[Feedback] Mental Breaks, Fires, and some other annoyances

[Stormfox]

Heya

After a longer pause I recently started playing again, and some major annoyances the game had in a12-14 seem to still be a pain. In no special order:

1) Fires, especially those through "dry thunderstorm". Not only do they still leave barren wastelands, they are also hardly containable and the "scheduled rain" often comes far too late. I even had to reload a much earlier save two times with my last colony because of uncontainable fires near my base basically engulfing and burning down everything faster than my 5 or so pawns could handle at that time.

Not only is that an excessive amount of danger and work undone, but it also happens because of "nothing" (a normal thunderstorm is not even an event, let alone a major bad one, by game definition) - and regularly.


2) Mental breaks have been discussed at length and the entire mood system still needs a lot of work - but one thing that seems new to me is the duration of mental breaks. They take a full day, sometimes longer now - and often end because the pawn in question collapses from exhaustion, which is a bit excessive. Also, there should be a minimum time between breaks that prevents pawns from having a 1-day-break, collapsing, and having a 1-day-break 5 minutes after waking up and eating right again.


3)Medicine use could use a few quality of life fixes. One I have from a mod - setting a default for certain pawn groups (like colonists, animals, enemies and so on). What would be even more important, though, would be a way to differentiate treatment of differently problematic health issues with different quality meds.

For example, simple bruises, cuts and cracks as well as long-term but not critical diseases like gut worms should be treated with herbal meds, while "real" issues should be treated with the best meds available. This could be either done by classifying health issues into "minor" and "major" and letting players assign defaults and pawn specific sets of meds for those cases, or even better, have a list of possible health issues in a sub menu that players can sort into different groups and assign a sort of medicine to.


4) Pawns absolutely should be able to at least carry a small melee weapon even when equipped with a ranged one - or be able to use their ranged weapons as a club in melee. It is completely silly that a mad wolf reaching my hunter has to be fended off with my bare fists because the stupid pawn was not allowed to bring that shiny plassteel knife we have lying around.

[Trylobyte]

Before I respond, I'd like to say this should probably go in the Suggestions forum.

1)  Dry thunderstorms are a huge hazard on smaller maps.  You can minimize their impact by choosing to play on a larger map where they're less likely to strike near you and can't turn as much of the map into a moonscape before the rain arrives.  If one of them strikes near you, anywhere near you, it's best to try to put it out IMMEDIATELY.  For ones that've had time to spread, fight them like you'd fight real fires - You can't put out fires faster than they can spread, but you can use Clear Plants to create firebreaks.  Fires can only jump one tile in my experience so a two-tile-wide firebreak should stop it from incinerating your base.

2)  My only issue with mental breaks is how they often make the problem worse.  The bonus the pawn gets from catharsis is canceled out by the penalties from not sleeping, not eating, sleeping on the floor, being naked, and all the other stupid things they do.  This can then lead to them immediately having another break.  Pawns who aren't suffering an extreme break should still sleep and eat.

3)  I like the idea of not using expensive medicine on small stuff.  Perhaps sort injuries by the amount of damage inflicted by it (minor, major, critical) and diseases by severity (chronic versus fatal) and be able to assign a different level of treatment for each.  I'm not going to take the same steps for a bruise or a scratch as I am for a gunshot or a missing limb.

4)  Supported.  If you don't want to implement multiple carry and dynamic switching, perhaps simply have guns with bayonets on them that modify melee damage.  Not as effective as a proper melee weapon, but better than using your hands.

[lighthoof]

Point 4 removes the advantage melee fighters have when they actually engage the target. There should be some additional mechanics, like ability to use that second weapon slot for a shield, when using a melee weapon as main one. This way you won't be able to able to cut an enemy with a steel gladius in pieces with a superior plasteel knife you have as a sidearm

[ChJees]

Could add injured animals being fed lavish\fine meals to the ever growing list of annoyances. What a waste to feed animals meals at all when raw food works just as well.

