What is the best way to capture an enemy?

[ComoNaoJogar]

I wanted to know the best way to capture enemies, because I'm killing them directly and I can't capture them

[Narrowmind]

The shock lance.

[Daatster]

If you're using Vanilla Expanded Psycasts then Paralysis Pulse is a way to go - it's 100% effective and has no risks of brain damage. There're also mods for non-lethal weapons so you can beat you enemies senseless but they won't die on you.

[The Blind One]

Yup the psychic shock lance is the best method to incapacitate an enemy for capture.

[XelNigma]

Go into storyteller settings, and adjust the "kill when downed" chance down.
You may have noticed raiders tend to kill over even when nothing lethal happened to them. all there body parts are still working, this is why. the game just triggers their death.

[hardy_conrad]

Shock lance has a risk of brain damage though, to say nothing of cost. I prefer adjusting storyteller settings and then increasing the difficulty of something else like insects to compensate. Also while it can be aggravating to hardly ever capture prisoners successfully there are things like slave traders and crashed drop pods allowing you to increase the size of your colony. Best way is kids of course, provided you have biotech (my favourite dlc) and are patient.

[Ann☆ﾟ.*･｡]

if you dont have psychic shock lance you can set up wooden spike room when raiders attack, good chance to down them. you can also use less murderous guns like assault rifle.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by hardy_conrad:

Shock lance has a risk of brain damage though, to say nothing of cost.

It's around 300-350 silver per charge depending on your trader. They have a base value of only 550 silver, come with 2 charges, and are sold fairly often by caravans. They have around a 30% chance of doing 1 brain damage which used to be meaningful before biosculpting and the scarless gene. They are incredibly effective and allow you to get the exact recruits you want.

I generally don't use them personally, more because I don't want to sit and look through every living raider before every raid to find the good ones, and because I like expanding more slowly. I'm fine picking through whoever is downed to see if they are decent, and the game is more balanced for that rate of progress.

Originally posted by ttv/ComoNaoJogar:

I wanted to know the best way to capture enemies, because I'm killing them directly and I can't capture them

Mostly if you want to recruit normally I would say just don't use high damage weapons, like shock lances would be a bad choice. Assault rifles are a pretty good option if you want to maximize downed enemies while still being effective in combat, or if you want to go all in on getting as many downed enemies as possible go with machine pistols. Using the melee attack on a gun is also possible if there is a specific enemy you want to try to down and they are running away or something, the damage is higher and the risk of death is slightly worse than with a machine pistol, but the blunt damage means it's less likely to cause scars if you don't have biosculpters or bionics ready yet.

[Ninefinger]

You can build a heat trap maze and down an entire raid and have your choice of the pickings. Designing the heat tunnel so that you can have quick access to all areas and so enemies dont want to break down doors on the way out.

Or if its your first enemy for eg you can bleed them out, just wound them and kite them till they fall then be quick to tend and capture. You can also make it so your base has two ways in that you can toggle with doors so the enemy can be forced to flee their current way in to go to the other way in, doing this allows you to bleed and kite specific people using doors to toggle the way into the base.

This way is very tedious and I only use this if its no other way and its a perfect pawn or something desperately needed and rare. Mostly the toggle is useful for keeping large raids busy going back and forth between entrances until you can regroup or simply outlast them till they leave.

[Steelfleece]

Make sure you go into custom difficulty and set the instant death chances to 0%. It won't save every raider, but it'll reduce the chance of them just dropping dead.

Plenty of times they'll die anyway from shots to the heart/brain/liver or destroyed torso. Especially if they have reduced pain from genes and gear. If they're neanderthals, just forget it. If you take one alive, terrific. If not, well, that's expected.

[ComoNaoJogar]

Thanks very much guys <3

[Riftweaver]

since some people mentioned mods, there are countless mods that add insainly effective non lethal takedowns. pretty sure vanilla expanded has a 'non leth' weapons mod that adds a bunch of stun guns and tasers. one of the combat overhauls adds a knockout melee ability, or a leg sweep. rimworld of magic has ice magic magic which can knock people over from the cold, theres tranq gas traps or stun turrets. seriously if your question involves something that can be added via a mod, theres probably at least 5 mods that will solve the problem