What a raids actually aiming for?

[Triggerhippy]

So I'm quite new, still on first game.

I've worked out that raiders are heading into my base and they will take the easiest path, I see how you can lure them down certain paths and trap, box them or whatever.

However since I don't want to actually find out the hard way, what are they actually aiming for? Are they after my stores, my pawns, or just to rampage round my base destroying? If I knew their final goal I could improve my trapping even more.

[Belgian Problem]

Mainly loot.

Start up a test game, setup a basic base, and let a raid win. See what they do.

[elipod]

If there are exposed targets: furniture to destroy, expensive items to steal, they tend to go there.

When knocking on walls, they tend to aim for bedrooms.
If raid has sappers, it does pathfind around your turrets.

[Uranus Destroyer]

they take the most valuable things, as much as they can carry and flee, sometimes they want to take colonists as well, it is possible to completely evade an encounter by just letting them loot stuff.

[Triggerhippy]

Brilliant stuff, so if i put a load of really valuable artworks in an area, forbid them to colonists and stuff a load of traps and mines around them I'm onto a winner.

[ministrog]

Originally posted by Triggerhippy:

Brilliant stuff, so if i put a load of really valuable artworks in an area, forbid them to colonists and stuff a load of traps and mines around them I'm onto a winner.

More or less. Purely from playing we can only guess what they're after and they'll pathfind their way over there. In saying that, I believe elipod said mostly what I would of said. So it really depends on the raid's 'type'. They mainly do one thing in common, neutralise threats. That means turrets, animals and pawns (your colonists). Hiding them in bedrooms, freezer or even purpose built panic rooms lowers the chances of them finding your livestock or pawns. This tactic is especially useful for early game where your base defenses are not fully constructed or functional (I'm looking at your solar flare event). It's the reason why they check your bedrooms first.

But once they're done kicking your potplants and chairs into oblivion, setting your wind gen on fire, they'll feel slightly better about themselves and move on. It'll be interesting if the dev's actually give raiders a mood buff after a successful raid.

Anyways, about sappers. They exclusively go for the most 'wealthy rooms' which are rooms with plenty of expensive furniture/loot. What's important here is that they used to beeline for them. Now they'll pick 2nd or even 3rd most exspensive rooms too if they are safer. In my experience, they usually consider a route safe by the amount of traps and turrets laid down and how fast the previous raid died. I distictly remember sappers kept coming in one direction on the map until I built enough defall traps.

[elipod]

If you want to bait your traps, unexpnesive/discarded furiture (like wooden stools) is enough. Raiders can't resist the urge to destroy them, or set on fire.

[Blue Mouse]

I have seen raiders steal small stacks of plasteel and silver that were left just outside my base, they grab the stuff and run. Not the best tactic, but I have made a single tile zone for silver, had my people haul about 100 or so silver to it and then delete the zone and forbid it, it might entice some raiders to go for it.

Also I have seen tribals start burning farms that were outside my base walls before, now I always just put a large throaway potato farm outside my base in the off chance that will keep raiders busy.

[Jojojay]

COLONIST. Give a colonist a shield belt and a bionic leg. Use him to bait raiders to wherever you want them to go. In the early game, you could also use a colonist with jogger/fast walker, or a colonist that is useless anyways.

Animals alao work well. Near the end of the game, i always have an overabundance of puppies, as i keep dogs for hauling and for diatracting mechanoids to stop them from firing their overpowered weapons. And also to force bazookamen to waste their one shot. You can use puppies you have extra as killbox bait (gosh, i sound so evil)

[=(e)= Lemonater47]

Raiders will also kidnap downed colonists. If that happens there's a chance that they will try and ransom them back.

[Jet]

can you invade the base of the raiders if your colonist was kindnapped

[Astasia]

It's mostly been said, but I'll just add my summary of how I've found raids work.

The most important thing is they aren't psychic, they have some general idea of where they want to go, but until they can see it they will usually pick secondary targets, so the priority list isn't always followed.

The actual priorities:

1. Wealth. If they can see a big pile of wealth close to them, this will almost always end the raid. They will pick up what they can carry and try to flee. There's no specific item type they are looking for, just valuable items in general, and they can uninstall furniture to steal if they see it as valueable enough (which I believe depends on overall colony wealth and number of raiders remaining). Sometimes with modded factions with expensive weapons you can kill a couple of the raiders and then they will decide to steal the weapons dropped by their allies and run off them map, which is always amusing.

2. Threats. If they detect one of your colonists as a threat they will shoot at them, but otherwise raiders aren't on the map to actively hunt your pawns down. If they do down a colonist they will see that downed colonist as potential wealth item to steal/kidnap.

3. Soft targets. If they can't actively see any wealth or hostiles, they attempt to destroy things like crops, batteries, wires, and power generation, or set fire to other flammables. If the raiders do enough damage they will be satisfied and leave. This can be exploited by constantly repairing something they are trying to destroy.

4. Doors. If they see none of the above they will go for whatever doors they can pathfind to and destroy them to see what's on the other side.

5. Walls. If they can't find a door to pathfind to, or the door is too strong or heavily defended, they will attack walls to try and get into your base.

Sappers seem to have more awareness of the inside of your base and will try and punch a hole directly to high wealth areas.

Using the above you can fairly reliably control where raiders go and what they attack during a raid, or even avoid any combat or damage by "paying them off" with external valueable piles.