How to defend against hungry animals?

[Jan2607]

Hey guys,

I'm playing in a cold biome, and there are wolfs. Lot of wolfs. And they are often chasing my colonists to consume some food.
And my turrets, which I build to defend especially against these beasts won't shoot! Turrets, you had one job!

So, if my turrets don't do the job, how can I prevent my colonists from being eaten?
I get the warning just in the moment, when they are actually under attack and got hurt. And a hurt colonist can't outrun a wolf...
So, mostly my colonists don't get away from the wolf. They are losing body parts and I'm running out of medicine now.
Other colonists are too far away to get there in time.

I can't micromanage all my colonists all the day. No way! It's just not possible! And they are meant to be safe in their base - with turrets! (you are telling me, we are in the year 5001 - and these smart, sci fi auto turrets are unable to recognize a threat by animals??!!)
Is there any way to protect against these beasts?

[Stormfox]

I just touched on that subject a few days ago in a longer thread. It is a definitive problem, and something needs to be done so that pawns avoid/combat predators better and warnings to the player go out when someone draws aggro at least, not when nothing can be done anymore for the exact reasons you outlined above.

[Hans Lemurson]

I think the problem is basically that they aren't "hostile" until they hit a colony-member.

[SpaceDorf]

Hunters and Shotguns.
As soon as a Wolf pokes his nose on your map ..
Just control the borders every other day or your homezone.
Think of them as Beavers that eat people


Also set everyone to return fire.

Works also on cougars, foxes and ice wolves.

Bears and Wargs require Pulse Rifles.
But I prefer to tame Bears, because the can stunlock even Wargs.
With a bunch of trained Carebears away missions become trivial

------ EDIT ------

Taming in general is quite useful.
Because the tamer feeds the animals.
Also providing easier food sources for the animals goes a long way too.
Kibble or Body Piles, free range chicken, rabbits, chinchillas .. everything that does not eat much but breeds fast assigned to a zone that keeps them outside.

[Shurp]

Short answer: micromanagement.

There is no non-micro way to deal with predators unfortunately.  You have to visually identify them on the map (difficult when polar bears blend in with the snow), then manually order your pawns to kill them.  If you're not paying attention, a pawn becomes lunch.

In a way this is realistic; cougars do sneak up on prey and catch them unaware, just like Rimworld players.

But this is also *unrealistic*.  Polar bears don't sneak up on people except in blizzards, and when a person *does* see a large predator they're normally smart enough to run or start shooting.  Pawns should have a chance to automatically engage a predator on sight, and a non-grizzly predator that gets shot should start running the other way rather than turning into a pawn eating monster.

[cultist]

Yeah, the best defense against predators is something alive and expendable. Chickens are great because they're easy to replace. Muffalo are great because they can fight back, and have a decent chance of surviving if your pawns back them up when they get attacked.

I'm pretty sure predators will not attack your pawns if they can find a more suitable target within reasonable range. When you're wandering around outside your base you need to pay attention to predators near your pawn, because they may pick him over a rabbit on the other side of the map if they're hungry.

[Stormfox]

I think the problem is basically that they aren't "hostile" until they hit a colony-member.

They are not even hostile afterwards - that is part of the problem. They do NOT count as an enemy until you damage them and trigger the xxx revenge code.

Yeah, the best defense against predators is something alive and expendable. Chickens are great because they're easy to replace. Muffalo are great because they can fight back, and have a decent chance of surviving if your pawns back them up when they get attacked.

Again, not feasible. If I have to lose a few chicken everytime a predator spawns and gets hungry to be reasonably safe of that, that is ridiculously expensive.


@SpaceDorf
Yes, no one ever denied that it is theoretically possible to pause the game every five minutes, carefully move over the entire map line by line or column by colum and watch for any predators, and then set out and manually kill them with killteams of 2-3 good shooters in draft mode.

Because that is about the only realistic way to prevent those "haha, gotcha, one colonist downed and nothing you could do about it" moments. Also, animal taming is very time and food intensive, not to mention the micro hell they pose when doing anything but "stay out of the way and haul", and in the scale you propose not something that is feasible for the first few seasons.

Can the "I am so hardcore I play naked in the snow with a potatoe as my cpu" people please be somewhat realistic sometimes? I am so tired of those "git good" and "there is the following 25 page manual for a workaround, so it is fine" posts. Not calling you out in particular, but it seemed like as good a place as any to get that out.

[cultist]

Again, not feasible. If I have to lose a few chicken everytime a predator spawns and gets hungry to be reasonably safe of that, that is ridiculously expensive.

