I've been having an epiphany lately. I am not sure whether or not to be very selective when recruiting my colonists and capturing raiders based on traits. I have been discarding most prisoners who have attributes like incapable of; "Intellectual","Dumb Labor","social" and so on. Should I be less picky and just recruit any colonist that is healthy or is being very selective a good thing?
Personally, I usually recruit based on the stats of the pawn, not if they are incapable of doing a certain task such as social or researching, since I usually only need one colonist for each of those. However, if you accept too many pyromaniacs, incapable of dumb labor, pacifists, etcetera, then you'll be screwed.
In summary, don't turn down a really good colonist because they can't clean, even though you already have several janitor colonists.
This seems logical thank you for the response ;). It's so weird that I am this anal about my colonists.
You're welcome, and it isn't THAT weird, in fact, it's probably better to have that trait than to be sloppy with colonists. Untold thousands have been lost to players not looking and pondering on character sheets.
It all depends on your needs. If you have a great researcher already and really need a crafter, then you don't really care if that downed raider with 9++ crafting can't do intellectual. You don't want him doing that anyways.
Similarly, if you need a researcher and find someone with good intellectual, it doesn't matter if he can't do dumb labor. He's going to spend 100% of his time in front of a research bench, so he won't have time to haul and clean.
But if you really need to get stuff hauled and your home is a total mess because nobody has time to clean, then picking up someone who won't do dumb labor might not be the best idea.
Then there are the traits that have effects other than skills, especially in certain combos. Do you really want someone who is abrasive and bloodthirsty, and will be causing social fights right and left? Or how about that neurotic pessimist? Sure, he'll work quick, but you'll be constantly struggling to keep him mentally intact. These sorts of bad combos aren't worth it, even if you need the skills they have.
For non-raiders, I take everyone who isn't a cannibal. Yeah, not optimal, but I like the challenge.
For raiders, they have to be seriously awesome and I have to have very few colonists.
Quote from: khearn on June 21, 2017, 06:41:54 PM
It all depends on your needs. If you have a great researcher already and really need a crafter, then you don't really care if that downed raider with 9++ crafting can't do intellectual. You don't want him doing that anyways.
Similarly, if you need a researcher and find someone with good intellectual, it doesn't matter if he can't do dumb labor. He's going to spend 100% of his time in front of a research bench, so he won't have time to haul and clean.
But if you really need to get stuff hauled and your home is a total mess because nobody has time to clean, then picking up someone who won't do dumb labor might not be the best idea.
Then there are the traits that have effects other than skills, especially in certain combos. Do you really want someone who is abrasive and bloodthirsty, and will be causing social fights right and left? Or how about that neurotic pessimist? Sure, he'll work quick, but you'll be constantly struggling to keep him mentally intact. These sorts of bad combos aren't worth it, even if you need the skills they have.
Thanks for the advice. I just feel like I have every type of worker I need for my colony and I'm not quite sure if I should keep grabbing colonists or not.
If they don't fulfill any needs, you might not want the extra mouths to feed. But someone who can haul and/or clean and who is good with a gun is always nice to have around.
It's hard to have too many crafters or constructors, although I guess it's possible. Having a second cook becomes neccessary once you have a certain number of people.
And someone with intellectual skills who is a night owl is a great find, so you can keep your research bench going night and day. You can do that without the night owl trait, but they'll be happier if they have it.
Then there is the role playing aspect. I hate to turn away anyone who is a relative of one of my pawns, even if they're pretty worthless. I've even recruited a couple that I knew whould be problems due to bad traits. But what can ya do? They're family.
I generally filter against the "no firefighting" or "incapable of [just about god damn everything]" types of ones, and the psych cases. With exceptions, of course-- in my colony from the previous generation, my first random join was an Ascetic Glitterworld Researcher who did fuck-all for my colony but research, but she kept housing costs down, she allowed us to more or less max out the tech tree within three years, and she was nocturnal too, so she didn't start many fights either. Good ol broad, she was.
I mean, I'm recruiting a "chemical fixation" chap right now, but he's mostly because of my eight colonists about three are half-decent shots right now, plus my colony isn't exactly awash in drugs for him to drown himself in either.
I tend to choose my prisoners based on my existing pool of pawns. If I have too many incapable of dumb labor or violence, I won't pick any more, but you can usually carry a few of each, it's just about sharing the work properly. Even one or two pyros is manageable enough, when they flip out you just draft someone and follow them around, it's never for that long.
Biggest problem I had was with a tribal colony a few months ago, I had so many pawns not capable of violence (like 50% of them), and everytime there was a raid I'd lose someone who could fight and my non-violence pawns would never die because they weren't fighting! I eventually ended up with a colony of like four or five pawns and none of them could fight, and then a mech raid happened...
Being too picky or accepting are both bad.
If you have researchers, incapable of intellectual is irrelevant for example. Such a pawn can still be very useful if good at crafting, cooking, growing, constructing, social, or violence.
The two I'm least likely to allow into my colonies are those incapable of dumb labor and violence. They need some strong redeeming qualities to overcome those.
