First Off: A reminder that this is a Primer guide and not a full blown manual on Settlement Events. This is written to give you a grounding in Event System what it means for you a Settlement Owner and what you can do to make the most of Events.

What is a Settlement Event?
Simply put Settlement events are things that happen outside your normal daily / weekly game play. It may be anything from a Small Electrical fire, to a full scale viral infection of your staff. On the Flip side a travelling trader may do a deal to repair his ship and leave you 250 Flux gas. Events will have the ability to cover some Twenty Points that affect your settlement. They may be good or they may be bad.

When will I see Events?
The Settlement Event system is created to cause ‘effects’ on Settlement Level 4 and above. At level 3 and below you can prepare for Settlement Events and even place buildings for this but you won’t see an event until you turn Level 4.

How Often will my Settlement see Events?
Settlement Events will only occur AFTER a 48 hour period of cooling off. So once you see your first one the next one wont be for at least 48 hours. This is because some events could have detrimental effects and this ensures no one returns after a week to find their settlement turned to a pile of Rubble.

What’s the Worst that could happen?
To answer this you have to understand that Settlement Events take into account your ‘preparedness’ and ‘active Services’ (I will explain that a little further on down the page). So IF you do not bother to take precautions and simply choose to ignore the Event system you could eventually lose your settlement.

Having said that – The Event system is NOT designed to kill off active and looked after Settlements. Far from it. For settlements that are actively being nurtured and maintained you will find a plethora of good, hell even great events can happen. For most of you Events will become part of the every day / week check and a chuckle at what happened that week.

Deadwood settlements, unloved, uncared for – the story will be somewhat different. Over time it’s likely that bad events will turn your staff morale, drain your SRP and funding and start receiving messages from the Official Receiver.

Phase One – 24th Jan 2015
Today sees the initial release of Settlement Events. This is designed to give YOU the settlement owner a chance to review the options and decide on a path. It gives you time to Read this Primer. Organise to build / buy / borrow / steal a building and plan ahead with SRP research.

The Settlement Ticker system (at its LOWEST Setting) will be enabled on the 14th of February. (Valentines Day). This is likely to be later in the day after final checks.

Event Services
In your Settlement Overview you will see at the bottom of that page three items listed under ‘Event Services’.

Emergency Services
Settlement Security
Trade & Research

These three ‘Services’ are the PRIMARY affects for Events. Initially you will see they are all set to : Inactive

These Services are controlled by a new Settlement Building called a Settlement Central AI Complex. This AI complex when fitted activates the Three Services. Once active you can research each service in your Research Screen.

You cannot research these new research topics unless you have a Settlement Central AI Complex in place.

Event Service Research
On your Research screen you will see the three Services listed above. They have been moved into their own small section and are NOT level Six dependencies. Each service can be researched independently and its up to you to decide how you research, or what you research first.

Costs in SRP will ramp up and I would suggest keeping a EAGLE eye on the SRP costs. Each level researched will give a 2% Boost to that Research Service. This will also be reflected in your ‘Overview Screen’.

Please Note: Removing the Settlement Central AI Complex will place the THREE services in to an Inactive State. You DO NOT lose the levels researched they are simply inactive until you refit a C.A.I.C. Once replaced the services will once again become active at their researched levels.

Settlement Central AI Complex (Buildings)
The reason we are releasing Phase one today is to give captains a chance to start to prepare for when the Ticker system goes live. To this end you will need to start building a Settlement Central AI Complex. These ‘currently’ come in 2 flavours. One for the Expanse and one for everywhere else.

The Schematics for these are available at Dome Depot & Golsan Crafting. We have strived to make these buildings HIGH in resources that are common on the server and LOW in resources that are in short supply. The builds are straight forward.

These initial building open up the Inactive Services. Later buildings on offer in weeks / months to come will be far more complex builds and will also give ‘Percentage Boosts’ to certain Services.

Question Coops – If I don’t bother to Deploy a C.A.I.C what happens?
Sadly if you choose ignore Settlement Events your settlement will suffer nothing but bad events. (re read the sections above).

Can I place more than one C.A.I.C ?
Not at the same time. Later should you wish to upgrade to a better version you can simply remove the old one and replace it with a newer one. (Bare in mind when you remove your existing one your Services will be inactive until the new one is fitted.)

What type of Events can I expect to See?
I won’t go in to specifics but we will be catering for 20 points of interest / event on your settlement. This will also take into account the Settlements surrounds. IE is there a RAID in the system, does the system have Asteroid fields, what about planets and star-bases. So events will also be tailored around your Settlements location.

Can I improve my events?
Sure – Increasing your ‘Services Percentages’ will open up new and improved events. It will also lessen the bad and down right dire events. As time rolls on and Settlements grow and we continue to add settlement addon’s so will we continue to add more events. In fact unlocking some of the higher level events may even be a bragging event