I just finished my first colony, somewhat save-scummed so I can learn the mechanics and absolutely love the game. I played on Cassandra on Rough (one below Extreme) and was faced with plenty of challenging scenarios but the only I think that were a little over the top were the excessive manhunter packs I faced towards the end of the game.
Manhunter pack #1 - pack of 40-50 wargs (!!). I had a pretty solid killbox consisting of 10 gun turrets, 20 steel traps, 4 shooters (charge rifles) and 2 melee colonists both in quality power armor. I managed to kill about half of them before my colonists were overwhelmed. I loaded that game :)
Manhunter pack #2 - pack of 40-50 wild board stormed my base, about half through my killbox and the rest through a long hallway/like side entrance to my base (previously broken through by sappers/pirates). I managed to defeat them all with a few downed colonists.
My feedback:
- Put some kind of cap on each manhunter pack per animal type based on their DPS, health, speed, etc. The warg scenario seemed slightly unfair and even when I tried to hide indoors they broke through very quickly.
- Limit the amount of animals that can push past each other when walking down a narrow hallway. I had two strong melee fighters stationed by the exit leaving a single space open for my shooters - while I was able to stop a few and force them to fight a massive amount of them just surged past. Logically, there is no way 10 wargs could rush past that space so quickly so it might make more sense to limit the amount of characters that can occupy the same space (corpses should not affect this limit, but should slow walk speed as they do already) so you can effectively make a chokepoint. In this case, this would still allow the wargs to move past the wargs engaged in melee with my colonists, but they would trickle through instead of burst through.
I haven't had this much fun with a game in a long time - keep up the good work!
You could just turn off your turrets and hide indoors if your defenses can't handle them... Manhunters don't bother you unless you're taking potshots at them through a door.
As said, the best is to hide indoors for a couple of days.
Build a solid wall to secure your base. And then put turrets and fighting positions in front of it. When man hunters appear restrict everyone inside. They might try to break down the door a bit, but you can repair that with a good constructor while they do it. Eventually they will stop and just run around.
With the wall you aren't locked into your buildings (which might be dispersed anyways), but have access to your outside areas like farms. So life goes on just fine.
Fair enough - I did try hiding but they were breaking through my doors fairly quickly. I guess it makes sense to have a dedicated repairman in those cases and build some granite doors.... I can't wait to play my next game with permadeath enabled :) Let those wargs come at me again
They only keep trying to get into your doors if they see you. So you need to get everyone inside fast. If they don't see you, they will give up eventually. Stone doors are a must for outer doors, yes. You can also have double doors. And keep one held open normally, so it doesn't hinder your movement.
Without that, then yeah, those large man hunter packs are a bit crazy :) Even smaller ones are easy to underestimate. I once foolishly took on 20-30 boars and got wiped out easily.
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=26623.msg269332#msg269332
changes manhunter to have random animals ( chickens / snakes / dogs / rats )
manhunter is harder than mech raids for me,
I started a thread about giving manhunter packs a better warning system instead of springing them on you and its on in an instant, it received no support though.
They can be easily dealt with (with minimal damage and rare death) if you have ANY time to prepare for them, but when you are scattered around the map doing random jobs you are screwed. It is also super silly that man hunter packs just down pawns rather than kill and eat them. This was basically the jist of my post, they should kill pawns instead of down, and to give a warning system similar to a raid that is preparing before attack (or give half of that time for the manhunter packs)
I like to build a 20-25x 20-25 building that extends off a building that is pretty center in my base, and build 3 doors on the outside wall, and taunt the manhunter pack into coming through the door when I have all my pawns inside on the furthest wall, the pack comes in 1 or 2 at a time, and unless they literally all come at once you can pick them off with pretty minimal damage. It is just having enough time to get colonists into said building, since manhunter packs spawn and instantly head for built structures full speed.