[A15] Polar bears hunting colonists, no warning

[mzbear]

Either remove the mad animal warning completely (it'll be more fun when it comes totally unexpected right?) or add a red alert when wild animals decide to hunt the colonists.

Mad animals get a RED warning and they're almost never fatal. Polar bears get no warning at all and they're pretty much guaranteed to be fatal if they reach melee before you notice.

I was actively trying to search for animals just a few seconds before this happened. The only way to find if animals have spawned is to try select large areas of the map near the edges and see if there are animals. That's something I do all the time in ice sheets, and yet this time I missed the polar bear because it had already moved away from the map border and was going after a guy hauling stuff from a cargo pod. It was basically a game over -event, which would've been 99.9% surely avoidable had I noticed it even 2 seconds before the bear reached melee (because that hauler was also the best shooter of the colony and had the charge rifle)

[makkenhoff]

Watch the hunger bar, that'll tell you. Not a bug, it is intended predator behavior. Consider them a constant threat to your colony, and deal with them like you would an invader. Anything that will attack and kill my colonists is treated like an enemy. One of the first things I do on new colonies, is search for predators, and mark them as "hunt". I also disable the hunt jobs, at least initially, and I draft the "best" pawn with the shooting skill to shoot appropriate low level targets manually, until I feel they can take down any normal creature. That's when I turn on their hunting, and let them handle things on their own.

[mzbear]

This is DEFINITELY NOT INTENDED BEHAVIOR. Or if it is, the manhunter warnings MUST GO and I'd very much enjoy if manhunters would always maim people to death too instead of just downing them.

It is absolutely insane that a single NEUTRAL polar bear spawning (unannounced) is significantly more dangerous than a pack of 20 manhunting polar bears arriving. With a little bit of bad luck, even setting colonists to automatically attack doesn't save you because you can meet the bear at a goddamn mountain corner and then you're just dead.

It is absolutely insane that the current game mechanics FORCE me to go around drawing selection rectangles all over the map twice a day, because not doing so can mean surprise game over. This time, EVEN THOUGH I DID THAT I STILL MANAGED TO MISS THE BEAR.

The player has a total information awareness about what's going on in the map, so it should NEVER come as a surprise that one of your guys suddenly just dies because you weren't babysitting his hauling session across the map. I repeat, I NEVER EVEN KNEW THE BEAR WAS IN THE MAP.

And since it clearly isn't intended behavior, it's a bug.

[BlackSmokeDMax]

I would say if your colonist knows enough to start fleeing due to a bear hunting him/her, then the game should make you aware of it also. Preferably with an auto-pause or same sound as the raid alert as well, so you don't miss it. It is a pretty big deal.

[mzbear]

I just did some math. It looks like 9 in-game hours is enough in worst case until the spawned polar bear starts hunting colonists. They can spawn at 50% food need and omnivores will get hungry at 30%. Polar bear hunger rate is 0.35, and hunger rate interestingly seems to correspond to satiation lost over 15 hour span (WTF?) so it's just 8.6 in-game hours to get that 20% drop to start hunting players.

So, it seems my plan of scanning for animals twice a day was flawed to begin with, I should've done it 3 times a day (or more, if at irregular times). At the fastest (i.e. 6x) speed this means I'd need to pause the game exactly ONCE PER MINUTE to do the animal scans. If I do it any less often than that, I might have an active stealth killer on the map unknowingly.

And who knows if I'll screw up a scan since I need to do it manually? Again, surprise game over if I miss a white bear against a white background. I also just realized that having any items on the map disrupts the selection box scans. Seeing that "(various)" could mean you selected two different types of stone chunks (and there was no bear in the area), or it could mean you selected steel and some cargo pod drop or whatever items left on the map (and there might've been a bear in the selection area!). So I should also pay close attention to the scanning process that I have to do once per minute, to see what the various-selection actually was, to rule out the possibility that the selection was unable to reveal animals. No. Just no.

This is a showstopper. Seriously, I can't play like this.

[asanbr]

I agree with OP. I had the same problem and posted about it a while ago. I don't remember the outcome (well, they didn't change it from A14 to A15, we know that much), but it't not news to the developers.

[Britnoth]

This is a showstopper. Seriously, I can't play like this.

Feel free to try my hunting alert mod (unfinished section). It is purely a UI change telling you something you can know just from pausing and checking the map yourself.

What I would like to see is hunting animals that you shoot then being flagged as a valid target so turrets will no longer ignore them.

