Natural hazards

From RRU Knowledge Base

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Landslide

Rock Slides, also referred to as Land Slides (oh my god Baz?), are probably the most common kind of environmental threat. Common in nearly every cavern, rock slides will occur across walls that are made up of dirt, loose rock, hard rock, and seams. These are not to be confused with the much more dangerous cave-ins.

They create rubble in adjacent squares, and do significant damage to any Rock Raiders, vehicles, or buildings nearby.

Rock Slides can be prevented by either drilling the relevant wall, or reinforcing the wall.

Cave-in

Cave-Ins, sometimes referred to as Fall-Ins, are a very hazardous environmental threat. They are like rock slides, but much larger.

Cave-ins occur over the span of several rock walls, doing some severe damage and creating large rubble that is spread across a maximum of two adjacent spaces.

In the Playstation Game, Cave-Ins create walls of hard rock blocking necessary paths.

Also like rock slides, cave-ins can be prevented by reinforcing or drilling the unstable walls.

Cave-ins appear in the PC Game and the NTSC Playstation Game.

Cave-ins only occur in areas marked in the Fall.map file.

Air supply

The Oxygen Supply is the amount of available breathable Oxygen in a Level. A depleting supply can be an Environmental Threat to Rock Raider Cadets.

The Air Meter

File:OxygenSupplyBar.png
The Air Meter: the blue bar indicates the amount of air remaining and the "O2" will flash when it gets critically low.

The Air Meter keeps track of your Oxygen Supply in the caverns and shows up at the bottom of the screen during gameplay.

The meter is important during certain levels such as A Breath Of Fresh Air and Don't Panic that have a depleting air supply. When this starts to get low it is most likely a good time to build a Support Station, as that will resupply air to the caverns. The more Rock Raiders you have teleported down, the faster your air supply will deplete.

Threat

File:AirLow.png
Low Oxygen Supply Warning

Starting with A Breath Of Fresh Air, some missions have caverns that do not have enough oxygen to support Rock Raiders, and will deplete. The more Rock Raiders that are present, the faster it will deplete (this interchanges, until at one point all later missions have limited oxygen). Rock Raiders will get tired more and more frequently as oxygen runs out. Sparks will warn you every time your Oxygen Supply drops by 5%. When it reaches the critical level of only 10%, a small low frequency alarm will go off that resembles heartbeats. When the Oxygen Supply runs out, all Buildings, Vehicles, and Rock Raiders are automatically teleported back up to the LMS Explorer and the mission is failed.

It should be noted that the Oxygen Supply is only affected by Rock Raider Cadets, and not by any of the Enemies present on the map, nor by the one or two cadets that appear atop the Mining Laser.

Protection

In order to counteract a depleting supply of oxygen, you have to build Support Stations and maintain 10 Raiders or less per Support Station in the mission at a time. The faster the depletion rate, the more Support Stations that will be needed, depending on the number of Rock Raider Cadets needed for operation.

Geyser

File:Geyser.png
A geyser in an ice cavern

Geysers are a terrain danger in the PS1 Games. They will exhaust a blast of hot steam every few seconds. Rock Raiders have to move past them quickly because the steam will damage all Rock Raiders and Vehicles, excluding the Loader Dozer.

Lava Plumes

While Geysers usually shoot steam, some geysers in Molten Terrain and Rocky Terrain caverns expel magma. These dangerous occurrences are known as Lava Plumes. They are known to take down even Tunnel Transports.