has to be understood. So in the steps below, I will do my best to explain the mechanics behind it.

Chaos generators

The right hand scene window gives you an overview of all scenes and all objectives inside of it, each objective generates 60/min worth of chaos.


But there are also the hidden costs, each of your units that gets downed, generate an additional 40/min and turning off an electrical box generates 300/min (not visible by scene, only global).

Recap

• 60/min per objective on scene
  
• 40/min per downed unit
  
• 300/min for electrical junction box

What doesn't dictate chaos changes is the colour of objectives, they only affect their ability to spread/make worse.

Dealing with chaos

This requires you to think a bit differently, as removing objectives from the board becomes more important than controlling the scene, as you have limited vehicles.

Fire

Fire objectives for example often takes the longest to resolve, meaning that containing them or keeping them at bay, while concentrating on technical/medical/police objectives, will cut down your chaos/min much faster
The only exception to this, being scenes of only smaller shrub or bale fires, as the scene can be closed quickly to gain a chaos boost.

Police

Police objectives have a side effect of generating casualties, though this can often be prevented by getting to objectives while they are still green or sending double the amount of police as there are criminals.

Additional police officers won't actually get involved in the incident, but use megaphones outside, reducing objectives faster.

Medical

Get all blue objectives out of the way, before they turn yellow. The painkillers ability is also a must have for this, get it to level 3 as soon as possible. It will let you instantly remove all blue objetives from the game instantly.

Technical

Assist cranes only until the objective is opened up, run 2 engineers on electrical or bombs, to get them shut down in time.

With bombs, if you don't have room for engineers, you can remove all injuries from the blastzone, let the bomb go off and shut down the fires.

Reducing chaos

Each objective will give between a reduction in chaos of 30-60 points and some larger objectives will get up to 120 point reduction. The amount of points seems to relate to the time the objective has spent at yellow/red status.


Each scene will reduce the chaos as well, it is listed in the scene overview by how much.

Keeping chaos high/low

Chaos will trigger scenes to happen more rapidly. From some tests it seems to follow a 25-50-75% guide, where it goes from a few scenes at a time, to basically just dumping all scenes on you.

This can be useful on trainee/easy to finish shifts faster, but medium and above, it spirals out of control. Fastest way to rack up chaos in trainee/easy is to turn off a few power boxes, granting you 300/m per box.
Thanks to Chris P. Bacon, for pointing this out.

Final words

This guide is a work in progress, so any constructive input, would be greatly appreciated.

[MentalButcher]

@chrispy I done diddly did the addition, with an honorary mention, appreciate it!

[3 Bugs in a Trenchcoat]

High chaos on low tier is actually smart XD
Didnt thought about that

[MentalButcher]

@Chris P. Bacon I did not actually correlate this, but it makes sense now that you say it, I shall add it when I get time! :P
It would actually make sense on trainee/easy to keep chaos high, to rush through the scenes. xD

[3 Bugs in a Trenchcoat]

The higher the chaos goes, the faster new Missions appear. More missions mean more chaos, therefore ALWAYS try to keep chaos low.