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[kiedra]

Again I'm here on the forums, seeking information about something that should follow certain rules, but somehow isn't. Maybe I'm just the unluckiest person in the world when it comes to the games RNGs or I'm again missing something in plain sight. Sorry if I sound frustrated, truth is, I am.

I'm desperately trying to reach different endings, so I went back to a mostly stealth build. Fully sensored you can control, or rather, prevent almost any encounter. But quite often maps have very tricky chokepoints that make it impossible to get through without being spotted. So a decent strategy is to carve you a new route (Launchers, Melee or Strong Weapons). Note I'm not referring to breaking down a single wall, I'm talking about 10+ tile long new routes. This obviously brings the danger of stuff caving-in on you, which is impact damage, a high one at that, meaning it's almost always going to break vital parts (sensors, interpreters etc.), not even to mention the corruption it causes.

I've had single walls (part of room), cave in on me the moment I step on it. Large areas blown up by a launcher do not have a single cave in, the first red flashing tile I step on, bam. I just rage quitted my run after carving out a ~15 long, one wide hallway with a melee weapon, to my surprise I got through and for science I waited ~200 turns if anything would cave in - nothing happened, not one tile. Guess what happened when I went back through it, no cave in, only the one tile I'm hovering over... Don't get me wrong here, I'm not sitting here blaming the game since I know, there is structural scanners. So I started a new game, grabbed one of them scanners, picked up a launcher and went away. Some of the usual light red glowing tiles in danger of caving in are now dark red, indicating they will cave in soon. Waited a bit to verify that, seemed legit. So I went into the carved out area trying if I could control this situation via the scanner. Of about 50 tiles destroyed total, 20ish we're flashing dark red, but still possible to find a "safe route" through it. Worked for about 5 moves, then I stepped on a light flashing tile which should be safe at least for this turn - yea, cave in on me. Oh and btw, all of the dark flashing ones, no cave-in. Then I tried a one-wide hallway like in the run before. According to the scanner everything seemed stable, worked fine for about 15 tiles, destroyed another one, stepped on it, cave-in - no dark red flashing indicating that. Went back the way I came, again no dark red tiles, about 5 moves later, cave-in on the one tile I'm stepping on, not a single other tile though...

Despite my frustration, I'm just trying to understand the mechanics, so I can minimize the danger in future runs. Is there maybe a base chance for something to cave-in if you step on it, even though it should be stable? Does the game maybe take a percentage of available tiles for a cave-in and randomly chooses some that will cave-in? This way it be better to always use a launcher, more tiles available lowers the chance for the one that you walk on to cave-in. I'm pretty sure there is no secure way to tunnel, unless you assimilate an excavator and have him do it. Otherwise it would be way to easy to avoid enemies. But still, if there is, pls tell me. Do wall parts of rooms have a much lower chance of caving-in? It's very rare to actually spectate one of those caving-in, well unless I walk on it... Maybe I am just super unlucky and tend to get hit more than average - I mean even on low chances, it's still possible.

I've also tried using a mining laser on -11 and to my surprise there were areas not flashing at all, and if you dig for 10 tiles, a line of red flashing ones appears again, behind them however no potential cave-in. In the end it looked like an overlay of future rooms, meaning the flashing ones were wall parts. That experience didn't really help to understand how cave-ins actually work.

[Kyzrati]

Again I'm here on the forums, seeking information about something that should follow certain rules, but somehow isn't. Maybe I'm just the unluckiest person in the world when it comes to the games RNGs or I'm again missing something in plain sight. Sorry if I sound frustrated, truth is, I am.

There are multiple rules working in tandem when it comes to cave-ins, but all you need to know is what the manual says:

Open spaces previously occupied by now-destroyed walls and earth have a slight glow to them. Moving through these unstable areas may cause a cave-in, but only if doing so for extended periods. Tunneling between rooms, or through a wall-earth-wall scenario, will not cave in.

That's it. Basically if you move right through wall-earth-wall, you're 100% safe, fine. If not and you move through anything more, there's a chance you're going to get seriously damaged and you probably do not want to do that. Very much not recommended. It's designed this way to prevent excessive tunneling, which is otherwise extremely cheesy!

In the end it looked like an overlay of future rooms, meaning the flashing ones were wall parts.

Right, this is most apparent in the Scrapyard because in order to get that special behavior for tunnelers to "create" a map, it has to be mapped out for them using different kinds of cells, and those aren't capable of caving in. Ideally they'd cave in anyway until dug out properly, but it's not easy to do architecturally and not too important because digging out the Scrapyard is not something people do (not really worth the dev time investment)

[kiedra]

That's it. Basically if you move right through wall-earth-wall, you're 100% safe

That's what I thought and what started my confusion, because I actually did have a cave-in like that. Should have screenshotted it, but it doesn't matter, not the game's fault. Even though I can reach highscores, I just realized that I've been playing the game the wrong way all along

As always, thanks for the quick reply!

[Kyzrati]

Well what the manual says there is purely the movement-based rules, but there are other things that can trigger cave-ins, like firing from a former wall/earth position (which destabilizes it), or a random collapse due to an area that took explosive damage (which destabilizes it). You can see the effects when you have a Structural Scanner, but in general you don't want to stay in these areas for any length of time. Even with just movement, if you do anything except space-wall-earth-wall-space, you're taking a risk.

(There aren't any bugs in the system, but it is intentionally very dangerous, and also not super straightforward, so you must've missed one of the factors.)

In any case, even short-distance travel through walls is an insanely effective strategy, so yeah do that, just be mindful of the distances and what else is going on (you can see a lot of tunneling in my recent combat-light streams)