How to defend against hungry animals?

[hwfanatic]

You should be able to define a zone to clear of animals, using Fluffy's Colony Manager.

[Perq]

Perq, to extend on that concept:

Hunters should consider predators enemies and prioritize hunting all predators in a certain distance to the home territory before anything else. Hunters should also always form teams if possible when doing so.

Oh, yes, that too. Wouldn't want any of my colonists (even those with power armors and plasteel swords/charge weapons) to solo-hunt. :2

[Hierophant]

I agree with scanning for predators regularly. But when I play on an ice sheet, I also always wall myself in, with one door for traders. Predators don't go through doors, as far as I can tell. Even if they do, just block the door until you need to open it.

[Stormfox]

I agree with scanning for predators regularly. But when I play on an ice sheet, I also always wall myself in, with one door for traders. Predators don't go through doors, as far as I can tell. Even if they do, just block the door until you need to open it.

From these forums, one could assume 99% of the players of this game always play on icesheets and never anywhere else...

Yes, if you live in a mountain base and are completely walled in and never venture out, then of course wandering predators do NOT pose a problem.

[Listy]

Under one of the tabs, "Assign" I think, one where you play with clothing) there's a option to allow your colonists to do one of three things when they see a threat. Its automatically set to "flee".

Do nothing: ignore the threat.
Flee: Default behaviour, and you've seen it all a million times.
Attack: The colonist will attack a threat with whatever weapons he posses.

Predators hunting a colonist are classified as a threat. IF you have two or three guys working in an area and a bear walks in thinking of Colonist, lettuce and tomato sandwiches they normally get riddled with gun fire before they get to butter the bread.

That along with my habit of hunting down any predators in an area I'll be working in means it tends not to be an issue.

[SpaceDorf]

Under one of the tabs, "Assign" I think, one where you play with clothing) there's a option to allow your colonists to do one of three things when they see a threat. Its automatically set to "flee".

Do nothing: ignore the threat.
Flee: Default behaviour, and you've seen it all a million times.
Attack: The colonist will attack a threat with whatever weapons he posses.

Predators hunting a colonist are classified as a threat. IF you have two or three guys working in an area and a bear walks in thinking of Colonist, lettuce and tomato sandwiches they normally get riddled with gun fire before they get to butter the bread.

That along with my habit of hunting down any predators in an area I'll be working in means it tends not to be an issue.

Exactly.
And the few times I played in Icy Terrain I greeted the predators with a squeel of joy.
Hey Guys, Fresh Meat incoming.

[shentino]

Best success I've had is putting up a wooden perimeter wall around my colony, with doors.  Still passable by people, but wild animals don't manage to pathfind through the closed doors.

[Shurp]

But if you build a completely enclosed perimeter wall, that blocks raiders from your killzones, no?

[hwfanatic]

Killzones are so 2016. 

[Listy]

Killzones are so 2016. 

Define Kill zone, I like to get them all standing in one place before the massive explosions...

[Mikhail Reign]

To final animals I just pause, zoom out as far as pos and then play again at full speed. Anything that moves is an animal. And food.

Anyone here use Colony Manager mod? Let's you automate Hunting, with zones, animal types and meat limits. Same for collecting wood (harvest wood in X area, until many in stockpile) and plenty of other stuff.

Takes ALOT of the micro out of the game.

[baconthepig]

When I first started playing this used to drive me crazy because I didn't know what to do about it or how to prevent it. After a little trial and error I almost never run into this issue anymore.

For starters, train a couple animals to follow your hunters around. I recommend bears if you can get them since they can stun attackers, don't eat much and are pretty tanky (they can take down most predators on their own just fine). If a predator does attack a colonist they will have to deal with your pet first. This gives your pawn time to flee or attack depending on the situation

I'll leave my colonists set to flee. This is mostly so that if I have a berserk colonist, everyone will run away from them rather than attack them, potentially killing them. If I see a fleeing symbol in the colonist bar I can pause and assess the situation.

Avoid hunting small prey. If there are a small animals on the map odds are the predator will attack that rather than your colonist.

Build a perimeter wall around your base. If you have a killbox, I like to leave an open path into the box but have a wall with doors on the back side of the box. If a raid happens I can open those doors and raiders will still path into the box but this will keep animals from getting inside the base. Aside from keeping you safe from predators it keeps other animals from getting to your crops or boomrats from camping out inside your base.

As for turrets firing on predators, this is a double edged sword. If a turret could target an attacking predator what are the odds it will hit your colonist rather than the animal? If my colonist is fleeing from an attack I really don't want my own defenses to kill my colonist by mistake.