Sometimes the story is "my colonists are idiots."

[gussmed]

Rimworld's a story generator, right? Well, sometimes the origin of the story is that a colonist does something stupid, and violates what I told them to do because of a loophole.

In this case, my colonist was hunting a turkey, and in order to get a shot at it, he wandered into an area I'd marked off limits. Because it said area was within range of a proximity trigger for a Mech cluster. Apparently colonists ignore zones when hunting.

I immediately took direct control of him, and made him run. He made it about 6 spaces before being downed. He had 5 hours to live.

I decided it was just possible I could rescue him, so I mobilized all the colonists who would hold weapons. I knew a frontal assault across open ground would just mean more downed colonists, so I waited until I could bring up a guy with a smoke launcher.

The smoke launcher is my best friend against clusters. Totally negates turret attacks, and provides significant defense against ranged mech attacks. The plan was just to go in, get him, and get out, and worry about neutralizing the cluster later.

It worked, but just barely. He had 1 hour to live when I got him to the hospital, but I did get him stabilized. Because the whole thing was pretty sloppy, the butcher's bill was an arm and a leg. Literally, one colonist had an arm chopped off by a scyther, and another had a leg blown off by a centipede.

Long time players are thinking "why didn't you deal with the cluster earlier? Why would you send out hunter unsupervised with a threat like that on the board?"

Rimworld likes to pile crises on top of crises. I had started to prep the ground for the cluster when another mech cluster landed, this time with a countdown timer and several factories. That was a lot more urgent.

I was setting up for that one, and a caravan entered the map next to it and attacked. Activated it well before I was ready and that ended up being a brutal mess. No casualties at all, but it took a long time to deal with it.

While I was cleaning up after that, I got a drop-pod raid of 20 pirates armed with nothing but sniper rifles.

I was cleaning up after that when clueless activated the mech cluster while hunting. By the time this came about I had about 4 intervening events total, counting stuff that didn't effect my base preparedness but did distract me and make me stop thinking about the time bomb to the northeast.

After several weeks of NOT triggering it, I just wasn't thinking about it any more except as a goal once I got things squared away otherwise.

[ichifish]

Lol, Great story.

I think you must be playing in a timeline just previous to mine, as your pawn showed up in my game and did almost the exact same thing under almost the exact same circumstances just last night. Will they ever learn?

I destroyed the mobile parts of a mech cluster, but Randy kept me busy with other stuff. After visitors from the Empire got nearly annihilated and I almost lost two pawns rescuing the survivors (invisibility lasts just long enough to get you in trouble, I find), I decided to take care of it.

So I forbade the doors and fired off the animal pulser. Worked like a charm last time, but this time not enough of the critters wandered close enough to the cluster to start a wave and the worst of the cluster (three inferno canons and six or eight turrets) remained standing.

... Except that I'd missed one little door in the southeast corner and Hanzo decided to walk out that door and all the way around the northeast corner -through the cluster zone that I'd cleared- to reach the west side where a mad donkey had been downed by a trap in my kill box. DIRECTLY into the three inferno canons!

Fortunately I was looking at the cluster trying to figure out the next assault plan, so no harm done.

I increasingly play with and enjoy the "lol, these guys, amiright?" attitude. I used to get all stressed out and micro a lot, but recently I find myself just watching and saying things like "Oh, man, I wouldn't do that if I were you" and "I don't think that's gonna end well, but it's your call Hadley" while I watch them do their knucklehead stuff.

[esculapio]

Doing stupid stuff is a characteristic of human nature. Imagine if we were perfect. No wars, accidents, lawyers, etc...

[SuperDave]

Who did you think was piloting the shuttle that led to you crashlanding here?
How is he meant to know what a zone looks like.
'Hey, Jim when you hunt the turkey, don't go near the tree thing near the rock but you can go like close to it.'

[martindirt]

Pawns and restricted zones:
"I'm not allowed to be here, but I'm going there, and the fastest way leading through that area. I'm just passing by."

Back in 1.0 days, there was a mod, what altered pathfinding mechanism, so pawns didn't walked through disallowed areas. But fk me with a thrumbo horn if I can recall the mods name.

[gussmed]

He wasn’t just passing through. When he triggered the sensor, I’m pretty sure the hunter had a path that ended within the mech cluster. That’s what I remember seeing, though of course I don’t have any way to verify it now.

Near as I can tell, hunters check whether the target animal is inside the zone allowed for the hunter, but ignore the zone when choosing a spot from which to shoot.