Difficulty capturing someone

[Demoulius]

Hello all,

Ive played the game before but havent touched it in...like 3 updates. Now 1.0 is here and im playing it again, and having fun

One issue ive got a problem with though is capturing....well, anyone.

Previously I never really had so many issues with capturing people. Most of the time the first few attacks that you got you were able to down them and pursuade them to join you. This playthrough I had killed over 20 people (I had dug graves for them so I could count how many had died at that point )

Now im getting an attack and one of the attacker is one of my main toons' sister. So naturally I want to bring them back together. I think ive spend over an 1.5hrs trying to get her to go down. So far ive killed with with fists. Clubs. Random stray shots. Melee attacks from ranged weapons. A cougar mauled her to death. Heck I wouldnt be suprised if a sneeze could kill her.

She has no injuries and aside from an alcohol addiction shes healthy. Im going through hoops to try and get her to go down and so far ive managed to do it once, with shots from hunting no less. The deadliest things in my arsenal managed to get her to go down -_- but she had only 4 hours before she bled to death and I couldnt save her in time.

Am I doing something wrong? All my melee combatants are carrying clubs or maces and AFAIK that should have the best chance to make some fall over....

[AileTheAlien]

Yeah, blunt melee should work the best; Unfortunately, knocking someone unconscious doesn't happen very often in this game.

[Demoulius]

So after about 1.5 hrs of trying to get this to work I finally DID knock her down... As well as 3 other people that I promptly captured! 

It feels so random though, and I think all 3 of them got shot as well. When I try to bludgeon them to death and down them with pain threshold I kill them and when I shoot their arses they actually go down. Oh and I fell over from an overdosis, apparently. Because he had no injuries when I hauled him in 

[5thHorseman]

There is a chance, for every enemy who is downed in combat, for them to die. This is totally independent of how they were downed, and is large enough to be a significant factor. I don't recall the actual number but it's something like 33 or 50 (or maybe even 67) percent of ALL downed enemies will die due to this check.

This means if they're downed because you hit them on the knee, they will possibly (even likely) die from it.

In short, you're not doing anything wrong. The game just found more ways to mess with you.

[Demoulius]

Yea I read something like that earlier  I also read though that with blunt weapons your chance of capturing someone increased alot because they wouldnt bleed to death but that doesent seem to be a major factor in whatever or not they die 

[TheMeInTeam]

There is a chance, for every enemy who is downed in combat, for them to die. This is totally independent of how they were downed, and is large enough to be a significant factor. I don't recall the actual number but it's something like 33 or 50 (or maybe even 67) percent of ALL downed enemies will die due to this check.

This means if they're downed because you hit them on the knee, they will possibly (even likely) die from it.

In short, you're not doing anything wrong. The game just found more ways to mess with you.

It's well over 50%, though I think somewhat dependent on how many pawns you have vs storyteller soft cap.

If you want to down someone for sure, do it with temperature or bleeding.

[mebe]

If you really want to maximise the chances then bleeding is probably the most likely way - if you are close by with a healer, meds and heal spot (and equipped with luck versus infections etc)

[Shurp]

If you have a good doctor, don't worry about meds.  Just drop a sleeping spot next to her, designate it medical, and tell your doctor to treat her on the spot.  Even if she gets an infection you can treat that later.

Note that you'll probably have to forbid all your medicine to get your doctor to *not* run back to base to get medicine... or create a "stay put" zone for your doctor and patient to stay in.

[jpinard]

If you have a good doctor, don't worry about meds.  Just drop a sleeping spot next to her, designate it medical, and tell your doctor to treat her on the spot.  Even if she gets an infection you can treat that later.

Note that you'll probably have to forbid all your medicine to get your doctor to *not* run back to base to get medicine... or create a "stay put" zone for your doctor and patient to stay in.

So is using a wooden sword better than a plasteel sword in this kind of instance?

[Yoshida Keiji]

This is yet another example of how stupid the game can be.

When an enemy is downed and you right click on it, you get a drop bar menu with options like: capture, attack to death, strip clothes. You get options as to what to do with the victim.

Before an enemy gets downed, you also get a drop bar menu as to shoot the target or to engage in melee.

I really cant understand why we cant get another drop bar menu between shoot to kill and shoot to down an enemy.

