Hey guys,
I'm playing in a cold biome, and there are wolfs. Lot of wolfs. And they are often chasing my colonists to consume some food.
And my turrets, which I build to defend especially against these beasts won't shoot! Turrets, you had one job!
So, if my turrets don't do the job, how can I prevent my colonists from being eaten?
I get the warning just in the moment, when they are actually under attack and got hurt. And a hurt colonist can't outrun a wolf...
So, mostly my colonists don't get away from the wolf. They are losing body parts and I'm running out of medicine now.
Other colonists are too far away to get there in time.
I can't micromanage all my colonists all the day. No way! It's just not possible! And they are meant to be safe in their base - with turrets! (you are telling me, we are in the year 5001 - and these smart, sci fi auto turrets are unable to recognize a threat by animals??!!)
Is there any way to protect against these beasts?
I just touched on that subject a few days ago in a longer thread. It is a definitive problem, and something needs to be done so that pawns avoid/combat predators better and warnings to the player go out when someone draws aggro at least, not when nothing can be done anymore for the exact reasons you outlined above.
I think the problem is basically that they aren't "hostile" until they hit a colony-member.
Hunters and Shotguns.
As soon as a Wolf pokes his nose on your map ..
Just control the borders every other day or your homezone.
Think of them as Beavers that eat people :P
Also set everyone to return fire.
Works also on cougars, foxes and ice wolves.
Bears and Wargs require Pulse Rifles.
But I prefer to tame Bears, because the can stunlock even Wargs.
With a bunch of trained Carebears away missions become trivial :)
------ EDIT ------
Taming in general is quite useful.
Because the tamer feeds the animals.
Also providing easier food sources for the animals goes a long way too.
Kibble or Body Piles, free range chicken, rabbits, chinchillas .. everything that does not eat much but breeds fast assigned to a zone that keeps them outside.
Short answer: micromanagement.
There is no non-micro way to deal with predators unfortunately. You have to visually identify them on the map (difficult when polar bears blend in with the snow), then manually order your pawns to kill them. If you're not paying attention, a pawn becomes lunch.
In a way this is realistic; cougars do sneak up on prey and catch them unaware, just like Rimworld players.
But this is also *unrealistic*. Polar bears don't sneak up on people except in blizzards, and when a person *does* see a large predator they're normally smart enough to run or start shooting. Pawns should have a chance to automatically engage a predator on sight, and a non-grizzly predator that gets shot should start running the other way rather than turning into a pawn eating monster.
Yeah, the best defense against predators is something alive and expendable. Chickens are great because they're easy to replace. Muffalo are great because they can fight back, and have a decent chance of surviving if your pawns back them up when they get attacked.
I'm pretty sure predators will not attack your pawns if they can find a more suitable target within reasonable range. When you're wandering around outside your base you need to pay attention to predators near your pawn, because they may pick him over a rabbit on the other side of the map if they're hungry.
Quote from: Hans Lemurson on February 05, 2017, 02:43:04 AM
I think the problem is basically that they aren't "hostile" until they hit a colony-member.
They are not even hostile afterwards - that is part of the problem. They do NOT count as an enemy until you damage them and trigger the xxx revenge code.
Quote from: cultist on February 05, 2017, 07:20:17 AM
Yeah, the best defense against predators is something alive and expendable. Chickens are great because they're easy to replace. Muffalo are great because they can fight back, and have a decent chance of surviving if your pawns back them up when they get attacked.
Again, not feasible. If I have to lose a few chicken everytime a predator spawns and gets hungry to be reasonably safe of that, that is ridiculously expensive.
@SpaceDorf
Yes, no one ever denied that it is theoretically possible to pause the game every five minutes, carefully move over the entire map line by line or column by colum and watch for any predators, and then set out and manually kill them with killteams of 2-3 good shooters in draft mode.
Because that is about the only realistic way to prevent those "haha, gotcha, one colonist downed and nothing you could do about it" moments. Also, animal taming is very time and food intensive, not to mention the micro hell they pose when doing anything but "stay out of the way and haul", and in the scale you propose not something that is feasible for the first few seasons.
Can the "I am so hardcore I play naked in the snow with a potatoe as my cpu" people please be somewhat realistic sometimes? I am so tired of those "git good" and "there is the following 25 page manual for a workaround, so it is fine" posts. Not calling you out in particular, but it seemed like as good a place as any to get that out.
