Animals breaking down doors?

[Undecided Name For Now]

I sometimes find that after awhile, a wooden wall disappears (Not possible for it to be raiders yet, as on peaceful and no raids yet.)
I'm wondering if animals sometimes break down wooden walls to get out for food? I.E. Panther?

[Astasia]

Yes if you wall in a wild animal and it gets really hungry it will break its way out.

[elipod]

But only big animals, capable of digging, panther would qualify. Wild cobra, on the other hand, died of hunger, being walled in my latest colony.
And digging walls is way faster than regular atack, which is why it's hard to notice, when it's happening.

[3 Ducks In a Man Suit]

Enemies don't dig your walls, they hit them the same way they do doors or pawns.

[elipod]

Try tor trap a hungry bear with walls and tell me.
Once I had a mix of wooden and stone walls, and got sapper with molotovs. He went for stone wall and took it down with 4 hits, call it whatever you want, but those weren't simple fist punches.

[Wolfguarde]

Moral of the story being yes, animals in a contained space that has a door will attack the door to get out once hunger becomes an issue.
Thrumbos, for example. Starve-taming them isn't really a viable stalling strategy when they decide to leave the map. Unless you have a lot of walls. And possibly fire :|

[AlexMBrennan]

Random strangers don't need to be hostile to destroy your walls - e.g. if they are taking an injured member of their faction they may decide that breaking down a wall is easier than using a doorway. Pay attention when you get that popup warning.

[Undecided Name For Now]

There were plenty of animals around that it could have eaten.
I've also had on another colony, a wall broken into, and my chinchilla got eaten.
There were plenty of animals outside the walls, but it broke in.
I'm not talking a tiny space either folks.

[elipod]

I never had hungry aminal breaking in. I believe they walk off map if they can't find food, and if they can't leave, they start breaking walls. But if there were other animals for panther to eat, maybe they broke out? Was there plant food available?

[Undecided Name For Now]

Yep. Plenty of plant food avaliable. Whether crops unguarded (Because sometimes I take a nice chunk of unprotected land inside my walled off area that still has wild animals in it and grow large stockpiles of crops, be it Corn, Smokeleaf, Devilstrand,Cotton,Hay) etc, or just regular grass.

[Astasia]

Animals will also decide to leave the map for other reasons, like temperature changes, and will break through walls in those situations as well. They don't actually go specifically for doors either, they aren't programmed to recognize doors unless they see it being used, so will generally just destroy a random wall section to get out.

Animals will generally not break into your base for food, they only break through walls when they are fleeing the map, at that point they are no longer interested in finding food. It's possible they might decide they want to leave the map on the other side of your base and break through your base to get there if that's the only path they can find. The pathfinding AI only searches like 120k tiles before giving up, that may seem like more than it would ever need, but it includes overlap from multiple path searches. It is possible to have a map so complicated it overwhelms the pathfinding and creates a situation where an animal or NPC might break through your base to get to the other side.

[Undecided Name For Now]

It wasn't trying to leave the map as far as I can see. It wandered nearby outside my walls.
There are alot of mountains and caves, so maybe it felt confused.

[trmcdougle]

I think it is possible that the conditions that caused it to try and leave changed by the time it broke through (perhaps it was no longer too hot or something?)

[Undecided Name For Now]

Not hot enough. Permanent summer at normal temp range.

[trmcdougle]

there is also a mechanic added fairly recently (A16 or 17 perhaps) that means any wild animal walled off from all the map exits will try and escape by breaking through walls (even if not hungry etc) - it was added, I think, specifcally to stop the thrumbo (etc) wall-in cheese for capturing/killing. I can't remember what they do after breaking through, perhaps just go back to normal.

[Undecided Name For Now]

Oh, that would explain it then.