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So I thought it would be fun to try the lone explorer start on an ice sheet (with some mountains, not sea ice!), and I was doing pretty well with Cassandra Extreme but had the consistent problem that all the newcomers who wanted to join Engie (yes, Engie popped up at the 10th choice for a starting colonist) were all complete garbage.

So Engie was happily building her base when a polar bear snuck up on her and ate her.  *sigh*

Is there any way to get useful recruits on extreme?  And by "useful" I'm not asking for a lot -- not a drug addict, not a heart attack waiting to happen, not blind or brawler or unable to mine and farm.  Someone who is actually an asset rather than a mouth to feed that attracts pirates.

And if the only way to get decent recruits is to drop the difficulty level to a boring medium... is there any other way to make the game more exciting?  Hmmm, if I build statues with my surplus silver maybe I can attract more numerous / well equipped pirates to give the crew a challenge?

Well it's just bad RNG on your part.  Difficulty doesn't affect the quality of who you'll encounter, but the quantity.  Every pawn is randomly rolled, not in favor of anything besides equipment in raids.  Your best bet is to build a comm. console and hope that a pirate merchant or slaver has someone of value you can afford or kidnap a promising visitor.  At least that'll increase your pool of pawn choices. 

I feel your pain.

I will be sitting at 5 colonist for years because nobody that is actually worth taking would come.

I'm also irritated by the fact that the last patch made 3 traits that make pawns either useless or an EXTREME liability.

Chemical fascination/interest are death sentences waiting to happen, or at LEAST an extreme cost waiting to happen due to inevitable addiction and organ damage.  True, you could burn all drugs immediately upon receiving them but that could fail (raid hits, drug binge happens before you clean it up) and misses plenty of dropped items that could be useful in later raids.

Pyromaniac is completely intolerable.  Even with a completely stone base with stone beds, the pyro will still seek out stockpiles and stuff and start burning. 

the fact that the game randomly generates traits and 3 of the possible choices will make a pawn useless is a real pain.  I can somewhat see the point of keeping chemical fascination in (though with the permanent damage and overdosing its a huge pain), but pyro is an immediate "no" - i think -  for everyone.

I would love to see the pyro trait be reworked. I cant stand the idea of having a pyro in my colony.

I *instantly* turn pyromaniacs into snacks and hats.  They're simply not tolerable.

A more subtle problem is that wanderer joins event ruins any chance of running a slave trader colony. Because of storyteller meddling, chance of incapacitating an enemy drop as your base population grows - you know, just in case you will recruit them.

I'd kinda prefer that we be given the option to accept/reject the wanderer joins event. There are times where I don't really want new pawns joining my colony since I prefer to keep it small. Most times if they are undesirable, I'd stick a melee weapon on them and have them charge raiders when they come by... gives a -mood debuff for a little while when they get wasted but at least I don't have to keep feeding them.

That said, I do think the randomness to traits is and skills is a fun and interesting part of Rimworld. It makes us value the pawns who are really good and thus feel the loss quite well if they get killed. Quite often, I'd keep my favourite pawns in the rear during battles and have the pawns I don't really value in front so they take the brunt of the attacks.

I don't get what's so bad about the Pyro trait. Firestarting is by far the easiest mental break to handle. All you need is a drafted pawn to babysit the pyro. Yes, it requires extreme micro-management but it lasts a couple of minutes at worst. No pyro has ever managed to start a fire that lasted more than a fraction of a second in any of my colonies.

Colony reputation should affect chance of events like wanderer joins. A colony that sells slaves or human leather should be avoided, or draw a very different kind of people.

Ya, pyro is actually no threat when you have enough pawns with firefighting set to "1". Chemical turns your colony in a strict "no drugs area". Getting valuable colonists is a problem, right now (year 4 or 5) I have six, three of them I took only because I really needed the manpower (jealous, lazy or has a tendency to break). I use the tranq turret mod (https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=29297.0) for one or two seasons now which gave me prisoners to replace my liabilities. The wounds of that turret deal little damage but inflict +15% pain and -25% movement, bypassing the RNG death but still being somewhat lethal. (4-5 hits to down, 6 hits -> painful death). I doubt that my colony would grow beyond the current size without some way to increase the pool. Although, it has below -40°C most of the time meaning that most raids are mechas.

pre post edit: b0rsuk has a point, I'd appreciate a higher chance for certain people if it fits the colonies ideology.

So attached is another example of what I'm talking about.  At first he looks good.  But what are the three attributes that are critical for survival?

Shooting, Growing, and Mining.

And what skill level in those three does this pawn have?

Oh, sure, he has plenty of *other* skills... that are totally useless on Day 4 when I'm trying to build power supplies and potato farms to keep my ice sheet buddies from starving to death.

[attachment deleted by admin due to age]

His stats are actually quite usable. He can haul, is a very good doctor and passable constructor and has a skill that gives him something to do in the lategame (research). The problem is rather that volatile and slowpoke are pretty bad.

Still, as far as bad colonist go, this one is actually pretty servicable. I would not buy him from a slave trader, but he is good enough for free.

You'll be desperate for a warden with 13 social by the time you finally do find a prisoner that passes your overly strict selection criteria.

Not a mod, and a bit cheaty IMO, but if it floats your boat...

Scenario editor -> forced trait -> too smart | 100% | all characters
Scenario editor -> allowed age -> 20-29

Does not get rid of useless pawn, but at least you can be sure you will have a decent trait  / decent health on randoms. You can even put hardworking or industrious (all will have that trait so there will be no social penalty vs lazy).

That dude is also a potentially great melee warrior with prostophile.

I agree the "wanderer joins" event could use some tweaking.  As for "useless" colonists, I find truly useless ones to be few and far between.  In my a16 colony, a staggeringly ugly pyromaniac has been my workhorse miner and hunter/soldier.  She's fine as long as I keep her out of the base and alone as much as possible.  I have a character with a chemical interest, who has had a few addictions I've had to work through.  She's a 20 constructor, 15 doctor, and 13 social, so we tolerate her excesses (she's also married to one guy, but sleeping with another guy right across the hall.  Quite a character).  Managing a Rimworld colony is sort of similar to being a sports coach - your job is to provide guidance and get the most out of the players you are given.

Wouldn't call 'Too Smart' a desirable trait, really, especially not early on where mood fluctuates a lot more.  If they come with anything else that impacts their mental break threshold they're going to break down more than an autodoor.

Generally, I find 'time bomb' characters (pyros, chems, characters who break super-easy) to be liabilities and unless they're exceptionally good (Eadras has some examples) I'm not going to put up with them.  Sure I could put up with them, but I'd rather not take the chance that my pyro will go on a firestarting spree in the farms/stockpiles when nobody's around to stop him or having to redesign my entire base so the resident chem doesn't overdose on the beer/flake/yayo I'm selling (causing a huge mood penalty when he dies) or snort that luciferium we pulled out of an ancient danger five minutes ago.

Quote from: cultist on February 03, 2017, 03:24:22 AMI don't get what's so bad about the Pyro trait. Firestarting is by far the easiest mental break to handle. All you need is a drafted pawn to babysit the pyro. Yes, it requires extreme micro-management but it lasts a couple of minutes at worst. No pyro has ever managed to start a fire that lasted more than a fraction of a second in any of my colonies.

Excuse me?  That doesn't work so well if your pyro decides to torch your base while you're under attack, as an easy example.  ALL of my pawns are always set to "1" for firefighting, in a compact base mostly built of stone, and it's been a serious problem more than once.

1.  Animal hunting colonist lacking notification is inconsistent with the game mechanics as a whole.  I recommend ruthlessly savescumming that until it gets fixed.  There is no self-consistent logic to not-notify on predator hunting colonist that would wind up avoiding support for not-notifying on sieges, raids, infestations, or mech ships.  The reason we get notifications for raids is the same reason the predator hunting colonist notification needs a look.

2. Don't be too selective with pawns.  If they can't do a few things, they are still valuable as long as they're doing something generating value/not idling.  There ARE useless pawns, ones with no passion and can't do dumb or skilled labor + can't fight or some such.  These are very rare.

Brawler is a fine trait btw.  Too many people underestimate melee even on high difficulties.  It's not viable vs mechs or boom manhunters (not that boom manhunters is hard to deal with otherwise) but can trash most other encounters.

Someone counted worthless pawns made by players and like half of them was like that, so its not that rare.  :P

Some colonists, while not technically useless, are damn near close to that. What can Bee do in my flat Ice Sheet colony ??
(http://wstaw.org/m/2017/02/03/soUseful_png_750x750_q85.jpg)
- she can't fight. She can spray with an awful heavy smg, that's it.
- social, animals, medicine, cooking, art, crafting. You only want your most skilled colonist to perform one of these. In ice sheet, I can't even give her cotton or leather to practice, and I have one good artist so I can't afford to waste stone on a flat map.
- I already have 2 good constructors, and a bunch of backup crappy ones like her.
- I have 2 growers with skill 7, plus two or so around 4 and a passion.
- I have two better miners with passion, and it's a flat map.
- I have an unemployed bartender with 11ish Cooking skill.
+ okay, she's my second best researcher ! Yay ! The other one is 9 + passion.

I have around 3 colonists like these, except she has no niche to fill. Soo... a third dedicated hauler/cleaner ? It will be a looong time before I research mortars, it's the only other thing she can do. And I caught some bullets to save her ! Now she's going to be a decoy wearing personal shield.

