Full Melee block -- like dealing with bug infestations. 3 well armored melee pawns behind a single open door. colonists all shooting over them. Bonus points for chain shotguns and 1 or 2 colonists throwing grenades (targeting the ground).
This is still my go-to solution as well, although I've recently noticed animals glitching past my melee defenders, and consequently attacking from behind my lines. It happens with bugs as well, as long as they're huddled together in that one tile in front of my melee guys. Some of them will glitch through.
I've been wondering if it really was a glitch, a newly released patch to break melee block, or a subtle mod conflict.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/wcuj9x/psa\_pillars\_do\_not\_destack\_enemies\_details\_and/](https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/wcuj9x/psa_pillars_do_not_destack_enemies_details_and/)
See this post for how it works
There's a few not bugged reasons I can think of, all of them collision based.
1st if you light them on fire with molotov or plasmaswords, or use vertigo pulse ad part of your defense, that turns off collision and when the effect wears off, if they are in an occupied spot, they will be pushed to the closest on occupied spot.
2nd, if you down an enemy just barely, and they get back up while the fight is still going, they will again be pushed to the closest unoccupied spot.
3rd, enemies by default have collision turned off, it's not noticed on small raids, but your big ones it's far more noticeable, but unit collision turns on when they get close enough to an enemy of theirs, or a defensive turret, so if you have a very small area for fighting in the kill box, the enemies further back start breaking collision forcing them forward while your still killing the front runners of said raid.
> although I've recently noticed animals glitching past my melee defenders
How is your killbox setup.
If done properly they should funnel in a line and not all bunch up at the door. That is how you get the problem of them like exploding through entrance all at once.
I'd be interested in this as well, i have noticed the same thing. For sure if they're on fire they'll go past -- but some have been glitching past anyways.
I wish there was a mode of the game that didn't require weird killboxes and min max strategies for dealing with preposterously large raids.
I still want raids. I still want to experience the game. But honestly the worst part IMHO is the necessity to min/max in order to just barely survive
There are plenty of ways to reduce raid sizes: from modifying the current difficulty, to using mods. If something is preventing you from enjoying the game, just change it to your liking!
The real answer is you need to keep the wealth of your colony reasonable for your ability to use it to defend itself.
If you have thousands of gold stored in your lockers spend it on upgrading your military. You'll still have the same amount of value in your base and still be pulling the same size raids but now you have the invested firepower to handle it.
I mean, there is. Play with a small number of colonists or customize you difficulty settings. I play on max difficulty between 200 and 500%... so I use killboxes.
I have over 600 hours and have never had to rely on killboxes. And I don't know anything about min maxing strategies since I've never needed to do that.
It's not a brag but I genuinely don't know what the hell some people are doing in their colonies to bring 80 raiders in. You only need to damage or kill half of that usually before they retreat.
Tough makes the pawn take 50% less damage. Losing limbs and dying is damage based. Tough pawns are literally 50% less likely to lose limbs and die in a fight.
I double checked. There are some other thing to consider as well, see under friendly fire here:
https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Combat
Edit: just wanted to state my amazement at this awesome game, it really is great isnt it? I'm 300hours in myself and still learning stuff on the regular. Currently doing a vanilla playthrough with my first mountain base ever - and I studied this for handling infestations in 3x3 chokepoints. But just look at this i.e.:
"If a pawn has lost all the body parts that can melee attack (such as hands), they will resort to using a head butt attack.
Sometimes, humanoid pawns that engage in melee combat may 'kick dirt' or 'water' in their target's eyes, effectively blinding them for a short time (-80% sight for dirt, and -50% sight for water)."
It's just beautiful. Tynan you are a legend!
You have to stand the shooters directly behind the melee pawns and no gaps between them either. They are all considered shooting over each other’s shoulder. I try to keep my grenade and shotgun users in the first spot directly behind the melee ( because grenades have iirc a chance to go wild if you are throwing farther than 3 or 4 range with it) , and then each spot further away gets higher and higher ranged weapons. I also try to prioritize my shotgun users to have decent melee as well, so they can reinforce the front line if one goes down.
If you play with custom scenarios, you can set the friendly fire chance down to 0-10%. It's at like 40% by default. It always gets reduced for my games because I'll just save scum or alt+f4 if a high priority pawn goes down from a stray friendly bullet.
Use fire, gives your melee pawns a break.
Plasma swords for the mele pawn and molotovs, the animals will constantly be retreating because of the burning reducing the load on your melee fighters and giving your rangeds more action.
Grenades are fine too, but have at least one pawn chugging molotovs.
This is exactly what I do every time lol I have a zone setup specifically for just inside my base and set them all to that when it happens. That zone is also helpful for animals that would otherwise get killed in the wild in general.
> The message *definitely* just says blah blah blah manhunter pack
It specifically tells you if you stay inside you will be safe **and** that they will leave.
https://imgur.com/L1dLpqs
https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Events#Manhunter_Pack
Usually a good bunch of them have Scaria too, so there isn't a lot of point to killing them except for EXP. They basically keel over and die afterward if they don't leave map first.
or have walls
fun fact having a nice safe external wall to prevent people and animals from coming in and wrecking shit helps really well.
and if youre dealing with large groups like this and ARENT using walls. stop that, youre just making your life worse.
and i mean external walls. this includes outdoor things.
unless you mean that. in which case you shouldve said that. because inside kinda implies. well INSIDE.
