Last Man Standing (Pete)

[Nasikabatrachus]

I've been playing Rimworld way too much a bit since build 334 was released, and after playing three colonies, the story of one man's (brief) survival after the scouring of Suttu is by far the most memorable of all the colonies I've played.

160 days into the life of the colony of Suttu, a raid came. This was Tough Cassandra, but I wasn't worried: raiders are pretty incompetent against a single wall built into a 1-tile-wide rock tunnel, and after a little while with nothing to do they just start cracking. (I get a lot of prisoners with this method; more than enough to prevent mental breaks with executions alone.) So when this raid came, I kept some colonists outside the main entrance a bit too long, and a fast running raider managed to get inside the main entrance, run past my retreating colonists, and stand inside a doorway to prevent it from closing, preventing a successful wall-off. Of course, it wasn't just because he was fast. If you've read Boatmurdered, you might remember how the main door of that fort was kept open to invaders by a single butterfly. In the case of Suttu, there was a stray gun preventing the outer door from closing properly. I had no idea that would happen. A single gun let the raiders inside.

As the raiders began to beat down the last door between the charred remnants of the outer colony and the interior of the mountain, I recruited every colonist I could find and brought them forward to meet the horde. When the door came down and the mob rushed forward, I knew it was the end. I paused and saved this particular state of affairs, and reloaded an autosave from a few minutes before.

The next day, however, I got curious about what would happen if I let it play through. Was it as bad as I thought it would be? Could the colonists fight off the raid with a little pluck and sheer determination?

Of course not. It was a foregone conclusion; without turrets around, raiders like to move in close and use melee attacks, so that the forward runners prevent colonists from using firearms while the slower raiders settle in and fire with virtual impunity. (Rimworld is one of the few places where I'd like to bring a knife to a gun fight.)

As the last of the defense team was either killed or incapacitated, I took one last look at the colonyâ€"and noticed one last colonist, Pete, asleep in his bed.

Pete first came to Suttu over a hundred days earlier. He was around when the buildings outside the mountain were just starting to be abandoned because it was impossible to repair them all in the face of the frequent raids.

Convinced he wouldn't last long, I nevertheless recruited Pete and had him hide in an unused room down the hall, deeper into the mountain. I figured he could use the long hallway to his advantage, allowing him to take out a few raiders in a final blaze of glory before he died.

To my surprise, however, none of the raiders found Pete. They walked straight past his (frankly, somewhat obvious) hiding spot, preferring to patrol the 1-tile wide exploratory mining tunnels in a loop. I even had Pete shoot at a couple raiders, one of whom shot back, but Pete was able to go back into hiding without much trouble. This rudimentary stealth game was fairly tense, given the circumstances around it. It makes me wonder if a colony could be constructed around hiding from raiders rather than fighting them or walling them off. Prior to this, I didn't even know it was possible for colonists to hide from raiders (if that was even what was happening).

After the raiders left, almost everything was wrecked and dead bodies lay everywhere. Only Pete and the prisoners remained alive. Since Pete had several skills disabled, including Warden, and only so much food was left in the stockpiles, I had Pete deconstruct all the doors, letting most of the prisoners go. Pete shot those who remained in order to maintain his fear/loyalty level (kinda messed up, but it does mesh with his backstory).

After that came the business of survival. You might think that one man alone in a smoking ruin would have relatively hard time surviving, but I found the opposite to be the case. The hydroponics tables were wrecked and the batteries were all destroyed, but there was a large crop of agave plants just outside the entrance thanks to the previous 159 days of selective cultivation. Between that and the food leftover in the interior stockpile, Pete could have lived on more or less indefinitely. Even the dead bodies were good for keeping Pete's loyalty up, as the multiple Horror Colonies posted here on the forum have shown. Pete's daily tasks consisted of deconstructing everything with metal that did not serve some crucial function.

Pete didn't live indefinitely, however. Apparently the pirates weren't satisfied with their work, so two raids came by just to pick on poor little Pete. During the first raid, Pete hid for a while, then came out of hiding to kill a couple stragglers as the raiders lost interest. During this first raid, I found that molotov cocktails are probably the most useful weapon in close quarters. Most guns in Rimworld are either not lethal enough or can't be fired fast enough to give a single person a chance against two other people (imagine if they were unarmed instead of wielding grenades or pistolsâ€"you'd be slaughtered!), and grenades can be dodged with a certain amount of ease. Molotov cocktails, however, can block off narrow hallways and force enemies to run around wildly. Using molotovs and a shotgun, Pete managed to get the better of two raiders.

My overconfidence got the better of me again during the final raid, however. I had been making Pete prepare a defense at the main entrance, consisting of three doors and some blasting charges, but it was only partly completed when the raiders mounted their assault. Pete was unable to hide, as the raiders got too close to him, and was chased through the mountain until he was surrounded in a hallway. Despite managing to put up a fight with his molotovs, Pete was hit with a molotov himself, and burned to death. It was kind of surreal, actually, since the raider who killed Pete had the same name and backstory as one of the dead colonists. (I saw several of those, even during the last two raids).

The colony died on day 163.

Lessons Learned (AKA TL;DR):

* It's surprisingly easy for one colonist to survive in a ruin. Thanks, new stockpile system! Also, thanks, raiders, for not taking the colony's stuff!

* Always check vital doors for blockages. Like guns.

* Melee is a bit overpowered, but so are molotov cocktails. It would be interesting to try "walling off" a natural chokepoint with molotov cocktails. Heck, it would probably even be simpler and more reliable than walling off with actual walls. At the very least, molotovs should be on hand for a final defense.

[Tynan]

This was so awesome I tweeted it.

Not enough indoor combat in this game yet.

[Zblugg]

I wept a little. For Pete. A tale of courage in the face of adversity.

Nicely done!

[Nasikabatrachus]

This was so awesome I tweeted it.

Not enough indoor combat in this game yet.

Cool! Glad to see my wall of text wasn't unreadable.

I played the save a few more times and have some other observations:

1. Pete's hiding spot isn't always reliable, which isn't surprising. A reload might end up with him getting killed in that spot, or in him having to kill a couple raiders before the group withdraws. The first time, during which Pete was bypassed completely, seems unlikely, but I'm not sure just how unlikely it is.

2. The other colonists weren't a completely lost cause in this scenario. I was able to get three or four to survive to the end of the raid by having the group withdraw deeper into the mountain, using molotovs on a hallway (at the expense of the thrower), and managing colonist position and health in the ensuing gun battle. Fire isn't so powerful that it can completely wall off a place, but it was a big help. I'd love to see what a fiery corridor would do if a whole raid were funneled through it.

[harpo99999]

I have had corridors full of flaming bodies (actually burning in the game) BUT unless the corridor is l o o o o o o n n n n n n g  g g g g  (you get the idea (very long) over 40 squares), the raiders seem to manage to somehow path THROUGH the buring bodies without catching alight

[Untrustedlife]

That my friend was a great story!