"Raiders have decided to kidnap who they can and leave" Fine, then quit attacking me!

[Nerdygamer1]

Are raiders supposed to, as the notification says, leave after kidnapping your downed pawns? This popup has always confused me, because I've always interpreted it to mean the raid's over and I can start the process of recovering, but the raiders seem to continue their assault anyway.

I have dozens of mods, so it's certainly possible there's a conflict somewhere, but I'm not asking for a "fix." I'm just curious what the intended behavior of this mechanic is, and I don't see any development options to force raiders to kidnap pawns, so I can't really test out any theories. In hindsight, it does seem a bit foolish to expect all the raiders to give up as soon as one raider has even picked up a pawn (players would then be free to gun down fleeing raiders and save their buddy easy), but will the rest of the raiders turn around and flee once all pawns they've decided to kidnap are off the map (meaning that if they're carrying a pawn that I don't like, I can just hunker down until they're off the map and then the raid will be over)? Or should I just completely ignore this notification and just make a mental note that some raiders are now going to path to incapacitated pawns?

[Khan Boyzitbig of Mercia]

This is a "fighting retreat" not a "flee uncontrollably" retreat that you thought it was.

Unless you get a message that they are actually retreating the raid isn't over, they will continue fighting and so should you.

[Astasia]

If they are in melee they will keep fighting. If they are ranged they will stop shooting (after another burst or two) and attempt to leave the map, they will not fire at colonists while leaving even if they are nearby, they will only engage in melee if they are attacked in melee or bump into a colonist. A few of them will immediately move toward nearby downed colonists to pick them up then carry them off the map. It is essentially a retreat and should basically mean your colonists are safe (other than the ones being kidnapped obviously) and free to unload on them as they attempt to leave. It's the same when they decide to steal and leave, or when they have done enough damage and leave.

If you have a mod like run and gun this might change, I don't recall.

[Nerdygamer1]

Originally posted by Astasia:

If they are in melee they will keep fighting. If they are ranged they will stop shooting (after another burst or two) and attempt to leave the map, they will not fire at colonists while leaving even if they are nearby, they will only engage in melee if they are attacked in melee or bump into a colonist. A few of them will immediately move toward nearby downed colonists to pick them up then carry them off the map. It is essentially a retreat and should basically mean your colonists are safe (other than the ones being kidnapped obviously) and free to unload on them as they attempt to leave. It's the same when they decide to steal and leave, or when they have done enough damage and leave.

If you have a mod like run and gun this might change, I don't recall.

Yeah, that's exactly how I assumed it would work. Maybe I'm pushing the attack too hard to try and save colonists being carried away, so I draw aggro from raiders who would otherwise flee if none of my colonists were nearby. BRB, going to screw about with a test world.

[Nerdygamer1]

Ran two test worlds, one just vanilla, aside from Hugslib and Harmony, and the other with my list of mods, both test worlds seemed to function identically.

I had a dozen or so colonists who were fighters, and four colonists to be bait. Bait would be sent into the raiders, while the fighters hung back. I wasn't able to tell exactly what triggered raiders to start kidnapping, but that wasn't what I was looking for; however, it did seem that they needed to take some losses. Initially, raiders would pass by downed pawns, preferring to go engage my fighters. Once the game decided that the raiders would start kidnapping, it APPEARS that each downed pawn will be assigned a raider, and the rest of the raiders will continue fighting for a relatively short period of time. In a real game, this may have felt like ages, and I may have returned fire, which might have locked the raiders in combat; in my test scenario, I had my fighters fall back and not engage the enemy. After a while, the remaining raiders did eventually turn around and leave. At this point, the raiders acted like they were fleeing - they didn't return fire, even when shot at, and my fighters were even able to path through the raiders without being targeted by melee (though, this may have been due to a stark difference in move speed; I gave my fighters archotech legs to be able to catch up).

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by Nerdygamer1:

Are raiders supposed to, as the notification says, leave after kidnapping your downed pawns? ..

I can't be sure about newer versions than i currently play. It used to be that this was a Goal for a Raid. If that's been changed to one that is optional or dynamic if they can't fulfill a different one in some way, I'm wrong. :)

Ah, found it: https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Raider

...If the raiders cannot find any structures to destroy, or undowned colonists to attack, the behavior will change into other goals: stealing valuables that are not properly stored in closed locations, kidnapping downed colonists to demand a ransom of silver or to recruit them into their ranks, leaving after being satisfied with the damage done, or giving up and retreating due to exhaustion and starvation...

(Emphasis added)

So, basically, they had already decided to kidnap and started that before a full Retreat, I think. Does that mesh with the behavior you witnessed?

[Astasia]

The wiki is actually incorrect there, stealing items and kidnapping colonists are actually primary goals and can happen more or less instantly on map entrance in certain situations, regardless of nearby active colonists or buildings. How it works specifically is raiders are looking to do X amount of damage to buildings, or to steal Y amount of value in items, or Z amount of value of colonists, if any of those are met the raid ends and leaves. Those values fluctuate based on the current size of the raid with larger raids requiring more value. On their way to try and achieve those goals they will shoot at any colonists they perceive as a threat. As you kill raiders the size of the raid shrinks and so does their accepted values for stealing/kidnapping. So a pile of loot in your killbox may not have enough value when the raid arrives for them to care about stealing it, but after you kill like 30% of the raiders that same loot might suddenly become good enough and they will stop fighting and try to steal it and leave.

I'm not sure what determines the length of time between the raid achieving their goal and them ending the fight and walking away. The AI manager for this kind of behavior is called a Lord I believe and there is probably some delay between the Lord ending the raid and all the raiders getting their individual AI goal updated. Usually in my experience this is just a few bursts of fire at most.

[martindirt]

My experience:
All work as Astasia described, but I want to add a small side note about multi angle raids.
(Here I have to say again, this is my experience, and my game is modded to hell)
So about multi angle raids.
Those raiders act as individual groups, one of the groups take much dmg, decide to flee .. other groups keep attacking.
In ops case (IF it was a multi angle raid, and IF my experience is ok) one of the groups decided to kidnap who they can and leave, but the others kept fighting.

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by Astasia:

The wiki is actually incorrect there, stealing items and kidnapping colonists are actually primary goals and can happen more or less instantly on map entrance in certain situations, regardless of nearby active colonists or buildings.

That's what I always thought, but I couldn't find any reference in the wiki supporting it. :( So, I figured it had changed.

[Nerdygamer1]

Originally posted by martindirt:

My experience:
All work as Astasia described, but I want to add a small side note about multi angle raids.
(Here I have to say again, this is my experience, and my game is modded to hell)
So about multi angle raids.
Those raiders act as individual groups, one of the groups take much dmg, decide to flee .. other groups keep attacking.
In ops case (IF it was a multi angle raid, and IF my experience is ok) one of the groups decided to kidnap who they can and leave, but the others kept fighting.

You are correct in your observation; I have since learned that my issue was that I wasn't giving them enough time to flee. It appears that once a group of raiders have decided on kidnapping colonists, any raiders who cannot kidnap a colonist will continue the assault for a short period before turning around and fleeing.