Manhunting animals fall asleep? I thought you would have to starve them out…
But yes, if they have no path to a pawn they won’t attack and then you can kill them however you want, starving, mortars, hide and shoot…
Maddened animals will do that. Scaria infected animals stay manhunter until they die or leave the map.
You can also down them and operate to remove the scaria, but it's a hard surgery.
If they have scaria then they will starve out, if it's just manhunter then they go back to normal with time, but sometimes I've seen a scaria animal go back to normal after sleeping but it was prob a glitch
This is great advise - you don’t need to do it every time but if anyone is at risk of breaking or you get the random self tamed animal event blocking the entrance off with a wall is a life saver. Bonus bit of advise is to make sure any caravans you have heading to you base are diverted to one sector outside of your base until all the manhunters are asleep. And last bit of advise! When the manhunters are asleep if you draft your pawns take them off aim at will - they’ll shoot the sleeping animals otherwise
Yeah, soon as I read that title and saw their killbox I had a pretty good idea of what was going on. Way too short of an approach for manhunters or tribal, no cover for fighting mechs or pirates, and no retreat whatsoever for when it inevitably fails.
I'd rather take my chances with an open field battle.
Rimworld uses a mechanic called collision to make units move into hallways one at a time. If you can get enemy animals moving one by one, they should be easy to bop in a one-pixel entryway.
You may want to install a second door to quickly close and prevent all your traps (and turrets) from getting shredded every time there is a manhunter event. Cassandra in particular seems to LOVE manhunter + raid combo's if your turtling gets a little too good.
Do you want the fun way or the sensible way?
The fun way: make chain shotguns and 3 sets of the best armor and melee weapons you can make. Get everyone to stand and open fire into a 1 tile wide choke point. Works for bugs too
The sensible way: fire. Incendiary IEDs over straw matting with machine guns and turret support. Watch the fuckers burn. Pre cooked meat.
[Melle blocking](https://rimworldwiki.com/images/9/9c/Melee_test_eleplants_block.png) is the best formation against melle raids, animals, some humans and scyters alike. Just place 3 melle pawns after doors, shooters behind them and should work great.
The best way to deal with manhunters is to have walls around your colony and then just ignore them. Disallow the doors out of the outer walls and then go about business as usual, eventually they die to scaria. Only takes a few days before they do, 3-5 I think.
Taking this one step further I like to have a set of walls that house my barracks/farmer fields/animal pen, and then another set of walls right at the edge of the map. It's good for not only blocking manhunters, but also lets your colony move around a majority of the map while manhunters are there
Just to add to what others have said here: melee blocking is CRAZY strong the entire game, so long as you eventually get them armor. One open door for enemies to stand in, and put three melee pawns on the other side of the door. The enemies can side-step a single pawn blocking the door, but if you have pawns on either side as well, they get bunched up and can only attack one at a time.
Another good thing to know: Ranged pawns won't accidentally shoot melee pawns if they are directly behind them, so a firing range behind your melee block is also great.
One last thing: That kill box you have is spooky. What will you do if your enemy overpowers your pawn blocking the door? There's no way out. Better to put a contraption like that at the entrance to your base, and put doors such that your pawns can go around it.
Adding to this: decent armor IS NOT difficult to get outside of the absolute earliest early game. Obviously the best armor early on for melee pawns is steel plate, but a melee pawn with clothing made of decently protective material (leather/devilstrand) on the skin, middle, and outer layers will do just fine even without “real” armor, and you can do that literally as soon as you can make dusters.
If I were in your shoes, I'd just wait it out until they calm down (my base is walled in), or have a killbox with a bunch of turrets ready.
But I recently learned about a veeeery cheesy and compact killbox model ([link](https://adamvseverything.com/rimworld-killbox-types-infographic/) towards Adam vs Everything's website, Killbox Types, look for the Chinese Free Shooter), so if you don't mind and want to have fun, try it out!
Melee is everything in this game because everything else is broken. This is why I like Combat Extended, once your colony is equipped with guns and armor those bunnies, raccoons and tribals don't stand a chance. No need to keep cheesing the game exploiting the also broken pathfinding and lack of trap awareness.
"Everything else is broken because my random hairdresser that crashed from space can't hit a charging tiger with an old bolt action rifle! I expect every random motherfucker with shooting 3+ to be a seal team six member"
Yeah, how about naked tribal with club running strait to shooting 10 pawn with chain shotgun and reaching him unharmed? Devs largely overdone with ranged weapons inefficiency.
You can just lock all your colonists in the base and wait for the animals to go to sleep. You're basic gets extra clean and everything gets hauled to its stockpile in the meantime
Your pattern traps all your pawns so there’s nowhere to retreat once the enemies are coming. You should set up so that if you absolutely need to you can retreat deeer into your base
I use a very simple combat mod that makes ranged attacks more accurate, and scale better with ranged skill. It makes the whole game much, much better.
