I've seen a table marked "Disturbance" next to all my other important informational bars. The number started at zero, and as my colony grew in size and power the Disturbance number began to grow as well, up to several hundred. At first I thought it was how distressed my colonists were, but the number increased even as I improved the colonists' lodgings and workplaces. Then the sky fell, and I realized that the number did not track our disturbance, but something Else. Who are we Disturbing? Is it one gestalt entity that would crush a colony like a man squishes a bothersome tick? Is it the land itself, crying in defiance against the Empire's voracious appetites? Is it our REDACTED predecessors, treating our childish tinkering like a worldwide alarm clock? Or is it simply that our desperate steam-powered flailing is a candle in the vast dark, inviting hosts of incomprehensible horrors to scrutinize and extinguish us?
A very brief summary from a very brief look through the game files: Colonies should generate one point of Disturbance for every building you have every time night falls (i.e. when shift 7 begins). This doesn't happen unless you have at least two buildings, though. Events have a cost in Disturbance. When night falls, the colony's new Disturbance total is compared to whatever the next event in line is (I didn't have time to look through and see how that's determined). If the colony's Disturbance is high enough, it pays the cost and triggers the event. The biggest cost I saw for any event is 120. Any given event isn't supposed to trigger more than once every twenty days, so big colonies might get to a point where they're generating more Disturbance than there are events to spend it on. Useful files to look through are: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Clockwork Empires\scripts\frameupdate.lua - Covers nightly counting of buildings. C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Clockwork Empires\scripts\gameobjects\event_director.go - Increments Disturbance and handles events; queuing them up, keeping track of what's been triggered and what stage they're in etc. C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Clockwork Empires\scripts\entity\case_files.edb - This is where the events themselves are listed, with costs, descriptions, text etc. If you want to see what all the events are, as well as a few that are still commented out, this is where to look. The format is pretty straightforward and creating new events would not seem to be all that difficult.
