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Also, make sure that the pawns are on the auto-control setting, as you can't issue such orders if they are on manual setting.

I did yesterday notice that I couldn't issue orders to a couple of colonists, but they were extremely exhausted from firefighting and wanted to rest, so I assumed that there was a point where their need for sleep becomes so great that it overrides taking orders. Or maybe I just did something wrong.

I had a whole series of disasters merged in to each other - boomrat manhunter attack, base on fire from boomrat deaths, alien ship, significant Zzt fire and deer manhunter pack - but managed to survive with only one fatality and my base mostly intact, although everyone was significantly worse for wear.

Despite my base being on fire and all my firefighters bedridden, I found that non-firefighters were able to do some firefighting by deconstructing blocks that were only slightly on fire. This would put the fire out in that square. So they weren't totally useless and were eventually able to put out the fires.

I'd been planning to have double door airlock-style base entrances but hadn't got round to it. I've also since thought to divide all the base's corridors into sections with a wall and door separating each section. The doors can be left open most of the time, so movement is unimpeded, but if the base is under attack they can be closed to try and isolate problems.

The manhunter event message implies that pawns are safe behind doors, so its unclear whether manhunter packs are working as designed. If the intention for the manhunter events is basically to keep colonists confined to base, then manhunter packs' pawn-locating or door-breaking abilities are way-overpowered. If the intention is for them to basically assault the base, which is what they do now, then the message text could be altered to make the situation sound less benign and more dangerous.

Ah, yes. I loaded the game up and saw the names underlined, which I hadn't noticed before. I would still like to see some indication on the icon which would make it much more obvious and easy to see at a glance or in one's peripheral vision. The underlining of names is quite small and one really has to look for it to notice it.

I'm thinking that the top of the screen icons, when under manual control, have a light Synthread-blue outline, or the whole background of the icon is highlighted in light Synthread blue. Or there's some symbol on the icon, that's easy to notice, like the timer symbol, crossed swords or medical symbols and so on.

I'd like to see some indicator for the colonist icons at the top of the screen showing whether they are under automatic or manual control.

Perhaps if colonists are set to manual control, the colonist icon at the top of the screen gets a light blue outline.

I think it's the same with firefighting - if a colonist is firefighting and tired or hungry they will go and sleep or eat rather than fight fire, which means having to set them to manual control to fight the fire.

An emergency mode would probably need to be colonist-specific rather than a general setting for all colonists, so individual colonists could be put on emergency setting, while others, such as non-firefighters, could continue as normal.

Potentially, the emergency toggle could only appear in times of emergency, such as if there is a fire or hostile pawns on the map.

The colonist icons at the top of the screen should have some indicator to show whether they are on emergency setting, possibly a slow flashing red icon or symbol.

Well, the last of my firefighters has succumbed to boomrat injuries. It sucks to have so many non-firefighters. Of the eight colonists, four are incapable of "Scary" and one is incapable of "firefighting".

I feel most colonists should be able to fight fires, since fire has such catastrophic consequences, although maybe the high percentage of non-firefighters is unintentional (as discussed in this thread).

There are times in the game when I feel an emergency setting is needed. Maybe it does and I don't know about it.

For example, your base is under threat from fire or on fire. So you order the colonists that won't fight fires to deconstruct wooden walls or cut grass to prevent the spread of fire. They will deconstruct one block or cut one square of grass and, if tired or hungry, they will then go and eat or sleep.

This necessitates micro-management of ordering them to cut a single square of plants, pausing when they've completed, and then ordering the next square and so on.

So an emergency setting would make colonists keep doing their assigned task, overriding their need for sleep or food, with the with consequent mood risk penalty.

I'll remember that for next time.

It's not going well in my current game. I've killed about three boomrats, but my base is now on fire and two of the three colonists that will actually fight fires (out of eight colonists) are now bedridden from boomrat injuries. I'm about to watch my base go up in smoke. 

The herd of muffalo that attacked my base last game year, breaking down an entrance door and roaming round my base was hard to deal with. Now sixteen boomrats are attacking my largely wooden interior base.

When they appeared at the edge of the map, there was only one colonist outside the base, near the base entrance and half a map away from the boomrats. So they chased him inside and broke down the entrance door.

I moved everyone to the furthest corner of the base from the boomrats and, while the boomrats ran around the corridor, they no longer locked on to my colonists. I waited it out, hoping the boomrats would go to sleep at some point so I could go and fix the front door. The boomrats never slept and continued milling around in their hyperactive state.

Whenever the boomrats were outside and around the other side of the base, I'd try and move a colonist towards the entrance door to fix it, but one or more boomrats from the other side of the map would see through walls and rooms and come running round to attack the colonist.

By this point, my colonists were all exhausted and hungry, trapped in a far corner of the base. So I got them to eat and then converted all the nearby prison and hospital beds for their use, as their bedrooms were near the breached base entrance.

Now the boomrats have started breaking down the base entrance near to where my exhausted colonists are trying to get some rest, at the opposite end of the base where they initially attacked.

I'm trying to understand how manhunter packs operate, in order to find solutions to their base attacks. They don't rely on sight as they can be in a general moving state and then lock on to a new target who is distant and with many walls and buildings in the way.

They can also detect and lock on to colonists at least half a map away.

They can detect colonists behind doors, even if the colonist has not been through that door and they will try and smash it down.

Thanks, that's some good information.

I've been watching my colonists' dressing habits a bit more closely. It looks as though their default behaviour, with the wear anything/everything ticked setting, is that they will always try and wear three layers of clothing (not sure about headwear). So Pants, T-Shirt/Button Shirt, and Duster/Jacket/Parka. They will continue to wear parkas into the summer if there's no duster or jacket available to wear, and they will put a parka back on in Summer if it's force-removed and there's nothing else available. I don't know if it's any different during heat wave periods.

So making a Summerwear/hot weather outfit setting might be useful to prevent colonists wearing parkas if no dusters or jackets are available.

The colonists did appear to swap between jackets and parkas automatically, though, with the changing temperature, if the apparel was available.

Thanks. I'll probably leave it then, unless they have something particularly nice.

The time hauling the stuff could probably be better spent anyway by making another really awful sculpture about colonist Grill and his bond with his timber wolf - part of a series.

That is how it's supposed to work.

Cool, that's good to hear. It feels like it should be something fully automatable, and not needing player intervention, similar to sleeping and eating.

I did see a couple of colonists not wearing parkas in cold weather, so I forced them into wearing them, but maybe I missed something, so I'll have a closer look if I see it again.

How does it work? When a certain temperature is reached colonists will change clothes? Are all colonists the same or will some stand lower temperatures before putting on a parka/removing it?

What about jackets? Will they put a jacket on if not wearing one? And tuques/headwear?

How does the automated clothes management system combine and interact with player's assigned clothing decisions?

Yes they will.

Thanks.

So in terms of temperature alone, one could hypothetically not touch the Assign clothes tab and never force colonists to wear clothes, and they will automatically change clothes according to their temperature needs?

I know colonists don't like wearing dead man's clothes, but is it worth stripping clothes off corpses and selling them to traders, particularly early in the game when money is tight? What sort of trade value do they have? Will traders even buy them?