Animal is hunting colonist!

[dStreamline]

+1

Good catch.

Maybe extend it to tame animals as well?

[TheMeInTeam]

Having it for tame animals would be reasonable, but it's not as game-altering to lose them at random and the countermeasures to keep them alive are different (as is the reason/requirement you'd have them outside base/walls anyway).  I could go either way on that one, in contrast to colonists dying at random w/o mundane micro which is not acceptable design in the framework of other Rimworld implementations.

[erdrik]

How is that irrational? The colonist is already shooting at the cougar. The colonist already has it in sight. If it decides to turn around and attack the colonist out of revenge it can't hide and probably isn't intending to hide, so logically you should receive a notification.

1.  "Real animals hide so they'd be hard to see" --> applies a certain standard for realism to how the game interacts with animals.
2.  "Animal charges into rifle fire from nearly maximum effective range after being hit by bullets" --> thoroughly tramples on the exact same standard used to establish the rationale in #1, creating self-inconsistency.

Taking a stance that #1 and #2 are both okay while using a realism standard is self-inconsistent, which is why it's not a coherent position.

...  You can't have it both ways.

Movies don't work that way, and neither do games. Bottom line:
ALL games(outside games with purely abstract themes) balance a line between getting certain aspects of the game immersive enough to pass for realism, while maintaining a mechanical balance for the purpose of fun and performance.

In Games, you can as a matter of fact have it both ways.

You want a realism standard across the entire game?
Don't play games. Play Life. Or a not even remotely close second could be hardcore simulations.



And just to put the nail in the coffin:
fiction primer
" ...Often, people have bred and engineered plants and animals for a new planet...
  ...One consistent class of modification we've seen applied to a wide variety of creatures is intelligence enhancement...
  ...been engineered and combined with human DNA to produce smarter variations...
  ...Some are created as warriors and weapons - hyper-intelligent guard dog, a bird scout that can speak what is sees, a bomb-carrying suicide monkey...
  ...These brain modifications are often paired with physical changes - fingers so a pig can manipulate tools, or a humanlike larynx and mouth so a dog can talk...
  ...Optianimals can usually use tools, form long-term goals and organize into primitive social groups...
  ...Many times, these modified animals have, during a regressive catastrophe, been forced into interbreeding with an unmodified animal population, producing descendants of widely varying levels of intelligence...
  ...In a few cases, transanimals have become the dominant species on a planet, eliminating or enslaving the remaining humans..."

Do not assume animals on the Rimworlds are in any way similar to or should act like real Earth animals to begin with.
They have every potential to do the exact same irrational BS, a crazed revenge seeking Human would.

[A Friend]

Realism aside, the game deciding to remove a pawn because of RNG without any sort of warning or reaction time is absolutely unacceptable and incredibly infuriating.

While it can be argued that we can prepare for it by hunting animals, it's not fun to always pause and look around the map to micro manage some predators. And let's be honest here. This event is pure instant bullshit along with blights and diseases.

[Lowkey1987]

-1

I do not feel that animal hunting should have an notification. It is an mechanic which shows how to handel it.
After some time, you know why the animal attacks and you know when it will do it. I often play with many winter months, and they will attack when they dont get food. When i send one lonly pawn to mine outside my town, i now in which danger i put him.

There are ways to counter predators: hunt them, give them food, give your pawn an animal (i recently notice the will protect there master even when he is mining).

You get a "zzzzZ" notification after it happend. You get the sickness notification after it happens.then you have to act quickly. Even the blink (hopefully the english word for "half your crops died)" comes when it is to late. An infestation gives you only 2seconds to react.
So this isnt the only mechanic which come out of the dark.

The problem seems: there is no easy way. When you dont think about it, people get hurt. And i understand that not everyone want to do this.

I, as a player, expect this behavour and try to avoid lonley pawns. A notification would make it easier, but then the animals would be ...no problem. "A there it is. I have enough time to gang it up". Now, you dont need preparation. Because two salves of an MG will mostly solve the problem (not bears).