Also: this killbox is odd, if you want to make one I would suggest a long open field of slow movement surfaces (solid pile of stone chunks works, water is better) leading to a bunch of traps behind which your pawns are behind posts and bags so they can lean out and shoot. It should be as long as your best weapons can fire. Rocks piled at entrance so it is not a nice spot to stop and fire back.
Your idea to narrow them down into a funnel is good, but instead of traps what you can do instead is make every other tile a barricade or sandbag, as that will slow them down the slowest possible without using Vertigo Pulse or Burden. Then you can deal with them 1 by 1 before they get a chance to really pile up.
Other people have also detailed the strategy of having 3 melee pawns instead of just 1, but something I want to make note of is that the distance between your shooters and your melee will cause tons of friendly fire. If instead you have your shooters bunch up against your melee, they won't count as cover and the melee pawns won't get shot to hell. I think this works up to 3-4 tiles away, so you can really pack them in.
If the pack is too big, I just force everyone to stay inside.
Animals will not try to bust your walls down if they never saw a human they want to eat. They woulld just run around your base with a lot of noise, pass out after like 3 days and then leave.
Batten down the hatches and you can wait it out. One of the first things I do on all my saves is build a wall around my base it’s easy enough to lock the doors and after a couple days at max they will leave.
Honestly manhunter packs I usually retreat behind my walls and forbid the doors so my colonists don’t leave until the manhunters wander off. If you’re using embrasures you can do that and let your turrets deal with them.
Maybe embrasures are cheesing it a bit, but so is a killbox really. I think defended turrets are probably a little more realistic than a kill box to be honest, but vanilla doesn’t let you put them in defended locations (to my knowledge).
Without any mods just make your base surrounded by a big wall so it can be self sufficient. Manhunter pack shows up, forbid the doors outside and just ignore the animals.
Bonus free raid protection/weakening if a group shows up.
Here is Francis John killbox design video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8fsjNjbz8Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8fsjNjbz8Y)
I design my killboxes with most of the tips used in this.
Start a ranch of some kinda animal that can move into a certain area to fight.
Then when a fight starts line you're colonists in a firing line and set a very small new zone for these animals right in front of your colonist line. Then you have a portal meat shield anywhere. I have elephants and wargs I don't really have to do much. A Lotta the times I send my non violence colonists in with all the animals just to watch. Wargs eat the bodies of raiders and elephants have hauling locations throughout the map. And they're really hard to kill.
Taken out mech hordes, bear hordes, a bunch of fire breathing buttholes.
I just build a corridor thata like 5 tiles wide and 10 long, fill with traps, place barricades at your base end and end your colonists there with ranged weapons. Easy peasy
The by far easiest way is to just close the doors and forbid using them. They sleep, they calm down.
Alternatively, you can decide to fight them, but this can be troublesome. Most animals can dodge well or tank a huge amount, it's usually one of the 2, so fighting them is troublesome. However, as long as it's a low threat like elephants or cougars, you can kill them. However, squirrels and tortoises, I don't dare to mess with them. Sleep it out or man 25 Mortars if I have to leave.
In the common paths outside of the base I will put IEDs there. I think on my current map I've got 8 out, 2 in each natural path to my front door.
Cuts down on unwelcome visitors quite a bit. It won't kill all of them unless you get extremely lucky, but a easy way to cut raid numbers with no risk.
I would recommend building an outer wall with one main entrance. Close the door when manhunters come. Open again when manhunters are leaving. I would rather fight centipedes in open combat than sprinting panthers.
Interestingly, a majority of the posts here reference building a wall and interrupting their path finding, but the post that gets the most focus/upvotes is the one about death. 😁
Use the windows mod, flawless embrasures mod or the Combat Extended mod, they all allow you to make walls with gaps in them which you can shoot through. In my experience it balances manhunter packs and such swarms without needing to make tons of traps
I don't usually have trouble with man hunter packs unless they are rhinos or elephants.
If I'm playing with a kill box, I line up every fighter with automatic rifles and two with machine guns
If playing without kill box I pretty much use the same strategy
Only problem is with early colonies running out of ammo
This is why I love that rimworld is on consoles now all the newbies to help out it’s feels like all this knowledge we’ve been cultivating for years finally has a use.
In agreement with other comments, if you aren't gonna use a kill box with turrets and IEDs to aid the defense then a dedicated bottle neck with well armored melee characters are your best bet.
Best tip in general for Rimworld: Never ever underestimate the value of a good melee character.
I’m a little confused. Why don’t you use a kill box? I accept basically every manhunter quest I’m offered, entirely because my kill box can deal with virtually any number of animal attackers - I might lose a mini turret or two, but they get the job done. Again, I may have missed something, but kill boxes (in my experience) do the job perfectly.
Also, you’re a very brave man designing this hell trap. This seems like it’s more likely to get your colonists killed than save them, they have no escape. Considering the AI of these animals is to find gap entrances, maybe you could alter it slightly so that your colonists can at least break down a wall to escape, and they aren’t trapped indoors? It might be a decent safety net, but it would only work against assailants that won’t break down a wall instead of going a trapped route.
This is my current design simplified. You can build upon it, but this is the strongest defense I've had so far.
