Manhunting Animals

[NinjaPancakeJr]

I've had three colonist in one run be eaten by hungry cougars eating them when they are out hunting. Am I doing something wrong? A m16 isn't beating claws and teeth.

[Astasia]

Colonists by default do not defend themselves unless drafted, and will not shoot at "hunting" animals even while drafted without being ordered to because they still belong to a neutral faction. You can set your colonists to attack enemies on sight to help deal with "manhunting" animals, but for hunting animals you will have to pause and take control. A single bullet hit on a hunting animal will often discourage it and cause it to go hunt something else, or usually weaken it enough to kite it or deal with it solo in melee, if your hunter can't land a single hit on a cougar before it reaches them then you are either using the wrong weapon for hunting or the wrong pawn for hunting. On top of that, higher shooting and animal skills reduce enemy retaliation chance, while being close range to the enemy increases it. A highly skills pawn with a sniper rifle can often safely deal with animals even with a very high retaliation chance.

If you want to train unskilled colonists to hunt and are cleaning out the prey animals cougars would usually prefer to eat, then you are going to want to draft up a few colonists and manually kill the cougars on the map occasionally to protect your colony. Or invest in reasonable armor so your colonists aren't at risk from being hunted.

[Louvi-Love]

Greetings,

You need to be aware of predator animals that are close to your base.
- Shoot close to them in order to make them run out of your base and its surrounding.
- Just kill them. Be careful however, if you miss your shots, you will be their meal.
Traps are helpful at the beginning.

Good luck.

[Zep Tepi]

I usually run small "Rim Starve" games. So rather than trying to kill them, I mostly try to avoid them. I check at night when my colonist(s) is sleeping to see how the predators are doing. They start hunting at 30% hunger, so if they're getting close to that, I stay indoors until they've captured something else. Then check to see if there are any leftovers to snatch.

[Riepah]

Personally, I prefer to do hunting manually. Pawns are pretty stupid at that job.
There are also mods that cause your entire colony to view predators that are currently targeting a colonist or a tamed animal as hostile and actually shoot them on sight - that helps your pawns not to wait until they're getting melee'd before actually defending themselves.

Especially when it comes to animals with a retaliation chance, I don't recommend automated hunting at all, either way.

[hardy_conrad]

I find hunting to be okay once you've got decent gear and skills, and can afford to take a pawn off other tasks. But I never hunt animals that retaliate.