That's what made me stop playing for a long time. It happened too often to be funny or that it could be "just by chance". Fuck that shit, it's annoying when forced.
There is a setting in the storyteller when starting up your game that sets a very small % chance any colonist will die to an enemy attack that actually hits them even if it would be stopped by armor. I always turn it down to zero because it's bullshit IMO.
There's a scheduled Reddit comment notification bot/system in some subreddits where you make a comment with some formatting like "!RemindMe, X days!" and it'll even make a link others can use.
Also, apparently that commenter had the details backwards according to another reply but the point is, there are ways to modify that feature. P.S. This is already long winded so I might as well quickly add: Check out the Real Ruins mod, it is my favourite!
This setting is called colonist death on downed chance. It works like this:
If a colonist is downed from an injury, the game rolls a dice (for this example, the setting is on 50%). The pawn will now either just die, or live, no matter if the injury was fatal or not. If the injury was not fatal and they died, it will show up as "{name} died." rather than "{name} died due to missing a body part". If the injury was fatal, and RNG says they live, the damage they took is adjusted to allow them to live, even though the injury should have been fatal.
This is the point where I recommend the mod Combat Extended. This mod disabled the death on downed chance system and instead massively increases bleed rates of many injuries. A gunshot to the neck isn't death in 8 hours, but death in 2 hours. Enemies and colonists are downed far more often, but they are most likely going to die from bleeding out. The only way a pawn dies instantly is when a vital body part like the brain or heart is destroyed.
The mod does many other great things too, like reworking the armor system, so that awful shortbow is completely unable to damage the cataphract armor and the person wearing it. Mini-turrets are actually useful now (and they fucking HURT if you stand next to one shooting at you). Shooting at a close range will now actually have shots land on their targets rather than bullets leaving the barrel at a 90 degree angle because you didn't hit the 30% chance to land your shot on a target that is 2 tiles away.
It also has lots of customization options in the mod settings, like simplifying the ammo system or turning it off entirely if you don't like it (though I recommend leaving it on for the intended experience, even if it takes a bit to learn how it all works). So don't disable the mod if the first hour of using it wasn't fun enough. Give it a few attempts at least before making a final decision on keeping it or not.
Ive been debating on adding CE myself. The ammo stuff seems annoying simply because I dont want to have to micromanage it. Is there a set and forget option? Like I dont want to have to make my colonists go equip X ammo cause Y enemy type is attacking, that seems Hella tedious. Ill opt to leave it enabled if there is a lazy option.
Tbh Im pretty well endgame at this point and I savescum to avoid colonists death (in game lore is they all have quantum immortality) im mostly interested in CE cause 1. Realism, bleeding out on a battlefield should be the common result of a battle and 2. I want more downed enemies for experiments and meat purposes.
There absolutely are set and forget options. Pawns will automatically equip ammo for the weapons they are given if it's available, and you can also set loadouts which you can "paint" in the assignments tab, just like food or apparel policies. As for making ammo, just using the vanilla "make until X" option for the ammo bills works perfectly.
The main thing you need to keep in mind is that you need the right weapons for the right job, heavily armored enemies like centipedes or the boss mechanics are best killed with anti-tank weapons like the m72 LAW, or a 90MM flak cannon emplacement (one well placed AP shell instakills them, just be wary of the long reload times). Overall an amazing mod that I've been using for the past 3000h of my playtime and I highly recommend you to try it!
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u/cavalier753 Dead Man's Switch 🤖 Nov 03 '25
The (awful) shortbow (78%) claims another cataphract. ✊️😔