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Manual

Drill mode

Drill mode (survival scenario)

A guided survival drill — a preparedness exercise that runs over your real map. It’s not a game bolted on; the mechanics are AIOS’s real features: the event is an infrastructure cascade, scouting a site is field-checking its status, finding water is the nearest-search, and travel time is real routing. It’s the quickest way to see what the system is for — and a good demo.

Playing on the dashboard

In the Map panel, the Drill group → pick a scenario → Start. It’s built from whatever region is loaded, centred on your current location (or the map centre if none is set), and the map focuses on that scenario’s POI layers (your own layer selection is restored when the drill ends). The scenarios that ship:

  • Flood & blackout — the nearest water works fails (its cascade is shown on the map); hold out with water + food. Flood surges test your camp: sit them out from high, flood-safe ground — a low-lying base gets swamped (stores damaged, camp untenable) and you’ll have to re-site.
  • Grid cascade — a substation fails and the outage cascades to water + comms; manage water + charge, and you can either hold out or reach a signal to call for rescue.
  • Cut off by the storm — a longer (9-day) endurance grind with storm-shortened daylight (far less travel/scouting per day) and flood surges; forage water + food, ration fuel, and keep camp high.
  • Danger zones — parts of the area are no-go zones that spread over the run (drawn as red areas on the map), with the grid down and a curfew cutting your daylight. Sources inside a zone are cut off and routes steer around them — so scouting and resupply cost more, and the zones creep toward your camp: if one reaches you, camp is overrun (stores lost, untenable) and you must re-site clear of them. Contaminated water means the purify-water research pays off. This is the areal cousin of a flood surge — the same “move before it hits” thinking, but you’re dodging ground, not height.
  • Wildfire — a fast-moving fire front (drawn in orange) that spreads faster than a danger zone and runs uphill faster — so where you camp on a slope matters. Like the danger zones it cuts off sources and forces routes around it, and it creeps toward your camp; on top of that, smoke saps the party’s energy whenever the fire is close, so keeping your distance is worth stamina, not just safety.
  • Deep winter — the grid’s down in a hard winter and the enemy is the cold. A new warmth gauge drains every day; replenish it by gathering firewood (scout a woodland), and camp near shelter — an exposed camp far from a building bleeds extra warmth to the wind (this ties siting to survival). A telegraphed cold snap bites hard, so stock firewood before it lands. Short winter days leave little time to forage. Run out of warmth and the party freezes.
  • Get out — an evacuation: a journey, not a siege. You win by reaching a distant safe point (a muster point / rest centre, marked 🏁 on the map) before the deadline, by moving camp toward it each day — so it’s a race across the real road network. A single move only covers so much ground, so you make the trip in legs (make camp partway, then again the next day). Watch fuel, energy and daylight (they cap how far you travel per day), resupply water and food on the way, and don’t run the clock out short of the goal. The HUD shows how far you have left.

Resources: water/food (vital), warmth (vital, in winter — gathered as firewood from woodland), charge (for rescue), fuel (driving), and energy — the party’s stamina, which walking drains and resting restores.

Each turn (the Actions row):

  • Rest / Next Day — the party consumes each daily resource; every gauge drops. Your daylight budget and energy (stamina) refill with the night’s rest. Setbacks can happen.

  • Scout — click a water/food/power POI on the map → 🔭 Scout this. It costs real travel time: the scout takes an actual road route there and back, drawn on the map, out of the day’s daylight — so you can’t scout the whole map in a day. Choose 🚗 Drive (~40 km/h, burns fuel) or 🚶 Walk (~5 km/h, burns energy — no fuel) with the Travel by radios (the mode applies to make-camp and survey moves too); out of fuel you must walk, out of energy you must rest. The scout reports the site’s true status (the baked map is stale — some sources are actually unusable/looted/dead), which shows as a halo and updates Nearest. This is the core lesson: verify before you rely.

