I just threw my keyboard at the wall

[Boba Phat]

Fortunately, I had a second keyboard lying around.  I understand this is alpha and there will be a few frustrations, but they're really starting to add up, and these are not bugs we're talking about; they're the result of the way the game is designed, which is much more troublesome.  To wit:

A raider attacks.  One.  Early game.  He's armed with grenades.

I send my two hunters out to deal with him.  One of the hunters is the one with a high animal score.  As a result, she has a half-dozen bonded animals following her around.  I don't want them bonded to her, but they're force-bonded whether I want them bonded or not.  I have my farming area walled off with wooden walls to keep animals from eating my devilstrand.  The raider heads straight for the wall and blows a hole with a grenade.  Fair enough.

My two hunters arrive and start shooting.  The raider throws a grenade.  We move.  ALL THE BONDED ANIMALS head to the spot where my hunter WAS standing.  Where there is now a grenade.  They all die.  All of them.  Simultaneously.  I finish off the raider and suddenly a STAMPEDE of animals head for the hole in my wall.  Entire HERDS of animals charge for the hole in my wall like there's free candy on the other side.  I'm guessing the random location where they WANT to be is somewhere on the other side of my farming area wall, so they all telepathically and instantaneously notice the path to the Promised Land and stampede through and start gobbling up my devilstrand.  I blueprint repairs to the wall and instantly four of my five colonists get malaria, including both doctors.  The only colonist without malaria is mourning an entire petting zoo full of bonded animals I didn't want or need bonded, and will probably go berzerk or hide in her room until the end of time.

It's about then my keyboard went flying at the wall.

The main problem with this stuff is that it's all WAD.  I'm used to playing roguelikes and I enjoy challenge.  I also recognize that roguelikes should be slightly unfair.  But an increasing amount of challenge in Rimworld is coming from micromanagement trying to overcome metagame challenges which have nothing to do with the game scenario and everything to do with game mechanics.

[Canute]

*sarcastic smiling*
Learning by doing.
Ok, you got maybe a bad accidents in a row, and special at the beginning this can be very frustrating.

- Animals, you shouldn't tame any animal you see, not even for pratice. They will eat all your food, and your pawn's just need to work to get enough food for them and not to improve the colony.
If you got enough food, get 1-2 animals which can fight/haul or 2-5 who can support you with eggs,milk or wool.
Except on the desert or ice, you should have enough animals to hunt for your fine meals.

- About bond animals, ok the bond status you can't undo, but at the animal tab, or at the animal training you can just set the master to none, then they don't follow them anymore on fights.
Special when a horde of chinchilla's follow the master into fight, to bad the raiders can't die from laughing :-)

- Grenade,rocket launcher, yes they can be a threat, special when you didn't notice them.
But a single raider with grenades arn't a big deal, just don't shoot him, mellee him and he don't throw any grenade.
And you should have 3 pawn's vs. 1 raider, even with fists they should overwhelm it.
Or when you realy want to shoot him, check what target got the raider and let the target move around the raider, while the other shoot.

Don't forget to build early a prisoner room, in case you find an interesting raider you may want to recruit :-)

[Boba Phat]

Animals bond at random even when set to "none."  The first thing I generally do is recruit a herd of boars and train them for hauling.  In my case, I have only two out of my five colonists who are willing to haul, which means hauling animals are pretty much a necessity.  Since I had only one colonist with animal skill, that's the one I set to do the training.  As a result, she ends up with a bunch of unwanted bonded animals even when the animals are set to "none."  You can set a bonded animal to "none" and prevent it from following your colonist around, but that gives your colonist a permanent "not [animal]'s master" debuff.  During a raid, you can manually remove all your bonded animals and restrict them to base, but having to remove and add every single animal before and after every single raid is a royal pain in the ass, so I generally don't: an example of the kind of irritating micromanagement which results in metagaming challenges to which I was referring, where it's the game mechanics and not the game which create difficulty.

[Don Tacos]

Yep, I've become enraged countless times because of suicidal animals running into my own lines of fire, or frustrated every time I have to un-master each animal when a raid or threat appears.  I would recommend quality of life mods that fix annoying mechanics (the game is still alpha) or reduce micro-management.

