OmanMkII
It’s possible to track the number of hops that a device on a network has, since TTL will be 8-bit numbers (and ususally start at 64, 128, etc.) if the TTL of a packet has 64 from the main device, the devices it’s sharing with will be 63 (and so on un the chain for N+1 hops). This may not be exactly how they do it since device fingerprinting would be way simpler, but it is a plausible way of tracking that a device is using a hotspot.
Fair enough if combat isn’t as much your thing! I find the stories that are generated to be excellent, and there tends to be more combat than most similar games which is why I focused more on it.
I was doing great up until ships kept crashing
My usual approach here is to either bombard it with mortars, have a trader “accidentally” set it off, or if neither are available set up a lot of traps and sandbags and get ready for a battle. Make sure you always have plenty of cover, and for psychics especially destroy them sooner to minimise the effects. If they’re the newer style of mechanoid raid, you may need to get really close and throw a few explosives in there or otherwise be inside the area and have everyone attack at once.
You can start building whenever you’re ready really, but definitely have a good defence set up before you start. For components I usually send a few people off with cattle to carry everything back from a friendly town (since traders can be somewhat sparse at times), and if you trade enough you may even be able to request reinforcements. I try to make sure everyone has the best armor and weapons I can afford/make - if you’ve got golden tiles but not much better than dusters, then a lot more deaths are likely. Even with the best gear, one of my characters was once killed by a lucky shot in the eye from a measly bow!
If you’re more for the survival aspect then definitely feel free to keep it on lower difficulties (I often do at the start), and you can usually make do without much strategy as long as you have good gear, decent cover, and a medic on standby with the best meds you can afford. Turrets or other friendlies are often great distractions, and if they’re taking the bullets then none of your colonists are.
Edit: I’d also add that learning from mistakes is great for all areas of life, if you can look at why you failed (not enough farms, too little meds, etc.) and learn from it then you’re going to do better the next time. Even if the general strategy stays the same, small changes can make a massive difference.
So a couple of tips I’ve learnt along the way: what makes a killbox work at all is managing how you can be attacked in the first place. If you can decide the battlefield and delay them as long as possible to be fully prepared, then you’re going to be a lot better off. Use traps everywhere, have more turrets than you do people, use artillery when you can, and give your enemy no cover to work with. It doesn’t have to be a killbox, but plenty of damage along the way and natural choke points can often defeat a raid before they can even score a hit.
The main point of wealth is that it scales the size of an attack proportionally. People have the greatest weight for wealth, so make sure you can hold off a raid before recruiting 20 prisoners. I don’t usually worry too much about keeping wealth low, but you see harder raids if your wealth has outpaced your defence.
The wiki also has plenty of solid strategies for defence if you’re stumped, and often working with the environment you’ve got can be much more fun than creating an artificial killbox (in my opinion anyway). Good defence is the basis for completing any of the quests I’ve found, so surviving long enough should absolutely help complete them.
Edit: I’d 100% recommend the game to anyone who’s interested in a colony builder that’s got a decent focus on survival, I’ve seen many hilarious and really fun things happen with a story that comes simply from chance.
I’ve had the best experience flipping the print and printing text on top. If it has to be on the bottom though, slowing the print speed and using a slicer with bridging settings may work better.
Mass effect and dragon age series from bioware are excellent, they’re a little involved but the story telling is incredible in both. While it has aged and may be depending on a love for star wars, their knights of the old republic series was also excellent.
They’re really damn good at making a story that’s worth being part of, often one of my first recommendations aside from the last of us, outer wilds, and a couple of others I’ve seen here already.