Quote from: Stormfox on February 05, 2017, 07:31:06 AM
Again, not feasible. If I have to lose a few chicken everytime a predator spawns and gets hungry to be reasonably safe of that, that is ridiculously expensive.
The best case scenario is spotting and killing the predator before it does any harm. The chicken is the last line of defense, to prevent you from losing a pawn. I'd much prefer to lose a single chicken than a pawn.
Quote from: Stormfox on February 05, 2017, 07:31:06 AM
@SpaceDorf
Yes, no one ever denied that it is theoretically possible to pause the game every five minutes, carefully move over the entire map line by line or column by colum and watch for any predators, and then set out and manually kill them with killteams of 2-3 good shooters in draft mode.
Because that is about the only realistic way to prevent those "haha, gotcha, one colonist downed and nothing you could do about it" moments. Also, animal taming is very time and food intensive, not to mention the micro hell they pose when doing anything but "stay out of the way and haul", and in the scale you propose not something that is feasible for the first few seasons.
Can the "I am so hardcore I play naked in the snow with a potatoe as my cpu" people please be somewhat realistic sometimes? I am so tired of those "git good" and "there is the following 25 page manual for a workaround, so it is fine" posts. Not calling you out in particular, but it seemed like as good a place as any to get that out.
Well thank you for calling me hardcore :)
I do play on Randy extreme and still get bored ..
But I don't get it why you make my suggestion so complicated.
I like fine meals, so normaly I have one or two hunters around.
It is also my prefered method of training the shooting skill. ( Trigger Happy + Shotgun = Awesome )
I play on 300-325 Maps ( yes, the potato cpu part is also true .. )
And what I do is designate everything for hunting that comes near my Colony.
I scroll around the map when I get bored, and when I see predators I zoom out and select all of them ( double click ) .. now I designate them to be hunted.
I don't think this is very much micro ..
If it is still to much I suggest Fluffy's colony Manager, where you can set Automated Hunting Jobs
and the Wildlife Tab, which shows you all wild animals on the map with the option to hunt or tame.
Besides scanning the area all the time for predators to mark, there is a real reason why this simply does not work:
Hunters on a normal hunting job do one thing extremely well when dealing with predators: die to them.
Single hunters are abysmal at dealing with the stronger/faster predators. The moment they finally hit once, the predator aggros and runs at them, giving them one or two more shots before they are done for (i.e. engaged in melee). Sometimes this works - you can hunt small predators like cobras extremely reliably because they are usually dead after the initial shot. With cougars or grizzly bears, not so much.
So to actually hunt predators you need at least two guys, and you need to micromanage the hunt, because without a drafted helper the main hunter will get downed at least 50% of the time.
Maxim 34. If you're leaving scorch-marks, you need a bigger gun
As I said in my initial post, this strategy does not work on bears.
Depending on my food storage bears call for a tamer or a firing squad.
So far my casualty rate is pretty low .. so I may be doing something wrong ..
Hungry colonists make a good defense against hungry animals.
When playing on ice sheet, you're actually glad for the bears coming your way on a large map. They're easy to spot, because there are very few objects and nothing moves on its own. But if you fail spotting, most colonists can still outrun a bear and will do so automatically. But don't equip your miners with miniguns and other slowing weapons.
A bear is a lot of meat!
Quote from: Stormfox on February 05, 2017, 08:55:14 AM
Besides scanning the area all the time for predators to mark, there is a real reason why this simply does not work:
Hunters on a normal hunting job do one thing extremely well when dealing with predators: die to them.
Single hunters are abysmal at dealing with the stronger/faster predators. The moment they finally hit once, the predator aggros and runs at them, giving them one or two more shots before they are done for (i.e. engaged in melee). Sometimes this works - you can hunt small predators like cobras extremely reliably because they are usually dead after the initial shot. With cougars or grizzly bears, not so much.
So to actually hunt predators you need at least two guys, and you need to micromanage the hunt, because without a drafted helper the main hunter will get downed at least 50% of the time.
This 1000x.
Well, I think, Tynan should change attacking animals to agressors, so turrets can do their job. At least you should get a message, BEFORE (!) the predator hits your colonist, because then it's to late.
