Any way to ensure knock-out instead of death?

[ApathicAlpaca]

So I get raided (early game so single pawns with knife mostly) and some of them have juicy skills/stats so I want to capture them.
Tough luck though, they almost always die, no matter if I chose ranged weapons or switch to melee.

Without deploying any late game stuff that I probly dont even know about, is there a way how I can ensure to knock out attackers instead of kill them?

Thanks.

[boytype]

Shock Lance.

[ApathicAlpaca]

Yeah I don't have such stuff. Yet.

[brian_va]

Club is supposed to have a higher chance of not killing than the others, but you'll still kill more than down most likely. Shock lance as mentioned.

[ApathicAlpaca]

Hmph. At the start of all things you cannot reliably get the pawns you like. Weird. But OK.

[boytype]

Shock Lance only costs like 750 silver if you find a merchant that sells them, but yeah.

There is a built-in stat called "Population Intent" that a lot of people in this forum seem to deny exists in the game, that impacts the chance that a pawn is killed or if they are downed when they get severely injured. But it is in the code either way.

The further below the intended population of the storyteller (the lower your pop), the more likely you are to get pawns joining or that you will down someone instead of killing them immediately.

[Narrowmind]

I was pretty sure there was an adjustment you can make in the game options to increase the likelihood of knock downs. No?

[Jaasrg]

Originally posted by Ratlegion:

I was pretty sure there was an adjustment you can make in the game options to increase the likelihood of knock downs. No?

I remember seeing something of that nature under custom settings, yea.

[ApathicAlpaca]

Originally posted by boytype:

Shock Lance only costs like 750 silver if you find a merchant that sells them, but yeah.

There is a built-in stat called "Population Intent" that a lot of people in this forum seem to deny exists in the game, that impacts the chance that a pawn is killed or if they are downed when they get severely injured. But it is in the code either way.

The further below the intended population of the storyteller (the lower your pop), the more likely you are to get pawns joining or that you will down someone instead of killing them immediately.

I guess that makes sense from a balancing perspective of course.

[POWER WITHIN USER]

Originally posted by ApathicAlpaca:

So I get raided (early game so single pawns with knife mostly) and some of them have juicy skills/stats so I want to capture them.

Without deploying any late game stuff that I probly dont even know about, is there a way how I can ensure to knock out attackers instead of kill them?

Yeah, damage enemies so that they start bleeding then have them chase a faster pawn until they bleed enough fall unconscious, for some reason the mechanic that causes 90% of pawns to instantly die as they're rotated doesn't activate due to blood loss.

[Seal Enthusiast]

You can also set up heat traps, if you are willing to break the game a little. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRYVLSzE6dM
Above video is a bit outdated, but you can still get the general idea from it.

Any pawn downed due to heatstroke will not auto die, and will just become incapacitated. Very effective in deserts.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by boytype:

Shock Lance only costs like 750 silver if you find a merchant that sells them, but yeah.

There is a built-in stat called "Population Intent" that a lot of people in this forum seem to deny exists in the game, that impacts the chance that a pawn is killed or if they are downed when they get severely injured. But it is in the code either way.

The further below the intended population of the storyteller (the lower your pop), the more likely you are to get pawns joining or that you will down someone instead of killing them immediately.

Population intent only adjusts the chance of population related incidents firing. You can read about the mechanic on the wiki:

https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/AI_Storytellers

Expand the technical information section for details.

Population intent has no effect on the rate at which enemies are downed or killed, this is a static 65% chance for pawns to be killed instead of downed which can be adjusted in the custom difficulty settings. This is why even early game when you have very few colonists it can be difficult to get a specific enemy you want downed instead of killed, and the reason threads like this exist. The game gives you easy colonist events until you get up to a good minimum amount and then later on as raids become larger you have a much larger selection of downed enemies to recruit from, assuming you don't use overly dangerous weapons like warhammers or charge lances.

Low damage blunt weapons like wood maces can sort of help, but you are better off using fists or weapons like machine pistols if you want to minimize the chance of fatally wounding a target. Clubs are actually kind of bad because they do a lot of damage and can rather easily destroy a head.

Edit: This will be the last time I explain the mechanic in a thread, hopefully.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/294100/discussions/0/3495383439596758637/

[GrenadesAndHamm]

There is a mod that is supposed to ensure that raiders dont die. It doesn't always work, but it does help.

[✚ Mariel ✚]

Shock lance is the way to go. There's some kind of code that makes it so when an enemy loses consciousness they usually die instantly, but it doesnt apply to shock lances. There is a chance it will brain damage them though but its quite low, much better than all alternatives. they are quite cheap, just hunting some animals and selling their hides to bulk goods traders will be enough to afford them. If you rush for the comms tech you can give some hides and stuff to a faction to raise their rep high then start calling their exotic goods vendors in to help you stock up. They can really save you from horrible things like centipedes and doomsday rockets as well.