[PotatoeTater]

I want to point out in order that every complaint you have about the current system has solutions and ways to prevent.

1. If you have been playing for a long time or even look at the wiki, it tells you fires are dangerous. It is one of the natural and manmade terrors you have to face. You can build fire breaks and firewalls out of stone, just like in real life, that way fire doesn't spread to buildings that easily. Also, late game you can uninstall firefoam poppers after you build them and keep some in a stockpile. When a fire appears you can install one close to it and then set it off with the colonist that installed it. Problem solved, it is all about planning and having a strategy to protect yourself, not hoping the game goes easy on you and nothing bad happens.

2. Mental Breaks are molded off of real life, when someone has a complete break down they don't take care of themselves, to be honest if you want it to be more realistic, you probably would have all your pawns killing themselves from how bleak the situation is. That being said, I play on extreme and even with the mood penalty from that difficulty, I rarely have mental breaks outside of minor ones. It is all about how you design your base, setup your schedule, and keep your colonists needs happy. Recruit a pawn that doesn't have that good of skills and make them your cleaners only. Setup mandatory joytime during the day when pawns moods start to get lowest. Grow cloths and place chairs at your work stations so colonists are comfortable while working and make sure you keep a stock of good clothes for them. Cloth is fine to uses for work clothing and then setup a uniform policy for combat with better stat clothing. Again, like with fires, you have to have a strategy setup and ready or else you will face problems.

3. Medicine already has a way to setup what type is used and how. A bar on every colonist exists so you can set what type of medicine is used when being treated. Micromanage your injuries, check every colonists and set what type they need for that time. Granted, the game could use pain killers and other preventative medicines; however, as seen with the current drug system, we have some now and the possibility of more to come. Rimworld has a pause button for a reason, the game is heavy about micromanaging your colonists and helping them to get things done properly. Just letting it run as the AI sees fit causes problems and while there does exist some policies you can setup to help you, your pawns only work as well as you play. You can't blame your low medicine on the fact that every time colonists argue and fight they waste meds, you can pause and check injuries and tell them they only get herbal or no meds at all this time, then once healed you can set it back.

4. The game is setup the way it is to allow for advantages of melee vs ranged. If your pawn can carry multiple weapon types, it takes away the strategy of preparing what weapons you want each pawn to have. Predator animals have a danger when being hunted, you can always send your hunters in groups while drafted to hunt them and then micro someone to carry it back, also you can have your hunter with tamed and trained animals so they will protect him from retaliating animals. This again is part of the strategy of Rimworld and how the game is meant to be played. The game isn't suppose to be easy. Your pawns aren't real colonists, they didn't come here to settle, they are trapped and like anyone in a survival situation, it never is easy. The game even says on higher difficulties that they are meant for those who want digital suffering and to make hard decisions. If you can't handle the micro and prep needed, try an easier difficulty, or go play something else that requires less strategy and time.

As a side note on animals being feed meals, it takes more raw food to feed anything than it does prepared, so the game will give downed animals meals because if its simple, it only takes 10 food units, while if they gave them raw, depending on the animal size it can take up to 50 raw food, which is the same as 5 simple meals. The game is just trying to save your food supply. Tynan has said that pawns food mechanics will be reworked soon like the clothing policies, but for now you just have to micro it if you don't like what the AI does.

[Stormfox]

I want to point out in order that every complaint you have about the current system has solutions and ways to prevent.

The question is not wether it is theoretically possible to cope with those problems but rather their frequency, severity and avoidability in contrast to the amount of micromanagement and fun factor. Some elements of rimworld just throw frustration at you without enhancing the gameplay. These are some of them that.

