ITT: We discuss irreplaceable body parts and unfixable permanent injury damage.

[theapolaustic1]

Wow ... the decision to euthanize a functional vegetable, or keep them alive and as comfortable as possible ... some of you don't think that's dramatic?  You guys are freakin monsters.

I'm using vegetable interchangeably. A brain-injured colonist can still move around and do stuff (though at levels like 3/10, they might starve to death if too far from the food), but a shattered spine leaves them paralyzed in bed. And like I said in my post above, a foregone conclusion isn't really drama, it's just a different death.

[Boston]

Wow ... the decision to euthanize a functional vegetable, or keep them alive and as comfortable as possible ... some of you don't think that's dramatic?  You guys are freakin monsters.

Not to mention that, with the addition of the social system, that vegetable might be someones son, mother, fiance or best friend.  The survivors didn't just have to see them get initially injured, now they have to make the decision on whether to freaken mercy kill their loved one. And, if you think the people are going to be "rational/logical" about the decision..... yeah, sure, come visit the real world sometime.

If that isn't drama, I apparently don't know what drama is.

[Zombra]

A foregone conclusion isn't really drama, it's just a different death.

It's not a foregone conclusion.  It's just what you have decided you'll always do because it's "game-optimal".  I suppose you also always murder lone travelers to steal the fillings in their teeth, just because you can get away with it i.e. "game-optimal".

If you're not interested in the meaning of the lives and deaths of your "pawns", if you think of them as nothing more than pieces on a game board, tools to help you "win", you just mayyyybe have missed the point of the game.

[theapolaustic1]

A foregone conclusion isn't really drama, it's just a different death.

It's not a foregone conclusion.  It's just what you have decided you'll always do because it's "game-optimal".  I suppose you also always murder lone travelers to steal the fillings in their teeth, just because you can get away with it i.e. "game-optimal".

If you're not interested in the meaning of the lives and deaths of your "pawns", if you think of them as nothing more than pieces on a game board, tools to help you "win", you just mayyyybe have missed the point of the game.

You keep insisting I've missed the point of the game because you've got some need to be mightier than thou on an internet forum, but you're not interested in me saying there's drama in "do I work to save them or get rid of them now". You're just keen on playing general hospital and need to be condescending about it for some reason.

[Vaporisor]

Wow ... the decision to euthanize a functional vegetable, or keep them alive and as comfortable as possible ... some of you don't think that's dramatic?  You guys are freakin monsters.

My previously mentioned comatose brain injured victim was the sole occupant of the ship I sent back into space.... o7

I have yet to have a win of rimworld like that one.  The colonists live on, and their loved one returns to space, as was his dream.... note, this was before social so was 100% roleplay.

You keep insisting I've missed the point of the game because you've got some need to be mightier than thou on an internet forum, but you're not interested in me saying there's drama in "do I work to save them or get rid of them now". You're just keen on playing general hospital and need to be condescending about it for some reason.

I do not see what you are refering to with the mightier than thou.  But the purpose of rimworld is to be a story generator.  If we go to your original post, you said that keeping an unusable pawn alive is "punishing the player" 

What Zombra was getting at is that the point of the game is to consider it.  That is why there is no "win" aside from build a ship, just to give a goal if players choose to go for it.  It is my point as well.  I have a colony, resources are tight.  If I keep the person alive, it is a drain on resources and space, but to take off life support for a coma patient is hard, but necessary.  Still hard on those they live with.

It we expand it to things like a spine injury and 3 brain injuries essentially, now we have a conscious person.  From a game standpoint, yup, just biomass the character.  Make space for the next.  The design of the game is built around not approaching it like a game.  To make wanting to kill that brain injured person a dilemma for the player.

So it cycles back to the original point of the topic and some of the talks.  To have a heal all, it devalues the design concept of the game.  The earlier discussion of having more gradient to the level of incapacitation did somehow lead into a question of morality.  Which in the end is part of the foundation of the game.  Make both choices difficult and punishing.  If it wasn't this way, then what is the point?

It kind of started with the previous quote reply you did of mine.

"It's silly to think that your colonists would go into conniptions over euthanizing a potato while they're on the brink of starvation, any more so than you'd expect them to freak out over "organ harvesting" because you removed an extremely infected kidney (to be clear, they don't freak out over that one)."

