Hunting Animals... And shooting your colonists in the process!

[Nexuni]

I've just had another death to "hunting fever". And i've got to say i'm slightly annoyed by how stupid the colonists are at times.

I know this is probably hard or impossible, but something needs to happen to prevent colonists from shooting other colonists.

You see, i'm noticing that i'm short on meat for meals, so the next thing I do is order some hunts... Guess what, colonist A grabs his pistol, walks two meters and proceeds to shot the animal from a distance even snipers would have trouble shooting it. Fine and all, it takes ages to kill it because he misses 99% of his shots but whatever. Now comes colonist B, my crafter, walking by, whistling, thinking nothing bad and just doing his job getting rocks to make stone blocks. Colonist A sees him walking right into his line of fire thinking: "Meh, whatever I won't hit him anyways." Colonist A shoots another shot at the exact moment colonist B walks into his line of fire. Guess what? Half a second later, Colonist B lies on the ground brains splattered around and a patch of blood expanding around his corpse.

So in the aftermath: My hunter is still trying to kill the god damn animal like nothing happened. I lost my crafter because the AI is stupid when it comes to hunting.

Point is: Something needs to happen... Colonists being invulnerable to friendly fire, or the more elegant way: tell the AI to stop shooting if a friendly crosses its line of fire. This gets me frustrated to no end. 

I really love the game, but some small things are just frustrating. Anyways, thanks for the great game!

[ITypedThis]

I think that the real problem is that any pawn between a shot and a target will get hit more times than not.

Even blind colonists can be very deadly with M-24s if you tell them to aim at something/someone behind your actual target, as the pawn in between will act as a super-magnet and attract the bullet.

Example:

B-----Cx-----A

Whereas A = shooter, B = intended target, C = random animal passing by, and x = point of impact. (--- = anticipated bullet path)

[UrbanBourbon]

I see a two-fold solution to a two-fold problem.

The 1st problem is of course the innocents getting in the way. The game really should draw an invisible safe zone, a corridor, between the hunter and the target animal. It could be 5 squares wide. Colonists should not be allowed to traverse that corridor. First, a straight line is drawn from the hunter to the animal. The software decides which squares are touched by this line. Now we have (more or less) a 1 square wide corridor, a forbidden zone. From there, we tell the software to widen the corridor, let's say 2 squares to each direction, resulting in a 5-square wide no-go zone. The resulting corridor gets updated as the target or the hunter moves.

The 2nd problem is the ridiculous amount of bullets that fly before the game animal dies. That's in utter and complete contrast to the reality. IRL any humane hunter intends to kill with one shot, or sometimes several hunters fire their rifles simultaneously if it's a bigger animal, like a moose. It's no wonder that RimWorld sees such a massive amount of hunting accidents. Hunting definitely needs tweaking. It's highly risky and unrealiable as an automated task, and requires babysitting. I never assign automated hunters, not even one. I do all my RimWorld hunting manually.

Automated hunters could have, for example, doubled or tripled aiming times, and weapon damages against animals. They should never fire their guns from the max distance, but instead pick the halfway spot.

Another solution would be to let the player assign a hunting spot for the hunter. When the hunter arrives at that spot, he would start shooting at any and all animals that enter his weapon's range. Colonists should avoid that kill circle as much as possible. Alternatively, the hunter should avoid firing his weapon if there's a fellow colonist within 10 square radius of the target animal.

Yet another solution would be to let go of automated hunting altogether, and switch to traps.

[DaveStrider]

You should try equipping your hunter with a melee weapon instead, if he's good enough and has enough armour he won't get hurt too badly, and he won't be taking potshots from across the map

[Lost Cause]

You should try equipping your hunter with a melee weapon instead, if he's good enough and has enough armour he won't get hurt too badly, and he won't be taking potshots from across the map

I gave the guy the full power armour, hyperwave clothing under that, two bionic claws, two bionic legs and he had 11 points of melee skill yet he lost and was killed outright in a one on one fight with a raging monkey.

Don't Use Melee XD

[Nexuni]

The problem with melee attacking animals is that with the new damage model, even a squirrel can kill a fully armored hunter in one hit if you are unlucky. Or bite an eye out.. I once had a squirrel outright bite through the skull and destroying the brain of one of my colonists if I remember correctly. So I try to avoid melee as much as i can.

[DaveStrider]

my guy managed to level his melee form lvl 3 to lvl 10 just from hunting, i guess he just had a lot of luck. (for the record he had 2 mechanoid blade arms, bionic legs and eyes, and full power armour + devilstrand undies)

[water]

Whatever starting colonist I have that is going to be my hunter always gets the starting rifle. I don't think I have ever had one hunting accident but I would agree that colonists that are not drafted should have some type of danger avoidance. Specifically when I'm letting my turrets take care of a small raiding party and several of my people decide to repair all the sandbags in the middle of a firefight, getting killed in the process. 

[Sir Wagglepuss III]

Not hunting on your doorstep is also an option.

[Dereknor]

I once gave a Minigun to my hunter. Oooh, he shooted too many colonist with his gun He even destroyed buildings in his way!

So I give all my hunters just a pistol. They shoot pretty good with it, maybe need like 5 or 6 shoots to kill, and they dont kill any colonists anymore.

[Wex]

I always select one animal from a herd to be hunted down, then I select another far away from the first and so on. Animals close to the colony are best killed by turret force-attack.

[Thunder Rahja]

This happens often when I have multiple hunters and multiple hunting targets.

[EBrown]

This has happened so many times with my sniper that I quit hunting animals.

Thanks,
EBrown

[Untrustedlife]

You could try hunting farther away from your colony, brilliant idea I know.


----
......ok..ok..maybe that was a bit harsh....

[Thorin]

For giggles, I gave my Hunter a minigun. As for the order: hunt that one deer across the map. I had food for days. After watching the show of spray and pray, I gave him his m24 back.

When I do hunt in the front-yard, the hunter is drafted. That way I can micro manage him.