Lesson learned. While I was drowning on the construction work of my new base, I noticed an NPC who was in the area of my soon to be old base. So I go in, and sure enough, an NPC was there… and it was one of the hostile ones. I try to persuade him, but he quickly turned hostile. I saw he only had a quarterstaff on hand… but little did I know that he already had his dirty paws on some of my stuff.
He got one of my simple flamethrowers, one of the many trophies I nabbed on many other NPCs. I turn thermal dissipation on, because he just set my base on fire. On the bright side, the bionic saved my skin from getting cooked… on the not so bright side, there was fire indoors.
So I quickly dispatch him via burst fire from a Saiga. Then I go to my tools pile and get all the fire extinguishers I had and save my base. Managed to save it before it turned ugly. The fire was only two tiles away from a 30 gallon drum of gasoline. For most part, the only damage I could see was a few broken bookshelves.
Checking the thieving bastard’s corpse, I noticed that he tried to make off with some of my spare parts, mostly electronic scraps and high quality lens, the rivtech ampoules, some silver bracelets, and a rocket.
I’m not even gonna butcher his corpse. I’ll put him outdoors, drop a couple of rags, and incinerate him. Over and over and over again until there’s nothing left.