Manhunters v Doors

[pdxsean]

Manhunter packs continue to attack doors, even when there are human targets available. In this save, a rhino has just smashed through a door to the workshop, having smashed through the door in the wall to the north. The manhunter pack had just hit, some beelined for that first door while another took the traditional open route to the entrance of the base. 

Perhaps this action is intentional, but the tooltip as well as the learning helper both clearly state that manhunters will not attack doors. So there's an error somewhere, whether it's in the programming or the documentation.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0eaARYcJtW6X2dKZWdMWEVDVG8

[attachment deleted by admin - too old]

[nccvoyager]

Manhunters will attack doors if they are chasing a pawn that went through the door.
They should not just randomly attack doors.

[pdxsean]

Manhunters will attack doors if they are chasing a pawn that went through the door.
They should not just randomly attack doors.

I agree. That is why I posted this. There were no pawns anywhere near the door in my exterior wall - let alone going through it - when the rhinos made a line for it and struck it down. As for the workshop door, all the pawns in the workshop were already hiding in there by the time the wall door was destroyed, and the rhino then came directly for the workshop door. Considering when the manhunter spawned I paused, put everyone in "safe" zone (inside the wall) and visually verified they were all inside the wall, I am not sure how I could have better achieved the conditions required for animals to not burst through doors to hunt colonists.

I guess next time I will have to upload a save immediately upon the manhunters spawning?

[nccvoyager]

I, unfortunately, have no internet access at home, and cannot actually run RimWorld on this netbook, so I have not had a chance to check the saved game.  I will check it tonight if I have time, and I will try to get back to you by 3PM Pacific on the 14th of September, unless someone else is able to help before then.

That being said, I just witnessed something quirky in my game when a pack of 42 manhunter boomrats showed up.

If the outer-most door to your base is set as "hold open" when the manhunter pack spawns, they will head directly to it as if it were still open and, after you close it, they will attack the door when they reach it until it is either destroyed, or some "need" like sleep or food interrupts their logic cycle.

I believe this is a quirk in the way that pathfinding is calculated.  (It appears that once calculated, they follow the path unless they are interrupted by a need, or a hostile attack.  For manhunters, the door that has been closed is considered an "obstacle" to their hunting, and is attacked.)

I am unsure if this is intended if the manhunters are on the other side of the map as the door that a colonist walks through, (literally over 100 tiles,) though I do believe that this is intended to make manhunter animals attack doors they "see" pawns walk through.

[pdxsean]

I don't hold doors open as a general rule, definitely not in my outside wall. That wasn't the case here.

I've uploaded another file from the next manhunter attack in a separate thread. Luckily in that other file they were exhibiting normal behavior just before the save, and several reloads on my part show them attacking the doors immediately after the save, as described in that thread. Hopefully that file will help as well.

[nccvoyager]

Took a look at the save games last night.

You do not have an enclosed wall.
The boomrats are heading through the hole in the left-most side of your outer wall to attack a pawn.
(I assume this is for a kill-zone for raiders.)

When the pawn they are targeting heads inside a building to do something, the boomrats recalculate a path to continue attacking that pawn, (that includes attacking doors,) and they attack the nearest door between them and their target.

This is a quirk with the way that manhunters "stay" hunting a single target when it becomes "inaccessible" to them.  (Like a need, or boredom.)

To avoid this issue in the future, you must plug the hole in your outer wall on the left side of your base.
I would also suggest removing the doors in the walls from your "safe" zone, as those tiles being in the safe zone tells your colonists that they can go there and open the door while "going for a walk" or the like.
Obviously, this would be bad.

Going into dev "god" mode, I replaced the wood doors with granite and blocked the hole in the left-most of the base.
The boomrats recalculated the shortest path (that includes doors) to their now "inaccessible" targets, and started attacking the (now granite) doors at the top of the base.
After a little time, the manhunters stopped attacking the doors and reverted to a "wander" state outside the walls, just as they should have.

The second file appeared to show normal manhunter behaviour; the rhinos already being in the base and "hunting" pawns that walked inside, even if they had to attack doors to get at them.

If, after you block the hole in the left-most of your base, new manhunter packs then still attack the outer doors, that would indeed probably be a bug.

[pdxsean]

Wouldn't this behavior - where they target a pawn who is "reachable" through a killbox - be inconsistent with the documentation? The headline in the learning helper is Animals Don't Attack Doors.

Even reading the text, "You can escape them by getting inside or behind a wall, but they will wait for you," gives the impression that the behavior you described wouldn't happen.

I think it's very common to have one open space in a wall to the base, typically through a killbox or defensive area like I have. Like, so common that I can't think of any base I've seen without it. Having you explain it to me does help me understand why it happens, and I guess I'll have to start building the killbox between the first and second walls, rather than in the first wall. But this is a common complaint/"bug" that I see on reddit, so there's some evidence of this kind of confusion. Reading through the comments there's a lot of disinformation spoken with confidence. So now I mean I'll refer people to this but honestly it seems like clearing up the text to like "Once they select a target, however, they may become so enraged that no doors will stop them" would make it a bit more intuitive.

[nccvoyager]

Indeed, the documentation may need to be changed to reflect that animals will wait outside of enclosed areas.
Manhunter animals will attack doors, but only if they are "hunting" a pawn that goes through a door, or an open door that is between them and their target is closed.

I myself have a base that has a three wide outer wall with a section of wall (behind my killing floor) that is only two wide.  I keep the doors in that two-wide area open until a raid, manhunter, or other event.
This makes the pathfinding "think" that there is a clear path through that doorway, and the raiders/manhunters/mechanoids all head directly for it, just as if it was no door at all.  Like an open "killbox" does.  (I believe the pathfinding also attempts to target the weakest wall, which is also this section.)
In the case of manhunters, I can close the doors, they attack the now closed door until they are bored, and that's that.