How to prevent your colonists death???

[woxly]

The best way to keep a pawn from death is called the "Pause" function. Typically when you press the spacebar, time stops moving. The only thing that pushes you towards death is time

[Canute]

In his case that wouldn't work.
The predator was all at mellee range while the hunter was hunting a different animal.
That lead to a sure dead of the hunter unless he wear a marine or plate armor to get enough time to beat down the predator with his rifle.

[B@R5uk]

The only thing that pushes you towards death is time

This is exactly the problem! From time to time I pause the game and plan what to do next. But sometimes I catch myself on the thought that I don't want to press the space bar anymore to unpause the game. Because everything is fine and "from bad to worse" is what to come.

This is where I usually drop the current game and start a new one. Or don't start...

[TheMeInTeam]

Predators are micro hassle.  Hunt them down or don't let pawns wander from the base.  At least you get some notice when being hunted now, even though the game is internally consistent doesn't target hostile predators like it does other threats.

It is possible with good play to never lose a colonist while never reloading, even on the highest difficulty.  However telling how to do this is more along the lines of multiple long-form guides, not a forum post response.

Quick tip: you can make a sleeping spot and designate it hospital to tend an injured colonist 1 tile next to where he's downed, which can save crucial time compared to hauling to base first then tending.  Infection risk is higher, but if you prevent death right now you can then probably tend the infection(s) successfully later.

[fritzgryphon]

Never use automatic hunting behavior and always draft and control your hunters.  It's the only way to be sure they maintain the right spacing from threats and don't get stuck in a corner.

Automatic hunting is inefficient, anyway.  The hunter will attack a single target to death, wasting shots and time, then haul that single carcass back themselves.  It's better to critically wound multiple animals in one trip, leave them to bleed out, and haul them via less useful colonists. 

Also, always hunt wildlife in order of their threat level, if possible.  A bear or cougar is only really dangerous if it manhunters/hunts at a bad time.  If you shoot it from a distance and get a few hits, you're likely to impair it's move speed below your colonist's move speed before it revenges (or at least impair it's move speed enough that you can flee to help).

[Teleblaster18]

I'm fairly new to the game and My last like three succesful colonies have all went wrong because some cougar or lynx starts attacking my pawns when they're hunting other animals. Then I usually draft my pawns and go to shoot the maddened animal. But it's always too late. Recently my colonist was tending the pawn that was bleeding out and he died because the medic wasn't fast enough. How can I prevent these type of situations in the future?

I'll see if I can give some helpful advice if you encounter this situation again.

The critical thing is that your pawn bled out before he could be tended to in an emergency.  Know that you can do an emergency treatment in the field, at the site of where your downed pawn is, but it takes a little work.  Please note: this method is not a sure-fire way of saving your downed pawn - sometimes their injuries will be so severe that not even the best doctor with the best medicine can save them.  This should give your downed pawn a much better chance of surviving immediately life-threatening injuries, though.  The main thing that it does is cut down on time wasted before the colonist is being worked on....and in cases where a pawn is bleeding out severely, time is your primary enemy.

Initially, look at the downed pawn's "Health" tab - if you see "Death within 2 hours" or less, consider using this method.

-First, you have to plop down a sleeping spot right where your pawn is.  You can find sleeping spots under your "Furniture" tab.  You want to designate this sleeping spot as "Medical"...it'll turn blue when you've got it right.

Next, you have to get the downed pawn onto this medical sleeping spot without having another one of your colonists trying to bring him back to your base - if your colonist tries to haul the downed pawn back to your colony's hospital beds, there's a good chance they'll bleed to death while being carried back.  There are two methods of doing this:

-either forbid the ALL the door(s) to the colony's hospital beds (the AI will use these before the sleeping spot), or
-Use the "Zone" tool so that the pawn who is going to be doing the doctoring can't leave the area where you've plopped down the sleeping spot.  If you don't know how to do this, let someone in these forums know, and we'll help you.  Creating zones is a critical part of the game.

If you've done it right, your doctor will move the downed colonist to the outdoor sleeping spot.  However: normally, the doctor is now going to try to get the best medicine available on the map to start working on this pawn!  Very often, by the time the doctor has gotten the medicine and returned it to the sleeping spot, your downed colonist will have died!  SO: you want to go to the downed pawn's "Health" tab, and set it for "Doctor Care, but No Medicine", so that the rescuer can immediately start reducing blood loss.  If your downed pawn survives, you should remember to change this setting back to the type of medicine that you want them to normally get.

If you want to go crazy with this, you can also set a single-tile zone for medicine right near the outdoor sleeping spot, and mark it as "Critical" - then have a 2nd pawn force-haul your best medicine from your colony to the medical sleeping spot location.  You can then change the downed pawn's level of medical care to match whatever type of medicine is being brought there.  Draft and undraft your doctor once it arrives, and after you've changed the level of care, and he *should* now begin to use the better medicine.

Remember that you can also send your best doctor to the site by drafting them and moving them there; once the better doctor arrives, you can undraft him (or her), and force them to take over.  This is advisable: pawns with higher medical skills work faster, and can stop blood loss quicker.


If you've managed to get your downed pawn stabilized, you now need to get them to a regular hospital bed - infections are going to be your biggest enemy now.  Deconstruct that medical sleeping spot, make sure to un-zone your rescuers from the zone that you've created (or unforbid the doors to your hospitals, if you've used that method), and NOW you can haul your incapacitated colonist back to the colony for rest and recuperation.




How to avoid finding yourself in that situation to begin with has a lot of answers.  There is safety in numbers when you hunt: some people like to draft a bunch of pawns all at once, and force them to all shoot at a single animal, one animal at a time.  If an animal revenges, you have a bunch of hunters with guns right there who can help take down the crazed animal. 

If you feel this is too "gamey" or an exploit, then keep checking your "Wildlife" tab so you know what's on the map before you send anyone out hunting.  A cougar is a fast animal: check it's "i" tab to see how fast it moves.  Now check your hunters' movement speeds in the same way: is the cougar going to be faster than your hunter, if your hunter is forced to run to safety?  Can you make your pawn faster by installing bionics on them?  Do your hunters have any conditions that make them a bad fit for hunting - like a pegleg, or missing toes, which will make them especially slow?

Check the stats for any animal you hunt: some animals will almost always revenge if harmed, others won't as often, and some animals will never revenge.  Check the status of your prey before shooting it.  Also, the game states that short-ranged, rapid fire weapons will increase the chances of an animal revenge, and using single-shot, long range weapons reduces this.  In short: this means that a weapon like an Autopistol or LMG is a really bad choice to hunt with, but a bolt-action rifle or a sniper rifle is a better choice.

I'd recommend not trying to melee any predator one-on-one, especially in the early part of the game; your colonists are rarely going to win.  Immediately draft the pawn, run him closer to your other pawns (who you should also draft and start running towards where the action is).  Stop running and fight hand to hand (melee) *only* if the animal has caught up to you...but still be rushing every other colonist to that site that you can by drafting them and sending them to that spot to help out.


Hope this helps!