Even without passion she will get to 10 and its pretty decent, above that she will lose xp but 11 shooting can still be enough.

^

Put Bee on night shift.  Set clean/haul to 2, and research 2.  Give her a personal shield and a spear for raids.  Even gutter trash hits pretty hard with lowish cooldowns on those.

Once you get a better night shift researcher:

Low skills like cooking level up pretty fast if set dedicated to it, early levels are cheap.  So if your bartender with 11 can do something else effectively, consider swapping.

Alternatively, make her spam cutting stones in between her cleaning/hauling.  Put her decently high priority crafting, then put a 10+ skill requirement on your forge, tailoring bench etc but set stone cutting to no skill requirement or only allow crappy crafters there.  Stone cutting is always at least kind of useful.

I don't jump in excitement seeing such a colonist but calling her useless is a big reach.  She even has an excellent trait for a melee fodder dedicated cleaner/hauler (fast walker).

Shurp

As someone who plays on somewhat challenging Randy, believe me the useless colonists do not get better, seems it's just random

Kind trait also gives periodic mood buffs to other colonists.  "Kind words +5" or something like that.  She isn't good, but not entirely useless, as she can clean, haul, and cook (with some training).  I notice teenage characters are often very bad like this, with virtually no passion for professions and very low stats, since the adulthood background stories were removed from them.  It makes perfect sense for them to not have an adult background story... but maybe they should gain one at some point?  Or have a chance to develop a passion for a trade?

Quote from: eadras on February 03, 2017, 01:11:46 PM
Kind trait also gives periodic mood buffs to other colonists.  "Kind words +5" or something like that.  She isn't good, but not entirely useless, as she can clean, haul, and cook (with some training).  I notice teenage characters are often very bad like this, with virtually no passion for professions and very low stats, since the adulthood background stories were removed from them.  It makes perfect sense for them to not have an adult background story... but maybe they should gain one at some point?  Or have a chance to develop a passion for a trade?

yeah, kids with low skills, fine, makes sense.

kids with no/few/weak passions?  and no in-game way to get passions?  that makes young colonists just feel bad, instead of "unskilled with potential"

Helloo !! We're talking about flat ice sheet ! I don't have enough stone to spare for a crappy artist when I already have to supply a skill 11 one. And my research bench is in a bedroom to save space - early on it was hard to find room. I could make more room now, but it would cost some stone and possibly another heater. It's currently winter, a bit under -70*C.

As for hauling/cleaning, I already have 2-3 colonists "wandering" without a job except in emergencies. She contributes very little.

Quote from: Limdood

kids with no/few/weak passions?  and no in-game way to get passions?  that makes young colonists just feel bad, instead of "unskilled with potential"

Yes, that's odd. I think old people should get more skill, young people less skill but more passion. And there should be a LAW that if a colonist has only LOW skill levels, at least some of these should be with passions. Not just because it lets you train them, but to make neurotrainers more useful.

Quote from: b0rsuk on February 03, 2017, 01:40:58 PM
Helloo !! We're talking about flat ice sheet ! I don't have enough stone to spare for a crappy artist when I already have to supply a skill 11 one. And my research bench is in a bedroom to save space - early on it was hard to find room. I could make more room now, but it would cost some stone and possibly another heater. It's currently winter, a bit under -70*C.

As for hauling/cleaning, I already have 2-3 colonists "wandering" without a job except in emergencies. She contributes very little.

Quote from: Limdood

kids with no/few/weak passions?  and no in-game way to get passions?  that makes young colonists just feel bad, instead of "unskilled with potential"

Yes, that's odd. I think old people should get more skill, young people less skill but more passion. And there should be a LAW that if a colonist has only LOW skill levels, at least some of these should be with passions. Not just because it lets you train them, but to make neurotrainers more useful.

I told you, use the pawn to CUT chunks INTO stone.  Don't use that pawn for art or any crafting other than making stone blocks.

However since you said this pawn is technically your 2nd best researcher, I see no reason you shouldn't put this pawn on whichever of day/night shift your proper research pawn isn't on and have her prioritize research.

Quote from: TheMeInTeam on February 03, 2017, 10:41:20 AM
can't do dumb or skilled labor + can't fight or some such.

Sheriffs that were Convent Children :P

Quote from: Mehni on February 03, 2017, 08:08:51 AM
You'll be desperate for a warden with 13 social by the time you finally do find a prisoner that passes your overly strict selection criteria.

What are the odds of a social 13 warden recruiting a 99% difficulty pirate?

Useless *bullet to the head*

BTW, I already have a social 7 warden.  He'll get the job done for any prisoner 95% or better.

Quote from: b0rsuk on February 03, 2017, 11:42:44 AM
Some colonists, while not technically useless, are damn near close to that. What can Bee do in my flat Ice Sheet colony ??

I was going to say "mine", then I saw "flat".  Ouch.  Well, she can still Grow.  So come harvest time she can plant enough crops to feed herself.  That's my key criteria -- not being a liability that others have to support. 

She also doesn't have the "nonviolent" tag, so give her a gun and tell her to go shoot up a wall and she'll eventually be useful in combat.

Quote from: Shurp on February 02, 2017, 08:30:19 PM
So I thought it would be fun to try the lone explorer start on an ice sheet (with some mountains, not sea ice!), and I was doing pretty well with Cassandra Extreme but had the consistent problem that all the newcomers who wanted to join Engie (yes, Engie popped up at the 10th choice for a starting colonist) were all complete garbage.

So Engie was happily building her base when a polar bear snuck up on her and ate her.  *sigh*

Is there any way to get useful recruits on extreme?  And by "useful" I'm not asking for a lot -- not a drug addict, not a heart attack waiting to happen, not blind or brawler or unable to mine and farm.  Someone who is actually an asset rather than a mouth to feed that attracts pirates.

And if the only way to get decent recruits is to drop the difficulty level to a boring medium... is there any other way to make the game more exciting?  Hmmm, if I build statues with my surplus silver maybe I can attract more numerous / well equipped pirates to give the crew a challenge?

I feel your pain man, this happens to me like every other colonist. The game gets frustrating when I have a colony
of 7 people, but only one person can do dumb labor. Its like being a mom with six mouths to feed, and twelve bullies
that like to pick on them.

Quote from: XeoNovaDan on February 03, 2017, 02:32:57 PM
Sheriffs that were Convent Children :P

There really should be a line of code preventing useless childhood background combined with useless adulthood. Convent sheriffs have like 2 skills open and none of them are the ones they get points in.

Use the soylent green mod and every new colonist will contribute to the colony!  ;D

Quote from: LordMunchkin on February 04, 2017, 06:34:56 AM
Use the soylent green mod and every new colonist will contribute to the colony!  ;D

Hmmm, this just gave me the thought that the nutrient paste dispenser would actually be useful if you could feed human corpses into it without receiving the cannibal penalty.

"But Engie, this is humans, isn't it?  It doesn't feel right."
"What are you talking about?  This *was* humans.  But now it's unidentifiable green goop.  Bon appetit!"

(Is this what the Soylent Green mod does?)

Quote from: Shurp on February 03, 2017, 08:26:59 PM

Quote from: b0rsuk on February 03, 2017, 11:42:44 AM
Some colonists, while not technically useless, are damn near close to that. What can Bee do in my flat Ice Sheet colony ??

I was going to say "mine", then I saw "flat".  Ouch.  Well, she can still Grow.  So come harvest time she can plant enough crops to feed herself.  That's my key criteria -- not being a liability that others have to support. 

She also doesn't have the "nonviolent" tag, so give her a gun and tell her to go shoot up a wall and she'll eventually be useful in combat.

I'm actually researching Mortars just so I can make use of my several crappy colonists. Incendiary IED traps are surprisingly good against (tribal) clusters. It's unusual tactics time.

Bee spends most of her time hauling (fast walker), stonecutting, mining when there's a chance (still more than growing). I'm not letting her plant in my sunlamp room (4 tables, the rest is gravel potatoes). Farming space is just too valuable to let her mess up, one "failed harvest" is 1 1/3 paste meals lost. When it's -39*C outside we call it Spring. She also has the honor to open cryosleep caskets (I remember one that contained several megascarabs).

I have to agree on the Pyro thing and since A16 dropped I swear that particular trait show up so often now.

Granted I use the mod that make all pawns capable of hauling/cleaning regardless of traits.

But I have gotten incrediably picky about who I will accept. No Pyro, Psychopath, or Abrasive period. Tend to avoid Brawlers, Any mentally unstable, and any addicts. Also will not take any "no violence" pawns until I have decent defenses set up and at least 10 other pawns that can shoot.

  I am at the point where if they call me asking for rescue, I just let them die since I have no clue what their traits are. And rescuing a pyro and taking the bullets just to have to send them out to fist fight a grizzly naked and take the mood hit on the rest.

Finally got my colony up to 13 pawns in year 6 but for the first 3 years was pretty much stuck between 1-5 pawns.

Here we go, another crashlanded space refugee:

Oleg Geradon
Incapable of Violent
Shooting:0
Melee:0
Social:8
Animals:4
Medicine:11
Cooking:4
Construction:0
Growing:0
Mining:2
Artistic:0
Crafting:1
Research:0

Yup, I'm letting him freeze to death.  In a well developed colony with turret filled killboxes he could at least be a chef or a warg trainer.  But out here in Iceville he's just a mouth to feed.

