Knowledge of caves before landing

[Meatshield]

How much do the marines know about caves?

Would a viable strategy on Big Red be building an outpost at Tcomms, blowing a hole in the southern wall, and then building cades leading south to Virology and LZ2?

[coroneljones]

As far as I know, they know as much as the IC maps show them, for big red this is the one.

[Retrokinesis]

What's interesting about that map is that it kind of shows the caves south of tcomms (there's definitely something there on the map, but it's not super clear what) and doesn't show the tunnels east and northeast of LZ1 at all.

Is it intended that the marines know about the tcomms caves ahead of time? I know people frequently end up building barricades there anyway, but it's such a completely ruinous flank if left unguarded that I've noticed that seems to be mostly excused either way?

[Meatshield]

What's interesting about that map is that it kind of shows the caves south of tcomms (there's definitely something there on the map, but it's not super clear what) and doesn't show the tunnels east and northeast of LZ1 at all.

Is it intended that the marines know about the tcomms caves ahead of time? I know people frequently end up building barricades there anyway, but it's such a completely ruinous flank if left unguarded that I've noticed that seems to be mostly excused either way?

Yeah, kind of why I suggested this strategy, getting kind of bored seeing the ol' flank through Tcomms on Big Red, in an otherwise great map.

[Bronimin]

There is nothing stopping you from scouting properly and 'finding' the caves behind tcomms.

Mostly though marines ignore virology and the caves around the warden's office and go straight for engineering/lambda without stopping to breathe.

[SlavishCircle]

I typically interperate anything with a more defined outline on the maps, like the image linked here, as a sonic image return of hollow spaces detected of the colony. It gives good wiggle room for explaining how those outlines show up on the map in the first place without any tiles being given, and how some entries are seen but not the entire system -- the deeper caves are too far underground for the sonic scans to give a definite image.