[makkenhoff]

Predators need to eat, they also kill other animals if present, including pets. I can understand being upset that a colonist is killed, and that you have to "babysit" pawns, but demanding an emerging behavior change because you personally don't like it... well, I can't get behind something like that, because in my view it isn't a bug.

If we go to the extreme view that it is an oversight that warnings are not being given when a predator is hunting pawns (despite predatory animal's real life tendency to ambush prey) then I would be okay with a single warning via toast notification being added.

[Britnoth]

but demanding an emerging behavior change because you personally don't like it...

Reread the OP. It asks for a UI change, not a behaviour change.

[nccvoyager]

Perhaps a learning helper topic regarding wild predator animals that are nearing starvation, and therefore looking for a colonist to snack on?

The issue, as I see it, is the lack of prey for the polar bears.
In real life, polar bears have access to fish, though since there are no fish in Rimworld, a lack of animals to hunt in tundra is evident?
Maybe land-fish, the distant cousin of land-sharks?

[mzbear]

WTF is wrong with people's reading comprehension? It's pissing me off to no end to read responses in which people treat me as an idiot who doesn't know game mechanics.

And that's actually the worst part of this, because my subconscious is also telling me "THERE'S SOMETHING YOU COULD'VE DONE ABOUT THAT IF YOU WERE ONLY BETTER AT THIS GAME", and I try to figure out WHAT THE FUCK WOULD HAVE BEEN POSSIBLE and the only thing I come up with is "oh, just pause the game once per minute and comb through the entire map manually". That's it, there's nothing else that could've saved me, but that definitely would've.

I haven't been able to start a new colony anymore, because I FUCKING CAN'T PLAY WITH THE ANXIETY OF HAVING STEALTH KILLERS THAT I'M SOMEHOW SUPPOSED TO KNOW ABOUT.

It would even be better if they were actually LITERALLY invisible and only became visible after they attacked. I COULD DEAL WITH THAT. I CANNOT deal with a VISIBLE enemy that gives me ONE MINUTE of time to discover itself before it engages in a potentially fatal, game ending behavior. WHY? BECAUSE "YOU SHOULD'VE SEEN THE BEAR THAT SILENTLY SPAWNED OFFSCREEN A MINUTE AGO, NEWBIE, WHY WERE YOU FOCUSING ON SOMETHING ELSE?", which summarizes half of the responses here.

And it annoys me to now end KNOWING that I could've avoided this game if I had only stopped everything once a minute to comb through the map. Yes, I should totally be doing that. It's how this game is supposed to be played! With a one minute timer ticking on the desk. Maybe I could even make a mod that automatically pauses the game for me once a minute, that would significantly improve the experience!!

[Britnoth]

I'm guessing you didn't even bother trying the mod, then? 

[mzbear]

I'm guessing you didn't even bother trying the mod, then? 

I haven't even launched the game after the incident. And I'd still have to keep scanning the spawns regularly because I need those snowhares for food, too. It just doesn't feel okay anymore.

[nccvoyager]

  I can understand that it is frustrating, but getting upset and swearing (or trolling) isn't going to help. I did not see a single reply that treated you as if you were an "idiot," as you put it.  The reality is that predatory animals hunting the nearest food source is intended.  Your colonists being that nearest food source is unfortunate, but not a bug.  In addition, animals spawning at the map edge, whether they are predatory or not, is also intended.

  Polar bears enter the map area, get hungry, and decide to eat. This is not something unique to polar bears.  Other predatory animals enter map areas, get hungry, and decide to eat too.  Usually, on other map areas, those animals have a plentiful supply of other animals to eat.  In cold biomes, such a luxury is often unavailable.

  If you feel that an alert should be added when a predatory animal enters the map area, or a colonist begins to flee from an animal, or when an animal begins to hunt a colonist, you can place a suggestion for such a thing in the suggestions forum area. Several other replies to your OP were made that suggested such a thing as well.

  Making sarcastic suggestions and attempting to bait others into an argument is not a good method of making yourself heard.

  _{(Adding to the whole part where you implied that some had acted as if you were an imbecile, what type of Utopian communities have you been a part of?  Those here replied with several helpful suggestions, and even a mod that may do something similar to what you want.  In a Dark Souls forum, they would have just told you to "git gud" and locked the thread.)}

  Edit: My earlier suggestion for "land-fish" was actually a serious one.  I was not mocking you; I seriously believe that a larger supply of food for polar bears would help mitigate this problem.

[Tynan]

It's working as designed; predators get hungry and hunt edible creatures. They generally prefer non-humans but will sometimes still ambush humans (without warning). This is entirely different from "manhunter" madness.