"Pet Follow" allows you to choose when pets should or should not follow their masters (when drafted, while hunting).  (https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=24422.0)

"Wildlife tab" and "quality builder" are also essential for making the game less tedious.

[Stormfox]

@Canute

Yes, of course there are fiddly workarounds (most of them being nonparticipitation in that part of the game). That does not make the actual complaint Boba has invalid. In fact, it reinforces it.

AoE weapons on enemies (and to a lesser extent, sniper rifles) are ridiculously hurtful and common and therefore prone to lead to frustration (In the case of nades, mostly because you have to micromanage your guys to do anything but stand there and shoot at the first thing coming into sight).

Almost everything about animal behaviour, training and usability is simply bad. So bad that it reaches the point where the most common (and best) advice is to mostly ignore animal taming besides some specific cases (an indoor chicken farm usually works if the zones are set correctly).

The auto-bonding and auto-drafting and auto-suiciding of pets is aggravating, to say the least - and the only real workaround is to add all your animals to one guy that will never, ever, participate in combat. Usually you do not even need the enemy to kill them - friendly fire does that just fine since they just have to stand one space in front of your shooters.

These kinds of things have to be fixed sometime by the base game - "just use a mod" cannot be an excuse for baseline gameplay behaviour issues.

[Zhentar]

I finish off the raider and suddenly a STAMPEDE of animals head for the hole in my wall.  Entire HERDS of animals charge for the hole in my wall like there's free candy on the other side.  I'm guessing the random location where they WANT to be is somewhere on the other side of my farming area wall, so they all telepathically and instantaneously notice the path to the Promised Land and stampede through and start gobbling up my devilstrand.

They were starving to death and suddenly had access to food.

[skullywag]

The pawns have a mind of their own somewhat, they will make bonds...you seem to want a pure sim where you control every detail it seems. This game doesnt do that.

[RemingtonRyder]

1. Try the PetFollow mod. By default, it stops pets from following your pawns when drafted and when hunting, and you can toggle these behaviours back on whenever you like.

2. If you're going to keep animals at all, you need to have an area restriction for them. It's like an invisible pen which keeps them from nomming on your shrooms, and it's super effective (if you remember to snag the PetFollow mod).

3. Malaria is treatable. But you might need to manually intervene so that treatment and feeding time happens.

4. While it may seem like there are many events happening in the example of the OP, only two events were actually fired. The animal disasters were an emergent result of gameplay, not the result of a malevolent AI. Things could have gone differently.

5. A drop pod just burst through my ceiling and crushed my leg. Why you do this, Tynan? WHY?!



Edited for accuracy.

[Silvador]

It's at this point that I would like to reiterate my point about a need for commands pawns can give to pets so that they don't suicide in their attempts to "help".

[Shurp]

4. Events happening all at once is just bad timing. There isn't really a malevolent design behind it.

This is incorrect.  Multiple events happening at the same time is by design.  The game periodically decides that it is time for some "fun" and will slap you with a dozen events in a short period of time.  Between these high threat periods things slow down a bit -- more so on Cassandra than on Randy.

[stu89pid]

I think forcing bonded animals to still follow zone restrictions regardless if they are bonded would be an easy fix.

Everything else in the OP is just Rimworld working as intended if you ask me. The animals went for the food (Why rimworld animals eat devilstrand seems strange but OK I can see it) when the wall got destroyed.

Yes, unbonding animals before each combat is tedious, but you were early in the game you said and this really doesn't take much time at all if you have 5-6 animals only at this point. Honestly, it's not even that annoying in my colony with 25+ animals.

[Mikhail Reign]

Can you not just set bonded animals to a zone inside behind your defences, instead of to follow, like you use to be able?

I mean who brings a dog to a grenade fight anyway?

[Zhentar]

Nope, animals ignore areas when following their drafted master.

[Ildac]

I'm so sorry, but I laughed my ass off at this post. XD

[zandadoum]

1) set them to an animal safe zone during combat
2) remove their master
3) profit

Fluffy animal tab mod helps to make this easier