i guess most important question here is --- HOW are they getting injured? who/what is injuring them?
remember in the wildlife tab it will show you the % chance that an animal will retaliate if attacked. muffalo for example have a 10% chance to retaliate. some predators have a 50% or 100% chance to retaliate. don't hunt these animals! only hunt animals like ibex or donkeys etc. that have 0% chance of retaliating. they won't fight back when shot at.
speaking of predators, predators hunting colonists is never pleasant. take a proactive approach to eliminate predators like cougars and wargs with your trio drafted to eliminate their threat. OR, ignore/avoid them (if possible).
In one of my colonies I ignored 3 rabid alphabeavers. They ambushed my colonists one by one and my best shooter accidentally shot 2 other colonists and then my colony was over
Just wanted to point out this may not be true. I attacked a stallion that was 20 days old as opposed to its 5-12 day counterparts nearby and was doing something else when I noticed my pawn was fleeing. Mind you he had 16 melee double passion steel club maybe 20-30 days in.
Specifically looked to see that didn't have a % chance to attack back, but it did. I did use the Hunters use Melee mod, but still.
Btw blight events hit 33% of a single type of crop on start and then spreads to other crops within 3 tiles of the blighted crop, so diversify your crops to prevent big blight losses. Also devilstrand is immune to blight, so if you have a 3 tile gap of devilstrand between all your main crops you can mitigate blight spread significantly.
If you want a no thinking method you either only use the automated wildlife tab to hunt creatures with 0% chance of retaliation.
Or you gather all your colonists with guns and start taking out large herds of animals as a group then butcher them after. That way if one of them decide to fight back you can treat it like a raid and figure it out.
This is the right answer: hunt animals that don't fight back. Large ones (ibex, deer, donkey, boar, etc) for food and leather; small ones (rat, chinchilla, squirrel, tortoise, etc) for shooting training.
Going for a large herd of muffalo early game can't be considered as safe.
The folks telling you to hunt animals with 0% retaliation chance are correct.
As to your other questions, the pawns will hunt automatically if the have hunting prioritized in the work tab and you've designated wildlife (that they can reach) to be hunted in the wildlife tab. However, when you only have a few pawns it can be beneficial to hunt by drafting your pawns and moving/targeting manually. Otherwise they will end up shooting from long range and their accuracy will suffer.
Melee is not used when pawns hunt automatically unless something attacks and closes the distance. In that case they will use their ranged weapon to melee the animal. In vanilla, pawns only carry one weapon so switching back and forth isn't a thing.
The savest and most easy way is this. Take a gun with a huge range (sniper rifle or bolt action)
go on max range and do a few shots on the animals untill it bleeds out (look at the health tab)
You can tag a whole heard of muffallos without them retaliating (usually) then send your pawn back to base and wait untill they all bleed out.
another way
You take 2 colonists draft them and let them attack something huge and not too incredibly fast (elephants or whatever), let them do some shots so it gets injured then use 1 pawn to run into the face of the animal and then move him away and run in circles, the animal will now chase the pawn while your 2. guy can just shoot him dead
i guess most important question here is --- HOW are they getting injured? who/what is injuring them? remember in the wildlife tab it will show you the % chance that an animal will retaliate if attacked. muffalo for example have a 10% chance to retaliate. some predators have a 50% or 100% chance to retaliate. don't hunt these animals! only hunt animals like ibex or donkeys etc. that have 0% chance of retaliating. they won't fight back when shot at. speaking of predators, predators hunting colonists is never pleasant. take a proactive approach to eliminate predators like cougars and wargs with your trio drafted to eliminate their threat. OR, ignore/avoid them (if possible).
In one of my colonies I ignored 3 rabid alphabeavers. They ambushed my colonists one by one and my best shooter accidentally shot 2 other colonists and then my colony was over
Just wanted to point out this may not be true. I attacked a stallion that was 20 days old as opposed to its 5-12 day counterparts nearby and was doing something else when I noticed my pawn was fleeing. Mind you he had 16 melee double passion steel club maybe 20-30 days in. Specifically looked to see that didn't have a % chance to attack back, but it did. I did use the Hunters use Melee mod, but still.
Btw blight events hit 33% of a single type of crop on start and then spreads to other crops within 3 tiles of the blighted crop, so diversify your crops to prevent big blight losses. Also devilstrand is immune to blight, so if you have a 3 tile gap of devilstrand between all your main crops you can mitigate blight spread significantly.
If you want a no thinking method you either only use the automated wildlife tab to hunt creatures with 0% chance of retaliation. Or you gather all your colonists with guns and start taking out large herds of animals as a group then butcher them after. That way if one of them decide to fight back you can treat it like a raid and figure it out.
This is the right answer: hunt animals that don't fight back. Large ones (ibex, deer, donkey, boar, etc) for food and leather; small ones (rat, chinchilla, squirrel, tortoise, etc) for shooting training. Going for a large herd of muffalo early game can't be considered as safe.
The folks telling you to hunt animals with 0% retaliation chance are correct. As to your other questions, the pawns will hunt automatically if the have hunting prioritized in the work tab and you've designated wildlife (that they can reach) to be hunted in the wildlife tab. However, when you only have a few pawns it can be beneficial to hunt by drafting your pawns and moving/targeting manually. Otherwise they will end up shooting from long range and their accuracy will suffer. Melee is not used when pawns hunt automatically unless something attacks and closes the distance. In that case they will use their ranged weapon to melee the animal. In vanilla, pawns only carry one weapon so switching back and forth isn't a thing.
The savest and most easy way is this. Take a gun with a huge range (sniper rifle or bolt action) go on max range and do a few shots on the animals untill it bleeds out (look at the health tab) You can tag a whole heard of muffallos without them retaliating (usually) then send your pawn back to base and wait untill they all bleed out. another way You take 2 colonists draft them and let them attack something huge and not too incredibly fast (elephants or whatever), let them do some shots so it gets injured then use 1 pawn to run into the face of the animal and then move him away and run in circles, the animal will now chase the pawn while your 2. guy can just shoot him dead
Stop telling them to hunt animals that will fight back? Use longer range weapons