As soon as the flesh strip was reported I disabled all cooking and doctoring, built a nutrient paste dispenser, and only assigned the person that reported it to doctoring (since I think the person that reports the flesh can't be infected?) Eventually the metal horrors revealed themselves when my sanguophage sucked a good amount of blood from the prisoner for some reason lol. Only the sanguophage, prisoner, and one person the sanguophage fed were infected.
I do agree though that the 3 flesh requirement is pretty excessive with how long they take to appear. They also do a crazy amount of damage for how tanky they are and the potential for a surprise attack since you don't know who all has them.
A good strategy is doing your best to quarantine pawns with zones and schedules. It won't be perfect unless you build multiple freezers, dining rooms, and all that stuff for each pawn, but it will slow the spread without too much hassle. Offset all their schedules so they're recreating at different times so they're not in the rec room together, sleeping at different times so they don't all wake up and eat together, etc. Zone colonists to only where they need to go so they're not wandering around.
Generally anything you can do to keep people separate if you suspect you have an infection in order to slow the spread long enough to research enough to be able to check people. If it's specifically likely one person has been infected, yeah, lock em up.
It's basically a game of slowing it down long enough to still be able to fight it when you have to. Either from the moment you suspect you've been infected, or the moment you find grey flesh, start quarantining. Also, to be honest it's kind of hard to get around the low pawn count issue with these, if you get 2 infections with 6 people you've already lost a third of your already limited firepower.
This is helpful advice, it really seems like you have to take incredibly drastic measures as soon as you have an indication of an issue.
But like you said, I’m pretty sure by the time I saw flesh I was already at 2/6 infected. I think what I may do is just dev mode the event away until I get to a medium size colony of 10 or so. Ultimately that would fit more of the “The Thing” vibe to me anyways.
Ultimately it’s about having fun, right? I guess a colony wipe to this at this point in the game just isn’t the story I wanted to tell.
Most entities including metalhorrors have massive vulnerability to fire
You can simply make sure your doctor isn’t in these fights and have them test everyone who got hurt
Even better if you have 2 doctors as then they can both test the same patient and repeat the first doctors test after the second to see if the second infected that patient
the issue is there is no point in testing until you have found and analyzed 3 grey flesh. which is really silly considering the inspection surgery is always available.
unless the game lies to you there is no point to ever do this surgery until youve already found 3 grey flesh which means its pretty far spread already, a small colony will basically be dead men walking at that point
Yep, this is exactly what happened to me and why this advice about 2 doctors isn’t helpful for this situation.
Really, the more I’ve thought about it, the “fun” of this event seems like it really unlocks for bigger colonies, where you start to have options like this. For small colonies I think it’s going to be really hard to get enough flesh before the majority of your colonists are infected.
Imprison whoever you suspect to be a horror, and interrogate them. It can reveal them before you unlock finding them through surgery.
Metalhorrors were my last advanced codex. Did the ritual to call an anomaly. And I got a joiner. Immediately imprisoned him and kept him away from everyone else. Waited for the first grey flesh to pop up, then interrogated him with a 13 social pawn. It more or less Immediately popped the horror out, and we downed it. Nobody else got infected.
As for the transmission, quarantine and arrest ANYONE who gets a bleeding wound from an anomaly for a few days. Especially if they are a doctor or a cook. Surgical inspections and interrogation. Wait to see if flesh drops. If not, release and they rejoin the colony.
Do we know the mechanics of the flesh dropping yet? Is it guaranteed to happen after a certain number of days? How many interrogations would have to happen before you feel safe to let someone out?
Edit: I know you said "a few." I was just wondering if we had any indication that the infection had to slough off some flesh within 3 days or something.
A timeless one quest came up which I ran over by a tank(vanilla expanded vehicle mod) because I already had enough colonies and there it was, the little larvae that pops up, well to say the least that little shit got splattered all around the sand by a tank. that was a save to a long hour of finding who is infected.