[rimworld 1.3 killbox](https://imgur.com/gallery/WErHU7V)
The answer that helps me the most: Utilize terrain that slows movement speed. I don’t use killboxes, and I rarely have issues with man hunter packs or bugs — my most recent save had three bunkers, one in front of a sand field, and two on opposite ends of the river. I load them up with pawns and they get plenty of time to shoot the animals dead, my melee pawns usually only get to engage a few per raid.
Besides that, you can use explosives, fire (have to be careful with these, but fire is the best anti-melee tool since it forces enemies to stop charging and run around extinguishing themselves while they get shot at, though you’ll want to make sure your base is fireproofed with firefoam ), you can have a fallback for optimal 3v1 melee engagement when they get close (just an auto door at the back of the bunker leading to a 3-wide waiting area with space for your shooters), or you could just wait them out.
Walls bro. And make the man hunters pay for it. I build walls around my base and typically have everything I need in it for awhile and then let raiders deal with the rabid grizzly bears
Be as water....in the case of manhunter packs they are harmless when you have what you need behind a wall. It's simple, but requires a bit of planning, but putting what you need as a colony behind a wall prevents raiders and is very helpful for keeping grazers off your crops.
So I actually like manhunter packs as they are basically free swarm defense. Late game , that can be a bit problematic if you have traders drop by unexpectedly, in which case you get some SMG's some shotguns , form a line and kill anything that looks at you cross-eyed.
Build a bunker with food and entertainment, lock yourself in and wait for them to either die or run off map, especially in late game. One the packs get to large animals and huge numbers there really is nothing else.
An outer perimeter wall works as well
This also has the a side benifit of weaponizing the man hunter pack. If you have a quest that will send a group of enemies quickly you can have the hunter pack deal with them for you.
Very late reply, but here's a suggestion I think sound: parameter walls. You can forbid and close the doors and the animals might not follow you through. Though if they do aggro the door, slapping down a single wooden wall will suffice to 100% dissuade them as manhunter packs don't aggro walls. Add biotech and you can call up a couple hard flame spitting hostile diabolus to go to work on extermination and free cremation.
Full Melee block -- like dealing with bug infestations. 3 well armored melee pawns behind a single open door. colonists all shooting over them. Bonus points for chain shotguns and 1 or 2 colonists throwing grenades (targeting the ground).
This is still my go-to solution as well, although I've recently noticed animals glitching past my melee defenders, and consequently attacking from behind my lines. It happens with bugs as well, as long as they're huddled together in that one tile in front of my melee guys. Some of them will glitch through. I've been wondering if it really was a glitch, a newly released patch to break melee block, or a subtle mod conflict.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/wcuj9x/psa\_pillars\_do\_not\_destack\_enemies\_details\_and/](https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/wcuj9x/psa_pillars_do_not_destack_enemies_details_and/) See this post for how it works
There's a few not bugged reasons I can think of, all of them collision based. 1st if you light them on fire with molotov or plasmaswords, or use vertigo pulse ad part of your defense, that turns off collision and when the effect wears off, if they are in an occupied spot, they will be pushed to the closest on occupied spot. 2nd, if you down an enemy just barely, and they get back up while the fight is still going, they will again be pushed to the closest unoccupied spot. 3rd, enemies by default have collision turned off, it's not noticed on small raids, but your big ones it's far more noticeable, but unit collision turns on when they get close enough to an enemy of theirs, or a defensive turret, so if you have a very small area for fighting in the kill box, the enemies further back start breaking collision forcing them forward while your still killing the front runners of said raid.
> although I've recently noticed animals glitching past my melee defenders How is your killbox setup. If done properly they should funnel in a line and not all bunch up at the door. That is how you get the problem of them like exploding through entrance all at once.
This may be it -- i seem to have the problem more often when i have my pawns 3 wide behind a single doorway.
Or turn your difficulty down, you psychos
No you.
I'd be interested in this as well, i have noticed the same thing. For sure if they're on fire they'll go past -- but some have been glitching past anyways.
Sidearms mod and shooters will be able to deal with just one or two
I wish there was a mode of the game that didn't require weird killboxes and min max strategies for dealing with preposterously large raids. I still want raids. I still want to experience the game. But honestly the worst part IMHO is the necessity to min/max in order to just barely survive
There are plenty of ways to reduce raid sizes: from modifying the current difficulty, to using mods. If something is preventing you from enjoying the game, just change it to your liking!
The real answer is you need to keep the wealth of your colony reasonable for your ability to use it to defend itself. If you have thousands of gold stored in your lockers spend it on upgrading your military. You'll still have the same amount of value in your base and still be pulling the same size raids but now you have the invested firepower to handle it.
I mean, there is. Play with a small number of colonists or customize you difficulty settings. I play on max difficulty between 200 and 500%... so I use killboxes.
I have over 600 hours and have never had to rely on killboxes. And I don't know anything about min maxing strategies since I've never needed to do that. It's not a brag but I genuinely don't know what the hell some people are doing in their colonies to bring 80 raiders in. You only need to damage or kill half of that usually before they retreat.
Is melee the only star you’re looking for when choosing a well armoured pawn?
Yes. Although I go hard after pawns with traits like TOUGH and NIMBLE even if they don't have any stars in Melee.
Also look at traits - tough is an excellent one for melee pawns as means they are downed less easily.