I already had the experience of a prison break when a warden was approaching a cell, the prisoner opens the door...and my pawn who was ordered to shoot...aims a head shot...I wanted that one alive...you asshole.

...and while the version 1.0 has hundreds of problems...Tynan will go and listen to Shurp instead...

[Shurp]

Yoshida, you do know that shooting an enemy pawn in the foot is just as likely to kill him as shooting him in the head, right?

Enemy pawns die as soon as they contact the dirt.  It's an intentional mechanic to reduce the number of pawns available to recruit.  Even if you beat him down with pink fluffy pillows he'll still die most of the time. 

If you want to change this behavior, just go into Difficulties.xml (in Core\Defs\Misc\DifficultyDefs) and change <enemyDeathOnDownedChanceFactor> to whatever you want it to be for the difficulty level you're playing at.  It starts at 0.50 on peaceful and goes up to 1.00 on merciless.  (I assume that there are additional modifiers for your population and storyteller that reduce this since pawns don't die 100% of the time on Extreme)

[Canute]

Yes, the gamemechanic lack the ability of aimed shoots/hits.
But this made the captuing too easy, and that is what the devs want to avoid.

There are ton of mods with non-lethal weapons, or mods that give abilities to pawn and many of these can be used to down most pawn's.

[N0xiety]

Hmm, i was also wondering this and did some tests in extreme difficulty. So i locked a perfect warrior with no weapons in a room of 30 random pirates. The battles were 1 on 1 and controlled. He managed to down 11, and another 11 died from non life threatening injuries. The rest 8 died from getting their torso or head destroyed(mostly torso), but they had something in common. Most of them were high on some kind of drug like go juice or something else, so they just wouldn't go down from pain till something like their torso is destroyed. They kept going with their legs and arms destroyed together with cracks and bruises all over their body.

What i can tell from this is that enemies die from rng %50 of the time for no reason other than balance and then drugs also adds like %20 more deaths because they won't go down from pain till something important gets destroyed. So the last value is about %30 of the enemies can be captured if you manage to deal non life threatening injuries all the time, but that is easier said than done. This test was with fists, which is the least lethal weapon in the game. When guns and other things go into the equation, the damage they can churn out destroys important parts like torso, head or heart makes it all the more harder to down someone. So in practice, out of like 50 pirates, you get like at most 1 or 2 downed after an intense firefight.

My conclusion is, even without the rng randomly killing %50 of the downed enemies, it is already hard enough to down someone without outright destroying them anyways. So i see no reason for such a balance rng mechanics existence. I should be able to subdue someone if i really want to with less lethal weapons. Someone like a prisoner for example. It would be the games fault if it gives me the opportunity for a situation where i can use less than lethal means to capture. Or maybe it is my superior strategy that gave me such an opportunity. I can't always use wooden clubs or fists to capture people anyways. When they come with like more than 50 people, how the hell am i supposed to have the luxury to use less lethal weapons right? So this mechanic is totaly useless and unimmersive. It is really annoying to see someone die from cracks and bruises to their body with nothing vital damaged while another guy lives with both their legs blown off. Game literally punishes you for doing good. It takes good strategy to create an opportunity where i have the leisure to use less than lethal weapons, but game just spits on your face for good strategy. This is a totaly unfair, unimmersive and an unneeded balance rng.

Edit: Did some more tests and it seems an avarage steel knife is pretty good for non lethal wounds, so it is pretty good for downing someone, yet the rng kills just the same at random even with all the non lethal wounds...

[Shurp]

I'm not convinced it's unneeded.  I'm playing a Cassandra Savage game and I keep getting more prisoners than I can feed.  But my base is small -- 7 pawns and 2 prisoners at the moment.  I was at 5 pawns and 3 prisoners earlier, that was a pain.  Remember that as your pop approaches target it becomes harder to catch and recruit pawns.

Recruitment is intentionally hard at higher difficulties... if it seems unfair, you can always try an easier difficulty.  Or just mod as explained above to fix it to the way you want it.

But I agree that the mechanism of achieving this is kludgy.  Is there a cleaner way to make it harder to recruit captives?  What if the better pawns just had a higher chance of 99% recruitment difficulty?

[Nainara]

If you want to be choosy about your prisoners, start stocking up on psychic stun lances when you have the opportunity to trade for them.