We need a way to auto hunt.

[Taramafor]

I know there's mods and all that but I'm talking in the vanilla game here. The fact that we can't auto hunt means we have to always manually click on the animals and click on hunt. Every. Damn. Day. With farming I can fast forward all the growing, gathering and eating. It lets me actually manage to build a base without waiting forever. This is made all the more problematic by the fact that it's more needed in early game, where it takes a lot longer to get your base(s) in order and that you still have to do it once you got a really large base with lots of people. Early game mood needs to be focused on. Late game you pretty much want to auto farm everything anyway.

Before anyone says it, no, I won't "just deal" with simple food. Frankly I'm tired of all the puke. Nor should I be forced to put on mods to resolve this. This is a flaw in an otherwise very good game. And something I think can be resolved without too much hassle I think, unless I'm overlooking something. I know it's early access so hopefully it's something the devs are working on. Nevertheless, solutions from us, the players, would probably help to that end. So let's try to focus on that.

The cons of auto hunting:
Animals can fight back, putting colonists in danger.
Animals that go boom are an even bigger danger.
Larger animals are also more of a danger.
You might want to tame an animal and not have it hunted.

Pros of auto hunting:
Able to actually have meat without having to slow down time all the time.
Meat would actually be worth trading because it's faster to obtain.
Leather is easier to obtain, helping with clothes (both wearing and trading).
It helps with beavers and "boomers". As well as mad animals (don't have to draft and order around).
Making animals attack you in hoards might be fun (could even trigger an animal hoard event siding with in future raider attacks. That could be fun).

Solutions to resolve cons:
Allow the players to select which animals to auto hunt. For example, early bow users can select weaker animals (in the "auto hunt menu") and late game users can select stronger ones when they're in power armor.
Have the game itself select weaker/more isolated animals.
An "auto hunt area". Either by auto selecting animals that wonder into the area or combining it with the "auto hunt menu" to select which animals to be hunted when dragging a box around an area.

Despite feeling like I shouldn't have to use a mod I'm going to ask if there is one that can help with auto hunting. And hope it gets worked into the vanilla game down the line. It's early access so I can't fault the lack of it too much. yet at the same time it feels like that it should have been addressed since farming and making clothes (the later needing hunting and both having energy tech/reserach invested) has.

Hmm. Maybe we need an auto hunt research. Haven't used turrets yet so not sure if they auto target animals (even if they do I'd still want to use people).

[daduhweewah]

there is a mod called rimworld manager, it is really good, you can auto hunt (and do many many other things) and you select which animals you want to hunt, you can even auto tame animals, you set how much meat you want. It makes things a lot easier. I have it set to hunt anything that isn't big, ferocious or boomalope/boomrat. Problems solved.

[OverlordMark]

IMHO I don't think hunting should be automated but it would be nice if there was some way to automate certain animal breeding aspects.  Hunting should be relatively high risk but high reward.

I would like to see a low risk/reward option to gaining meat though.  Take the animal zones, for example.  It would be nice if there would be some way to auto-slaughter anything above X animals.  This way you could create Animal Zone 1, set some chickens in it, and then as soon as there are more than 10 animals they would kill the oldest.  A couple of rabbits join the colony, set them to Animal Zone 1 and let the colonists sort it out.

[JimmyAgnt007]

Auto hunting can be done simply by adding a bill, you select what animals to hunt or avoid.  Then it simply adds the hunt tag to them and thats it.  Bill can be at the butchers table or as a universal toggle like the job list.

Friendly fire is still an issue but a separate one.  If you just have one or two designated hunters its usually fine.  Ive got several and its doing ok for now.

[Harold3456]

I don't have a problem with hunting as it, particularly because it's one of the few interactive tasks in the game. I like the fact that the player has to figuratively "hunt" down the animals on the screen in order to get the colonist to hunt it ingame. Autohunt strikes me a sbeing a bit TOO convenient.


You probably don't notice on temperate climates, where it's not a big deal, but I once had a game in an ice clime where I'd resorted to cannibalizing raiders, and half my screen time was spent zoomed into the white map, searching for rats and snow hares. Actually scouring the sparse map added a little something to it for me.

Likewise, I'm currently on a map that always has tons of hunt animals, but also has tons of panthers. I micromanage the hell out of any of my colonist expeditions, because I've already lost 4 (yep. 4.) to panthers, and I want a colonist within rescue range if need be.

[skinicism]

  Tynan apparently said that automated hunting is terrorism.
Although I do not view it as such I think that Rimworld
needs pythons with the ability to immobilize hunting quarry
using their 'entangle' ability.