I keep killing raiders instead of incapacitating them!

[Fraktal]

I finally found a raider that I would love to recruit to join me.

Too bad he gets turned to swiss cheese and dies as opposed to bleeding out.

Or I engage in melee and he seriously wounds one of my colonists.... then dies.

Any tips? I keep reloading this save over and over and over and over...

[Sempai]

Just stop shooting him

[HunterSilver]

Psychic shock lances. If you spot a unit that you Really want, hit them with a psychic shock lance.
Alternatively, put him on ice and get the next Ressurector Mech Serum that shows up as a quest reward and jam it in him.

[Narrowmind]

How many people do you have?

[Garatgh Deloi]

Originally posted by The Orange and Blue Ninja:

I finally found a raider that I would love to recruit to join me.

Too bad he gets turned to swiss cheese and dies as opposed to bleeding out.

Or I engage in melee and he seriously wounds one of my colonists.... then dies.

Any tips? I keep reloading this save over and over and over and over...

Get some psychic shock lances. They do have a 30% chance to cause brain damage, but they should always down the target.

[Defektiv]

Use a club on the ones you want to down instead of kill. Try to isolate them and let your melee club them. I'm also finding tox grenades do a pretty good job of knocking them out. I just have someone spam them all over the kill box as the raid is approaching and half of them choke out and drop before they get very far.

[HunterSilver]

Originally posted by Defektiv:

I'm also finding tox grenades do a pretty good job of knocking them out.

I haven't tried out acid or tox yet, just how good are they at downing units and is it easy to recover them afterwards? Any idea roughly how long they have to spend in a cloud of toxic before they get toxic shock and go down?

[MaroonToon]

Raiders have a set chance to die when downed. you can disable it in the custom difficulty settings. if your issue is dealing too much damage, then use your fists or, as others suggested, use tox grenades.

[Talesin]

As others have said, Psychic shock lances is the best way to "recruit" people, however they only have a rare chance to appear amongst the traders stock.
Otherwise you need to find a way to seperate him and try and club him until he gets knocked down.
I haven't researched the tox grenades so i don't know how well they work.

[Defektiv]

Originally posted by HunterSilver:

Originally posted by Defektiv:

I'm also finding tox grenades do a pretty good job of knocking them out.

I haven't tried out acid or tox yet, just how good are they at downing units and is it easy to recover them afterwards? Any idea roughly how long they have to spend in a cloud of toxic before they get toxic shock and go down?

It happens pretty quick. My kill box is on the shoreline of a coast so they have to walk through water to slow them down but usually about half the raids end up downing instead of getting killed without even reaching the shooters. I think it depends a lot on the individual pawn but it seems if they don't have toxic resists they go down in seconds. I can usually get 3 or 4 grenades off to really build up the toxic cloud before they walk into it and recovery is not hard. Even if you don't have a gas mask for someone to run in, the cloud starts to dissipate after about 5 seconds and even having someone run in to grab them doesn't take long. My pawns usually don't even get the initial tox buildup if they have to run in and grab someone. And the toxic cloud doesn't seem to do a ton of damage to the enemies either so you can just wait for the cloud to go away. Last raid I even had one enemy get up and fall back down several times before the cloud cleared trying to escape.

See below, I toss the grenades at the ocean shoreline and they rarely ever even get past the pond on the inside.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2880750239

[Fyredrakon]

Get them downed to pain. Low damage high volume weapons are best for this(machine pistol is best since it does only 6 dmg), that way you won't kill them. You will still have to bandage them up. If you can afford it, invest in psychic shock lances.

[dot]

Once you reach a number of pawns, battle dropped gets rare. All I can say, get a couple of physic shock lances for the next time xD. Or relay in children making and ritual rewarded pawns if you want easier ways to reroll or get more pawns.

[Fraktal]

Originally posted by Ratlegion:

How many people do you have?

3. It’s so slow starting out in this game.

I did get lucky and have a baby coming tho.

[Defektiv]

You using ideology? I didn't realize it until really late but my altar has a fiesta option with a 50% chance of a random recruit of the same ideology joining if the result is fun or unforgettable.

[Kahri]

In the game options adjust the slider so that raiders die less often?

[Fyredrakon]

Storytellers restrict colony growth, meaning less downed raiders for you to recruit (enemies die instead of getting downed through artificial damage manipulation), and less colonist spawns (quests, drop pods). They do this based on colony population, different storytellers reduce these numbers at different population sizes. The best counter to this is psychic shock lances. Also recently babies can be effective counters, but are not as instant as other methods. For early growth, there's nothing other than luck that can help you, but you will naturally have faster growth in the beginning.