  • ⛺ Make camp here — click any spot (a POI or bare ground — higher ground is usually bare ground) → relocate the party there (costs one-way travel). The new base is scored for terrain / water / flood-safety / soil, and the log reports its elevation and height above nearby water — the “higher ground” signal. Nothing stops you camping anywhere; it’s advisory — but on a flood day a low-lying camp (little height above water) gets swamped (stores damaged, forced re-site), while high ground rides it out. So to find safe ground, turn on Map → Terrain (Elevation & Temperature) shading/contours and pick a spot well above the water. Moving camp changes where scouting and rescue are measured from. (This is the siting survey, inside the drill.)

  • 👁 Survey from here — click high ground → a scout climbs it (round trip) and reveals every scoutable source in line-of-sight at once — the reward for taking the high ground (needs elevation). The result is listed (grouped by resource, with distance from camp and each source’s true status); click an entry to fly to it. (The advisor’s Survey from there button does exactly the same thing.)

  • Resupply — a real supply run: it travels back to a confirmed source (costing daylight + fuel or energy, by your Travel-by mode, one run per resource per day) and draws from it. Each source is a finite budget, not a tap — it depletes as you draw and eventually runs dry, so secure more than one source of a vital and manage the portfolio. A confirmed food source only tops up food, a working substation only charge, etc.

  • 🔬 Research — each drill poses 2–3 real survival questions that open over the run (one from day 1, the others on later days), so there’s always something new to look up. Look it up in the Library (or ask the Assistant), then type the answer. The day-1 question fits the scenario’s threat and unlocks a capability:

    • Flood / storm / danger-zones → purify water (boil) → resupply even from contaminated sources.
    • Wildfire → smoke safety (stay low, damp cloth) → smoke saps far less of the party’s energy.
    • Deep winter → staying warm (insulation, keep dry) → an exposed camp bleeds far less warmth.
    • Grid cascade → signalling (fire / mirror / SOS) → call for rescue without a comms mast in sight.
    • Evacuation / wildfire → navigation (find north) → the party travels more efficiently (less daylight/energy per trip).

    The later questions are broader preparedness (finding water, hypothermia signs, lighting a wet fire, flash-flood safety, rationing) — solving any one gives a small morale lift, and rationing softens its energy cost. It’s all optional — never answering doesn’t block you — but it turns a losing situation around when the threat is biting.

  • 🎚 Difficulty tiers — pick a tier when you start: Training (forgiving — more stock and daylight, the full advisor), Standard (the default), Hard (leaner stock, shorter days, more contamination, the advisor gives only hints), or Exercise (the advisor is off — trust your own read; a debrief at the end). Harder tiers also let a bounded director quietly tighten the pressure when you’re coasting — it can pull a coming setback a little earlier, but it never kicks a struggling party and never springs an un-forecast event.

  • 🧰 The drill runs on the real tools — it’s a guided tour of them, so use them: Find Nearest to locate water/food/fuel to scout; Places to Settle (+ Terrain (Elevation & Temperature) shading/contours) to find flood-safe high ground for camp; Comms Signals to see where you’ll get a signal for rescue; Line of Sight to preview what a vantage reveals before you climb. The drill panel points you at the right one for the moment.

  • 🔎 Read the map before you scout — clicking an un-scouted source shows a pre-scout intel hedge (“likely intact” / “uncertain” / “probably contaminated/looted”), derived from real geography: water near the failed works is likely contaminated, consumables near a town are likely looted. It’s a hint, not the truth — scout to confirm — but it lets you spend daylight on the sources most likely to pay off. The advisor’s scout suggestions carry the same note.

  • 🕰 Intel goes stale — a scouted-good source you’re not relying on can be looted or contaminated as the crisis deepens (“reports in: a scouted water source has been contaminated — re-verify”). It never rots your last tight lifeline (that would be unfair), but it means scout once, coast no longer works: keep a backup and re-verify. (It costs you a future resupply option, never your current stock.)