It's not funny to micromanage this. It's not a feature of the game, it's just annoying. There is enough stuff you need to micromanage.
And I can't tame a chicken army, because I can't grow enough food for tamed animals. I would have to spend too much power to grow it (I have only 10 days of growing period).
This is one of the things I find to be rather irritating currently. I can have predators hunting my pawns simply waltz into my base and go pass all my turrets to attack them.... And the funny thing is they will even walk pass other pawns who pass by them and beeline since they are hunting a particular pawn.... Its not exactly fun to have a sudden notice that one of my pawns is being attacked without any notice if they are out of the base too...
Right now, I basically scan the map often just to see the predators around and to cull them if I find their population getting abit much.
Would probably be nice if we get a notice similar to the Mad Animal or Revenge warning for Manhunter events.
My biggest gripe is that predators who start hunting are 100% dead set on killing/eating their chosen prey, even when theyre being bashed on by 3 different pawns. If a larger predator whose harder to take down gets in a hit, that colonist is fucked unless you have something that can almost instantly incapp it, because it won't stop attacking its prey till either it dies or they do.
I make it a priority to get hunters shotguns. Fun fact, you can draft a colonist and force them to fire point-blank, even if they're being melee'd. The amount of timber wolves I had try to tango with shotgun hunters and become a free meal is enough to warrant my need to rush for shotguns.
Here's a 100% effective way of dealing with predators that doesn't involve much micromanagement:
Load your autosave after your colonist gets eaten. Then go kill that predator.
If the game is going to be stupid, be stupid right back at it :)
Quote from: Shurp on February 05, 2017, 11:10:34 PM
Here's a 100% effective way of dealing with predators that doesn't involve much micromanagement:
Load your autosave after your colonist gets eaten. Then go kill that predator.
If the game is going to be stupid, be stupid right back at it :)
No disagreement there. It is exactly how I tend to deal with that.
For some outdoor activities like taming and hunting you can assign an animal bodyguard ! It needs to be trained with obedience, and it will automatically follow although it tends to trail behind. You can change which animals escort your colonist in the animal tab. Unfortunately I don't think it works for mining.
It also helps to have your miners, hunters and so on work on the night shift. At night, all predators sleep (!).
Quote from: b0rsuk on February 06, 2017, 03:51:13 AM
It also helps to have your miners, hunters and so on work on the night shift. At night, all predators sleep (!).
Not bad advice, even if not a night owl.
A physical barrier around your base if your best bet. Also, most animals are slower than most your pawns. Those pawns that (due to various health issues) are slower than 4,4 or thereabouts, restrict to your enclosed home zone.
Even when they're not slower, it's often good to just ignore them and make them run away towards other colonists (who are drafted and coming to help). Today I had a builder hit by a polar bear in what looked like a hopeless situation ! I drafted Van Doom and ordered her to run away, while a spear and a great bow were coming for help. My colony is on the edge of a map because that's where some rocks and a geyser are. Van Doom was building a second stage perimeter wall to claim extra ground for hospital, laboratory and bedrooms.
Surprise, animals, even faster have trouble killing prey who is running away ! A pawn slows down when attacked in melee, but the attacker stops completely! You're actually gaining ground on him. I call it Warcraftitis, because it was first prominently featured in Warcraft 1: Orcs and Humans. I mean the mechanic where melee attacker has to stop to strike while the running away unit can keep moving.
Just be careful with drafting. If the colonist is already in melee range, drafting him will cause an instant attack, slowing you down. This is not what you want. If you're already in melee range, wait a bit and rely on automatic "cowering" until there's a gap. Then it's safe to draft.
Predators are not so much an issue if there's enough prey for them to feed on. In Ice Sheet, regularily searching for predators is mandatory (except you got Colony Mangager). You gotta get them before they get you! Most predators are also faster, which makes outrunning futile. b0rsuk's glitch only works when the predator actually misses its victim, else it gets stunned and is trapped there!