Quote from: Shurp on February 04, 2017, 11:10:07 PM
Oleg Geradon
Incapable of Violent
Shooting:0
Melee:0
Social:8
Animals:4
Medicine:11
Cooking:4
Construction:0
Growing:0
Mining:2
Artistic:0
Crafting:1
Research:0

Oleg Geradon=Soylent Cola.

Quote from: Shurp on February 04, 2017, 11:10:07 PM
Here we go, another crashlanded space refugee:

Oleg Geradon
Incapable of Violent
Shooting:0
Melee:0
Social:8
Animals:4
Medicine:11
Cooking:4
Construction:0
Growing:0
Mining:2
Artistic:0
Crafting:1
Research:0

Mmm... he could've made a decent medic. Judging by the way you're going about that though, you probably have plenty of those... so yeah, useless (unless Plague..?)

Same goes for warden, I suppose.

Quote from: b0rsuk on February 04, 2017, 03:20:15 PM[...] Bee spends most of her time hauling (fast walker), stonecutting, mining when there's a chance (still more than growing). I'm not letting her plant in my sunlamp room (4 tables, the rest is gravel potatoes). Farming space is just too valuable to let her mess up, one "failed harvest" is 1 1/3 paste meals lost. [...]

I can recommend Fluffys work tab mod (https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=16120.0) for such cases. It lets you diversify work priorities (do at your own risk!). You can set a crappy grower to do "plant crops" only, but not "harvest crops". Or set several pawns to do the wardening (read: deliver food) but only your social psychopath to do the recruiting. Both cases are the same person, the workload was too much. Using that support method she can now do both tasks sufficiently and has free time to occasionally haul stuff around!

*Given the huge amount of work types, you also get 9 priority settings instead of 4.

Quote from: XeoNovaDan on February 05, 2017, 03:50:19 AM
Mmm... he could've made a decent medic. Judging by the way you're going about that though, you probably have plenty of those... so yeah, useless (unless Plague..?)

Same goes for warden, I suppose.

Yes, I already have two doctors and a warden in my colony of three people.  And the way I'm killing off pawns I don't need a warden much anyway :)

Plague is admittedly a concern.  I did buff herbal and regular medicine to 60%/90% because otherwise they're pretty useless.  I suppose if I hadn't and I was losing colonists I wouldn't be so picky about replacing them.  But then I could easily wait until *after* they died to replace them; no need to pick up crappy pawns in advance and thereby increase the likelihood of diseases and larger raids killing them!

Quote from: XeronX on February 04, 2017, 06:55:16 PM
I have to agree on the Pyro thing and since A16 dropped I swear that particular trait show up so often now.

That's because the Pyromaniac childhood background now gives the trait automatically. I believe that's new for A16.

Hmm, I got by just fine in 2 instances of the plague with ordinary medicine in vanilla. Even with a level 6 doctor, there was like a 2 or 3% margin

Quote from: XeoNovaDan on February 05, 2017, 04:50:39 PM
Hmm, I got by just fine in 2 instances of the plague with ordinary medicine in vanilla. Even with a level 6 doctor, there was like a 2 or 3% margin

I would not call a 2 or 3% margin "getting by just fine."  ::)

I just figured out another reason to stay away from OLD colonists. The game tends to generate escape pod people and chased colonists that are family members. So, when you have a 80 year old geezer and his brother drops by, he won't be much younger!

One of my new colonists in a mining colony (i send there useless idiots / addicted pawns for withdrawal / pyro / etc) started to set fire inside the base. Pretty quickly he started to burn, run outside, and got attacked by a... fox. Fox bitten of his leg. Then a pretty good doctor (paramedic lvl 14 med) tried to install a peg leg on him, like three times in a row. Two times with minor fail, and one with extreme fail. Pretty hilarious what he had to go trough to waste his pathetic life :) Well, hi was not that useless, producing kibble requires resources :)

Another idiot who came back to main base from smokeleaf withdrawal treatment, first thing he did is he goes into alcohol binge. Such excellent idea. Unlucky for him and lucky for me, a slave caravan was passing by. He was too dumb to resist arresting and selling him to the trader. And hi is not the first colonist that was arrested and sold to slavery :)

Two useless morons less in one day :)

So after letting half a dozen escape pod refugees freeze to death, Willow Mann shows up and wants to join:

Shooting: 2
Melee: 4*
Social: 12*
Animals: 2
Medicine: 3
Cooking: 5
Construction: 5
Growing: 0
Mining: 1*
Artistic: 9*
Crafting: 1
Research: 12*

She's *almost* useless.  She at least knows which end of the gun to point at the enemy, knows not to apply the pickaxe to her teeth, and... well, I'm not sure why she's using her face to push the dirt around in the garden but she'll learn, right?

Bonus: she can cook!  Finally, a reason to keep her around!

Maybe I'll have her make some statues to brighten up the bedrooms too.

Well, I captured and converted an escape pod refugee last night who was incapable of violence. The upside was that she was good at animal handling, growing and research. So I basically stuck her on those 3 and to do the majority of cleaning. That frees up the rest of my pawns to do more productive stuff. She can also help maintain my smokeleaf joint production for me to roll in the $$ when the traders come around.

It has made me think that having at least 1 pawn who is not combat orientated is actually pretty useful since they can do most of the miscellaneous stuff while the rest of the colony can focus on defence when a raid comes around.

Artistic 9* is useless ? Wow. You don't like money ?

Most pawns are useless because the game doesn't have enough content yet.
Not enough skills, not enough jobs, not enough options.
(I'd say around 90%, according to how many escape pods I let die and how many times I reroll my colonists before starting).


Compare to Dwarf Fortress, where having a really skilled dwarf is awesome, but generally no dwarf is useless. Anyone can be recruited to the army and trained.
And if you had 20 jobs instead of 10, the likelyhood of having a truly useless colonist would be very low, making the game overall more interesting and fun.


Summary:
All you gotta do to fix this and make the game much more fun is add more skills and jobs that allow other ways of attaining same results (or new).
Like: Fishing, weaving, pathfinding (for caravans), armorsmithing, weaponmaking, etc.
Then instead of one superpawn and a million useless pawns you'll have many pawns all of which are more unique and useful

Quote from: b0rsuk on February 07, 2017, 01:59:28 AM
Artistic 9* is useless ? Wow. You don't like money ?

Hell, yes, is useless. You can sell art only to exotic traders. By the time this pawn manages to get 5 small marble statues better than normal, already wasted more 100 times their value in food, heating, electricity, construction materials, sculptor table, chair, bed, etc.

That's not an investment in a potential good pawn. Is just resources wasted.

You can deconstruct the bad statues, besides for selling I make grand statues. And now after the room quality change I get stacking "impressive workshop" "impressive bedroom" "impressive hospital" "impressive rec room" bonuses, on top of the +15 beautiful environment. I can feed my prisoner nutrient paste and he doesn't rebel despite go-juice withdraval (-35). It typicall gets one nice large statue to get "impressive" or "slightly impressive" status now. I have them in every major room.

Another good example of a pawn that is perfectly fine. I mean, yeah, I would not jump up in joy about her statline, but no disabilities, some relatively high stats and a few passions to go along with them and she can learn to shoot?

And about art - even a poor wooden statue is worth about 150 silver, takes up one space and can be crafted quickly. Equivalent value relations for stone.

But then, if you absolutely have to play on some mega-hardcore setting where your mere survival hinges on having perfect quality panws, maybe you should consider the game settings the problem, not the fact that solid, middle-of-the-road potential colonists are not tailor-made for your scenario. I thought you *wanted* it frustratingly difficult - is having to wait quite some time for a feasible pawn not part of that difficulty?

"Having to wait some time for a reasonable pawn"

But the thing is, I'm being (in my mind) *un*reasonable about how *poor* of a pawn I'm willing to accept.  I just want shooting, growing, and mining skill of 2 or greater without any horrific impediments (abrasive, pyro, etc).  Yet I keep getting pawns with godlike skill in social, research, or art which I simply don't need -- and the inability to perform basic colony maintenance tasks like shooting pirates or planting potatoes.

And btw, for making money all I need is a pawn that can walk faster than 2 squares/sec to go back and forth between the giant pile of smokeweed 5 squares away and the crafting spot.  He cranks out cash faster than any skilled artist.

(Willow's now 11 Artistic skill is great for making bedrooms nicer.  And I found out how to stop other pawns from gawking at the artwork.  Create a "No Art" zone with a square for each sculpture.  Then invert it so the colonists can go everywhere *except* there!)

I definately think the whole 'incapable of' thing should be removed. Imagine starving to death because you just refused to touch a stove or carry a rock, it just doesn't make sense.

Quote from: b0rsuk on February 07, 2017, 06:38:01 AM
You can deconstruct the bad statues, besides for selling I make grand statues. And now after the room quality change I get stacking "impressive workshop" "impressive bedroom" "impressive hospital" "impressive rec room" bonuses, on top of the +15 beautiful environment. I can feed my prisoner nutrient paste and he doesn't rebel despite go-juice withdraval (-35). It typicall gets one nice large statue to get "impressive" or "slightly impressive" status now. I have them in every major room.

There are plenty of ways to make money. You don't need to introduce another production chain in your colony for that. For me at least pawns with passion and skill in artistic, social, animals are just a waste. (because usually they get stellar values in those skills and crap in useful ones)

Basically I want shooting, construction, crafting, growing, cooking and medicine. In that order.

