Tynan, could we get some clarification please

[puddlejumper448]

When I started playing the testing version, I encountered what I thought was a bug, so I started tracking it. I came to the conclusion that it probably wasn't a bug, but I would like some clarification on how this is actually worked out. This is about the new mood de/buffs, feeling great, good, bad, terrible. I kept a log for 120 days, checking every day, and for my colonists it didn't go so well. My starting three were more likely to get bad than anything, while the two I gained (I kept it at 5 colonists for my own sanity lol) were close to even.Here are the final breakdowns:


(percentages are rounded to the nearest whole, may not equal exactly 100)

Will had 120 days and never once saw Great, but maybe will himself was just bugged, my other colonists were fairly random, with a small lean toward the negative for my starters. Here's what I would like clarification on though, is this suppose to be random like it seems (and says in game), or is it based on some factors like people have said, in which case it needs to be a lot more clearly defined.

If it is random, i feel like we traded one unsolvable negative (the old colony wealth negative) for a new unsolvable negative. I probably wouldn't be bothered by this as much if the Days with Nothing was above 50% so that all of them were more rare personally.

On the other hand, if it is based upon other factors, what i saw someone say was bad moods give you feeling bad, which seems purely punitive, and good moods give you feeling good, which is kind of useless at that point, they are already in a good mood. Also if this is the case, it should say that in game, which is why i'm skeptical that this is true.

Which one is it? Also what is everyone else's opinion on this new feature?

[Tynan]

It's entirely random, and its purpose is to add some variation to the mood system so:

1. Your colonists don't all go insane at the same moment as they cross a shared mood threshold in lock-step, and...
2. It's less attractive to try to game the mood system by abusing your colonists so they just barely stay above their insanity threshold all the time, and...
3. When things go wrong, some of your colonists in good moods will stay stable. This desynchronization effect interrupts some negative feedback loops and makes colony death more drawn-out (but still interestingly dramatic!), which is always a good thing.

I hope that clears things up.

[puddlejumper448]

It's entirely random, and its purpose is to add some variation to the mood system so:

1. Your colonists don't all go insane at the same moment as they cross a shared mood threshold in lock-step, and...
2. It's less attractive to try to game the mood system by abusing your colonists so they just barely stay above their insanity threshold all the time, and...
3. When things go wrong, some of your colonists in good moods will stay stable. This desynchronization effect interrupts some negative feedback loops and makes colony death more drawn-out (but still interestingly dramatic!), which is always a good thing.

I hope that clears things up.

Actually yes it did clear a lot of things up, and I see now that while i was keeping the log I must not have been actually playing much, none of these circumstances really came up, although now that I see what all it can do it does make a lot more sense. I think it tripped me up because it was mainly all bad in the early game and evend out in the late game, I guess I just got really unlucky. I will keep an eye though, maybe my problem with will was related to a traity he had if its possible, like a bad meshing, sadly I don't remember his traits

[Tynan]

Yeah, random sequences don't look like people tend to expect "random" to look, intuitively. It's intuitive to expect random to imply a lot of alternation between states, but real randomness has a lot more repeated outputs than you'd think.

[userfredle]

A nice addition there tynan, it is interesting to watch my neurotic colonists work with this, really adds some penalty for not having mood boosters around the colony

[RickyMartini]

Interesting! When these moods where announced you just said they were random moodifiers to add variation, but you clearly had a nice idea behind it and it even makes sense. I really think that "colony death" has been stepped down a little..