Manhunter hordes are way too powerful

[DNK]

Just thought I'd gripe a bit. I'm playing Phoebe as usual, fairly hard difficulty, and most of the raids are easily handled, albeit with a bit of injuries.

For instance, a group of about 8 poorly armed outlanders did a siege, I think I got one stab from a shiv and killed 5. Another was mechanoids, which took a lot of patience with a sniper rifle (my only one) but was handled eventually. Only one man lost a leg, not too bad.

So my tribals with 1 sniper rifle, a mech minigun, and 8 axes then gets assaulted by about 30 boomrats.

What the F? How is that remotely in line with the other "big threats"? I had absolutely no way to survive that encounter. I had to reload an earlier day, it was a literally unwinnable situation. There is no vanilla way to handle that as a tribal start.

But just about any massive (and laggy) manhunter pack is going to do that, when it spawns like 3-5x my number of colonists. Boomrats obviously are pretty bad. But it felt like a very Randy situation, and I shouldn't get those as Phoebe or even Cass.

[Mehni]

Lock your doors and stay inside. Unlike raids, there's nothing forcing you to fight manhunter packs.

[The Man with No Name]

I made a similar thread a few weeks ago. It's interesting that my thread was also about boomrats. I've experienced lots of manhunter hordes now, but that particular one was something else in its level of intensity. What seemed to make it different to any other I've faced is that the boomrats were able to detect, lock on and attack (their state showing as "Attacking so-and-so") colonists on the other side of my base through my base, walls and all. So I could hardly move at all in my base without them detecting and attacking from round the other side of the map. It all ended in huge fires inside my base, alien ship, Zzt fire and a deer manhunter pack in the most testing chain of events I've ever faced in the game!

So I'm not sure that all Manhunter packs have the same operating logic. It was like boomrats have been given some extra sensory ability boost, more powerful than the smell of a bloodhound.

[khearn]

I had an interesting situation earlier today with a manhunter pack. I had a new recruit with an alcohol addition issue that I was working through withdrawl, and he had a mental break and was wandering around outside in a daze. Then I got a manhunter muffalo pack attack. So I couldn't just plan on staying inside until they calmed down, because a pawn doing dazed wandering won't respect zones.

I ended up drafting someone else and arresting the alcoholic, and fortunately he came along peacefully. So I was able to go into lockdown, at least until one of the muffaloes got in a fight with one of my cassowaries. Then I got pissed and started taking pot shots at the muffies from doorways and eventually picked them all off with no further casualties.

That wouldn't have worked so well with boomrats, though.

[O Negative]

I had a pretty scary situation where manhunting boomrats made it into one of my wooden huts in the super early game. My poor colonists were stuck inside their bedrooms until the boomrats decided to leave

It made for a good story, though.

Theres no existing game mechanic that can't be won against. There's always a solution, you just have to be prepared ahead of time in case it happens

[XeoNovaDan]

I agree that certain manhunters in manhunter packs do need to be toned town a little by having their combat power rating increased. Boomrats are near-enough suicidal to engage in melee, for instance, and it's extremely difficult to hit them with firearms due to their incredible movement speed and tiny body size, and their sheer numbers.

Although as already mentioned, you can pretty much just shut manhunters out and probably pound them with mortars

[cultist]

You're not supposed to engage them, you're supposed to hide inside until they go away. If you do manage to kill a manhunter pack, you've potentially beaten one of the harder events in the game (depending on type and number of animals - early manhunter events tend to be just a slightly worse version of the Mad animal event.)

[Shurp]

It's important to distinguish *boomrat* manhunters from other sorts.  I just got attacked by a muffalo manhunter pack of 30 muffalo.  My freezer is now seriously full of muffalo meat.

What makes boomrats such a challenge is that they're too small to shoot, too fast to outrun, and you can't melee them.  There's just really no good offensive options against them.

Hiding inside and waiting for them to starve to death and explode is just about the only thing you can do.  BTW, applying the wood beatdown to any wandering pawns works well to keep them inside.

[O Negative]

They don't have to starve and die before they "go away." They'll leave on their own after a solid 24 hours. At least, that's my experience with all of the manhunter packs I've seen.

[giannikampa]

I really like manhunting hordes as an incident, they give a different enemy to fight with, this is good. But in my opinion such big hordes give you no choice between trying to firefight or hide inside. playing over 10 years game leads to numbers that could easily be halved and still be too dangerous for you to put the nose out of the door.

[The Man with No Name]

Going forward, use stronger doors at the base entrances, Plasteel being the best, and divide all the base's corridors into sections linked with doors that are normally held open but can be closed in times of emergency. That way, if the base is penetrated, the intruders can be isolated without being allowed to have the run of the base.

[Mehni]

I almost always fight manhunter packs. Muffalo are my favourite, because they're easy and give lots of meat. Boomalopes are fun, because they chain react into a huge explosion. Boars, elephants, rhinos? Bring it on. I'll even take on wargs, despite them being faster and stronger than humans.

But boomrats? Boomrats are nothing but trouble. Their explosion is too small for a chain reaction. Their tiny bodies are too hard to hit. Their movement speed is too high to run from. When the fight is over, half the colony has lost a finger or toe and gained nothing but an eye scar or infection.

Which is a darned shame, because that red leather is gorgeous. But noo, it all burns.

[DNK]

To the guys saying to lock yourself in... they broke down the doors faster than I could fix them. I didn't realize they leave after 24hr, so maybe I'll add granite doors to my stronghold and wait it out... I think I could keep granite doors repaired fast enough, right?

[XeoNovaDan]

...

For doors leading from inside to outside the base, double-door them. If all but one of your peeps are inside and manhunters perhaps observed the straggler going in, they'll bash down the first door but not the second.

[Shurp]

You can repair doors while they're trying to bash them down.  Just order your best constructor to walk up to the door and start repairing.  They give up after several blows.  But it does help if all 50 aren't trying to bash down the same door.