I also read, some players want a notification before a raid drop because pawns at the border of the map get in trouble.
Some people think this is bullshit.
Some people think animal hunting is bullshit.
But not everyone.

But a timestop when my pawn gets hurt would be nice.

PS: And it is not even RNG compared to other events.

[TheMeInTeam]

Movies don't work that way, and neither do games. Bottom line:
ALL games(outside games with purely abstract themes) balance a line between getting certain aspects of the game immersive enough to pass for realism, while maintaining a mechanical balance for the purpose of fun and performance.

In Games, you can as a matter of fact have it both ways.

Yes, it is possible to be irrational.  It's not good to be irrational via inconsistency in game systems, just like it's not good for movies to have terrible plot holes or character actions that don't fit motivation.  The movie still happens, but it's less good than it would be if the character choices made sense in the situation the movie presents.

This is a bad gameplay mechanic that amounts to a pixel hunt as the only non-reload counter measure, even according to its proponents.  It is also inconsistent, both with the game's notification system *and* with the standard used for reality in almost every other portion of the game.

You are telling us that it is OK for animals to unrealistically hunt people and be unrealistically threatening to them but that a notification for it would not be called for because real animals hide...all despite the fact that the game will tell you what an animal is hunting if you actually physically click on it, even from across the map in spots where your pawns couldn't reasonably see it.

That is not a coherent position, and the outcome doesn't make the game better.  It makes it worse.

Do not assume animals on the Rimworlds are in any way similar to or should act like real Earth animals to begin with.
They have every potential to do the exact same irrational BS, a crazed revenge seeking Human would.

Then notifications for them are warranted after all.  The colony can see them, and they know how dangerous they are, so the present treatment is inconsistent with the game's notification system and we don't need to care about "realism".

There are ways to counter predators: hunt them, give them food, give your pawn an animal (i recently notice the will protect there master even when he is mining).

Pixel hunting is a junk mechanic that needs to stay back in the 1990's where it died.

You get a "zzzzZ" notification after it happend. You get the sickness notification after it happens.then you have to act quickly. Even the blink (hopefully the english word for "half your crops died)" comes when it is to late. An infestation gives you only 2seconds to react.
So this isnt the only mechanic which come out of the dark.

Predator hunting is *critically* different from those events.  For those events, even infestation, the player is capable of action that allows for colonist survival after the notification.  If you don't pixel hunt, a predator will kill your colonist at range no matter what you do.

I also read, some players want a notification before a raid drop because pawns at the border of the map get in trouble.
Some people think this is bullshit.
Some people think animal hunting is bullshit.
But not everyone.

Opinions are not equal (IE if someone expressed an opinion that most asteroids are larger than Earth, we would not weight that as an "equal" opinion to one formed from evidence).  What matters is the reasoning.  Raiders appearing on top of you is a bit tangential, but players claiming that have a legitimate case it's inconsistent too, because the rules of the map's borders are arbitrary in terms of what you can build where and timing.  Infestations and drop pod-into-base raids are both given a grace period of a few seconds, and those make all the difference.  The border raid is *inconsistent* with the reasoning for that grace period.

From a design perspective, disparate standards applied to notifications and minimal counterplay aside from a mundane "don't physically go there ever" are weak.  I can engineer it so I never even get infestations or zzzt events, not even 1 for 10 in game years.  After the first harvest or two, I can survive blight easily.  If I prepare for it, I can react to 3 scythers drop podded into my base, which should be MORE threatening than a random cougar hunting a colonist.

Not only can I prepare for those things, but I can do so without manually scanning the map on a pixel hunt and ignoring actual gameplay on pain of losing someone at random if missing a spot.

[Lowkey1987]

There are ways to counter predators: hunt them, give them food, give your pawn an animal (i recently notice the will protect there master even when he is mining).

Pixel hunting is a junk mechanic that needs to stay back in the 1990's where it died.

You get a "zzzzZ" notification after it happend. You get the sickness notification after it happens.then you have to act quickly. Even the blink (hopefully the english word for "half your crops died)" comes when it is to late. An infestation gives you only 2seconds to react.
So this isnt the only mechanic which come out of the dark.

