How to survive manhunter packs breaking down doors?

[The Man with No Name]

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.

[Bozobub]

You can generally repair doors faster than most manhunter packs can damage them.

[The Man with No Name]

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 Man with No Name]

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).

[Xav]

I use double doors.

Like so:

[Interior BASE]

WWWDWWW
   W        W
   WWDWW

[exterior BASE]

If the manhunters take down the first door, they won't know to take down the second.  Just make sure if your pawn is through the 2nd door before the manhunters take out the first door.  Stone doors, although slow to open, but being high in hit points can help a lot with this.

[Hans Lemurson]

I accidentally found out an exploit for dealing with manhunter swarms:  They will attempt to attack you through diagonal corners.  Pawns which are inside, but next to a diagonal corner that touches outdoors, will be valid targets for the swarms.  If you have such a corner, you can use it to lure the swarm over to that area and away from your doors.  Just be aware that the animals WILL attack you through these corners.  Their main advantage is that you can very quickly disengage, and animals do not attack walls.

You can even build these on demand if you have a little bit of spare building material.  Add a single wall segment to the interior of one of your exterior walls, and then deconstruct the wall segment that it covers.  There is now a little alcove in your wall that has "diagonal access" to the outdoors, but which cannot be walked through.

If you make this alcove out of fireproof materials, then you can even use that as a place to have your fight with the boomrats.  Just keep your fire-fighters and medics on standby and away from the fight so that they can extinguish your colonists when a boomrat booms.

...Or you can regard that as a damn dirty exploit.

[Wanderer_joins]

Apparently blocked-corner touch will be fixed:

https://ludeon.com/mantis/view.php?id=2386

[Hans Lemurson]

Apparently blocked-corner touch will be fixed:

https://ludeon.com/mantis/view.php?id=2386

Hurray!  Exploit begone!

[Bozobub]

I simply have enough turrets near the doors that any manhunter packs are quickly decimated, while I repair the barred doors.

[The Man with No Name]

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.

[Bozobub]

(Non-incendiary) grenades also "puff" out fires.  They're quite effective, if dangerous.