... And your initial post was about making money, not about beautification of the base.

Pawns mood affect the global work speed which is a major contribution to work performance.

Just because you don't use artists doesn't mean they're useless, it's just not your playstyle.

Quote from: Shurp on February 07, 2017, 07:23:31 AM

And btw, for making money all I need is a pawn that can walk faster than 2 squares/sec to go back and forth between the giant pile of smokeweed 5 squares away and the crafting spot.  He cranks out cash faster than any skilled artist.

You do realize you can completely ignore speed for smokeweed right?  Set a critical stockpile that only accepts smokeleaf on the crafting spot interaction space, then set a stockpile 1 square left that accepts smokeweed.  Set the crafting details to drop on floor.

Your crafter will now not move AT ALL, and will craft smokeleaf into smokeweed as fast as it's progress bar will move, and will "drop" it right into the smokeweed stockpile.  If its not enough spaces to hold the smokeleaf, extend the stockpile to a 2x2 zone which should keep the crafter crafting while others haul

great use for those industrious pawns you blow the legs off of - if you want to keep em but don't have any useful leg replacements yet.

Quote from: Shurp on February 07, 2017, 07:23:31 AM
But the thing is, I'm being (in my mind) *un*reasonable about how *poor* of a pawn I'm willing to accept.  I just want shooting, growing, and mining skill of 2 or greater without any horrific impediments (abrasive, pyro, etc).  Yet I keep getting pawns with godlike skill in social, research, or art which I simply don't need -- and the inability to perform basic colony maintenance tasks like shooting pirates or planting potatoes.

And btw, for making money all I need is a pawn that can walk faster than 2 squares/sec to go back and forth between the giant pile of smokeweed 5 squares away and the crafting spot.  He cranks out cash faster than any skilled artist.

You're barking up the wrong tree. The actual problem is that Tynan let a balance problem slip into A16 - smokeleaf are stupidly profitable. Also, some skills, especially Social, need changes.

Speaking of useless colonists,
(http://wstaw.org/m/2017/02/07/gojuice.png)
Now to be fair those colonists tend to carry a small amount of these drugs with them, but I'd rather just cure my people, especially that one of my first 3 initial colonist is an... Addiction Counsellor, Sammy. A former joywire addict. Sounds like a kickstarter backer.
Anyway, A16 added new ways in which colonists can disappoint!

Go juice withdrawal is easily cured by cranial injection of 5g of high grade Pb.

And yes, smokeweed is OP. But the real problem is that there is no base markup on manufactured goods. A poor statue is worth *less* than the slate it's constructed from.

Part of my problem (and this is entirely my opinion) with "useless" colonists is that, realistically, nobody is useless, not in real life. Anybody can do physical labor, even if it is just digging ditches and moving piles of stuff.

In-game? Nah, bro.

And, to be entirely honest, a pawn "incapable" of something, (and even someone with hilariously low skill levels, when you get down to it) is literally a waste of materiel and space. Hauling and Cleaning are gamebreakers for me, but being "Incapable" of other skills are up there.

It has gotten to the point where it isn't even about the "story" at this point. Like, I couldn't care less. I just want functional human beings.

That, coupled with how hilariously ineffective pawns are at anything less than MASTAH-CLASS skill levels, is disheartening. If you have 5 in Shooting, sure, you aren't going to be an Olympian, but I would expect you to be able to at least hit a target regularly. If a group of ~13 year old kids, the majority of whom have never fired a rifle before, can put 5 bullets into the diameter of a quarter after a week of practice, then you should be goddamn able to at least hit what you point a rifle at.

If I could have previously-"Incapable" pawns do work, even with time, effectiveness and mood-penalties, I would be happy.

I would frame it differently. There's a number of skills where you only care about the most skilled person in the colony. Unless there's an emergency of some sort like your doctor was ambushed in an infestation, you only need:
- one doctor
- one cook
- one recruiter
- one animal tamer
- one crafter (as long as you have limited materials)
- one constructor for items that have meaningful quality (beds, chairs, stools and armchairs only)

Rimworld promotes skill mastery too much. I think it has to do with the fact less skilled colonists can't assist the master. You only have one chance to perform the medical operation, or even treat wounds, and your medicine is limited! You want your meals made by the best cook to minimize chance of food poisoning (used to be really NASTY as it halved movement speed). One cook should be enough with efficient design, and people generally want fewer cooks (a.k.a. NPD), not more cooks unless selling meals. Only your highest recruiter counts because he gets the highest chance, and you can't try too often. The same for taming. For crafting, you want to make best use of your materials and achieve best possible quality. Steel, components, wool and good leather are limited. With constructor, the biggest issue is with dining chairs and armchairs, those are expensive and a failure is costly. On the other hand, plain beds and stools are fast to build and one builder can supply the entire colony.

Research stacks perfectly with multiple researchers, you just need two or more research benches and yes, you can connect extra benches to the same multi-analyzer.

To elaborate, a colony having once skill 12 cook and one skill 7 cook should be better fed than a colony with just one skill 12 cook. A colony should be better off with two skilled crafters instead of one. Two recruiters should be better than one.

But in Rimworld, two cooks is the same as one unless one of them is somehow taken out of the picture.

Quote from: b0rsuk on February 08, 2017, 02:03:26 AM
To elaborate, a colony having once skill 12 cook and one skill 7 cook should be better fed than a colony with just one skill 12 cook. A colony should be better off with two skilled crafters instead of one. Two recruiters should be better than one.

But in Rimworld, two cooks is the same as one unless one of them is somehow taken out of the picture.

I don't follow this at all....If i have 12 chefs in a kitchen with 1 stove, i will not get food made all that much faster than if i have 1 chef

you want that skill 12 and skill 7 cook making more food than just the skill 12 cook?  then make another stove.  I routinely make use of multiple stonecutter benches early on.  Multiple skilled crafting spots (smith, machining, tailor, art) can be done too, but require some fancy zonework (namely excluding the crafters from benches they aren't allowed to touch).

The only thing it doesn't really work that great for is animals and wardening...since there is a TARGET delay on the action (though it still works if there is an extreme abundance of animals/prisoners)

Yeah most cases they can do something useful, so they're in.  Extreme ice sheet challenges and such where you must cannibalize to survive, yes you reject people (rather you convert them to food and leather which you desperately need more than their skills, to be specific).  Otherwise, people are way too picky about colonists and value added.

I have a colony where I'm stuck with triple artists.  It's 'kay.

http://i.imgur.com/mlWiXuc.jpg

Three of these are incapable of hauling.  Yet another is a pyro.  The dedicated cook started with 2 skill in it and only "interested" passion (now obviously high since it's year 2).

With all the complaints about other stuff here, the multiple "incapables" are not a serious problem in this colony.  The most annoying trait is actually my two "greedy" colonists.  These snowflakes get a -8 on being in the barracks, though one of them is constantly getting lovin' so I'm leaving them there for the moment.  The other one got kicked into an external placeholder. 

Despite all this, I don't have a separate room only for one "greedy" and no mental break risk, not even minor, on extreme.  Triple artist --> wood statues is putting up enough money to clean out exotic goods traders (can cycle those for money --> call in a bulk alongside 2 exotic).

The only major stopping points for bringing in another colonist is 1) desperation in extreme environments or 2) if they're so limited that you're going to make them idle, and you don't want to send them off raiding to try to steal supplies.

Quote from: Limdood on February 08, 2017, 05:49:35 PM

Quote from: b0rsuk on February 08, 2017, 02:03:26 AM
To elaborate, a colony having once skill 12 cook and one skill 7 cook should be better fed than a colony with just one skill 12 cook. A colony should be better off with two skilled crafters instead of one. Two recruiters should be better than one.

But in Rimworld, two cooks is the same as one unless one of them is somehow taken out of the picture.

I don't follow this at all....If i have 12 chefs in a kitchen with 1 stove, i will not get food made all that much faster than if i have 1 chef

you want that skill 12 and skill 7 cook making more food than just the skill 12 cook?  then make another stove.  I routinely make use of multiple stonecutter benches early on.  Multiple skilled crafting spots (smith, machining, tailor, art) can be done too, but require some fancy zonework (namely excluding the crafters from benches they aren't allowed to touch).

The only thing it doesn't really work that great for is animals and wardening...since there is a TARGET delay on the action (though it still works if there is an extreme abundance of animals/prisoners)

Is not what he wanted to say. (I actually agree with him). If you have one cook with skill 12 in cooking (making lavish meals) is one thing. But what if you get another, with skill 7 in cooking? Now you have 2 cooks, but only one is actually cooking, because you want those lavish meals, right? (Lavish meals require 10 in cooking btw)

So the other one is useless. But in a *normal* situation, the other cook would help his "master chef" by... I dont know... chopping onion, peeling potatoes, boiling pasta or whatever. Those lavish meals would be ready sooner. Not the case with the actual setup.

The only way to make the other cook useful, is to build another stove, set fine meals to forever, filter skill from 6 to 9 and wait for the "bad" cook to advance to 10 cooking. Only then you will have 2 level 10+ cooks able to cook lavish meals at 2x speed.

That's what b0rsuk wanted to say. And to use your own example if you have one skill 18 crafter and a skill 10 crafter, would be a waste to let the low skilled one to make your clothes or guns. You will use the high-skilled one (priority 1 in tailoring and smithing) and set "crafting" to 1 for the other. And is still the same problem.

I hope now is clear.