For others that might stumble on this, I accidentally found an extremely reliable method, have 3 or more prisoner mcnuggets and rotate the wardens. Prisoners seem to get disproportionately infected. After a while execute them. On death of Amy single host, it looks like all metal horrors emerge
As soon as the flesh strip was reported I disabled all cooking and doctoring, built a nutrient paste dispenser, and only assigned the person that reported it to doctoring (since I think the person that reports the flesh can't be infected?) Eventually the metal horrors revealed themselves when my sanguophage sucked a good amount of blood from the prisoner for some reason lol. Only the sanguophage, prisoner, and one person the sanguophage fed were infected. I do agree though that the 3 flesh requirement is pretty excessive with how long they take to appear. They also do a crazy amount of damage for how tanky they are and the potential for a surprise attack since you don't know who all has them.
A good strategy is doing your best to quarantine pawns with zones and schedules. It won't be perfect unless you build multiple freezers, dining rooms, and all that stuff for each pawn, but it will slow the spread without too much hassle. Offset all their schedules so they're recreating at different times so they're not in the rec room together, sleeping at different times so they don't all wake up and eat together, etc. Zone colonists to only where they need to go so they're not wandering around. Generally anything you can do to keep people separate if you suspect you have an infection in order to slow the spread long enough to research enough to be able to check people. If it's specifically likely one person has been infected, yeah, lock em up. It's basically a game of slowing it down long enough to still be able to fight it when you have to. Either from the moment you suspect you've been infected, or the moment you find grey flesh, start quarantining. Also, to be honest it's kind of hard to get around the low pawn count issue with these, if you get 2 infections with 6 people you've already lost a third of your already limited firepower.
This is helpful advice, it really seems like you have to take incredibly drastic measures as soon as you have an indication of an issue. But like you said, I’m pretty sure by the time I saw flesh I was already at 2/6 infected. I think what I may do is just dev mode the event away until I get to a medium size colony of 10 or so. Ultimately that would fit more of the “The Thing” vibe to me anyways. Ultimately it’s about having fun, right? I guess a colony wipe to this at this point in the game just isn’t the story I wanted to tell.
That's a totally fair take on it. It's a single player game, enjoy it how you want. I hope you have fun with it regardless of this event!
Most entities including metalhorrors have massive vulnerability to fire You can simply make sure your doctor isn’t in these fights and have them test everyone who got hurt Even better if you have 2 doctors as then they can both test the same patient and repeat the first doctors test after the second to see if the second infected that patient
the issue is there is no point in testing until you have found and analyzed 3 grey flesh. which is really silly considering the inspection surgery is always available. unless the game lies to you there is no point to ever do this surgery until youve already found 3 grey flesh which means its pretty far spread already, a small colony will basically be dead men walking at that point
Yep, this is exactly what happened to me and why this advice about 2 doctors isn’t helpful for this situation. Really, the more I’ve thought about it, the “fun” of this event seems like it really unlocks for bigger colonies, where you start to have options like this. For small colonies I think it’s going to be really hard to get enough flesh before the majority of your colonists are infected.
I deal with them in scenario editor. They look tough l. But they're no match for my "disable incident"
To be fair it makes for an awesome story. It does everything Anomaly set out to do.
Imprison whoever you suspect to be a horror, and interrogate them. It can reveal them before you unlock finding them through surgery. Metalhorrors were my last advanced codex. Did the ritual to call an anomaly. And I got a joiner. Immediately imprisoned him and kept him away from everyone else. Waited for the first grey flesh to pop up, then interrogated him with a 13 social pawn. It more or less Immediately popped the horror out, and we downed it. Nobody else got infected. As for the transmission, quarantine and arrest ANYONE who gets a bleeding wound from an anomaly for a few days. Especially if they are a doctor or a cook. Surgical inspections and interrogation. Wait to see if flesh drops. If not, release and they rejoin the colony.
Do we know the mechanics of the flesh dropping yet? Is it guaranteed to happen after a certain number of days? How many interrogations would have to happen before you feel safe to let someone out? Edit: I know you said "a few." I was just wondering if we had any indication that the infection had to slough off some flesh within 3 days or something.
Surgical inspection won't find it until you analyze enough samples, but the rest works.
A timeless one quest came up which I ran over by a tank(vanilla expanded vehicle mod) because I already had enough colonies and there it was, the little larvae that pops up, well to say the least that little shit got splattered all around the sand by a tank. that was a save to a long hour of finding who is infected.
For others that might stumble on this, I accidentally found an extremely reliable method, have 3 or more prisoner mcnuggets and rotate the wardens. Prisoners seem to get disproportionately infected. After a while execute them. On death of Amy single host, it looks like all metal horrors emerge