About fires:
The aforementioned complete base loss was almost unavoidable - almost fresh colony, no real way to cope with that. This was an extreme example, but I find the "barren wasteland" problem bad enough to experience it as unfun and unbalanced. Of course our rimworld is not Earth, but do you really see a normal thunderstorm, something that happens dozens of times per year in each region, setting off wildfires burning down entire regions? Yes, such things have happend. If it was classified as a major hazard like a mech raid or siege (and about as frequent as those), that might be allright. For an everyday "just weather" event, the consequences are far too severe.


About Breaks:
Again, they are NOT avoidable, especially not in the early stages of a colony. And especially not with the ridiculously unbalanced social effects of some traits (discussed at length in other threads before, no need to delve into that). I do not want them gone. I could even accept a rare case of berserk when warranted. The problem is, they happen ALL the time and the "problem pawns" often are never able to recover from that state, because they get stuck in the endless spiral of far-to-long-break-followed-by-collapse-then-another-break-because-of-malnutrition/illness-that-came-from-collapse.

An example:
In my newest game, my fifth colonist started with an addiction and had withdrawal symptoms for about half a year. That was a fun and interesting problem that was solvable. In this case, by simply coping with her fits for a few months. This of course meant that she was basically "out of order" until her addiction cleared, but I liked the idea, the story it told and there was a definitive end in sight. Still, there were times when she went through the aforementioned neverending break cycle for about a season, which was simply riciculous and unfun.

Since all of this happened basically at the beginning of a new colony in a halfway difficult setting (cassandra rough in tundra), there was not much else to do than take it. I was even relatively lucky once - her one berserk break hit her when she was the only one tending to the crops far enough from the rest, so she ran around until she collapsed.


About Medicine:
Of course there is the "micromanage every single wound every time someone gets hurt" way - and even then, there is no solution for a pawn with one major wound and a bunch of scratches or bruises. That still makes it fiddly and about as un-userfriendly as possible. A way to setup more detailed defaults would ease up on that kind of hassle without removing any of the depth of the health system.


About melee backups:
Your solution is again one of annoying micromanagement (and nothing new, I might add). Yeah, in my last game, I lured every single bear into my base to get shot by my turrets so I could safely dispose of them before they kill one of my hauler pigs, but that does not mean it felt anything but tedious (and somewhat exploity).

As for melee vs ranged balance - not only do personal shields enter the equation after a while, but the same realism that you seem to love so much would dictate that bringing a knife to a gun fight should be stupid. Allowing either small backup weapons or some kind of "weapon butt" attack that at least simulates using a club would not unbalance the current combat system much, but make it feel less frustrating and unimmersive. Most ranged combatants have low melee stats anyways since they tend to not train them, so proficient melees with shields would still have an advantage.

It's simply stupid that a seasoned shooter should need to fear a damn squirrel on a rampage, but that is exactly what happens if he misses his 2-3 shots before it pounces him. (slight exaggeration intended to make a point)

[milon]

Before I respond, I'd like to say this should probably go in the Suggestions forum.

This seems more like a Discussion thread and less like a Suggestion one. I'll leave it here.

[Trylobyte]

Before I respond, I'd like to say this should probably go in the Suggestions forum.

This seems more like a Discussion thread and less like a Suggestion one. I'll leave it here.

Fair enough, wasn't sure.  'S why you're the mod!

Now, on the subject...

Point 4 removes the advantage melee fighters have when they actually engage the target. There should be some additional mechanics, like ability to use that second weapon slot for a shield, when using a melee weapon as main one. This way you won't be able to able to cut an enemy with a steel gladius in pieces with a superior plasteel knife you have as a sidearm

Melee guys do have an advantage in melee over shooters, that being that they're melee guys.  They likely have a far better weapon and much better melee skills than their target (and if they don't that's their fault).  I'm not sure a Melee 4 with a plasteel knife would be much good against a Melee 12 with a steel longsword.  But at least there's a chance, yeah?  If I'm holding a perfectly good ten-pound club in the form of a rifle, why am I going to fight with my hands when I could beat them with the gun, put a knife on the end of the gun, or simply pull a knife?  It's not like knives are big.