Quote from: TheMeInTeam on February 09, 2017, 01:27:36 PM
http://i.imgur.com/mlWiXuc.jpg

Wow, that's one ugly and soulless base. It looks effective, because you're gaming the system to the fullest.

* * *

What I was saying is that Rimworld has a Master Syndrome. For a big fraction of skills you only care what's your most skilled colonist in the area. But it doesn't ring true. An amazing doctor would still need good and educated nurses and assistants. He can't operate and prepare tools, bandages, sewing needles, lubricants and whatnot at the same time. Or imagine a dentist doing everything alone. Hell, even people working at reception need medical education.

For everything that has quality, you want BEST, not "good enough". Exceptions: tables, flower pots, but only because their quality doesn't seem to affect anything at all.

When I get a great colonist to join it is like Christmas.  I love that feeling!  Just had that happen last night and I was grinning ear to ear with the master craftsman type person I got with almost no terrible traits.

Here we go again.  I get the dreaded "seeking refuge" transmission.  But I figure, OK, let me take a chance, after all, it is one of the colonist's lover...

So of *course* he's incapable of violent.  Screw that.  Load autosave.

Can someone point me to a mod where all pawns are forced to have shooting, growing, and mining skill equal or greater than *2*?  That's all I want.

Haha, the game just reminded me how amazing Sheriffs are. He's a Brawler sheriff, no less! No hauling, no cleaning, 4 Shooting, 1 Animals, 2 Artistic, 3 Research, no passion except melee. But Waaait ! Don't I have a pile of Scyther Blades ? Oh well, he can operate my incendiary mortars too.

Now that I've played a ton I'm enjoying worthless colonists a little more as it makes me appreciate good ones so much more LOL.  :)

The purpose of Non-Violent colonists is to wear a Personal Shield and run around like a headless chicken to drawn enemy fire.  They aren't cowards, they just refuse to bring harm to sentient beings (unless they go berserk).

Another use is as pack mules. They carry extra cargo in caravans and can negotiate. You're not risking much by sending them without protection.

I'm keep seeing so many pyromaniacs. How can it possibly be that common? From game to game, I always end up with several. Bad luck I guess, but seems fairly consistent.

What makes me despise them more, is how they'll just go on random fire starting sprees even if they're kept in a good mood. At least the other bad social traits are more manageable if you're well set up to provide good happiness.

A close second is anyone who can't clean or haul.

They should have a chance to watch a campfire instead, or go watch forest fire.

Quote from: b0rsuk on February 22, 2017, 01:14:16 AM
They should have a chance to watch a campfire instead, or go watch forest fire.

Watching things burn should be a joy activity like stargazing or passionate labor.

It is. Colonists go to "relax socially" at a campfire. So to make pyromaniacs stand out, they could just go and build a few campfires using your wood, even if it's forbidden.

I think pyromaniacs should watch Forest fires and bem happy for a long time.

Also, I tried a quick scan at all note random character and looks like 70% até useless, 20% acceptable, 9% good, 1% really good!
I think they should change the random generator to give people more good perks and useful skills, look like most backstories have more negative then positive points!
A 2-1 ratio of good to bad perks would be welcome and more presets characters with good traits is a must have! Looks like everyone that funded the game looks more to his negative points that the positive!

Maybe Pyromaniacs should have a 'need' for fire, similar to drug addicts ? There would be 2 tresholds, one below which they might have a soft break and another where they have a hard pyromaniac break. The point of this is that it would enable other things that affect pyromaniacs, like watching campfires or forest fires would make them satisfied for some time.

My all melee colony just got another wanderer. Regina, 80 years old, frail. She's not totally useless - 12 research+passion, 10 crafting+burning, kind, psychopath, depressive. But here's the thing: I checked her Research Speed stat and due to her manipulation handicap she actually researches slower than Tail, who's just 6 research!

Now I'm wondering about crafting. Obviously she can't craft as fast as MJ. But do Manipulation, Sight and similar stats have effect on manufactured item quality ? That would be a saving grace of disabled colonists with high skill levels. Maybe she can craft slower, but output better items ?

I also wonder about psychopath and kibble. She can butcher human corpses, but is it worth it ? She can't cook. Will it be more efficient than just dropping corpses in my barn like I've been doing lately ?

Quote from: b0rsuk on February 22, 2017, 07:31:32 AM
Maybe Pyromaniacs should have a 'need' for fire, similar to drug addicts ? There would be 2 tresholds, one below which they might have a soft break and another where they have a hard pyromaniac break. The point of this is that it would enable other things that affect pyromaniacs, like watching campfires or forest fires would make them satisfied for some time.

"Mental Break!  Mcleod has gone on a fire-starting spree.   Last straw: Lack of fire."

Not sure what you mean with kibble. You'll get a 25% nutrition bonus compared to the ingredients. However, butchering a corpse into meat can give you less nutrition than the corpse has "raw". Do the math with your cooks butchery efficiency. It will pay off if you have abundant vegans though.

Here we go again.  Accepted a refugee chased by pirates.  He's a pyromaniac.  Let him die.

Next one I accepted because she's someone's mother.  *she* is a pyromaniac too. 

What percent of Rimworld's inhabitants are pyromaniacs?  This is ridiculous.  Do I have to create a mod to get rid of these insane traits?

----- edit ----

Turns out she wasn't totally useless.  I had her stand around waiting for the tribals to attack.  30+ showed up.  Three died from collateral damage while they tried to kill her :)

Unfortunately... 5 charge rifles cannot do enough damage to stop 30+ raiders.  Hmmm.  I need a plan B...

...which the raiders provided.  They attacked my mortars.  And my pile of artillery shells parked right next to them...

*screen shakes*

And suddenly they're all fleeing.  I'm saved!!!

I guess mining my base with IEDs is the only way to defeat the hordes!

Quote from: Limdood on February 02, 2017, 10:34:00 PM
Chemical fascination/interest are death sentences waiting to happen, or at LEAST an extreme cost waiting to happen due to inevitable addiction and organ damage.
...
Pyromaniac is completely intolerable.

Yep, I never take either of those. There's a mod designed to address the issue, called Nerve Stapling (https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=29316.0) by Thirite (https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?action=profile;u=62934).

Unfortunately the costs of using it is a liability.

Your issue here is just that you're playing in a biome that forces you to be selective and you're playing on a difficulty where you can't afford to be selective. 

I've been playing on randy extreme on a tropical biome for instance and I haven't run into this issue at all.  If they're worthless skillwise, they can cut stone or haul the ever-growing gigantic crops or tame alpacas, or any number of other things.  Occasionally,  I'll get a wanderer/chased by pirates whos is... uh.. special, and they get to be my unguarded caravan runner.  After playing a while on these settings I've find my selection criteria to be pretty forgiving:

A) recruit difficulty <97%
B) Mood traits > -15 (no volatiles, no jealous neurotics, no depressive too smarts. etc), caveat: only in year one, afterwards joywire :3
C) No pyros.  They clearly need some work.
D) Can do SOMETHING.  brawler sheriffs with low animal/artistic get the boot e.g.
E) Not a dinosaur (frail + bad back + dementia)

I haven't seen an issue with chemical fascination, for some reason I've yet to get a fatal overdose.

Now with this, I end up accepting like 80%+ of potentials, and I've accepted some pretty gnarly ones like a granny with cataracts in both eyes.  She can't see, but she can cut granite!

Now, playing on an ice sheet, that'd be different, I can see that 80%+ becoming like... 50/50.  Since they have to at least be able to not be a drag in the early game.

Secondly, your emphasis on skills and not traits means I think you're underestimating just how quickly low skilled pawns become worthwhile, particularly in skills where they don't produce things of "quality" (growing/mining for instance).  0 skill passionless mining becomes 3 mining in like 2 days, essentially nearly quadrupling their mining speed.  4 mining is the base 100% mining speed I think?  That's not too bad!  Growing is a bit annoying since you can't have your 0 growers harvesting crops, but on a tropics this is easy since they can get growing by chopping wood.

I would recommend just playing on a slightly more forgiving biome like tundra or desert or something easier like me if you're playing on "extreme".  Sure some people can win extreme ice sheet as a solo start, but then some people win jackpots, doesn't mean playing the lottery is fun or smart :P

I'm presently playing on boreal forest.  That's pretty forgiving.

The trouble is defending my base.  A colonist with a shooting skill of 0 can't hit the broad side of a barn.  Putting a charge rifle in his hands will add more tribals to the 30+ horde storming my walls than he can kill.  All I demand is a skill of 2 or higher so he can hit something.

If I accept colonists who can't shoot, then I am forced to spam turrets for defense, and if I'm spamming turrets for defense why bother accepting more colonists anyway?  5 colonists and 20 turrets can splatter anything that comes at them.

My only alternative is to micromanage skill zero shooters to the shooting range for endless hours of training...

You're right that I can be more lenient on the mining/growing since they'll pick up skill *eventually*.  But shooting skill is more difficult to come by and more essential.

Shurp, terrible fighters who are still capable of violence are mortar operators. You can also give them miniguns.

Well, usually I start out with spamming turrets, but my colonists work on massing wealth to buy fallback plans like doomsdays, triple rockets and psychic lances.  Mostly explosives for tribals and mechanoids that attack at bad times, lances for particularly well equipped individual pirates and snipers during a siege.  In the very beginning if you run into sappers/too many tribals/bunch of melees with plasteel, you can always just walk away from your fort and they'll just steal some crap as you pick them off while they're kicking doors down.  But later on that's less viable. 