Pausing, drafting, giving command, unpausing is the way to avoid misbehaving pawns (auto attack or other stupid action)
My gripe is that predators prefer living prey to carrion. Most carnivorous animals will be very happy to eat an animal that is already dead. There's even a wonderful documentary "Hyenas of Harer" (Harar), made by Planete, where they show Harar, a (low-tech) city where hyenas were an issue and they used to kill livestock. The elders came up with an idea: feed the hyenas. They leave meat and especially remnants from butchers in the open. Hyenas feast on those and leave everyone alone, even city dogs and cats. They skulk the city at night and clean it. A few people even make money off tourists by feeding wild hyenas by hand. They're quite shy and don't tame, but that doesn't stop them from snatching meat from their hands. They went so far as to make special openings in city walls so hyenas can enter whenever they want.
The inhabitants have funny beliefs about the hyenas, for example that they eat djinns and demons, and no djinn can go near Harar. A woman was shown saying she likes listening to hyena sounds at night, it makes her calm and she sleeps better.
Back to Rimworld. Leaving meat in the open (you can place it on an equipment rack and it won't deteriorate) doesn't make predators prefer it. But you can send a colonist to tame predators just to feed them, then they will leave you alone. Whenever you actually do tame one, butcher it and feed to other predators. It may seem like asking for trouble (all predators have a tiny chance of attacking on failure), but at least you can control who is likely to get attacked. So make it the person with nice Melee skill, give him a helmet, an armor vest, a duster, a good weapon, and maybe an animal bodyguard.
Assigning predators for taming (great animal skill training!) has to be done manually (again, not with Colony Manager ;)). It's also less safe and more work intense than hunting, but there are benefits different from hunting. Guess it's worth a try.
PS: Had a muffalo herd wander in my Ice Sheet. Was so happy to finally get muffalos, placed a stack of rice outside, but those stupid animals didn't know that there was food and started to go hungry near the edge of the map. Could tame only one before they wandered ... Muffalo manhunter pack! Seven hells, Christmas and Easter on the same day? Rescued some of them, they ended up trapped in my Husky lair where I kept them fed untill I tamed them. One of them somehow escaped and wandered around the area where 20 muffalo corpses waited for hauling (herd location?) with said rice stack 30-40 tiles away. Muffalo female started to go hungry, not knowing that an accessible pile of rice waits not far away. Long story short, predators might end up hunting your pawns and pets anyway. Their target gets reassigned when the current one hides behind a door tho. b0rsuk, have you actually tried your suggestion?
Yes, I have. I fed some bears so they stayed away. But this doesn't account for new bears that migrate in.
Mufallos and the like seem to have a certain range of food detection. I placed stacks of food outside a few alphas ago and they actually hanged around my colony. I mean it's not a very reliable method but it works.
But in my opinion any creative method is better than "I'll download a mod that removes it".
You shouldn't download Colony Manager just to get rid of that single problem. I just like to advertise the mods I use whenever their functions help.
Quote from: b0rsuk on February 06, 2017, 04:06:41 PM
Yes, I have. I fed some bears so they stayed away. But this doesn't account for new bears that migrate in.
Mufallos and the like seem to have a certain range of food detection. I placed stacks of food outside a few alphas ago and they actually hanged around my colony. I mean it's not a very reliable method but it works.
But in my opinion any creative method is better than "I'll download a mod that removes it".
Again, Bears make perfect pets .. they can haul, hunt for themselves and with their stun ability they win a 1vs1 against wargs every time ..
puny wolf not biting my human !
Hello o/
I'm new around here, got an idea that might fix the problem in future iterations.
I think that hunters could be assigned to exterminate given type of animals, and when they are assigned for extermination, they are treated as enemies (so that turrets will auto-fire on them). Just like pawn collecting rocks to make bricks, hunters would hunt animals whenever they are assigned the job and there is an animal of given type present. That said, I'd also love to see melee hunters being a thing. :V
Same thing could be made with taming.
Perq, to extend on that concept:
Hunters should consider predators enemies and prioritize hunting all predators in a certain distance to the home territory before anything else. Hunters should also always form teams if possible when doing so.
You should be able to define a zone to clear of animals, using Fluffy's Colony Manager.
Quote from: Stormfox on February 07, 2017, 06:58:25 AM
Perq, to extend on that concept:
Hunters should consider predators enemies and prioritize hunting all predators in a certain distance to the home territory before anything else. Hunters should also always form teams if possible when doing so.
