Survival Guide - Dust Settles: Seasons

Table of Contents:

Purpose:

Seasons provide your camp a bit of time reference in this post-apocalyptic world. As in the pre-apocalyptic world, seasons will pervade all of your daily life, affecting everything from the temperature, to the look of your game screen, to production and returns from common tasks. Each season will last 90 turns (3 in-game months) and you should immediately notice when the season changes due to the color change that will occur on your screen. Your camp will always start a little ways into spring so you can begin building up before summer storms and especially before the winter chill sets in.

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Location:

Information about what season you are in will permeate your entire game screen. Each season will have its own associated color schemes with everything from the image at the top of your screen changing to the background gradient. Your spring color scheme will be similar to the first image above with purple, blue, and green filling the screen. The summer screen will have more reddish tints and dry brownish-yellows. Fall will go to more faded, grayed-out purples and orangish-browns as in the third image as things begin to cool off. Your screen in winter will consist primarily of grays and whites as the world becomes blanketed in snow.

You can also keep track of which color schemes are associated with which season by checking the weather/season box in the right-hand column on your screen. The first image in this box will show you what season it is with the season spelled out below.

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Seasonal Effects:

Each season has its own effects on your camp's production and returns from missions. Most of the seasonal effects will be relatively mild, noticeable, but mild. Your explorers will have an easier time searching for their assigned resources if they are searching in the spring and fall, when temperatures are milder. Summer and winter, with their harsh weather, will provide more of a challenge to your explorers, leading to poorer returns. Recruiters, on the other hand, will have an easier time finding and bringing back survivors during the summer and winter, since the survivors will want to find shelter. The spring and fall will produce less results for the recruiters since the random survivors wandering around will have less incentive to want to get out of the elements. Summer and winter have other effects though that will be felt more quickly.

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Summer:

One of the biggest effects of summer on your camp is the increase in storm activity. With the summer heat, any slight cool front moving through has the potential to create storms. Any time you have storms roll through your camp, you have the chance to have a severe storm hit that could cause serious damage to your buildings. During the summer, more storms means a higher possibility of damage, if you don't have the proper protection. Remember, if your buildings are destroyed by a storm, they will all be unstaffed.

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Winter:

Winters are not only as cold as they were before, but now they are getting colder (nuclear winter). This means that your people are going to need more than a roof over their heads to make it through those cold winter nights. They are going to need warmth. This means that you will have to burn building supplies to keep your camp warm. You will need to provide one building supply per shelter and barracks to help your camp stay warm. If you do not have enough supplies to cover your shelters and barracks, then you will not have enough supplies to cover any small or large generators or weapons production. You will be able to overcome this cost once you open nuclear heating through your advanced research.

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