That's when the crummy colonists come into play, as pretty much any colonist will be able to generate wealth in some way to buy some kickass arms.

I suppose if you want to go completely turretless, like not even a single plasteel turret for enemies to absorb hits on, then yeah I'd be super picky.  But as I play on randy, that doesn't feel like it'd work to me since you can get 3 raids and a siege in one week plus mechanites and the flu.  Sheer exhaustion will end up resulting in just the worst berserk meltdown.

That being said, you can always "train" with shooting by attacking mountain walls with a pistol.  I used to do that until I got bored out of my mind lol.

Yes, exactly, training a skill 0 shooter up to skill 3 is tedious and boring...

And yes, I was trying turretless play.  As long as I'm only getting attacked by a dozen or so I can manage, but the 30+ hordes are more than I can shoot.

And now I have a perfect example of just how wrong this is.  A pirate merchant showed up with three colonists on offer:

a) Ren, Vatgrown Soldier / Medieval Minstrel.  Incapable of skilled labor, caring, social, hauling.  Despite shooting of 7, this is a *no*.

b) Alpha, Medieval slave / Taxonomist.  Incapable of violent.  Again, *no*.

c) Boss, Militant child / Lost marine.  Despite being incapable of dumb labor and mining, and also being a Teetotaler, I'm willing to take a chance because he has shooting of 15 and some other nice skills.

So in short, 1 out of 3 colonists is actually usable.  This skills/traits business is awful.  (Although I'm amazed none of them are pyromaniacs)

I think part of the difficulty is that more colonists = bigger raids, so every colonist who cannot fight is a liability. 
3 Super-Soldiers will kick ass. 
3 Super Soldiers guarding 10 pacifists will get murdered.

Yeah, there's even a mod I saw on steam that's directly for addressing this, combat readiness mod or something around those lines.  Basically factors in your colonist combat abilities into raid size.  So might be worth looking into for your turretless games.  I don't think it'd make sense in the base game since I think the game currently assumes some form of defenses.

Personally, I would like to see a black market where you could request specific items at a markup.  This would allow you to invest all your colony into combat neurotrainers.

Better yet, mini trainers would be the perfect solution to this and a lot of problems.  High abundance  (gauranteed a few for each skill in exotic trader/caravan) low cost trainers that set your ability rather than increase it. 

E.g. shooting minitrainer: cost 800, sets shooting to 4.

Actually I like a black market better xD

In any case, I think the best option would just be to lower the difficulty to intense, and leave extreme to those cowardly turret users :3  Or perhaps bribing/releasing prisoners for tribals if they specifically are your problem, although I'd imagine useless pawns don't fair much better when highly outnumbered by pirates.

Also tbh colonist value for raid size is probably a bit too high.  Not increasing wealth deliberately is bad, but deliberately not recruiting the majority of recruits kind of goes against the idea of rimworld and running with what you get.

Raid size depends on number of colonists ? Then put him on the first line as a (shielded) decoy. If you're getting casualties, let it be that guy!

Yeah, then he dies and everyone else gets a mood hit.  Hmmm.  Well at least I can get rid of a useless colonist that way. 

Maybe I should turn him into a suicide bomber.  He runs into a large enclosure with several artillery shells spread about, waits for all the tribesmen to chase him in, then sets them off with a grenade.  *boom*

Hey, wait a sec, if he has a shield there's a chance he'd survive, right?

Quote from: Shurp on March 15, 2017, 07:15:16 AM
Hey, wait a sec, if he has a shield there's a chance he'd survive, right?

Possibly, depends on the quality of the shield I suppose.

Personally I like to use the Imperial Guard/ Soviet approach. If a raid happens, EVERYONE has a role to play;
- Everyone who can shoot picks up a rifle, expendable colonists are sent to the front and important ones are kept back.
- The melee users are either proficiently skilled in melee and augmented or are part of the "mob" who cannot shoot and are a fallback crew to defend the main entrance should the enemy break through.
- Non violent are kept as rescuers/repairmen/firefighters.
- Anyone else who cannot do dumb labour/firefight and repair are used either as meat shields or as spare body parts.

This way, no one is TRULY useless.

Quote from: Shurp on March 13, 2017, 10:47:56 PM
Unfortunately... 5 charge rifles cannot do enough damage to stop 30+ raiders.  Hmmm.  I need a plan B...

If you stop turning down above average colonists you might have enough people to defend the base.

1% of pawns are useless. The rest is up to you.


Hell, lets take a look at what you consider a "useless" colonist:

13 Social, 8 Medicine, 4 Construction, and 7 Research. Passions in all, incapable of.. art and cleaning. So he can still haul.

This is a top 10% colonist right there. The 3 critical skills are Medicine, Social, and Shooting. In that order.
He is excellent at the first two, and while has zero shooting he at least is not a brawler or pacifist, so can still hold a gun and gain a few easy levels in shooting. Once anyone becomes lvl 5 or 6 shooting they are more than capable of hitting targets at short range. In the mean time just give him an SMG or shotgun. He is even a good researcher! Which is an excellent secondary task when he isnt recruiting a prisoner. He can even be your primary constructor if you do not yet have one, or of that person is needed to mine or grow.

Prosthophile and volatile are tricky to deal with early on, but if you do get him a bionic (which is hardly wasted on a doctor) they will cancel out. Slowpoke is a non issue when he will spend 90% of his time indoors.

Next:

8 Social, 11 Medicine, 4 Cooking, incapable of violent.

Cannot fight, but has 2 of the 3 key skills in spades. Can also cook well enough if you have no one better. Hauling and stone cutting are also perfectly viable jobs when you have no prisoners. Top tier character even without being able to fight.

Next:

12 Social, 5 Cooking, 5 Construction, 9 Art, 12 Research. "She's *almost* useless." You say.

High social again.. can cook if needed, art is high enough to be a viable option, and is a top tier researcher which is important if you are playing to get to space quickly, or can let a researcher with other skills do that while they take over. Social + Researcher is an excellent combo. Again, what is wrong with this colonist? At 2 shooting they can at least hold a gun?



Colonist count is an extremely minor increase to raid sizes. Vast majority of the raid is from your colony wealth once you reach the midgame. Anyone that can hold a gun is a net positive to defend the colony. Even a pacifist is useful if you have a personal shield for them to tank shots with.

If you play without turrets, you need to change your mindset from 'I want a perfect colony with fair haired golden children' to 'my motley crew makes the dirty dozen look respectable'  :P

Quote from: TheMeInTeam on February 03, 2017, 10:41:20 AM
1.  Animal hunting colonist lacking notification is inconsistent with the game mechanics as a whole.  I recommend ruthlessly savescumming that until it gets fixed.  There is no self-consistent logic to not-notify on predator hunting colonist that would wind up avoiding support for not-notifying on sieges, raids, infestations, or mech ships.  The reason we get notifications for raids is the same reason the predator hunting colonist notification needs a look.

Search function is your friend, friend.

Well, in the first year, which is usually the make or break of a fort, pawns play the greatest role in raid size by a landslide, even if you get loot from thrumbos and psychic ships.  So accepting 99% isn't really an option if you're going for a no security buildings defense.  Which is why I personally don't do that heh.

Quote from: Greep on March 16, 2017, 04:43:38 AM
Well, in the first year, which is usually the make or break of a fort, pawns play the greatest role in raid size by a landslide, even if you get loot from thrumbos and psychic ships.  So accepting 99% isn't really an option if you're going for a no security buildings defense.  Which is why I personally don't do that heh.

Please stop spreading misinformation.

That reply is so... informative.

I'm using this:

https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=20912.msg246117#msg246117

Which would mean colonists are a colossal factor in raid size early game.

Keep in mind, more colonists -> more necessary wealth.  If you're at 5 colonists, you'll need half the crops, half the gear, half the clothing, half the medicine, etc. than 10 colonists.  So more non-combatants definitely is a big sink if they aren't producing wealth that helps you fight.

That is an excellent post describing how the current raid sizes are defined.

I suggest you read it.

Right at the start, when your wealth is almost nothing, then yes, colonists are important.

But the first 5 raids get a size penalty to help new players out. Once you are past that, you should have a significant level of wealth.

Let us say it is mid game and your colony is worth at least 100,000. Probably more.

3600 silver more from a new colonist is ~3% more.

above 1k raid size, raid points are halved, above 2k, halved again.

so that 3% is at least going to be reduced to just 1.5% increase, or possibly 0.75% increase if the raids are large enough.

If you have 8 colonists, going to 9 colonists is 12.5% more people to do work, and defend the colony. Versus raid sizes increased by 1.5%.

Colonist count quickly becomes meaningless past the first season or so.

Hmmm, you have a point there.  It's when I hit the 50k to 150k point that I start running into raid size problems.  A 2~4k colonist isn't going to step that up by much.  In which case it really could be worthwhile to hand him a charge rifle and let him spray ammo around uselessly (occasionally winging bystanders) until he gains experience. 

Probably more worthwhile to hand him a minigun though :)  OK, back to the drawing board!

Question: if you have a dozen colonists, how do you set up a killbox that isn't 30 squares wide?  I don't want my pawns standing next to each other catching missed shots by the enemies, but if I spread them out there doesn't seem to be enough room.

