That seems like it is the case. Fires themselves don't seem to impact FPS much, but at the height of the boomalope fireworks display (it was pretty damn amazing!) it started to judder a bit... and then it started raining. Not quite heavily enough to extinguish the dead boomalopes while there was enough left of them to eat, but at least there were a couple of wounded ones that we finished off.
Three boomalopes actually survived unharmed, crazily enough. They managed to rush through the thinnest part of the flamewall at what was basically the last possible moment.
Anyway, all that is old news.
I
justlast night had a ridiculous moment, a classic Rimworld/DF moment which has left my colony in tatters and made me seriously consider savescumming- it took some effort to stop myself, believe me.
Things were going alright, we were a bit low on food but we'd just managed to fend off a tribal raid without much trouble, killing one outright and capturing another, whilst a third was downed as he tried to run and had his head beaten in with a club (my two defenders in that battle were both blessed with the 'bloodlust' trait), while only one made it out alive.
As my main colonist came through the gates with his captive, though, he went into a smokeleaf-deprived daze and dropped the guy in the swamp-- at pretty much the same time as, out on the other side of the fort, another colonist (the one who'd had his wife and son brutally killed as they chased him into our territory with a group of fellow raiders, something I think he was still kinda cut-up about) had a breakdown of his own, going berserk.
At first I was just mildly amused, since he was out gathering wood alone and there was no-one around for him to bother except for perhaps a cassowary. Then, as I watched in mounting horror, he ran
past the cassowary and rushed an elephant that was lurking just off-screen. Its immediate reaction as he tried to stab it with his shiv was to gore him horribly in the arm with its tusks.
He got up again, and was gored again- and this time he managed to piss it off.
I stationed my one good marksman who
wasn't dazed at some embrasures in the nearby wall and had him try to kill it, but his arrows were mostly ineffectual. Then I had the injured guy's closest friend (I checked his social screen to see who might be willing to undertake such a daring mission to save him, but it helped that this guy was also notably more expendable) rush out to try and rescue him whilst the archer provided covering fire.
I didn't really expect it to go
well, but... the elephant charged over there and
gored his friggin' head off in its first strike.
With mounting desperation I had another colonist, the cook and also one of our better medics, run out there with some meds to stabilize the guy, but she too was hit by the elephant after managing to stem only half of his bleeding wounds. It tore her shoulder off, apparently - I am unsure if that means the meat of her shoulder itself, or just that the arm was torn off at the shoulder. I'm guessing the latter, since pawns with severed necks visibly lose their heads, too.
Eventually I did what I probably should have done ages ago and had someone arrest my dazed rifleman- having to beat him down with a club, mangling his ring finger in the process. I had Tony, the other marksman, swap out his bow for the guy's rifle, and he was eventually able to muddle through and wear the elephant down and kill it. Poor Taiki was long dead by then, sadly. We managed to save the cook, though, which is fortunate since nobody else has much in the way of cooking skill or any passion to learn.
So, yeah...
Tl;dr: Colonist who arrived as a chased refugee and was still all sad about us killing his wife and son goes berserk, attacks an elephant with a shiv, sends it into a rage and is then gored horribly, causing the death of one pawn and the crippling of another as they attempt to rescue him.
He died, too. Also, these are the first colonists to die in this game, come to think of it. Damn.
I started writing that out last night whilst half-asleep, right after it happened, and it was even more rambly, can you believe that? This is the abridged version. Edit: Oh! And other exceedingly amusing moment from last night:
After the elephant was dealt with, Tony - who had received a nasty bruise from its tusks in the process - was resting in our one hospital bed.
I know, this fort is a friggin' shambles. At that point a raid came. I was rather concerned at first, since, well, one of our fighters was dead and everyone else was wounded to varying degrees of severity.
Fortunately, the raid turned out to be just a few tribals with melee weapons. The most of them charged down to start battering on the main gate, which is when I noticed something interesting about the layout of the room with the "infirmary" in it- right next to that hospital bed is an embrasure overlooking the gate.
I have an amazing mental image of Tony just sitting up in bed with a weary groan, placing the barrel of his rifle through the slit, and neatly gunning down two of these savages and scattering the rest before simply lying down in bed and going back to sleep.
'Twas a heartwarming moment indeed, after our recent losses.