That said, I'd definitely restrict this 'emergency melee' weapon to being a knife.  Though if we wanted to be really real, we could also allow pistols and shotguns to be fired even against a melee opponent right next to you, as that's sort of what they're designed for.

2. Mental Breaks are molded off of real life, when someone has a complete break down they don't take care of themselves, to be honest if you want it to be more realistic, you probably would have all your pawns killing themselves from how bleak the situation is.

Only people suffering the most severe mental breakdowns will completely forego sleep and starve themselves to death, despite this being standard behavior for colonists.  In fact, people are just as likely to overeat and oversleep when having a breakdown as they are to go the other way around.  While breakdowns often aren't an issue later on, it would be nice to let pawns eat and sleep during breakdowns to prevent the cycle of madness.  And personally, I'm a little surprised that suicide attempts aren't a possibility for an extreme break.  Might hit too close to home for some people.

I want to point out in order that every complaint you have about the current system has solutions and ways to prevent.

Everything has solutions, ways around, circumventions, mods, or other ways to get around them.  That's not the point the OP is making.  The OP's point is that yes, there are workarounds, but they're too cumbersome, obscure, frustrating, or unfun for how annoying the situation they counter is.  It's like complaining that your computer won't turn on and having the tech support guy tell you that it turns on just fine if you completely unplug everything first, blow all the dust out, then plug everything back in every time.  Yeah, it works, but it's needlessly cumbersome.

[PotatoeTater]

Now, on the subject...

Though if we wanted to be really real, we could also allow pistols and shotguns to be fired even against a melee opponent right next to you, as that's sort of what they're designed for.

You actually can, you just have to micro and order your pawn to fire on target, granted if he gets hit with a melee attack it restarts his weapon charging to fire, but if its a miss he will fire his gun still.

[greggbert]

Mental Breaks, fires and the other annoyances you mention are all solvable but you have to pay attention to things that the game doesn't throw in your face.  With the effective use of beer and smokeleaf, you can prevent mental breaks almost completely (on hard).  Any time I get a mood warning I just manually tell my colonist to smoke a J.  Beer every 2 days and only when joy is below 65%.

Also I notice a LOT of players ignore comfort and beauty which has a huge impact on mental breaks.  Make sure all workstations have chairs with a high comfort rating and have at least one colonist ALWAYS CLEANING.  The beautify modifiers for dirt are brutal. Put chocolate and insect jelly in your common room.  Make sure all your main rooms and pathways are pretty enough that everyone get's the advance beauty mood perk.

Also lots of pawns have character traits that contain mood bonuses such as nudist and prosophile and greedy.  DONT'T INGORE THOSE.

But by far beauty comfort and effective use of drugs is the key to preventing breaks.

If your colonist does have a break, tell the other colonsts to melee attack them then capture.  You will escape with just a few bruises and no damage to your colony.  Also fine meals are a great mood perk as well as a very expensive dining room.

For fires, just make sure you use either stone walls or wood with 2 wide concrete paths around it.  Then you're done.  Easy.  Stockpile at least 1000 wood just in case of emergency before the fires start in case of tree loss.  I never use poppers I just ignore fires.

I think those things are not annoyances you just have to pay attention to things that are buried a little deeper in the game.

[CrazyEyes]

Okay, fire breaks, yes, that seems to be pretty much working as intended.  It seems unfairly brutal if it catches you off guard, but if you plan ahead and make areas with nothing to burn you should be okay.  Even wood floors are fireproof, and if there's enough vegetation on your map that fire is potentially map-destroying then you should have no shortage of wood to build with.

As far as mental breaks go, I don't necessarily mind their frequency as much as I do that colonists will typically ignore their other needs and expose themselves to unnecessary danger because of them.  I'm sure we've all had that one colonist who decided to start wandering around in the middle of a raid and got shot to pieces because of it.  Not that that behaivior can't happen in real life, but the game should consider the circumstances more when it decides when and what kind of mental break a colonist has.  Right now it will apply a minor break thinking it is something that can be dealt with easily but results in the death of the colonist instead.