This is my usual setup;

(http://fs5.directupload.net/images/170316/temp/ek3doxnf.jpg) (http://www.directupload.net/file/d/4662/ek3doxnf_jpg.htm)

I set there a dump stockpile which is configured to store some stone chunks.
In between you can see the arranged deadfall traps, all made of steel. A good 50% of raiders will be killed solely by them.
If they survive this corridor, there are 10 turrets waiting to stop them before they get into the base itself. And inside the base, I can line up my colonists. On the two sides right behind the last two turrets, two guys with miniguns, and behind the sandbags everyone else.
Until now, no raid came into the base. Biggest tribal raid until now was somewhere above 40+ peeps.
Oh, and my wealth is somewhere above 400k I think? Have to look it up though.

Well, for a pure fire fight shurp, I make a cone of fire that's greater than 45 degrees (2 or 3 horizontal, one vertical, e.g.).  Can get a nice fire zone for about 20 colonists which is more than usually you get with cassandra anyways.

Yeah, I guess I have to go a bit more angular than usual.  Typically I apply an inverted cone (my colonists at the pointy end) so that sappers going through the wall are still easily plinked.  Reversing that... might be a challenge, but I'll give it a swing!

(http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/MTG-ThreadNecromancer_3198.jpg)

(http://i.imgur.com/IPyHlFH.png)

(https://i.imgflip.com/1m8zoe.jpg) (https://imgflip.com/i/1m8zoe) (https://imgflip.com/memegenerator)

(http://i.imgur.com/KSmiJpn.png)

LOL... too funny!

I would left that person to die unless I was desperate for a combat colonist. That's REALLY bad, and only decent if you happen to have a pair of Power Claws (not Scyther Blades) because otherwise you can't use the Animals skill.

The "hard worker" trait is especially hilarious

Wow.. was starting a new game and looking through the colonist interviews.  And got... THIS. 

This right here is why I'd never hit start after hitting map select.



[attachment deleted by admin due to age]

Not entirely useless.... but its her affect on my other pawns which did it...

I started out with a duo who are pretty good. The male's a good hunter/cook while the female was a great doctor and useful for research. After awhile they became lovers and were to be married. In between this time however, I had a female wanderer join in. She wasn't great at anything but at least she could do most chores and I could do with a hauler/cleaner around...

However, the one problem with her was that she was very prone to starting social fights with my Male pawn. She's sent herself and my male pawn to the medical room a number of times already. Which has impacted my food supply and kept my doctor busy when she could have been doing other stuff... The last straw was when she started a fight with my male pawn during the wedding ceremony.... both got sent to the medical room again, wedding got called off, and I am hit by a pirate raid. So now I have to defend my base with just 2 pawns (I only have 4 pawns total at that point) and a single turret.

I'm contemplating sending that trouble-making pawn as a sacrifice to the pirates just so that I can rid of her. She's only really chummy with my female doctor (ironic considering she was constantly fighting with with her fiance). So don't think the others will miss her too much.

This makes me think we need a mod which provides more interesting ways to get rid of annoying colonists.  Suppose we had an "execution" event, like the marriage event, where the colonists all agree to hang someone that annoys them all?

Quote from: Greep on March 29, 2017, 08:07:39 PM
Wow.. was starting a new game and looking through the colonist interviews.  And got... THIS. 

This right here is why I'd never hit start after hitting map select.

Nooo you're missing out all the fun now!

Speaking of colonists like Maymay above, I found this Reddit quote illuminating:

QuoteLooks okay to me. Slap some power armor on her, give her a plasteel sword and throw her in a cryptochamber next to a stockpile of go-juice.

Maybe that's the trick ? Some colonists are literally not worth keeping OUT of cryosleep casket. They're only somewhat usable when it's time to repel a raid, and maybe as a caravan guard, but certainly not Maymay above. A colonist needs to be worth more than the food he/she eats, that's the bare minimum.

For me there is only three types of colonists:
Those that are good at one or more important things.
Those that are not, who will become haulers or janitors.
And cowboy hats.

Quote from: Shurp on March 31, 2017, 07:21:46 AM
This makes me think we need a mod which provides more interesting ways to get rid of annoying colonists.  Suppose we had an "execution" event, like the marriage event, where the colonists all agree to hang someone that annoys them all?

This game clearly needs magma.

You could always send them out to try and tame/hunt a passing thrumbo. Hmmm, but then the rest of your colony would still have to deal with the thrumbo afterwards. Maybe that's not such a good idea after all...

Quote from: XeronX on February 04, 2017, 06:55:16 PM

But I have gotten incrediably picky about who I will accept. No Pyro, Psychopath, or Abrasive period. Tend to avoid Brawlers, Any mentally unstable, and any addicts. Also will not take any "no violence" pawns until I have decent defenses set up and at least 10 other pawns that can shoot.

Wait, no psychopath?  Whyever not?

I LOVE psychopaths.  They're immune to many negative moods, can be used to butcher humans without a stacking debuff (tribal raid = fortune in human leather armchairs and cowboy hats!) ... Sure, they don't get some positive mood buffs too, but having someone you can rely on to not fall into a negative mood spiral is wonderful.

Quote from: b0rsuk on February 08, 2017, 02:03:26 AM
To elaborate, a colony having once skill 12 cook and one skill 7 cook should be better fed than a colony with just one skill 12 cook. A colony should be better off with two skilled crafters instead of one. Two recruiters should be better than one.

But in Rimworld, two cooks is the same as one unless one of them is somehow taken out of the picture.

Huh?

Why not have them work different shifts.  Two cooks cook twice as many meals per stove as one cook. 

As well, unless you're save-scumming, having multiple pawns capable of a task helps you cope with injury and death better.  I *hate* just having one capable cook. 

Ah, well, that was a much older thread than I thought.  Eh, whatever.

And why have twice as many meals when once as many is enough ?

Maybe the solution is having colonists develop interests over time. They would gain a passion or two, and have a random skill unblocked. The chance would be inversely proportional the the number of skills they already have. Above certain limit, say, 5 unblocked skills, the chance would be 0.

All I want is the ability to put nobles in irons and force them to work my fields and mines.  Hmmm.  But then I can't really trust them with an assault rifle, can I?

Wow, that could create an interesting dynamic... a useless colonist shows up; you can force him to be a soldier or a worker but not both.  Which do you pick?

(No no no, "hat" is not an acceptable answer! :-P

For the past many games, my main worry is that all of them Im getting like three unable of violence out of 12, where from the other fighting 9, only two are shooters.

I'm getting so pissed at this RNG that now I'm gonna start getting rid of the non-fighters. In this game, a third non-fighter came asking for rescue and was a flake addict. Before this guy, an escape pod came with a Luciferium addict who I left to die, crashed within my base...walked away like 20 tiles and collapsed there.

The third non-fighter that was being chased cost me a shooter and then in his withdrawal went mental and killed another non-fighter while I was getting ready to fight a Psychic Ship with the only 2 shooters I have and was about to kill one of them in his berserk so I turned my gunner around and shot the bastard. As result of this bad colonist group, on 4th of Aprilmay 5504... I'm back to only FIVE pawns.

1. Non-fighting Doctor, Social, Researcher.
2. Minner.
3. Cook, Crafter.
4. Shooter, Artist.
5. Shooter, Constructor, Miner and Researcher.

...and just came out of a Toxic Fallout. This is of course all in Tribal.


I came to wander:

"How many non-fighters per game do you usually get?"

I'm literally averaging 3 out of 12.

QuoteI came to wander:

"How many non-fighters per game do you usually get?"

I'm literally averaging 3 out of 12.

It's pretty common for me to get them too.  Especially booting up a new game and choosing which pawns to start with.  I used to roll with whatever they give me. Now I end up with 1 or 2 incapable of violence out of 3 a bit too often if I do that.  It was really noticeable when I was starting new games back to back for mod testing.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1136101685#_=_

My latest game reached a population peak of 9 colonists of which 3 were Incapable of Violence, downed to 5 members of which 1 was Incapable of Violence... Now 4 are being kidnapped and the solo survivor is... of course the single non capable of violence...

https://imgur.com/a/FHeOI

Yeah.. Seems like only 2 out of 10 are any good.

I think there are too many effects which disable jobs, and some professions add bonuses to skills they can't even perform which in most situations shouldn't be allowed. How do you even get through life on a world like those in this game being so horrible and unable to contribute? I imagine people like that should only be common a developed world where resources are readily available. Far less so on a semi post apocalyptic world.

Quote from: Yoshida Keiji on September 16, 2017, 12:08:46 AM
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1136101685#_=_

My latest game reached a population peak of 9 colonists of which 3 were Incapable of Violence, downed to 5 members of which 1 was Incapable of Violence... Now 4 are being kidnapped and the solo survivor is... of course the single non capable of violence...

https://imgur.com/a/FHeOI

Wow, that is harsh.  In my current game I've had one refugee, 5 prison recruits, and 1 hospitality recruit.

The refugee won't do dumb labor, but has a 20 research now and came with 12 medicine (passion)
One of the prison recruits is a brawler who won't do dumb labor, but is now a 20 cooking
2 of the prison recruits have no limitations.  One is my top miner the other is a non-specialist who usually hauls/cleans but also backups the cook.
the other 2 prison recruits are both near-sighted, but make up my melee team.  They work my night shift, mostly cleaning and hauling, but also crafting.  One won't do medicine, the other won't do social.
The hospitality recruit was brought in to be a shooter and backup grower.

