OK, I had one of the best failures ever in a game like this last night and felt like sharing. It was equal parts my bungling, and ... ok it was all my bungling... (spoilery ahead!)
It all started when my potato crop was blighted just before the first harvest. I blame the abnormally dry weather... I had long since run out of food rations and had scoured the countryside for berries and such. I was avoiding hunting for the time because my long goal was to build a grand farm so I wanted to save as many animals to tame as possible. There were two herds of muffalo, and several wild turkeys that would make a grand farm.
Soon after the crops failed I received a communication from the ex-wife of one of my members who goes by the nickname "Worthy". Worthy's ex-wife had escape some space pirates and was looking for somewhere to hide. It was a tough call because Worthy was already moody from hunger, so bringing his ex-wife on the team would likely make his mood worse. I'd lie, though, if I said the reason for accepting her plea was anything other than wanting to test where such a move would lead in the team dynamic. I could almost here Worthy's pleas to not allow her because "she's crazy" or whatever and ex-husband would say.
She arrived on sight a few minutes later... and she was crazy. She was a good horticulturalist, though, so I over looked that "psychotic" trait of hers. We could get through this. We'd overcome worse........
The pirates arrived the next day, 6 strong, loitering on the other side of the hill across the map. Their loitering was to my advantage as it allowed me to set up sand bag firing positions at a choke point. I armed 4 of my settlers with the best weapons I had, a sniper rifle for Worthy, my best shot, some molotovs for Digger the miner, and two with pistols and took up positions. I let the ex and my other farmer named Uni behind to see if we could scrounge any food to stave off starvation.
It was a tense time in Crashville....
The Pirates eventually moved on my positions and my settlers put up a brilliant defense. The pirates were not entirely stupid however and eventually split into two groups and moved out of my firing arc trying to force me out of my defensive positions. I can't claim that the AI was this advance, but their move did indeed put me in quite a pickle. We were starving, after all, and all hands scrounging was what we should have been doing rather than having a standoff with some pirates.
Desperation set in and I left my defensive position with the plan of focusing fire on the best armed pirate of the north group and then whittle the group down and then repeat on the southern group. It was time consuming but it worked perfectly. By the end 5 pirates lay bleeding out in the sand, a 6th had run away. I set my soldiers back to civilian mode and they limped back to the base, bleeding, starving, but happy. Proud? They arrived at the base, opened the front door and... their blood ran cold.
I immediately received a cascade of mood change alerts before I realize what had happened. I looked around to find out what had happened and then I saw it....
Worthy's ex-wife was huddled in a dark corner of the room... eating Umi the farmer.
Capitalizing on the shock in the other settlers, the ex-wife shot my already severely wounded laborer Josh, killing him instantly. Worthy then shot his ex-wife dead. I'd like to think his mood lightened, even if just a bit.
I sat, a bit stunned. I realized that there were now just 3 settlers, and my utopian dream of a happy farm had died with the crazy woman's first bite of geologist. If I was going to survive I needed to hunt. So I found the closest muffalo herd and collected a few to be hunted and set all settler's priority to "hunt". Off they went to finally get something to eat. While they were hunting I went back to the base to start laying out the next building project, hydroponic farms, that I had researched just before the pirates arrived.
As I was laying out the hydroponic room I realized that I was hearing glass breaking and couldn't figure out why. When it dawned on me I panicked and scrolled quickly over to the hunting grounds and confirmed my worst fear.
I forgot to change my weapon assignments before sending them off to hunt so there was Digger the Miner hunting muffalos with... molotov cocktails.
The dry forest was ablaze, my settlers were trapped.. and all I could do is sit there watching them die in a fire... and laugh uncontrollably.
The end.