Beyond that, I agree that the level of disregard they show for their own well-being (not eating or sleeping) should be restrited to more extreme breaks, and the ones the game deems as "minor" should see the pawn wandering around, taking care of their own basic needs but refusing to do any useful work.

I do like that people's moods are more easily managed with the additon of drugs (and of course, beer).  Smart use of drug policies can turn a colony of berserk maniacs into a colony of people who are just managing to hold it together.  Smokeleaf, for example, is free to grow and produce joints from.  It requires no research and costs literally nothing but space and time.  Having your colonists smoke a joint a day if their mood drops below, say, 50% goes a long way towards insulating them from mental breaks.  The fact that you can set a policy to do this rather than keeping an eye on every single pawn makes it easy to set up this behavior.

Medicine is harder to handle in a way that doesn't involve direct player intervention 90% of the time.  The problem is alleviated somewhat by the fact that it's now possible to mass-produce regular medicine out of herbal.  Still, it's annoying when your doctor goes for the glitterworld medicine to treat bruises and cracks that have no chance of even becoming infected.  Right now the best way to handle the problem is to manually set all your colonists to herbal medicine only, and only upgrade their care if they get sick or infected or if you're planning to operate on them.  However, in the future it'd be nice to have some global settings for this so that our doctors will treat wounds approriately without our direct intervention.

The worst offender is the ranged vs. melee issue though.  I have a lot of problems with the system, but here's the most relevant: why does my soldier stop shooting just because the enemy has entered melee range?  Yes, it used to be the case that getting hit by a melee attack would reset your aim timer, but that doesn't seem to happen anymore as far as I can tell.  That means holding their fire and resorting to slap fighting would only make sense if my soldier actually had a backup melee weapon and was using that, but they don't, so why would they swing their fists rather than use their assault rifle?  I'll take a penalty to hit over piddling damage with bare fists any day.  And really, they should be able to at least use their gun as a club (at the cost of equipment durability), or fix a bayonet and use it like a spear.

To answer the cries of "but that's not fair!"  No.  It's not.  Why would it be?  A person with a knife against a person with a gun has very little chance of coming out on top of that fight, even if they survive long enough to get close.  The advantage melee fighters are supposed to have is in numbers, it shouldn't be artifically rigged to give them a fair chance 1-on-1.  If they manage to get into close quarters, that should put the shooter at a disadvantage, but not render them helpless.

[sininemm]

Handy way to put out wildfires is to make small patches of "grow potatoes" that surround the fire, one patch on each side. The pawns immediately consider that territory Home and zoom to put the fire out.

If the fire overruns the patch, delete it and replace it near the fire line. It works great for all but the most ridiculously spreading map-destroying fires.

[Stormfox]

Handy way to put out wildfires is to make small patches of "grow potatoes" that surround the fire, one patch on each side. The pawns immediately consider that territory Home and zoom to put the fire out.

If the fire overruns the patch, delete it and replace it near the fire line. It works great for all but the most ridiculously spreading map-destroying fires.

Unneccessarily complicated. Just paint a piece of home zone over the fire.

Later in the game, when you have a dozen colonists, that is usually what works. Early on, when you have 3-4 available people, trying to keep five storm induced brushfires in check is as unrealistic as the above suggestion of building your very first hut out of stone.

[Trylobyte]

Early on, when you have 3-4 available people, trying to keep five storm induced brushfires in check is as unrealistic as the above suggestion of building your very first hut out of stone.

I'm reminded of a game where I set up near a large patch of fertile ground, then decided to move it to a much larger open space (albeit one with weaker farming) nearby once I decided I wanted a big colony.  I was glad I did as, later, I had 3 flashstorms hit that first patch of ground before the end of the first year and turn it into a wasteland.  I would've been doomed if I had to rely on my colonists to put those fires out.