Some of these recruits came in with poor skills, but are now useful because I found a way to take advantage of what they could do.

I will admit I avoid recruiting drug addicts, pyromaniacs and people who have lost limbs before I can capture them.

Get the psychic shock lance. Shock those raider with capable skill you like. Hope you're not fried his/her brain.

After the raid, capture him/her and lock him/her down in your luxurious prison you have forever.

You know it's really strange players are encouraged to recruit their colonists from among bloodthirsty killers.

I wrote a script once that randomly matched any childhood background with adulthood background, and results were averaged after a few thousands of "colonists". The amount of "disabled" colonists wasn't as high as you think, but my generator code was naive and assumed all backgrounds were equally common. Plus I had no idea what to do with kickstarter backers (how often they spawn). But that's just direct job disabling from background, not counting serious health issues like cataracts (breaks shooting), pyromaniacs (not fun during a raid), drunks, etc.

Is it just me or does the pawn creation RNG vary depending on the situation you come across them in ?.. e.g. any free ones falling out of the sky / requesting to join / are fleeing from pirates are usually pretty awful, to the point that I just turn them all away or let die out in the wild unless they have a big relationship with someone I already have... Invading pirates are a little better, but still quite rare to see the magic decent pawn you want... then for me the best *seem* to be when you have a caravan take care of a pirate outpost for another faction ?

Since I am already about 4 or 5 pawns beyond my self imposed limit, I only recently started paying attention to downed pawns again when I noticed one with a name I usually end up liking in past colonies was down at an outpost.. think my brain went "yay, squirrel old buddy !, good to see ya!!" so I checked his sheet : https://i.imgur.com/m1SEmJ8.jpg (https://i.imgur.com/m1SEmJ8.jpg)

OK, chemical interest is pretty far from ideal, but I had been wanting to test the treatment for it the psychology mod adds (the only other one I have had in this game died from the flu after destroying their liver before I could get a doctor skilled enough to treat it), so I patched him up and let him tag along while my caravan continued it's goals.  There was one other downed pirate beside him with an even better sheet, but I grudgingly left him to die (for not being a squirrel haha).

It's still early days of me checking this, but since then I can't seem to go on a raid to one of these outposts without seeing someone downed that would be a lot better than some of my own, and get seriously tempted to grab them hehe.  Whereas for once I checked every invading pirate in that screenshot and couldn't see a single one I would even remotely want, much the same as usual :)

For comparison's sake here is the latest colonist that dropped out of the sky and I felt forced into at least rescuing since he was the brother of one of my starting colonists (thinking don't you dare decide to join!), after I gave him an artistic neurotrainer, doing what he does best ... https://i.imgur.com/tdbwoiz.jpg (https://i.imgur.com/tdbwoiz.jpg) ... I am just noticing that he seems to have appropriated the only remaining power armor suit I have too, while Northfield crawls into hospital after being shredded by rockets yet again, lol.  If his sister ever pops her clogs it will be time for him to practice his melee skills... naked, with a lump of wood, against panthers, muwahaha.

Quote from: SpookyMunky on September 18, 2017, 10:57:06 AM
Is it just me or does the pawn creation RNG vary depending on the situation you come across them in ?.. e.g. any free ones falling out of the sky / requesting to join / are fleeing from pirates are usually pretty awful, to the point that I just turn them all away or let die out in the wild unless they have a big relationship with someone I already have... Invading pirates are a little better, but still quite rare to see the magic decent pawn you want... then for me the best *seem* to be when you have a caravan take care of a pirate outpost for another faction ?

Each human in the game has a childhood background and adult background. A colonist is made up of a combination of the two, plus some unspecified fairy dust I can't figure out without access to source code and knowledge of C#. Anyway, they are drawn from several pools, including:

- spacer (those who crash land, people in cryosleep caskets)
- raider
- tribal
- trader
- wanderer (presumably visitors etc, these are often used to show off kickstarter backers).

So YES, raiders are definitely drawn from a separate pool. Okay technically it's not separate pools, each background has a list of situations he might appear in, for example a badger tamer might belong to raider, tribal, and wanderer. Then a badger tamer may show up as a trader, tribal, or raider.

Raiders tend to have bad Construction and Growing scores, not that these skills are hard to raise. They have better than average combat skills. "Spacers" and civilian colonists have better worker scores, but surprisingly often some jobs disabled. As of alpha 16 when I tried it, tribals had somewhat better Melee scores, but poor Research and Artistic. NO bonus in Animals or Growing department. On the other hand, they had very few jobs disabled. Perfect worker ants ! Note if you start as Lost Tribe, wanderers you get are usually with tribal backgrounds as well, so it does have this long term nice effect - capable colonists. Traders - I don't remember, but probably higher Social scores.

Interesting, I wonder if there has been another pool added that would be something like defender (since they technically aren't raiding and seem to be a lot nicer candidates for capturing) as an added incentive for people to get out and about from their bases even when the rewards for some of these outposts don't seem to be worth it ?

That or yet again I am looking into things far too much with too little data to go on so far since I hadn't been paying attention to their sheets until maybe 3 outposts ago hehe.  I think another few outposts have popped up in my game recently so I'll be sending out another attack caravan soon, before randy throws any more annoyingness at me like the sleeping sickness that has kept everyone at base for months instead of the short R&R I was expecting :).

Hmm, I can hit two of them with one caravan and fit in a couple of friendly bases for some trading with a 20 day round trip... might be a plan.  More fun than checking the code ;).  I'm tempted to also send out a precious resource mining / attack caravan in the opposite direction that includes Urist, see how well he can wield his lump of wood  ;D.

(https://i.imgur.com/ZnubZ9l.png)


Medieval minstrel must be the worst adulthood backstory ever, is there any worse?

Sheriff is on par with minstrel as a terrible backstory.

Note that if your pawn is capable of violence, that pawn can be a "shooter".  Brawler trait gives me pause handing them a gun due to the mood hit (don't want mental breaks during a raid).  Anything else and they can shoot an LMG or minigun through a crowd with the best of them, or just shoot close range with shotguns and such where post processed curve won't screw them much.

Or you just pop out of a door vs isolated raiders and melee them 5 vs 1, even with just steel clubs this will put the target down fast, and if they don't have a strong melee weapon they will not do significant damage on return hits.

Good thing is, B18 got a new feature, Banish colonist.
Bye Bye Sheriff, thanks for the fish and leave your clothes here.

isn't the vanish penalty the same as colonist death penalty (-3)? Assuming no other additional penalties (friend/wife/etc)

Also, the real problem with the minstrel above is that vatgrown soldier disables social. Otherwise he'd at least make a good recruiter and sculptor.

Combinations which inactivate a bonus should be flat out prohibited. Either that, or the bonus should reactivate the skill. Perhaps at a base of zero, so the vat minstrel gets a social skill of only 4.

I 100% agree that combinations where one job disabling another should be ruled out.  I've had one to many pawns pop in that are supposedly experts in something only to have their second job or trait completely disable it.  I feel like the negative traits, bad stats are almost weighed to heavily in the game now.  I get that there is supposed to be bad traits and things are supposed to go wrong and thats part of the challenge but why is it even when I'm sitting there rerolling my rich explorer it takes me 10 minutes to find someone who isn't literally about to die of a heart attack, with a bad back, a pyro with a drug addiction all at once, BUT HEY HE HAS 15 SHOOTING BUT EVERYHTING ELSE DISABLED.

etc.

I'm a firm beliver in trying to play the game in vanilla as intended as most mods feel cheaty to me, but I pretty much have to use prepare carefully now to help microadjust my colonists initially or it just isn't fun.

Perhaps the system could be adjusted a bit so colonists can be just a hair better to outweigh the negatives when they get rolled, or something can be done where based on the difficulty you're playing adjusts the numbers of your colonist possibilties.  If you're playing on extreme then more bad colonists make more sense.  As it is, for most games, I pretty much let 80% of the joins/spacer crashes/prisoner captures die/let go because its not even worth it to deal with all the BS just for an extra set of hands. 

Personally I'd like to see significantly less "incapable of" (not removed entirely) and also less interest/passion so that these are more meaningful.

I definitely don't like self-inconsistent backstories like a pawn having a violence-disabling childhood then somehow having a warrior backstory as an adult (despite not being able to fight).

Things definitely seem to have slowly drifted to be more negative and more extreme on colonist RNG, at least to me.  It used to be you got a fairly even mix, both when rolling new characters on start and as joinee's later in the actual game.  It *WAS* possible to get someone who had high stats and good traits, but not common, just as it was to get bad stats and bad traits.  Now it really seems like whatever system is used on the back end (let's assume points like prepare carefully uses for the sake of discussion) is far to heavily weighed towards negative stuff.  It seems like there is a tie in to the stats and passions a colonist has to being old as fuck, bad back, alzhiemers and dementia.  Traits sort of feel the same, but not quite as bad.  Good traits, not ancient, and not incapable of important stuff are my go-to's since you can level up the actual stats, but without passions.... ugh.. it can take forever.

Really though, all of that is fine, just needs to be tweaked a tiny bit less negative on occurance.  The jobs that contradict each other should definitely be fixed.  Needs to be some sort of rule built into the code that says if a colonist specializes in X, then he can't have Y or Z professions that remove it.  The actual text of the stories at some point should be fixed and adjusted of course but thats not nearly as important at this stage of the game.  That can be done last or post official release even since its just backstory and not game affecting.  Just immersion breaking.