The best case scenario is spotting and killing the predator before it does any harm. The chicken is the last line of defense, to prevent you from losing a pawn. I'd much prefer to lose a single chicken than a pawn.

[SpaceDorf]

@SpaceDorf
Yes, no one ever denied that it is theoretically possible to pause the game every five minutes, carefully move over the entire map line by line or column by colum and watch for any predators, and then set out and manually kill them with killteams of 2-3 good shooters in draft mode.

Because that is about the only realistic way to prevent those "haha, gotcha, one colonist downed and nothing you could do about it" moments. Also, animal taming is very time and food intensive, not to mention the micro hell they pose when doing anything but "stay out of the way and haul", and in the scale you propose not something that is feasible for the first few seasons.

Can the "I am so hardcore I play naked in the snow with a potatoe as my cpu" people please be somewhat realistic sometimes? I am so tired of those "git good" and "there is the following 25 page manual for a workaround, so it is fine" posts. Not calling you out in particular, but it seemed like as good a place as any to get that out.

Well thank you for calling me hardcore

I do play on Randy extreme and still get bored ..

But I don't get it why you make my suggestion so complicated.

I like fine meals, so normaly I have one or two hunters around.
It is also my prefered method of training the shooting skill. ( Trigger Happy + Shotgun = Awesome )

I play on 300-325 Maps ( yes, the potato cpu part is also true .. )
And what I do is designate everything for hunting that comes near my Colony.
I scroll around the map when I get bored, and when I see predators I zoom out and select all of them ( double click ) .. now I designate them to be hunted.
I don't think this is very much micro ..

If it is still to much I suggest Fluffy's colony Manager, where you can set Automated Hunting Jobs
and the Wildlife Tab, which shows you all wild animals on the map with the option to hunt or tame.

[Stormfox]

Besides scanning the area all the time for predators to mark, there is a real reason why this simply does not work:

Hunters on a normal hunting job do one thing extremely well when dealing with predators: die to them.

Single hunters are abysmal at dealing with the stronger/faster predators. The moment they finally hit once, the predator aggros and runs at them, giving them one or two more shots before they are done for (i.e. engaged in melee). Sometimes this works - you can hunt small predators like cobras extremely reliably because they are usually dead after the initial shot. With cougars or grizzly bears, not so much.

So to actually hunt predators you need at least two guys, and you need to micromanage the hunt, because without a drafted helper the main hunter will get downed at least 50% of the time.

[SpaceDorf]

Maxim 34. If you're leaving scorch-marks, you need a bigger gun

As I said in my initial post, this strategy does not work on bears.
Depending on my food storage bears call for a tamer or a firing squad.
So far my casualty rate is pretty low .. so I may be doing something wrong ..

[b0rsuk]

Hungry colonists make a good defense against hungry animals.

When playing on ice sheet, you're actually glad for the bears coming your way on a large map. They're easy to spot, because there are very few objects and nothing moves on its own. But if you fail spotting, most colonists can still outrun a bear and will do so automatically. But don't equip your miners with miniguns and other slowing weapons.

A bear is a lot of meat!

[jpinard]

Besides scanning the area all the time for predators to mark, there is a real reason why this simply does not work:

Hunters on a normal hunting job do one thing extremely well when dealing with predators: die to them.

Single hunters are abysmal at dealing with the stronger/faster predators. The moment they finally hit once, the predator aggros and runs at them, giving them one or two more shots before they are done for (i.e. engaged in melee). Sometimes this works - you can hunt small predators like cobras extremely reliably because they are usually dead after the initial shot. With cougars or grizzly bears, not so much.

So to actually hunt predators you need at least two guys, and you need to micromanage the hunt, because without a drafted helper the main hunter will get downed at least 50% of the time.

This 1000x.

[Jan2607]

Well, I think, Tynan should change attacking animals to agressors, so turrets can do their job. At least you should get a message, BEFORE (!) the predator hits your colonist, because then it's to late.

It's not funny to micromanage this. It's not a feature of the game, it's just annoying. There is enough stuff you need to micromanage.
And I can't tame a chicken army, because I can't grow enough food for tamed animals. I would have to spend too much power to grow it (I have only 10 days of growing period).

[Euzio]

This is one of the things I find to be rather irritating currently. I can have predators hunting my pawns simply waltz into my base and go pass all my turrets to attack them.... And the funny thing is they will even walk pass other pawns who pass by them and beeline since they are hunting a particular pawn.... Its not exactly fun to have a sudden notice that one of my pawns is being attacked without any notice if they are out of the base too...

Right now, I basically scan the map often just to see the predators around and to cull them if I find their population getting abit much.

Would probably be nice if we get a notice similar to the Mad Animal or Revenge warning for Manhunter events.