New player with a few questions :)

[magicbush]

I just bought the game a few days ago and decided to give it a go tonight. I am doing good with my first colony having fended off a few raider attacks, and animal attacks and seem to have most of the buildings built(with individual bedrooms). However one of my members caught the flu and is just laying in a medical bed. Every now and then a warning pops-up that he's about to go insane, and checking his thoughts it's because he gets hungry. Do they not get food themselves or am I doing something wrong? I have to disable all the medical beds before he will get up and go get his food and then re-enable them. Also how do I make him take medicine? It still shows untreated, but I see no way through health bills to make him grab medicine.

My other question has to do with population. I still have yet to get another colony member after a few month's, how do I get new colony members? I tried capturing a prisoner from a raider and selecting to recruit, but he died from his wounds . The next raid the 2 guys just ran away because of my auto-turrets and pistol guy.

My final question is what is the point of visitors? Random people show up from a neighboring faction and I don't get the point lol? They just wander around my colony and leave after a while..

Thanks for any help and I apologize if this has been asked a billion times, but I didn't see it asked in the first 2 pages .

[DeMatt]

I just bought the game a few days ago and decided to give it a go tonight. I am doing good with my first colony having fended off a few raider attacks, and animal attacks and seem to have most of the buildings built(with individual bedrooms). However one of my members caught the flu and is just laying in a medical bed. Every now and then a warning pops-up that he's about to go insane, and checking his thoughts it's because he gets hungry. Do they not get food themselves or am I doing something wrong? I have to disable all the medical beds before he will get up and go get his food and then re-enable them. Also how do I make him take medicine? It still shows untreated, but I see no way through health bills to make him grab medicine.

You need to assign somebody the "Doctor" labor.  Patients don't treat themselves, that's the doctor's job.

My other question has to do with population. I still have yet to get another colony member after a few month's, how do I get new colony members? I tried capturing a prisoner from a raider and selecting to recruit, but he died from his wounds . The next raid the 2 guys just ran away because of my auto-turrets and pistol guy.

Bed marked for "Prisoners", have somebody capture the incapacitated enemy (he'll put him in the prisoner bed), have a doctor treat his wounds.  Doesn't have to be a skilled doctor.

My final question is what is the point of visitors? Random people show up from a neighboring faction and I don't get the point lol? They just wander around my colony and leave after a while..

You can be mean to them, if you want.

[EarthyTurtle]

It sounds like your main problem is you don't have a doctor who is looking after him. If it was your doctor who became sick he won't be able to treat himself so you will need to assign someone else to temporarily fill in for him. If your not sure hwo to assign colonists tasks, what you need to do is:
Click on 'Overview' -> Go to the 'Work' Tab -> Make sure you have a colonist has a tick under doctoring (if you wanna take it 1 step further I usually 'manual' priority everything, so I have a main doctor with '1' and a back-up doctor with '4'. but this is optional.)

You can get members in a variety of ways, you've discovered the recruitment of prisoners which is good Again make sure you have a colonist assigned as a doctor. In most cases (especially with bullet related injuries) they will need medical treatment, if your doctor is incapacitated or awaiting treatment her/himself then they won't be able to treat patients. Give your primary doctor the Lee-Enfield and later a M-24. That keeps him well out of the fighting so he doesn't get injured and can treat others.

More or less visitors can be viewed as an annoyance, a benefit or a resource. Annoyance coz sometimes they steal your food (not so much anymore). Visitors can be beneficial especially if their visiting around the time of a raid because they will fight anyone they consider an enemy. That and when they stick around your colonists can get social buffs from conversation. But as a resource, when a visitor dies you can freely strip and take their items. It is often the case if you can lock a visitor in a confined space for a period of time it stops them leaving and eventually they starve to death. Again that means you can loot their corpses freely. You can't kill visitors directly, but if you find clever whys of indirectly killing them then they can be utilised as free items.

If you have anymore question just feel free to ask I hope this cleared some up for you

Edit: Damn it DeMatt got in just before me

[magicbush]

Thanks a lot for the help guys . My colony is coming along great after getting that all figured out, I will post if I have anymore questions .