Predator hunting is *critically* different from those events.  For those events, even infestation, the player is capable of action that allows for colonist survival after the notification.  If you don't pixel hunt, a predator will kill your colonist at range no matter what you do.

I didnt talk about pixel hunt. I dont even care much about predators that much. To give pawns an animals isnt pixelhunting. To put food before your doorstep isnt pixelhunting.
There are ways to counter them. Simple ways.

And predator hunting isnt "Oh he attacks, my pawn will die.". I had some attacks from wolfs and wargs, my pawns could handle them alone. Yes, they didnt look good after this, put the win the fight, mostly because they have weapons. They can shoot, even in close combat.
Some have the benefit, that a husky or two stay by there site, and attack the predator.

Okay, when i send one hunter out, to kill one deer, and the bear thinks "i am starving, better eat the pawn" he will mostly die. But not because its a dump mechanic. Its because the pawn is alone and i didnt take my time to overthink this.

I dont know how you play your game. And i dont want to tell you how it is to be played. I have offert some solutions. But we do this things differently and ATM i didnt have any problems with predators. When some predator finally will kill one pawn... tragic.
And at this point, i think this benefit the game.


Also, this is a problem of mapsize and biome. If i have a very great map, help will take some time. if i have a mountain, the way back to base will be much larger. And so is the risk with predators.

But this mechanik, like every other should pause the game immediatly . After the first hit, the player should be able to do something. This is a problem when you run on 3x speed. Because there will be a second and third attack.

[TheMeInTeam]

Tagging every pawn that might step outside the base is not a realistic move, especially on the food-constrained maps this actually happens with any frequency.

Leaving food outside the base does not solve the issue.  Animal predators ignore fresh corpses they would otherwise eat to attack live pawns, and most of the ones that are actually threatening (aside from bears) won't eat grains.

[Okay, when i send one hunter out, to kill one deer, and the bear thinks "i am starving, better eat the pawn" he will mostly die. But not because its a dump mechanic. Its because the pawn is alone and i didnt take my time to overthink this. [/quote]

I micromanage hunting so I don't shoot myself (I consider that its own issue, that using the hunting command is a false choice compared to draft hunting).  The problem is when these things hit constructor, miners, or even the odd hauler.  Even if you react instantly and pawn is within 15-20 tiles of a non-mountain base, predators can kill or at least seriously maim (IE permanent damage) these pawns due to predator stun.  You can try to shoot back, but even assault rifle will frequently fail to stop something like a cougar or warg.

I'm not worried about the handler on nice cozy biomes as he drags along his 5+ animal pain train.  That guy isn't going to die.  Losing a leg off a constructor at random while a corpse from last raid is frozen 10 tiles away w/o notification or any counterplay except "play slow and pixel hunt" is not viable gameplay.  You don't have the food to put 2 dogs on everyone.  Sometimes you don't even have dogs/tamed animals of significance.

Also, why do animals hunting colonists get special extra consideration?  What about this mechanic necessitates that it doesn't get notification, such that it's inconsistent with how the game normally treats its mechanics?  It's not like if you get caught out that a notification would save you every time, but it would make preparation against this type of mechanic reasonable.

[Vlad0mi3r]

I see both sides of the argument as having merit.

In my colony before my current one I had my level 20 grower killed by a panther while going to pick up some metal I had unforbidden and forgotten about. This resulted in an that's it everyone on board the ship we are out of this dump. Poor Cuveas constant drug binges, mental breaks and being a general pain in my ass but he could grow those plants. So yeah the random killer predator really bugged me that day.

You can do the pixel hunt and for some that's no fun. I don't mind so much but I can see how it could get tedious. You can also give animal escorts fight fire with fire bears are good for this, some kibble production to keep on top of predators is a fair trade off IMO.

Yes I have witnessed first hand a cougar bolt past an ostrich and boomrat to attack one of my pawns who was set to flee threats so ran away (sort of) after the first hit I was lucky enough to have pawns nearby and it saved the day. So an alert would be nice. Hell I get a yellow alert every time my self tamed rat with dementia gets confused so an alert for colonist under attack is not an unreasonable request.