It isn't silly to think that because of something called hope.  Even in a life threatening situation such as survival on some -70c ice sheet, that person comatose people will still hold onto the hope that they will recover regardless of medical.  But amputation?  People do not hesitate on that call.  They do what they can to not let somebody die.  So that example is what started the thread drama.  In that situation you exampled, they are different.

Result is I think this followup comment got missed:

"Now here's where the drama comes in: Do you really think it's more dramatic to have "do I kill him now and suffer the consequences, or a bit later?", or to have "Do I try to keep him alive until I can fix him (even if that's in a year, or two or more), or do I kill him now?". As it stands, it's a foregone conclusion. There is no drama in knowing the outcome from the start, that's the antithesis of drama."

I agree.  If there was the potential for "hope" in the game, then most definitely it is more drama from play and roleplay to supporting the disabled pawn.  The more dire the situations for the colony, the more it weighs one way or the other.  But the game mechanics do not support the "hope" concept for certain injuries. 

Those players who are not immersive (I do not mean that is derogatory, is first person vs third person thing) then it is just silly to keep a broken spine or a 2 brain alive.  Our logic dictates that it is a worse thing.  It is a drain on finite resources and mechanics state that just being alive means raids and other hostilities would be that much worse.  So is better for everybody to just euthanize.

It isn't so much morality, but perspective.  A detatched observational 3rd person vs an invested immersed 1st person view when playing.

[Zombra]

You keep insisting I've missed the point of the game because you've got some need to be mightier than thou on an internet forum, but you're not interested in me saying there's drama in "do I work to save them or get rid of them now". You're just keen on playing general hospital and need to be condescending about it for some reason.

Sigh, and you're being condescending right back, so where does that leave us?

-----

The alternative you propose certainly has its drama too, as well as a "crunchier" gameplay decision.  But honestly, I think the decision the game has now is more interesting because in gameplay terms it's a no-brainer: a unit that can't work is obviously of no use to the colony.

But if you frame it as a scene in a story, the drama is super intense!  "Everyone works in my colony, so see to it that you're never injured.  If you can't lift a gun or a shovel, you don't get fed.  No exceptions, no loopholes.  I have a bullet saved for each of you."  Jesus Christ!  What would it be like to live in that colony?  To me that's much better theater than that one episode where Worf hurts his back and has to face being crippled but you know it's all going to end up fine because there's always a fix for everything.

And the other decision (keeping them alive) is equally fascinating, and continues to be fascinating with every "wasted" resource.

[Vaporisor]

But if you frame it as a scene in a story, the drama is super intense!  "Everyone works in my colony, so see to it that you're never injured.  If you can't lift a gun or a shovel, you don't get fed.  No exceptions, no loopholes.  I have a bullet saved for each of you."  Jesus Christ!  What would it be like to live in that colony?  To me that's much better theater than that one episode where Worf hurts his back and has to face being crippled but you know it's all going to end up fine because there's always a fix for everything.

I made mention of it in my long edit above, but quoting so you get it as well.  It does come down to perspective.  A detached third person vs immersed first person perspective when playing.  If removed, and guiding/playing the game like it is an ant farm, that is a fair play.  In which case, the drama is not there.  Logically it isn't a hard choice.  Deal with the temp mood penalty for the long term betterment of all.

First person immersive, the drama is as you and I see it and play.  So what the OP is saying, from what I gather anyways is that the game needs some mechanical gradient to make that call more difficult.  We argue that to have a full heal that is too easily accessible devalues the morality that us first person immersion players find a struggle whereas from third person, there is no struggle.  It is what must be done.  Neither call is wrong, hence why some gradience could really value if balanced right.

[Gennadios]

A foregone conclusion isn't really drama, it's just a different death.

It's not a foregone conclusion.  It's just what you have decided you'll always do because it's "game-optimal".  I suppose you also always murder lone travelers to steal the fillings in their teeth, just because you can get away with it i.e. "game-optimal".

If you're not interested in the meaning of the lives and deaths of your "pawns", if you think of them as nothing more than pieces on a game board, tools to help you "win", you just mayyyybe have missed the point of the game.

