Flee towards safety

[gaf]

My suggestion is quite simple, to change the current colonist "flee" behavior to be a little more self-preserving. Currently it seems that the colonists simply try to run away from the danger (like an angry animal). But this often means they also run away from the safety of the base or better armed companions. Someone trying to get away from an angry rat would probably not do so by running out into the wilderness away from their home.

So, I would propose to change this mechanic to have the colonists flee away from the danger, but also try to flee towards safety (like the closest indoor room in the home area if they're outside, their bedroom if it's safe, or to try and place armed non-fleeing colonists between them and the danger).

Optionally, if you want to keep the "panic flee" behavior, where a colonist would just run blindly, this could be implemented as a separate mental break-event, but not be the regular flee on danger behavior.

This might seems like a "cheap" idea, as it would require no new interface or interaction by the player, but I'm putting it here as it might require some more advanced logic under the hood.

[Limdood]

i'd really rather not have my colonist flee right past the charging bear and die in some absurd attempt to reach a door rather than flee directly away from the threat.

The game is also VERY bad at determining "safe."  Safe for the game might not be what you consider safe, or like i mentioned above, it might take the pawn into MORE immediate danger. 

[jamaicancastle]

Unfortunately the amount of work needed to successfully determine "safety" areas and flee towards them - while also fleeing away from threats - would be pretty hefty. Especially if you're treating colonists as potential safe areas, since they could move around while the fleeing is going on. (Two or more armed colonists fleeing at the same time could potentially get stuck in a very, very odd loop that I'm not sure of a simple logical way out of... aside from dying, obviously.)

Trying to judge "safety" on the fly is probably both too computationally expensive, and not precise enough, since different players - and different threats - have different ideas about safety. (For me, "anywhere in the home area" would work fine, but not for a person who uses the home area for large-scale firefighting. If you have a manhunter pack, "indoors" is great... but not if you have an infestation. You get the idea.)

Ultimately, the best way to protect your colonists is to draft them and have them move in the direction you want. The game will probably never be smart enough to automate that kind of decision-making, and I don't know if it necessarily should be.

[gaf]

I think you misunderstood. I'm not proposing to replace running away from danger by running towards "safety". I'm proposing to combine the two. In other words, instead of only picking a direction or new location to run towards based on it being the furthest away from the danger(s), it should also give a small weight (maybe 10-20%) to choosing locations/directions that bring it closer to safety.

The current model means a colonist will run in a straight line away from the danger that is chasing it. My proposal would result in a something more like a curve, where the colonists still runs away from the danger, but bends off and tries to loop back towards safety when possible.

As for what calculations are needed to guess at what is safe I'm not sure it would necessarily be so time-consuming. If you settle for something basic like the center of the home area, a gathering place or the colonists bedroom (when you're running away outside away from home) this is already well defined in the game and would require no new calculations. While such a basic target may not be the best place to run to when the colonist gets closer or is inside, it's probably good enough when the colonist is far away and this mechanism is used.