[Lowkey1987]

I use the hunt command often in mid-game.

At the beginnen, i draft every pawen because of the danger of a manhunt. I shot every animal, and go away. When the bleed to death i collect the dead animals. In my opinion this is a savely way.
Later, when i have more pawns is just let them hunt the whole herd. If a manhunt beginns, there are other hunters who will help. Also, if an animal hunts me, there are more pawns to help.
Yes they sometimes shoot themself but.. i dont want to micro this. As you said: Another issue.

And i think it isnt "another consideration". When i kill my first hive in A17, i didnt get a notification that the bugs will rush me now :-D. The problem was, there were hives at two differen points. I thought i could kill one, and then the other later. Now, the other have rushed me and killed it self by this (the bugs die and couldnt maintain the hive).

I think, there is a problem with what we expect. Here is a bad example, against myself:
On my map are many corpses. Its winter now (and its winter everyday. sometimes it gets warm, just long enought for the snow to smelt or to take a look at the sun). And i get an attack in my base (its not fully encloused on purpuse). But there are many fresh corpses lieing arround. It seems that a wolf will attack a small animal over half the map, even when a corpse is closer.
This could be good because: The corpse is frozen, hard as rock. But my huskys eat frozen corpse so... the wolf should do this too. Why hunt, if you have food which didnt move?

I see too, that many players consider animal hunting as problem. And i think, because of this, the dev will change it. Even when the mechanic is good (in my opinion) it didnt mean, it should stay.
But if you put a notification up, for me it means i didnt have to be careful. Now i can handle an suprise attack but I will have more time to react, more time to solve the problem. Also i will get many notifications, because in winter, i get many attacks. As a new player i would think "This is a event". But it is not.

Could it be, that it is not with a notification because its not an event which is triggert?

PS: Also i like it when a pawn loses a leg. Or an arm (okay i have EPOE). But you can put a wood leg on him. And someday you will get a party, becaue you bought e bionic leg and know he is at his best again. Losing one finger or a nose, this is a pain. Because its not enought to by a bionic put angers me permanently.

PPS: I try to bypass english words i didnt know. Sry!

[TheMeInTeam]

But if you put a notification up, for me it means i didnt have to be careful. Now i can handle an suprise attack but I will have more time to react, more time to solve the problem. Also i will get many notifications, because in winter, i get many attacks. As a new player i would think "This is a event". But it is not.

Could it be, that it is not with a notification because its not an event which is triggert?

It's not an event in the game sense, but anything that happens is an event in the technical sense.  It could be given a notification easily if the devs want to do so.

What's the purpose of giving notifications for "time to react" for most events if we're going to force players to micromanage like this anyway?  It's not different from not getting a notification about a siege or needing to tell your pawns to manually eat in the game sense; if the game forced you to do these things players could do them, but they would not make it a better game.  Why are animals considered an exception in this regard?

And yes, there's expectation dissonance with other mechanics.  Hive change from A16 --> A17 is a good example as you say.  I would argue that it's a little awkward now, since you get notification if that random deer herd turns on you...but not if 25 angry bugs are bearing down on the colony.  Considering they will attack the colony even if they collapse a roof on themselves, that's another example of something in the game that could be better, for the same reason as the animal hunt notification.

An alternative to what I suggest would be a way that isn't a pixel hunt whereby players can consistently mitigate the threat of predators hunting colonists if planning in advance.  Wildlife tab mod will let you order hunts on them all, but that's a little clumsy as a solution (much better than vanilla manual pixel hunting though).  Similar to how you can pre-build border structures to more easily defend sieges with cover or plan against sappers, some kind of investment the player can make consistently to avoid the problem (since animal companions are not always an option, certainly not always for every pawn) would work the same way.

We even get a notification when beavers enter the map, seeing them from enormous distance, so there's plenty of plausibility in game scope for some method of noticing/dealing with predators consistently in vanilla that isn't a pixel hunt, and more than one way to solve this.  The one I give is just a "cheap" one - IE very little developer resources/effort needed to implement.  Others might need more.