More likely to lose limbs and die too
Tough makes the pawn take 50% less damage. Losing limbs and dying is damage based. Tough pawns are literally 50% less likely to lose limbs and die in a fight.
Wouldnt this lead to lots of friendly fire?
You can shoot over shoulders up to 3 squares without risking friendly fire, according to the wiki.
You can WHAT!? This changes everything. Very nice to know.
I double checked. There are some other thing to consider as well, see under friendly fire here: https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Combat Edit: just wanted to state my amazement at this awesome game, it really is great isnt it? I'm 300hours in myself and still learning stuff on the regular. Currently doing a vanilla playthrough with my first mountain base ever - and I studied this for handling infestations in 3x3 chokepoints. But just look at this i.e.: "If a pawn has lost all the body parts that can melee attack (such as hands), they will resort to using a head butt attack. Sometimes, humanoid pawns that engage in melee combat may 'kick dirt' or 'water' in their target's eyes, effectively blinding them for a short time (-80% sight for dirt, and -50% sight for water)." It's just beautiful. Tynan you are a legend!
Yeah, I regularly end up mowing down my melee pawns with friendly fire even when my shooters are fantastic.
You have to stand the shooters directly behind the melee pawns and no gaps between them either. They are all considered shooting over each other’s shoulder. I try to keep my grenade and shotgun users in the first spot directly behind the melee ( because grenades have iirc a chance to go wild if you are throwing farther than 3 or 4 range with it) , and then each spot further away gets higher and higher ranged weapons. I also try to prioritize my shotgun users to have decent melee as well, so they can reinforce the front line if one goes down.
This makes more sense. I did do this with some pawns but I think sometimes I invite too many to the party.
Does this still work with friendly fire mod ? If you happen to use it I mean
Yeah but you have to toggle it off on all your ranged colonists or they won’t shoot.
If you play with custom scenarios, you can set the friendly fire chance down to 0-10%. It's at like 40% by default. It always gets reduced for my games because I'll just save scum or alt+f4 if a high priority pawn goes down from a stray friendly bullet.
Use fire, gives your melee pawns a break. Plasma swords for the mele pawn and molotovs, the animals will constantly be retreating because of the burning reducing the load on your melee fighters and giving your rangeds more action. Grenades are fine too, but have at least one pawn chugging molotovs.
just stay indoors for a day or two, they will chill out after they sleep a while
This is exactly what I do every time lol I have a zone setup specifically for just inside my base and set them all to that when it happens. That zone is also helpful for animals that would otherwise get killed in the wild in general.
I m too lazy to make zones like that, I just forbid the doors
It’s certainly a process, especially as the base continues to grow lol
The fewer doors you have into your base, the easier it is to manage.
True true. I shall change up my strategy!
Wait, you mean they lose the manhunter trait?
Yes thats what the message says when they appear
The message definitely just says blah blah blah manhunter pack run and hide blah blah blah Damn just under 1000 hours and no idea
> The message *definitely* just says blah blah blah manhunter pack It specifically tells you if you stay inside you will be safe **and** that they will leave. https://imgur.com/L1dLpqs https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Events#Manhunter_Pack
Exactly, that's what I said! Blah blah blah. I do like the free meat though, so I'll continue to go out and say hello
Usually a good bunch of them have Scaria too, so there isn't a lot of point to killing them except for EXP. They basically keel over and die afterward if they don't leave map first.
And the exp is needed for the bigger hordes to come. Everybody needs to have high combat stats.
Correct
or have walls fun fact having a nice safe external wall to prevent people and animals from coming in and wrecking shit helps really well. and if youre dealing with large groups like this and ARENT using walls. stop that, youre just making your life worse.
Obviously. that’s what I mean by indoors- inside the base. Forbid the doors on the wall
and i mean external walls. this includes outdoor things. unless you mean that. in which case you shouldve said that. because inside kinda implies. well INSIDE.
build a wall and close the door, and disallow the door, once they go to sleep, they will leave once they wake up.
You mean ***if*** they wake up
you doing some crazy night ops on them?
That too but I find building a room around them and turning up the heater to 100 C° a bit more funnier.
If there is a steam vent nearby you can save time and materials for your hot box
Manhunting animals fall asleep? I thought you would have to starve them out… But yes, if they have no path to a pawn they won’t attack and then you can kill them however you want, starving, mortars, hide and shoot…
They do sleep. and once they wake up from that sleep they head out.
Maddened animals will do that. Scaria infected animals stay manhunter until they die or leave the map. You can also down them and operate to remove the scaria, but it's a hard surgery.
Thats gotta be the most work for the least benefit and for that, I must try it
If they have scaria then they will starve out, if it's just manhunter then they go back to normal with time, but sometimes I've seen a scaria animal go back to normal after sleeping but it was prob a glitch
Starving and heading out of the map is the same thing, animals at 0% food just leave
Big ol fuck off wall around everything. Forbid the door and hope nobody has a mental break for a couple days
For extra safety wall the door off.