This feels like another argument that assumes easy access to resources. On ice sheets, gravel zones are a precious resource, and every potato that doesn't go to your colonists goes to the muffalo that provides the parkas and turqs. Maybe I suck at the game but I've never been able to secure a reliable enough food source on an ice sheet map to even consider being sentimental. My main consideration with the gravely disabled is whether to euthanize right away or if I can hold out for a trader to stock up on chocolate and beer before the deed gets done.

The point of the game is to be a colony/survival simulator with a horribly imbalanced AI that a segment of the forums insists is a feature. It doesn't take place in a resource stuffed Judeo-Christian Midworld nation state where the gravely injured can be kept on life support for the duration of their natural lifespans.

With those considerations in mind, you're playing the game wrong if you don't enuthanize the colonist. Either the AI or the biome is too easy.

[Vaporisor]

With those considerations in mind, you're playing the game wrong if you don't enuthanize the colonist. Either the AI or the biome is too easy.

Like my previous replies, it is the type of player.  I play the game like a roleplay story.  In the ones I have started posting in forums, I just executed my good smith/melee combatant because was troublemaker.  It was not for good gameplay or game too easy, it was roleplaying a story.  So depending on how I am playing the colony, I might keep somebody alive just for "story"  It depends on the colony.  Psychopaths, or if they are the honorable ones.

Same thing with graves, animals etc.  Logically a person should never build graves but instead put all bodies in a freezer specifically to feed their dogs.  People will still build crypts though.  My one colony has two raiders in crypts specifically cause they had a relation to colonists. 

Roleplay.

[Gennadios]

With those considerations in mind, you're playing the game wrong if you don't enuthanize the colonist. Either the AI or the biome is too easy.

Like my previous replies, it is the type of player.  I play the game like a roleplay story.  In the ones I have started posting in forums, I just executed my good smith/melee combatant because was troublemaker.  It was not for good gameplay or game too easy, it was roleplaying a story.  So depending on how I am playing the colony, I might keep somebody alive just for "story"  It depends on the colony.  Psychopaths, or if they are the honorable ones.

Same thing with graves, animals etc.  Logically a person should never build graves but instead put all bodies in a freezer specifically to feed their dogs.  People will still build crypts though.  My one colony has two raiders in crypts specifically cause they had a relation to colonists. 

Roleplay.

But does your roleplay get hurt if there's a pie in the sky cure hidden somewhere in the research tree or the cargo hold of a trade ship that may or may not spawn in 30 day's time? It's fine that some players see drama in the choices currently presented, but does it detract anything for features to be added that cater to the people that don't see much of a choice in what there is?

I keep relations and former colonists in graves as well (except for that one bastard that went crazy and hospitalized two colonists before being put down,) I'd just rather have one more grave and an empty bed than to dedicate a room to being a resource intensive sarcophagus.

[Boston]

A foregone conclusion isn't really drama, it's just a different death.

It's not a foregone conclusion.  It's just what you have decided you'll always do because it's "game-optimal".  I suppose you also always murder lone travelers to steal the fillings in their teeth, just because you can get away with it i.e. "game-optimal".

If you're not interested in the meaning of the lives and deaths of your "pawns", if you think of them as nothing more than pieces on a game board, tools to help you "win", you just mayyyybe have missed the point of the game.

This feels like another argument that assumes easy access to resources. On ice sheets, gravel zones are a precious resource, and every potato that doesn't go to your colonists goes to the muffalo that provides the parkas and turqs. Maybe I suck at the game but I've never been able to secure a reliable enough food source on an ice sheet map to even consider being sentimental. My main consideration with the gravely disabled is whether to euthanize right away or if I can hold out for a trader to stock up on chocolate and beer before the deed gets done.

The point of the game is to be a colony/survival simulator with a horribly imbalanced AI that a segment of the forums insists is a feature. It doesn't take place in a resource stuffed Judeo-Christian Midworld nation state where the gravely injured can be kept on life support for the duration of their natural lifespans.

With those considerations in mind, you're playing the game wrong if you don't enuthanize the colonist. Either the AI or the biome is too easy.

Considering how fully half the available biomes in the game (Arid Shrubland, Temperate Forest, Boreal Forest, and Tropical Rainforest, although that is a stretch) are perfectly survivable, I really wonder exactly why the Ice Sheet is used as the benchmark.