[Lowkey1987]

What i meant is, for an triggerd event, we get notifications.

But now i think of this, not for every one. Like the hive. Compare it to a siege.

If a siege army gets to many deaths (lets say an animal attack them, causing a rocket to go off, many body parts fly arround), you will get a notification that they attack.
This should be the same with hives.
With this you can understand cause and impact.

But this is another issue. I agree, there should be a help with animals. I have learnd how to handle them. Perhaps there should be a learing aid.
The AI which sets a target could be better. Like "When there is no pray in 20 fields around me, is there a corpse around me."
Also, there could be a notification like "Hunting animal comes into homezone".
This would reduce the pain. But if you leave your homezone you are on your own.

And i dont think the mechanic is bad. Its not bad designe. its not perfect at this point.

[TheMeInTeam]

The bad part of the design is the way the sole agency interacts with expectations on the player.  The concept of an animal attacking colonists for food isn't bad in a vacuum, but it's poorly implemented.  If that poor implementation is intentional, I would say it's bad design, but if it it's not intentional it is more of a poor implementation of a decent idea than strictly bad design.

I'm not too fussed at what the counterplay is if there are reasonable alternatives to my suggestion that a player can reasonably execute w/o tedium.

[erdrik]

Then notifications for them are warranted after all.  The colony can see them, and they know how dangerous they are...

No, YOU can see them.
You need to separate what you can see from what the colonist can "see".
This is a common problem with games that lack a fog or war mechanic.
The player assumes all their units can see everything they can see. And that is not always the case, whether thematically or mechanically.
Being more dangerous and capable of revenge doesn't change that when animals start hunting stealthily then their prey will have less chance of spotting them. The issue is that properly hiding a stealthy animal from YOU requires that the games PAWNS have a more robust hostile detection system. Namely one that supports NOT detecting hostiles in a stealthy state. That way they can handle all that stuff automatically and send or not send notifications appropriately.
Since the game DOESN'T have such a detection system, then it needs to be simulated through UI interaction with the player. Notifications for hostiles that are thematically visible, and no notifications for hostiles that are thematically stealthy.

As for WHY there isn't such a system, reasons can vary from "its just not in yet" to "it would cost too much CPU and would mean sacrificing something else".

...This is a bad gameplay mechanic that amounts to a pixel hunt as the only non-reload counter measure...

Wrong. there are two other "non-reload" measures.
1. Have a trained animal accompany the colonists that regularly leaves the base.
The trained animal will defend said colonist, decreasing the chance of serious injury.
2. Always have backup nearby.
Most animals can't do serious injury to a colonist if you have backup even remotely close by.
Ive had my colonists hunted frequently, and outside of a bear or similar, Ive had a 100% survival rate with minimal to no permanent injury despite REACTING LATE.

I have NEVER reloaded, due to an animal hunting my colonists.
Im more likely to reload because of an infestation or some other overwhelming series of bad events.

You are telling us that it is OK for animals to thematically hunt people and be thematically threatening to them but that a notification for it would not be called for because thematically the animals hide...all despite the fact that the game will tell you what an animal is hunting if you actually physically click on it, even from across the map in spots where your pawns couldn't reasonably see it.

With the bolded corrections, yes. That is indeed ok.
Because it is not the colonist looking at that animal. YOU. THE PLAYER. Is looking at that clicked animal.
Could you be given a notification when an animal decides to hunt a colonist?
Sure, you are the player. You are the "god-like" presence that sees everything and plans everything. But you are ALSO the subject of the theme and challenges the DESIGNER wants to place in front of you. If the designer WANTS stealthy hunters, but either has not yet implemented a detection system or can't afford to spare CPU cycles for one, then it is ALSO reasonable that you DON'T get notifications for animals hunting colonists. And that ISN'T inconsistent in the face of the revenge mechanic, because it matches THEMATICALLY according to the games lore.

[A Friend]

This playstyle of "be paranoid all the time" doesn't sound fun.