RimWorld Guide: Friendly Fire

RimWorld Guide: Friendly Fire

RimWorld Friendly Fire Range can be a tricky thing to remember, but I have some sure-fire tips that will make it so you never have to worry about friendly fire in RimWorld again! This RimWorld guide covers friendly fire in general, the friendly fire range, how many pawns you can have in a formation without worrying about friendly fire, turret friendly fire, which types of weapons ignore friendly fire, how to avoid friendly fire, and more!

[Video Transcript]
Friendly Fire
Hey everyone, Adam here with another Rimworld guide. Sometimes when I am streaming I’ll see people type ‘Wait, aren’t you worried about friendly fire’? which made me realize that not a lot of people know the specifics of how friendly fire works in RimWorld. So, in this guide, I’ll quickly go over how you can keep your colonists safe from shooting one another in the back.

The highlighted area you see here is the safe from friendly fire range. A colonist with a ranged weapon in the center can’t hit friendlies who are on any of the white squares with stray fire. It is important to remember that this is for a single colonist in the center. For an easy way to remember for an entire group of colonists, be sure to stick around for the later part of this video. But more on that in a moment, let’s get back to our single pawn for now.

Entire safety zone full of friendlies. Doesn’t matter.
If he has an awful Minigun. Doesn’t matter.
0 Shooting skill, Trigger Happy. Doesn’t matter.
One arm, no eyes, he’s drunk. Also doesn’t matter.
Target inside the safety range. Doesn’t matter. Well, there won’t be any friendly fire, anyway.
Grenades or other Explosive Weapons? That does matter. Friendly Fire range does not apply to grenades nor explosive weapons.

Easiest way to remember

Okay, so now you’ve seen the friendly fire range of a single pawn, but practically speaking you’re going to want to remember how to position your entire group so that no one can hit one another.

Depending on if you are more information or visual based, there’s a few ways I like to remember this.

First, the numbers. You can have 21 total colonists in an area and have them all be safe from friendly fire. That’s 3 columns of 5, with 3 extra colonists on each side.

Basically, have your center pawn, then go 2 in any direction, and then 1 on each side of that. Fill in the gaps.

If any of that is confusing or hard to remember, or, like I mentioned, if it is easier to think of it visually, you can also do this trick.

Just throw down a meditation spot and fill it in with colonists, making sure no one touches the edge of the meditation area, as seen here. It’s what I do when I forget!

Test it yourself

You can test and confirm this on your own if you’d like. Turn Friendly fire up to 100% in the custom difficulty options. Turn on Development Mode → “Open the View Setting” 3rd Button at the top → Check “Draw Shooting.” Now you can see the chances of bullets hitting various things. The number shows the % chance of the bullet being intercepted. No number means no chance. 0 means no chance. Any non-zero number means there is a chance of friendly fire. Use an animal sleeping spot or a wall to practice shooting.

Friendly fire at 100%
Blasting the minigun with friendlies in the safe zone.
No numbers.
No chance of friendly fire.

Friendly fire at 100%
Blasting the minigun with friendlies OUTSIDE the safe zone.
Numbers greater than 0.
Yes, chance of friendly fire.

Friendly fire at 100%
Target inside the friendly fire zone.
No numbers. No chance of interception.
But we do see some “Wild Dest” which means that a wild shot, meaning a missed shot, would land in this square. With the “Wild Dest” is “Miss 0%”. The friendly fire safety area still prevents bullets from landing on the friendlies.

The “Friendly Fire” slider in the custom difficulty options only applies to Interceptions. It does not apply to bullets that land on that square. Let’s turn Friendly Fire off, by setting it to 0%, and see the change. Let me reiterate that: Turning friendly fire off does not fully turn off friendly fire. If you hover over the Friendly Fire slider in the custom storyteller settings it also explains that friendly fire is still possible.

Friendly fire at 0%.
Blasting the minigun with friendlies OUTSIDE the safe zone.
Target far away.
Now the numbers are 0s.
With friendly fire set to 0% there is no chance of friendlies intercepting bullets.

However, with Friendly Fire set to 0% there is a chance of bullets landing on friendlies who are outside the safety zone.

Friendly fire at 0%.
Blasting the minigun with friendlies OUTSIDE the safe zone.
Target near friendlies.
The numbers are still 0s. Still no chance of friendlies intercepting bullets.
However, With “Wild Dest”, or “Missed Shot Lands Here” the number with Miss is NOT 0. That means there is a chance the bullet lands on a friendly.

Friendly fire set to 0% does not protect friendlies outside of the safety range from bullets that land on them.

There is currently a huge exception to all of this, however. – The “Standing on a Door Exception”. If a colonist is standing in a door way they can be damaged by bullets that land on that square, even within the ‘safe zone’.

It is important to know that if you have a friendly standing on a door inside the friendly fire range and the target is far away, there is no chance of Interception friendly fire.

If you have a friendly standing on a door inside the friendly fire range and the target is near the door, there IS a chance of shots landing on that doorway and hurting the colonist standing on the door.

Turrets, barricades and other furniture will not intercept shots in the friendly fire range. Shots can land on, and damage, these objects while inside the friendly fire range however.

Turrets follow the friendly fire safety range as well. Turrets will not hit friendlies who are inside the safety range.

Conclusion
And that does it! Hopefully this rimworld guide has helped you to understand friendly fire in RimWorld. There are many things on the Rim that can kill your colonists, but, if you use the information in this guide, you can mark one off the list.
If you enjoyed this Rimworld guide or it helped you at all please consider subscribing to the channel, liking the video, leaving a comment down below, and sharing it with others. If you’d like to reference a written version of this guide be sure to head over to my website at adamvseverything.com/guides.
And, as always, thanks for watching!