Colonist berserk rage, gets killed by "friendlies"

[asanbr]

I would like to hear people's opinions on this.

When a pawn goes berserk I can handle it in many ways, usually I lure them outside and walk away and let them attack rabbits and wild boars until they are exhausted or downed and then I take them inside again.

Sometimes I will beat them down with fists if I need to take care of it quickly.

I only equip people with ranged weapons or wooden logs except for special cases, since random berserk rages can lead to very bad things if they have longswords or gladius always on.


In this situation, I had two people locked inside a small room without food for a while because of manhunters that they weren't able to deal with on their own. I just wanted to wait it out.

So a friendly tribe sends some warriors and kills the manhunters. Fine.

No more danger. But one of my pawns goes berserk from starvation and walks around in rage. He has lost a leg and has a ranged weapon so all he could do is fist fight anyone, if he was able to catch up with them.

He accidentally walks out to the tribals and they start throwing pila at him, of course killing him.

Nothing wrong in terms of game systems here, but game design? Should they really go full fire on a harmless berserking pawn?

In retrospect, what I could have done was drop pod someone else in and beat him down manually before he went suicide on the tribals.


I use the same behaviour to my advantage of course, with psychic insanity lances on raiders / siegers as the most obvious example.

[Shurp]

Whenever you trap people inside, always use a barricade.  Drop a block of wood/steel/whatever in front of the door so if they snap they can't get outside where they can hurt themselves (or others). 

And keep in mind he'd be just as dead if the friendlies hadn't shown up -- he would have snapped, ran outside, and gotten eaten by the manhunters.

[asanbr]

No, they were gazelles. They would just beat him down but unlikely to kill or eat him.

Great idea with the barricade though, I should have done that.

[Hans Lemurson]

Berzerking colonists are treated as enemies by your own soldiers too.  Draft a guy with a shotgun nearby the berzerker, and it'll go just about the same.

[PatrykSzczescie]

I have a colonist who trains animals. Once he trained in a pack of tamed wolves in bad mood and went berserk, got defeated quickly with his hand torn off.

Berserk, manhunter, berserk - they all are treated the same.

[asanbr]

Berzerking colonists are treated as enemies by your own soldiers too.  Draft a guy with a shotgun nearby the berzerker, and it'll go just about the same.

Yes, but I can control their behavior and their weaponry so that my people don't get killed. I can do nothing about friendlies.

[PatrykSzczescie]

I've just had it the other way: a caravan arrived, one of its members went berserk, my colonist that had attack set as threat response shot that berserking pawn multiple times until the pawn died with no reputation penalty. Free rifle, meal and clothes to sell to that caravan.