Oh, yes, that too. Wouldn't want any of my colonists (even those with power armors and plasteel swords/charge weapons) to solo-hunt. :2
I agree with scanning for predators regularly. But when I play on an ice sheet, I also always wall myself in, with one door for traders. Predators don't go through doors, as far as I can tell. Even if they do, just block the door until you need to open it.
Quote from: Hierophant on February 08, 2017, 07:05:48 AM
I agree with scanning for predators regularly. But when I play on an ice sheet, I also always wall myself in, with one door for traders. Predators don't go through doors, as far as I can tell. Even if they do, just block the door until you need to open it.
From these forums, one could assume 99% of the players of this game always play on icesheets and never anywhere else...
Yes, if you live in a mountain base and are completely walled in and never venture out, then of course wandering predators do NOT pose a problem.
Under one of the tabs, "Assign" I think, one where you play with clothing) there's a option to allow your colonists to do one of three things when they see a threat. Its automatically set to "flee".
Do nothing: ignore the threat.
Flee: Default behaviour, and you've seen it all a million times.
Attack: The colonist will attack a threat with whatever weapons he posses.
Predators hunting a colonist are classified as a threat. IF you have two or three guys working in an area and a bear walks in thinking of Colonist, lettuce and tomato sandwiches they normally get riddled with gun fire before they get to butter the bread.
That along with my habit of hunting down any predators in an area I'll be working in means it tends not to be an issue.
Quote from: Listy on February 08, 2017, 07:33:52 AM
Under one of the tabs, "Assign" I think, one where you play with clothing) there's a option to allow your colonists to do one of three things when they see a threat. Its automatically set to "flee".
Do nothing: ignore the threat.
Flee: Default behaviour, and you've seen it all a million times.
Attack: The colonist will attack a threat with whatever weapons he posses.
Predators hunting a colonist are classified as a threat. IF you have two or three guys working in an area and a bear walks in thinking of Colonist, lettuce and tomato sandwiches they normally get riddled with gun fire before they get to butter the bread.
That along with my habit of hunting down any predators in an area I'll be working in means it tends not to be an issue.
Exactly.
And the few times I played in Icy Terrain I greeted the predators with a squeel of joy.
Hey Guys, Fresh Meat incoming.
Best success I've had is putting up a wooden perimeter wall around my colony, with doors. Still passable by people, but wild animals don't manage to pathfind through the closed doors.
But if you build a completely enclosed perimeter wall, that blocks raiders from your killzones, no?
Killzones are so 2016. :)
Quote from: hwfanatic on February 09, 2017, 07:49:58 AM
Killzones are so 2016. :)
Define Kill zone, I like to get them all standing in one place before the massive explosions...
To final animals I just pause, zoom out as far as pos and then play again at full speed. Anything that moves is an animal. And food.
Anyone here use Colony Manager mod? Let's you automate Hunting, with zones, animal types and meat limits. Same for collecting wood (harvest wood in X area, until many in stockpile) and plenty of other stuff.
Takes ALOT of the micro out of the game.
When I first started playing this used to drive me crazy because I didn't know what to do about it or how to prevent it. After a little trial and error I almost never run into this issue anymore.
For starters, train a couple animals to follow your hunters around. I recommend bears if you can get them since they can stun attackers, don't eat much and are pretty tanky (they can take down most predators on their own just fine). If a predator does attack a colonist they will have to deal with your pet first. This gives your pawn time to flee or attack depending on the situation
I'll leave my colonists set to flee. This is mostly so that if I have a berserk colonist, everyone will run away from them rather than attack them, potentially killing them. If I see a fleeing symbol in the colonist bar I can pause and assess the situation.
Avoid hunting small prey. If there are a small animals on the map odds are the predator will attack that rather than your colonist.
Build a perimeter wall around your base. If you have a killbox, I like to leave an open path into the box but have a wall with doors on the back side of the box. If a raid happens I can open those doors and raiders will still path into the box but this will keep animals from getting inside the base. Aside from keeping you safe from predators it keeps other animals from getting to your crops or boomrats from camping out inside your base.
As for turrets firing on predators, this is a double edged sword. If a turret could target an attacking predator what are the odds it will hit your colonist rather than the animal? If my colonist is fleeing from an attack I really don't want my own defenses to kill my colonist by mistake.