Prisoners Casually Shooting One Another

[Damien Hart]

I first encountered this right after I arrested a colonist who had just had a mental breakdown, who had a psychotic episode on the way back and proceeded to attack his captor. I drafted a second person to expedite the process of beating him into submission, and then everyone went on their merry way (well everyone but the guy bleeding on the floor, but he asked for it).

A few minutes later, I heard the telltale tat-tat of pistol fire... What the hell? There was no one on the map but me and the prisoners, and no explanation as to what had caused the sound, so I let it slide. But surely enough, a few minutes later, tat-tat-tat. This time, after some searching, I found that the imprisoned colonist was wounded, and that the freshly built walls of my half finished atrium (which was doubling as my prison until it was completed and the prison could be dug out) were sporting damage in several spots - too many to be a coincidence in walls that had only been built that day.

Determined to get to the bottom of this mystery, I watched, and I waited. Floors were smoothed, and walls were built, and the cleaner studiously cleaned the rubble of the new floor... and then I spotted it: in between cleaning two squares, my cleaner casually squeezed off a round, narrowly missing the prisoner. I watched for a few more minutes in disbelief as the psycho shot the prisoner twice, and then put a round into the back of my miner as he walked past. Clean some floor, spill some blood; clean some floor, spill some blood. I don't think she understood the concept of cleaning - and she was formerly a janitor! So I followed the natural response: I yelled various expletives at the monitor and ordered her to drop her weapon.

But this wasn't an isolated incident; no sooner had she dropped her weapon than the miner decided to follow her example. Dig some rock, make the nearest colonist dig out a bullet. So he was ordered to drop his weapon too. After a third colonist opened fire, I'd had enough, and I quit.

So I updated to the newest version, I was on 0.3.408, updated to 0.3.413. So I started a new game, and a little while in, dismayed by constant hardships, a colonist had a breakdown. So I arrested her, and she was locked in her cell without incident and everything proceeded as normal. A few minutes after that however, another broke down (too many half rotted corpses apparently... pansy) and as he was being detained he went mental, and received a beating... Déjà vu.

And what do you know, the warden walked in, deposited the prisoner's meal, and gave him a case of acute lead poisoning. Had a friendly chat with him, gave him another dose. I'm sure that's conducive to recruitment!

The only common factor seems to be arresting a colonist who has had a breakdown, and goes mental while being arrested. Also, the first instance had several raider prisoners in the same room, and none of them were ever targeted, which leads me to believe that only colonists are affected. Has anyone else encountered this or something similar?

[OpposingForces]

i haven't, but i have an idea of what's causing it. i think it's related to the new faction system. when a colonist snaps, the game removes them from your colony faction. then it puts them in a new/ different faction that gets tagged as hostile due to them attacking you. seems like they never properly get tagged as a prisoner after you subdue them and lock them up. i'll have to keep my eyes out for this.

[Tynan]

Thank you for the detailed report! I've added this to the bug tracker.

[Tynan]

I can't reproduce this. Can anyone find a short, clear set of steps to reproduce this bug?

I recommend you use devmode tools to drive people insane, incap people, etc.

Mantis bug is here: http://ludeon.com/mantis/view.php?id=679

[Damien Hart]

First off, the subject for this was a mistype, I meant colonists shooting each other, but anyway. So, I had a bit of a play with the dev mode tools and managed to reproduce it after a few tries. I tried forcing different mental breaks with the tools, but no dice. So I tried forcing them via normal game mechanics - assigning soldiers and starving them, depriving them of sleep and sticking them in the ugliest place possible; using this method I managed to reproduce the bug.

As far as I can tell, the cause is the double mental break caused by arresting a non-violent broken colonist, who then has a second, violent mental break while being dragged to his cell. It doesn't seem to work with dev mode forced breaks because they cause the break without altering happiness or fear, meaning the second break doesn't occur.

[Tynan]

OK so fundamentally the problem occurs if someone breaks while being dragged to the cell?

(I've never seen this occur but it makes sense that it could).

In any case, I can fix that.

Thank you for the help!

[Damien Hart]

Yeah, seems to be.

No worries mate, happy to help.

[securitycop]

Thank you for the detailed report! I've added this to the bug tracker.

ive noticed this too but in my case its the warden taking popshotts at prisioners