Aliens gone rogue? How to check alien settings?

[zOldBulldog]

One of my maps was created in Peaceful mode and no reaction to pollution (I can't remember the exact name of the setting) so that I could do design tests in peace and learn the game well before dealing too much with aliens.

But... I just had an outpost attacked by a couple of loose biters. No idea why, although pollution clouds are hard to see I'd swear that even if pollution was enabled it doesn't reach any of the nearby nests.

I think I have one possible explanation, and that would be no worry now that I killed the biters. Having started this map on 0.16 I got the well known "almost no stone" scenario and had to temporarily become Australian go on a massive walkabout a couple days ago to see where I could find stone. During that walkabout I walked close to some nests and even engaged in a minimum amount of combat. My guess here is that perhaps I shook lose some biters that were somehow unable to attack me and instead got set on a wild roaming until they came across my outpost.

Anyway, the key questions:

1) Is my guess above the likely answer? Or am I looking at some kind of 0.16 bug?

2) How can I verify my alien settings for this map to make sure that they are still set to peaceful and no reaction to pollution? Preferably without using a command that disables achievements.

[Deadlock989]

1. Don't know about likely, but it's possible.

2. Go the load game menu, copy the map's exchange string, go back to start new game, paste the exchange string in the box. All the settings are supposed to be encoded in the string. Not ideal (was surprised there is no in-game option to see map settings) but it works.

[Aeternus]

Most likely you had aliens migrating to a new nest site (they expand even in peaceful mode unless you turn that off) and your outpost happened to be in the way. Biters will attack objects blocking their path, chewing through them until they can move over them.

[zOldBulldog]

Thank you deadlock, I will try that when I get back into the game.

Aethernus, the expansion is turned off (or supposed to be).


So, I'll verify with deadlock's method, and hopefully it is just those few biters that got shook lose from their bases. If those "not so peaceful" alien settings are on, I know I can use commands to turn them off, then hack the save file to re-enable the achievements... but it is a pain.