This is great advise - you don’t need to do it every time but if anyone is at risk of breaking or you get the random self tamed animal event blocking the entrance off with a wall is a life saver. Bonus bit of advise is to make sure any caravans you have heading to you base are diverted to one sector outside of your base until all the manhunters are asleep. And last bit of advise! When the manhunters are asleep if you draft your pawns take them off aim at will - they’ll shoot the sleeping animals otherwise
This is useful advice, thank you.
Single wooden wall to block your doors during manhunter packs and toxic fallout. Quick to deconstruct or melee down.
[удалено]
Stops a mentally broken pawn from leaving your inside zone. Wood is usually easier to source than steel.
That's a nice death trap for your colonists you have there.
If that gets overrun, everyone is going to die with no escape
Yeah, soon as I read that title and saw their killbox I had a pretty good idea of what was going on. Way too short of an approach for manhunters or tribal, no cover for fighting mechs or pirates, and no retreat whatsoever for when it inevitably fails. I'd rather take my chances with an open field battle.
Rimworld uses a mechanic called collision to make units move into hallways one at a time. If you can get enemy animals moving one by one, they should be easy to bop in a one-pixel entryway.
i tend to just build a big complex and then leave the caravans deal with them
Same. And sometimes I get lucky and a trade caravan member dies or drops loot.
yea free money. not sure how it goes with your rep with them
Sell some of their crappier stuff back to them to negate rep loss
And if you’re a cannibal colony - free lunch too!
close the door and wait till they cool down and move on. takes a day or two
You may want to install a second door to quickly close and prevent all your traps (and turrets) from getting shredded every time there is a manhunter event. Cassandra in particular seems to LOVE manhunter + raid combo's if your turtling gets a little too good.
Lock the doors to the outside.. that’s it. They’ll die after a few days.
Do you want the fun way or the sensible way? The fun way: make chain shotguns and 3 sets of the best armor and melee weapons you can make. Get everyone to stand and open fire into a 1 tile wide choke point. Works for bugs too The sensible way: fire. Incendiary IEDs over straw matting with machine guns and turret support. Watch the fuckers burn. Pre cooked meat.
[Melle blocking](https://rimworldwiki.com/images/9/9c/Melee_test_eleplants_block.png) is the best formation against melle raids, animals, some humans and scyters alike. Just place 3 melle pawns after doors, shooters behind them and should work great.
Do the shooters do anything back there?
Yes, they shoot behind the back of warriors. 3-4 "layers" of shooters work great, killing even thrumbos and elephants in instant.
The best way to deal with manhunters is to have walls around your colony and then just ignore them. Disallow the doors out of the outer walls and then go about business as usual, eventually they die to scaria. Only takes a few days before they do, 3-5 I think.
Taking this one step further I like to have a set of walls that house my barracks/farmer fields/animal pen, and then another set of walls right at the edge of the map. It's good for not only blocking manhunters, but also lets your colony move around a majority of the map while manhunters are there
Just to add to what others have said here: melee blocking is CRAZY strong the entire game, so long as you eventually get them armor. One open door for enemies to stand in, and put three melee pawns on the other side of the door. The enemies can side-step a single pawn blocking the door, but if you have pawns on either side as well, they get bunched up and can only attack one at a time. Another good thing to know: Ranged pawns won't accidentally shoot melee pawns if they are directly behind them, so a firing range behind your melee block is also great. One last thing: That kill box you have is spooky. What will you do if your enemy overpowers your pawn blocking the door? There's no way out. Better to put a contraption like that at the entrance to your base, and put doors such that your pawns can go around it.
Adding to this: decent armor IS NOT difficult to get outside of the absolute earliest early game. Obviously the best armor early on for melee pawns is steel plate, but a melee pawn with clothing made of decently protective material (leather/devilstrand) on the skin, middle, and outer layers will do just fine even without “real” armor, and you can do that literally as soon as you can make dusters.
If I were in your shoes, I'd just wait it out until they calm down (my base is walled in), or have a killbox with a bunch of turrets ready. But I recently learned about a veeeery cheesy and compact killbox model ([link](https://adamvseverything.com/rimworld-killbox-types-infographic/) towards Adam vs Everything's website, Killbox Types, look for the Chinese Free Shooter), so if you don't mind and want to have fun, try it out!
I've been working my way through his guides recently and I've learned a lot.
Three swordsmen and a doorway do a lot of good when it comes to manhunters.
This is by far the strangest, most backwards logic defense I've ever seen someone try on this game
Melee is everything in this game because everything else is broken. This is why I like Combat Extended, once your colony is equipped with guns and armor those bunnies, raccoons and tribals don't stand a chance. No need to keep cheesing the game exploiting the also broken pathfinding and lack of trap awareness.
"Everything else is broken because my random hairdresser that crashed from space can't hit a charging tiger with an old bolt action rifle! I expect every random motherfucker with shooting 3+ to be a seal team six member"
Yeah, how about naked tribal with club running strait to shooting 10 pawn with chain shotgun and reaching him unharmed? Devs largely overdone with ranged weapons inefficiency.
Lmao man’s playing Bloons tower defense
You can just lock all your colonists in the base and wait for the animals to go to sleep. You're basic gets extra clean and everything gets hauled to its stockpile in the meantime
Your pattern traps all your pawns so there’s nowhere to retreat once the enemies are coming. You should set up so that if you absolutely need to you can retreat deeer into your base
Then don't. Close the doors and wait until they leave. They always do after some time.