  • ⚖ Ration & ⛏ Fortify — the two ways to answer a forecast. Ration a resource strict (◉) to stretch it (~0.6× the daily draw) — but a hungry, thirsty party tires faster (a smaller energy restore each rest), so it’s a trade, not free. Fortify spends daylight + energy to sandbag the camp and raise its flood-safety above the line, so a forecast surge washes past instead of swamping your stores — cheaper than relocating if you saw it coming. Both are on the HUD; the advisor suggests Fortify when a surge is forecast and your camp is low-lying.

  • ⚠ Forecasts & pacing — the run moves through acts (setup → escalation → crisis → resolution, shown by the day counter) and setbacks are forecast ~2 days ahead (“expect a flood surge tomorrow”). The warning is your chance to prepare — move camp to safe ground, stock up, secure a backup source — so a failure is always something you could have seen coming, never a cheap surprise. Watch the forecast strip and the advisor’s “prepare” nudge.

  • 📡 Call for rescue (charge scenarios) — with a charged device and a comms mast in terrain line-of-sight from where you are, call for help and win early. No signal? The hint tells you which way to move to higher ground.

  • 🧭 What now? — the next-move advisor. Stuck on what to do? It reads your run — how many days of each resource you have left, what you’ve confirmed, the daylight left, flood exposure, whether a rescue is within reach — and tells you the single most important thing to do next, why, and (where it can) offers a one-click button to do it, plus a couple of runners-up. It’s deterministic (a priority ladder, not the AI): secure a vital that’s about to run out first, move off flood-exposed ground before a surge, top up what’s getting low, then bank supplies while you’re comfortable. Advice only — it never acts on its own.

Keep every vital resource above zero until relief arrives on the final day → you win (or call for rescue). Run out of any vital resource → the drill ends; try again.

Survival is graded, not pass/fail. When a run ends you get an outcome — Held (exemplary), Held (strained), Evacuated (you called for rescue), or Failed — and an after-action review: your tightest moment (the lowest any vital’s runway got), the lessons from what bit you or what you dodged, and preparedness scores (margin · foresight · redundancy · party · efficiency). The scoring deliberately rewards the prepared, slightly-conservative operator — buffering a margin, acting on forecasts, and securing a backup source — over one who barely scraped through on luck. aios geo drill review prints the debrief; the dashboard shows it in the HUD when the run ends.

From the CLI

aios geo drill start [grid-cascade|storm|conflict-zone|wildfire|winter|evacuation] [--seed N]   # begin a scenario (default flood-blackout); each run
                                      #   VARIES (contaminated sources + setback days are seeded), so no two
                                      #   plays are the same — pass --seed N to reproduce or share an exact run
aios geo drill status                 # day, stocks, party, recent log
aios geo drill advise                 # "what should I do next?" — the deterministic next-move advisor
aios geo drill scout <fid>            # a scout checks a site (fid from `aios geo near water`)
aios geo drill camp <place|lat,lon>   # relocate camp there (scored by siting)
aios geo drill vantage <place|lat,lon>  # survey from high ground — reveal everything in line-of-sight
aios geo drill resupply [water|food|charge|fuel]  # supply run to a confirmed source (costs travel; sources deplete)
aios geo drill ration <resource> [strict|normal]  # stretch a resource (strict ≈ 0.6× daily) — but the party tires
aios geo drill fortify                            # spend daylight+energy to make camp flood-safe before a surge
aios geo drill research                # show the scenario's research question (answer it from the Library)
aios geo drill answer <text>           # submit the research answer → unlocks a capability
aios geo drill rescue                 # call for rescue (needs charge + a signal) — an alternate win
aios geo drill day                    # advance one day
aios geo drill end                  # end the drill (the map reverts)

Notes

  • The drill’s status marks are its own — they overlay the map + Nearest while it runs but never touch your real field annotations, and they vanish when the drill ends.
  • It needs a loaded map region (and elevation, for the terrain-based bits). Region-agnostic: it works on whatever you’ve baked or fetched.
  • It’s a drill — for practising the thinking, not a simulator of the disaster itself.

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