Because it just happened again:
Predators can spawn anywhere on the map without any forewarning. They can spawn right in the middle of your base. And five seconds later they will likely attack and cripple a colonist before you even realize what is happening. Since you only get a warning when your guys start taking damage, you have no counterplay.
This needs to be fixed. Predators should not spawn so close to your base and players should get some kind of warning when they come near your pawns/installations.
Animals enter from outside map, if you don't have your base closed then obviously predators can wander inside...
No, they do not. At least, not only. Speficically, predators spawn out of thin air anywhere, and that can and will be right in the middle of your base. As with all events in this game, that even seems to be predetermined at least a bit before it happens, because until a few hours after my orininal post up there I would have been able to send you a savegame showing exactly that.
Manhunter packs enter from off the map, they're not ODSTs. Predatory creatures also only enter from off the map, like any other animal does. Their wanderings might bring them close to your base whilst they're not hungry.
I've never, personally, seen an animal pop in / out of existence anywhere besides the edge of the map.
If you are indeed seeing that happen and can reproduce it / document it in a detailed way, please report in the bugs (https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?board=11.0) subforum so it can be properly dealt with.
If you happen to be running any mods, you should also check if disabling them resolves the issue.
Bugs related to mods should be reported in the Mod Bugs (https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?board=23.0) subforum.
From my experience, predators cannot appear from thin air, but will move close to good prey candidates. So it may seem like they appear from no where, but if map is desolated with suitable prey, they see your farm and your pawns as a food source.
I seem to recall this topic so presumably it's an old bug that's still hanging around. I never experienced it myself.
In addition to the above: Did you observe it as it happened? Was it really five seconds* untill they attacked your pawns? Have you then checked the hunger bar of said predator? All freshly spawned pawns usually do so with full bars.
*read: a few moments
it is an old issue. but in a16 i havnt experienced it anymore.
happens when you have around half the map enclosed with walls on big maps.
the predators just get "somehow" behind your walls while you are offscreen looking somewhere else.
then they have free Access to your base.
Dear nonbelievers [scnr] - it happens, and it happens quite often. Had another two incidents today. I tend to see it every now and then in the "middle ring" so to speak, too - but it is usually not that much of a problem there, since the likeliness of one of your pawns being the only thing near them is rather low.
One recent instance could possibly have been just a hungry snake beelining across half the map right towards the back of my base and one of my two chicken - I did not catch it spawn with the autosave this time, just run through the rear part of my base. Still, it went for over 100 tiles straight for the chicken, repeatable after reloading. Even if that particular instance was "normal behaviour", I would question that behaviour.
The issue is from how a hungry animal looks for food, since it looks for the one that is 'closest' (and maybe weakest) in tiles, even if it means running 100+ tiles to go around a huge wall. I don't like how this works, but I'm guessing it's done for performance. That said, this isn't an algorithm that runs too often (whenever an animal gets hungry), so it could probably be improved.
Beware of farms: Animals get hungry often when there're many animals.
Looks like someone hasn't enclosed their area perfectly. Life does not simply spawn out from nowhere, and my Institute (a mountain valley base perfectly walled off on its north and east valley openings, with the other sides large mountains if not going straight to the edge of map) has a clear grazing range, safe for my livestock to feed on once it was clear of the original wildlife.
Quote from: Stormfox on January 22, 2017, 05:53:01 PM
Dear nonbelievers [scnr] - it happens, and it happens quite often.
I was pretty sure this was happening too, but I wasn't aware it wasn't supposed to. Cougars and grizzlies were pretty commonly "just appearing" (afaict) and eating my chickens, which were 'behind the lines' so should have been obvious if they just wandered in.
Btw, you don't have to enclose your colony perfectly to avoid wolves attacking your colonists. All you need is a few squirrels.
I dislike the idea of building walls, so I run an open town-like colony. Which means any kind of predator can walk in freely. Hunters are sent after the ones which I spot wandering on the map, but this screening is of course something that can't be done perfectly. So I developed a "squirrel defence", which is a zone inhabited by 3-4 squirrels, located partly around the colony and partly inside. Squirrels don't eat much, but as predators prioritize small prey, they will attack those squirrels first. While the predator is occupied in killing and eating those squirrels it's relatively easy to kill, so I'll just draft some of the nearby pawns and have that predator shot.
Quote from: carbon on January 22, 2017, 10:34:08 AM
I've never, personally, seen an animal pop in / out of existence anywhere besides the edge of the map.
I have. At least once, a warg (or some wolf-like critter) killed one of my dogs. My hunting habits are such that it's unlikely that it simply walked in. More than once, I've lost chickens to cobras spawning in the base, too.
I've never seen predators or any animals spawn anywhere but the edge of the map. I have, however, seen a polar bear spawn with an near empty food meter on an ice sheet and immediately make a beeline for my colonists. I've also seen predators take extremely long routes to get to animals behind walls because they are the "closest" prey. Either one of these could account for predators seeming to spawn in your base if you aren't paying enough attention.
Quote from: DeathWeasel on January 23, 2017, 11:53:08 AM
I've never seen predators or any animals spawn anywhere but the edge of the map. I have, however, seen a polar bear spawn with an near empty food meter on an ice sheet and immediately make a beeline for my colonists. I've also seen predators take extremely long routes to get to animals behind walls because they are the "closest" prey. Either one of these could account for predators seeming to spawn in your base if you aren't paying enough attention.