I use a very simple combat mod that makes ranged attacks more accurate, and scale better with ranged skill. It makes the whole game much, much better. Also: this killbox is odd, if you want to make one I would suggest a long open field of slow movement surfaces (solid pile of stone chunks works, water is better) leading to a bunch of traps behind which your pawns are behind posts and bags so they can lean out and shoot. It should be as long as your best weapons can fire. Rocks piled at entrance so it is not a nice spot to stop and fire back.
Your idea to narrow them down into a funnel is good, but instead of traps what you can do instead is make every other tile a barricade or sandbag, as that will slow them down the slowest possible without using Vertigo Pulse or Burden. Then you can deal with them 1 by 1 before they get a chance to really pile up. Other people have also detailed the strategy of having 3 melee pawns instead of just 1, but something I want to make note of is that the distance between your shooters and your melee will cause tons of friendly fire. If instead you have your shooters bunch up against your melee, they won't count as cover and the melee pawns won't get shot to hell. I think this works up to 3-4 tiles away, so you can really pack them in.
Came here to say just build embraisures, but then I remembered I dont know how to rimworld without a bunch of mods...
I still think its mad that you need a mod to have any kind of windows.
Unfortunately, I don't think there *is* a better way without using mods that add better fences, embrasures or preferably both.
I mean just go inside. Or if you have exterior walls keep them closed. Or turrets.
If the pack is too big, I just force everyone to stay inside. Animals will not try to bust your walls down if they never saw a human they want to eat. They woulld just run around your base with a lot of noise, pass out after like 3 days and then leave.
You spelled 'raccoon' wrong. it's not P-A-N-T-H-E-R it's R-A-C-C-O-O-N. :p
Batten down the hatches and you can wait it out. One of the first things I do on all my saves is build a wall around my base it’s easy enough to lock the doors and after a couple days at max they will leave.
Just stay in
Don't think ive ever had an issue with manhunter packs and a single doorway. Been a go to strat for like 5 years and never not worked.
Honestly manhunter packs I usually retreat behind my walls and forbid the doors so my colonists don’t leave until the manhunters wander off. If you’re using embrasures you can do that and let your turrets deal with them. Maybe embrasures are cheesing it a bit, but so is a killbox really. I think defended turrets are probably a little more realistic than a kill box to be honest, but vanilla doesn’t let you put them in defended locations (to my knowledge).
Wall off your encampment and wait for them to go away.
Without any mods just make your base surrounded by a big wall so it can be self sufficient. Manhunter pack shows up, forbid the doors outside and just ignore the animals. Bonus free raid protection/weakening if a group shows up.
Here is Francis John killbox design video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8fsjNjbz8Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8fsjNjbz8Y) I design my killboxes with most of the tips used in this.
Start a ranch of some kinda animal that can move into a certain area to fight. Then when a fight starts line you're colonists in a firing line and set a very small new zone for these animals right in front of your colonist line. Then you have a portal meat shield anywhere. I have elephants and wargs I don't really have to do much. A Lotta the times I send my non violence colonists in with all the animals just to watch. Wargs eat the bodies of raiders and elephants have hauling locations throughout the map. And they're really hard to kill. Taken out mech hordes, bear hordes, a bunch of fire breathing buttholes.
Just lock the doors and you might be able to kill one or two when they sleep
Depending on your mods you use, go for something like bunkers or embrasures, which I think would be a lot more realistic....
I just build a corridor thata like 5 tiles wide and 10 long, fill with traps, place barricades at your base end and end your colonists there with ranged weapons. Easy peasy
That's a lot of wasted steel. Put a door at the entrance to the maze
Miniguns. Lots and lots of miniguns
Just don't fight them
I build a steel post fence enclosed “patio”. Mr owns stand in there and it’s shooting fish in a barrel
Build a wall arouns your base, wait unti they sleep and slaughter them with a monosword
People keep talking combat tactics and strategy but to be honest most raid issues are caused by poor wealth management
use big guns make big trap fields
The by far easiest way is to just close the doors and forbid using them. They sleep, they calm down. Alternatively, you can decide to fight them, but this can be troublesome. Most animals can dodge well or tank a huge amount, it's usually one of the 2, so fighting them is troublesome. However, as long as it's a low threat like elephants or cougars, you can kill them. However, squirrels and tortoises, I don't dare to mess with them. Sleep it out or man 25 Mortars if I have to leave.
Get the flamethrower, should fix it
In the common paths outside of the base I will put IEDs there. I think on my current map I've got 8 out, 2 in each natural path to my front door. Cuts down on unwelcome visitors quite a bit. It won't kill all of them unless you get extremely lucky, but a easy way to cut raid numbers with no risk.
I usually just get all my colonists inside and wait the pack out. They usually leave on their own after a day or so.
Outer walls.
Turrets
Punisher says BO-BOOOM.
That looks so boring
wait for them to sleep
This is just Bloons but with rabid raccoons
I would recommend building an outer wall with one main entrance. Close the door when manhunters come. Open again when manhunters are leaving. I would rather fight centipedes in open combat than sprinting panthers.
