Survival Guide - Dust Settles: Weather

Table of Contents:

Purpose:

Weather has always been a consideration when doing any sort of daily activity. Things are no different for your camp in this world. Weather will affect much of your daily life from returns to production to the number of buildings currently in your camp. You will be able to keep track of the weather throughout the game to help you decide how to schedule your missions. Overall, most of the weather that you encounter will cause you only a little difference (think grabbing an umbrella before going out) though some will cause serious problems around your camp (think preparing for a hurricane.)

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Location:

You can check on the day's weather on the right-hand column. To the right of your season reminder, you will see a display showing you what the day's weather is like with the temperature range and related image. This can give you an idea of what you might want to expect as you set up the day's orders and what you might expect in your end turn results. You will find the option for adjusting your weather defenses under this information. If you have not yet opened/built a weather center, you will only see a notice reminding you of this fact instead of the link. Once you have built your weather center (you only need and will be able to build one), you will see a button that will allow you to open the page where you can adjust your weather defenses to either active or inactive.

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Weather Effects:

Even in pre-apocalyptic society, the weather affected a number of things that a person or community did during a day. Construction, trips, transportation, and many other things were affected by the weather. This post-apocalyptic world is no different. Rain, sun, clouds, and storms will all affect your camp. Some of these will provide you benefits, some will hurt you, and some will do both, depending on the task at hand. Construction in this world will not be affected by weather. The people you have assigned as workers generally understand how important it is for your camp to make sure that those buildings are finished. Many of your other activities will be affected by the day's weather conditions. One thing to note really quickly, rain and snow have the same effects since snow is basically rain on cold days.

Your explorers will have an easier time finding the resources they are searching for if the weather is sunny or cloudy. Rainy/snowy weather or stormy weather will provide a severe obstacle as your group searches the surrounding land.

Recruiters will have an easier time bringing people back when the weather is sunny or cloudy, since your recruiters will be able to cover their search space more easily and survivors will be more likely to be out and about. During rain/snow or storms, of course, the survivors have already ducked and run for any cover they could find, thus making an already difficult task more difficult for your recruiters.

Your army and militia's accuracy in battle will be mildly affected by the weather. Storms and rain/snow will hurt their accuracy since it is harder to see, hold on to weapons, and stay steady, especially if they're still moving just before they fire. Cloudy and sunny weather will allow for better accuracy since seeing the target is not a problem.

Your special ops will have much better luck sneaking into and out of a camp on rainy and stormy nights when visibility will be decreased and the militia may have other things on their mind, while clear or cloudy nights will provide less cover for the raid.

Most of your other daily activities will either be unaffected by weather changes, or so minimally affected that you would probably not notice any change that couldn't have been caused by some other modifier.

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Storms:

Storms have always proven a problem for humanity. The fierce winds, lightning, heavy rains, and possible hail can cause severe damage to everything from the paint on a person's car to the house they live in. After the apocalypse, the dangers are no different. Just about any of the buildings in your camp can be destroyed by a severe storm. Storms tend to take a heavier toll on buildings that cover larger land areas like farms, medical facilities, or lots. The terrain your camp sits on will have an effect on storm severity will a rating of "low severity" meaning fewer destructive storms and "high severity" meaning more damage.

Overall, when a storm hits your camp, you have the chance that the storm might be severe. It will not always be severe, and thus your camp will not always receive damage. If the storm is severe, though, some of your buildings will be destroyed. Of course all of them will never be destroyed, but a decent number could, which could put you in danger, especially if you do not have much wiggle room in production requirements.

Once you have done enough research, you will be able to build a weather station and enable weather defenses. This will allow your camp to board up and prepare for the worst, even if the storms turn out to be mild. Once you build the weather center you will have to turn the defenses on manually using the "Activate Weather Defenses" button inside the Manage Weather Defenses screen. You can deactivate these defenses at any time through the same page. Your camp will use one-half of a building supply for each land unit a building occupies to board up and cover up before the storms strikes, whether the storm turns out to be severe or not if you have your weather defenses turned on. If you don't have enough supplies to cover all of your buildings when a storm hits, none of your buildings will be covered. You can decrease the number of supplies needed to cover your camp by researching Architecture and/or Spatial Logic, and you can increase the chance that your weather center will be able to predict a mild storm by researching Architecture and Ingenuity. To see exactly how many building supplies your camp needs to actually protect itself, check the number displayed just below the "Disable Weather Defenses" button.

If a severe storm hits your camp and you don't have the appropriate defenses, some of your buildings will be destroyed. The rest of the buildings of that type will be unstaffed since the members of your camp are going to run for better cover if the buildings they are in, or ones like them, are destroyed. They will also need to be told that it is okay to return to their posts once the day is over. (Your people rely on your word to know when things are safe.) You will be alerted in your end-turn display to the number of buildings you lost of each type so that you can rebuild as necessary and you will be reminded that the others were unstaffed so that you can restaff them as needed. Storms will not kill your people, though.

After mastering Architecture your buildings will be completely resistant to storms. Thick walls, strong windows, heavily attached roof, it would take a new apocalypse to take down your buildings at this point.

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