It shouldn't be. If anything, Temperate Forest should be, for reasons outlined in "Guns, Germs and Steel".

[Zombra]

I made mention of it in my long edit above, but quoting so you get it as well.  It does come down to perspective.  A detached third person vs immersed first person perspective when playing.  If removed, and guiding/playing the game like it is an ant farm, that is a fair play.  In which case, the drama is not there.  Logically it isn't a hard choice.  Deal with the temp mood penalty for the long term betterment of all.

Personally, I think it's fantastic that there are players out there who will slaughter their own colonists without a second thought.  Again, that makes the whole situation, this time on the meta level, more dramatic, not less. 

This feels like another argument that assumes easy access to resources.

You have woefully misread me.  You seem to think that I advocate never euthanizing colonists.  To me that is just as dull as always euthanizing them.  Dramatically, the middle ground between the two is where the rubber meets the road.  When the material penalty for the moral decision becomes so great that the moral decision becomes unsustainable.  Despite your protestations, I don't believe that that point is ever "always, instantly".

And despite my blanket statement above ("Monsters!"), I don't believe as Vaporisor says, that players are either 100% merciless number jugglers or 100% moralizing role-players who damn the consequences.  I don't think that any player wants to kill his own colonists.  Some of us will keep them alive as long as possible, to the ruination of the colony.  Others will kill them immediately, almost spitefully, and blame the game for making it such an economically sound decision.  But I think most of us fall somewhere in between, and where exactly is a fascinating question.

I think that may be what this is really about.  theapolaustic1 wants a hard-headed, material reason - any reason - to justify feeding and caring for a crippled colonist.  He feels he is "forced" to kill by the necessities of the situation, though he can't escape that it's really his choice.  He wants a straw to grasp for so he doesn't have to make the hard decision.  But the decision is inescapable, and whatever desperation drove him, he chose to take the life of a loved one.

[Gennadios]

Considering how fully half the available biomes in the game (Arid Shrubland, Temperate Forest, Boreal Forest, and Tropical Rainforest, although that is a stretch) are perfectly survivable, I really wonder exactly why the Ice Sheet is used as the benchmark.

Not a benchmark, an example.

There are enough ways to play the game that it's easy to not understand a person's stance simply because the issue at hand isn't as severe in someone else's playstyle. I felt that this might be the case and threw it out there.

He feels he is "forced" to kill by the necessities of the situation, though he can't escape that it's really his choice.  He wants a straw to grasp for so he doesn't have to make the hard decision.  But the decision is inescapable, and whatever desperation drove him, he chose to take the life of a loved one.

But the bigger issue is the lack of uncertainty in the situation.  Euthanizing a colonist during a famine rightly feels like a necessity. Euthanizing a colonist during a rough patch and then having a trade ship pass by with an item that had a 37% of curing the colonist (given the surgeon's skill) a few days later would feel more like drama. Regret lives off of what-ifs, and the latter situation would most certainly have more of them.

[rexx1888]

all the talk of story is kind of missing the point.

if you are in a poor colony with no resources, then you get your various stories about monsters killing useless people an sentimental saps saving their loved ones so some other git can eat them for lunch.

no one is trying to take that away. It would just be nice to know the option is there to fix problems too. An in THEORY it IS!!! if we talk of the canon of the game, glitterworlds exist. An they do have a way to save a person with a broken spine etc etc. An if every player was on that page, the optimal goal ACTUALLY becomes send them to space. But also not because trying that may get you killed etc etc. The problem is, the canon isnt the game, an there is no trader who passes by with scar-spray, the glitterworld medicine for those pesky scars that seem to hurt so much even though that makes little sense.

An that is an actual LITERAL oversight, because the canon says one thing an the mechanics say quite another. If you dont like that, then change what Glitterworld means, or fix the mechanics. Itd still be nice from a gameplay perspective to fix some of those injuries an to actually have to make those choices. An personally, that makes the drama all the more interesting, because i also feel like i have some choices in the matter.

[GeorgeMichaelElkanich]

Whenever you have any kind of spine injury , always check that to a Spine Surgeon because a little injury can be a big one if not healed at right time.