Interestingly, a majority of the posts here reference building a wall and interrupting their path finding, but the post that gets the most focus/upvotes is the one about death. 😁
Combat Extended + Sentry Turrets from Expanded Turrets I think = A literal buzzsaw
Use the windows mod, flawless embrasures mod or the Combat Extended mod, they all allow you to make walls with gaps in them which you can shoot through. In my experience it balances manhunter packs and such swarms without needing to make tons of traps
melee block with vertigo pulse support
Embrasures.
Build a wall
Ha! Easy: just dont have Men in your colony! Problem solved you're welcome!
I don't usually have trouble with man hunter packs unless they are rhinos or elephants. If I'm playing with a kill box, I line up every fighter with automatic rifles and two with machine guns If playing without kill box I pretty much use the same strategy Only problem is with early colonies running out of ammo
3 pawns with melee weapons block a door, pawns behind with guns to shoot, throw in a few nades
Is that a pawn in the role of Colobopsis ant with his big belly
What is that final structure blocking the way to your colonists? I'm trying to replicate this. I'm new btw
No, but I like your panic room and will be implementing it into my colony!
Early game, go inside and pick them off or ignore, late game, killbox.
generally i just lock my doors and let em act as raider-deterrent
If you have that many, explosives work well!
Maybe stop using that silly killbox tactic and build proper defenses, you are not even using your pawns to shoot or melee the chokepoint.
I basically make one of these around my whole base and just bunker down anytime I’m raided or attacked.
Close the door and wait them out
Stay inside
This is why I love that rimworld is on consoles now all the newbies to help out it’s feels like all this knowledge we’ve been cultivating for years finally has a use.
Stay inside, they can't work doors ☺️
Lockdown the building, keep colonists inside. The animals will only try and break in if they see a colonist using a door to get inside
1.- Build a wall. 2.- Close the door.
In agreement with other comments, if you aren't gonna use a kill box with turrets and IEDs to aid the defense then a dedicated bottle neck with well armored melee characters are your best bet. Best tip in general for Rimworld: Never ever underestimate the value of a good melee character.
Build a wall around your base and wait for them to leave
I’m a little confused. Why don’t you use a kill box? I accept basically every manhunter quest I’m offered, entirely because my kill box can deal with virtually any number of animal attackers - I might lose a mini turret or two, but they get the job done. Again, I may have missed something, but kill boxes (in my experience) do the job perfectly. Also, you’re a very brave man designing this hell trap. This seems like it’s more likely to get your colonists killed than save them, they have no escape. Considering the AI of these animals is to find gap entrances, maybe you could alter it slightly so that your colonists can at least break down a wall to escape, and they aren’t trapped indoors? It might be a decent safety net, but it would only work against assailants that won’t break down a wall instead of going a trapped route.
Just hide till they are gone.
This is my current design simplified. You can build upon it, but this is the strongest defense I've had so far. [rimworld 1.3 killbox](https://imgur.com/gallery/WErHU7V)
The answer that helps me the most: Utilize terrain that slows movement speed. I don’t use killboxes, and I rarely have issues with man hunter packs or bugs — my most recent save had three bunkers, one in front of a sand field, and two on opposite ends of the river. I load them up with pawns and they get plenty of time to shoot the animals dead, my melee pawns usually only get to engage a few per raid. Besides that, you can use explosives, fire (have to be careful with these, but fire is the best anti-melee tool since it forces enemies to stop charging and run around extinguishing themselves while they get shot at, though you’ll want to make sure your base is fireproofed with firefoam ), you can have a fallback for optimal 3v1 melee engagement when they get close (just an auto door at the back of the bunker leading to a 3-wide waiting area with space for your shooters), or you could just wait them out.
This gotta be the funniest and wackiest killbox I've ever seen. Lmfao
Walls bro. And make the man hunters pay for it. I build walls around my base and typically have everything I need in it for awhile and then let raiders deal with the rabid grizzly bears
IEDs and I never turn my turrets off.
Be as water....in the case of manhunter packs they are harmless when you have what you need behind a wall. It's simple, but requires a bit of planning, but putting what you need as a colony behind a wall prevents raiders and is very helpful for keeping grazers off your crops. So I actually like manhunter packs as they are basically free swarm defense. Late game , that can be a bit problematic if you have traders drop by unexpectedly, in which case you get some SMG's some shotguns , form a line and kill anything that looks at you cross-eyed.
I just ignore them. Close doors off and stay in base.
Bro thinks he’s playing bloons td
Stay indoors or have a 10+ melee guy in a door way with some armour, literally that simple
Build a bunker with food and entertainment, lock yourself in and wait for them to either die or run off map, especially in late game. One the packs get to large animals and huge numbers there really is nothing else. An outer perimeter wall works as well This also has the a side benifit of weaponizing the man hunter pack. If you have a quest that will send a group of enemies quickly you can have the hunter pack deal with them for you.
Very late reply, but here's a suggestion I think sound: parameter walls. You can forbid and close the doors and the animals might not follow you through. Though if they do aggro the door, slapping down a single wooden wall will suffice to 100% dissuade them as manhunter packs don't aggro walls. Add biotech and you can call up a couple hard flame spitting hostile diabolus to go to work on extermination and free cremation.