I surrounded my base exits with wood, with doors to enter.
I'm 90% sure they spawned past it, since I had a second spaced layer, with boomalopes in between, I'll confirm next Monday
I'm not sure what roles Boomalopes play in your thought, but predators avoid Boomalopes/-rats since A15.
Found another major annoyance related to that:
I had another of those "spawn and then sprint across the map to hunt a colonist deep inside the base" predators - this time a cougar. I had to reload 3 times until I was finally able to down it, for one simple reason:
Colonists do not see a predator hunting one of them as a hostile target, so you have to not only draft everyone but also manually target the beast while it sprints right past everyone (it does not turn to face the attackers even if hit, it continues to run towards its designated target), manually run everyone after it and then target everyone again, and so on.
That is a ridiculous amount of micromanagement for a simple "hostile inbound" situation that simply should not be neccessary. Flag a hunting beast the same way as a manhunter and fix the spawning inside your base issue, and it would work out halfway decently.
Quote from: Stormfox on January 26, 2017, 11:55:58 AM
Found another major annoyance related to that:
I had another of those "spawn and then sprint across the map to hunt a colonist deep inside the base" predators - this time a cougar. I had to reload 3 times until I was finally able to down it, for one simple reason:
Colonists do not see a predator hunting one of them as a hostile target, so you have to not only draft everyone but also manually target the beast while it sprints right past everyone (it does not turn to face the attackers even if hit, it continues to run towards its designated target), manually run everyone after it and then target everyone again, and so on.
That is a ridiculous amount of micromanagement for a simple "hostile inbound" situation that simply should not be neccessary. Flag a hunting beast the same way as a manhunter and fix the spawning inside your base issue, and it would work out halfway decently.
I'd bet that, as a normal hunting target, they're not generating "manhunter" status.
Quote from: Bozobub on January 26, 2017, 12:09:40 PM
Quote from: Stormfox on January 26, 2017, 11:55:58 AM
Found another major annoyance related to that:
I had another of those "spawn and then sprint across the map to hunt a colonist deep inside the base" predators - this time a cougar. I had to reload 3 times until I was finally able to down it, for one simple reason:
Colonists do not see a predator hunting one of them as a hostile target, so you have to not only draft everyone but also manually target the beast while it sprints right past everyone (it does not turn to face the attackers even if hit, it continues to run towards its designated target), manually run everyone after it and then target everyone again, and so on.
That is a ridiculous amount of micromanagement for a simple "hostile inbound" situation that simply should not be neccessary. Flag a hunting beast the same way as a manhunter and fix the spawning inside your base issue, and it would work out halfway decently.
I'd bet that, as a normal hunting target, they're not generating "manhunter" status.
It would be more reasonable to frame an animal that is the process of hunting a man as a manhunter than to have colonists largely ignore these threats even while drafted.
I just had a polar bear attacking, killing and eating half of my husky. Drafting two nearby colonists immediately, they didn't make it in thyme to save the moon moon. However, as soon as they were standing, they shot at the bear for as long as it kept hitting, and later eating, the pet. When they bear was done, my pawns had to be manually told to kill the bear.
Sitenote: What's the revenge chance for polar bear? Because it didn't go manhunter untill it finished his meal, and even then, wasn't enraged by the first shot.
Normally predators will turn manhunter immediately. But a predator eating will frequently keep on chowing down while you shoot him. Hard to say if this is a bug or WAD. Which does the predator consider more important, eating or fighting?
The code for spawning animals ONLY uses edge cells. There are no other ways a normal wildspawn can use anything other than an edge cell. If it cant find one the spawn will fail.
Predator eating is an uninteruptable job, could be considered a bug, but thats up to Tynan.
There's an open bug report for the uninterruptible eating: https://ludeon.com/mantis/view.php?id=2334
And that's not quite true, Skully. Herd animals pick one edge cell and then spawn a herd in a small radius around it. It will only pick cells to spawn them in that are reachable through open doors, but it is possible for that cell to be on the other side of a wall from the map edge. But it can only happen with Wargs (no other predators herd), and only up to 10 cells away from the edge (or less if you don't roll the maximum herd size).
Yeah the herding due to grouping is a thing but youd hae to be building on the edge of the map, and I have to assume thats not the case here based on people saying things like "middle" of the base. Valid point though.
Quote from: skullywag on January 27, 2017, 09:03:34 AM
The code for spawning animals ONLY uses edge cells.
BTW, when we're talking about "edge" cells, is that the no-build border area or something else?
The single row of cells touching the vast black void of nothingness.
Is that the reason why excess pawns spawn in one tile? Like 28x manhunter wargs, most of them spawn like a pack, and there's one tile with several wargs. Guess this is the original spawn tile then.
The more I think about it, the more unreasonable it seems that an animal that you can click on and see "hunting x" where x=colonist or pet is treated as anything except hostile.
Constantly scanning the map for predators as mandatory to avoid randomly losing stuff should not be viewed as necessarily fun gameplay. It would be much more sound for the game to treat a predator hunting player assets similarly to "maddened animal" events, so that the player is not expected to constantly scan the terrain and kill stuff solely to avoid the issue.
In essence, any argument against that position would also be an argument claiming that raids, maddened animals, and mech ships should happen w/o any event notification, all of which could also (in principle) be handled by constantly scrolling around the map looking for them. If that sounds tedious it's because it is tedious, but animals hunting your colonists are no different.