A pawn that is at least "interested" can become quite good in that category, passionate is a luxury. While you don't want too many, pawns with weak stats but otherwise can do any task are solid options as cleaner/haulers, and can usually be handed a decent quality club if you don't have grenades or miniguns yet.
Personally, anyone character who wont do dumb labor is already a deal breaker for me... theyve gotta have some pretty fucking spectacular scores somewhere else for me to change my mind, like 12 or more medical skill etc
At some point, probably its useful discard colonists/recruitments. This point is when you have a young colony with few pawns. But when you already have a somewhat "strong" colony, its just pointless.
One of my biggest and strongest colonies that I had was a den full of... everything.
Quote from: tyriaelsoban on June 22, 2017, 10:49:14 AM
Personally, anyone character who wont do dumb labor is already a deal breaker for me... theyve gotta have some pretty fucking spectacular scores somewhere else for me to change my mind, like 12 or more medical skill etc
It's enough if you can assign them useful work such that they don't idle. Incapable of dumb labor but "interested" in art (7 skill) and research (4 skill) is something I'd keep for example, because I could night-shift research this pawn even if I have another already, and once that's through I can just make them generate wealth + room impressiveness spamming statues.
Even 1 flame is enough where if you leave the pawn on the task long-term they get pretty high skill after a couple seasons. A random interested by crappy level 3 crafter can be shoved onto a tailoring bench w/o power making dusters and a few seasons later you have an extra person who can make high-quality equipment. If this person is capable of violent they can also spray miniguns or throw grenades just fine.
Pawns that wind up idling despite every effort to make them productive often find their way into prisons, though they seem to be pretty good at escaping these open door facilities for some reason.
_ In " easy " biome it's fine to recruit as many as you can because you got enough foods to feed them all. In harsh biome or hard story mode, you will want to be picky in recruitment, because elite pawns not only lower raid size in early game, which means you got better change to survive, but also you need less foods to feed people, spend more time and resources to build defensive system and equip your soldiers.
_ I personally always only recruit elite pawns only, who must have certain shooting / melee skills, capable of at least 2 main jobs with passion, no bad traits, healthy and of course can do anything. And i especially welcome cannibalism, psychopath ( psycopath cook is the best ), iron-will or sanguine who will stand strong whatever situation, hardwork is also welcome but no really needed, greenthumb is ok if there is passion in growing, doctors are always good too, and pyromaniac is good material for a chair.
As noted by others, "Incapable of X" only matters in certain circumstances, those being:
-- X is something that directly saves lives (firefighting, medical, fighting to defend your life and those of other colonists)
-- X is something that no one else in the colony can do competently already
-- X is dumb labor
You can get by with a low percentage of colonists in the first category but too many of them will spell your colony's doom eventually. The second category is far less important but still matters because those colonists are still eating your food, making messes to clean up, and adding to your colony wealth.
The Dumb Labor category is, in my opinion, a strange mixture of both. You absolutely need some pawns to haul and clean. Without cleaning, your pawns will be miserable and have constant food poisoning and poor medical care. Cleaning literally saves lives by reducing infection rates. Without hauling, crops rot in the fields, unsightly garbage like corpses cannot be removed, you cannot run an efficient base at all because materials are strewn everywhere. Trained animals can somewhat relieve the burden but good luck getting a pig to burn a corpse or refill a campfire or open a cryptosleep casket (yes, for some damn reason that is a hauling job). But you do not need *everyone* to be able to do these things, only *enough*. And how many *enough* is will vary from base to base.
Unfortunately a full 25% of randomly generated adult pawns are Incapable of Dumb Labor. Without getting into whether that should be changed (yes), it means that you need to be extra vigilant about making sure you have enough pawns to do the basic, dirty tasks that make a base run efficiently. Personally I will never recruit any pawn who won't haul unless they 1. are a superstar in multiple other areas and 2. those other areas make it possible for them to be doing SOMETHING useful all day instead of wandering idly. Research and art are ideal, cooking/crafting is also a strong possibility in a base with sufficient resources.
Quote from: tyriaelsoban on June 22, 2017, 10:49:14 AM
Personally, anyone character who wont do dumb labor is already a deal breaker for me... theyve gotta have some pretty fucking spectacular scores somewhere else for me to change my mind, like 12 or more medical skill etc
Honestly, I'm not as picky on dumb labor as I used to be. Your colony can seriously operate fine with only 50% of your pawns capable of hauling and cleaning, you just need to prioritise their tasks properly.
It's violence that I'm really careful about these days. I'll happily carry one or two of these shmucks in a ten-man colony, but too many more and you just get outgunned in raids.
I'm usually extremely picky with colonists - I play with hospitality mod cos I don't like vanilla behaviour(if I play on vanilla I instantly send unwanted colonists on suicide caravan missions and in general I tend to accept more not 'perfect' colonists than with hospitality).
I don't mind colonists being incapable of some kind of work, I look at traits and if they are good specialists in field I need. I usually have at least 1/10 of my colonist on priority 1 cleaning>hauling duty, rest just help up with cleaning/hauling when they have nothing to do(with specialized colonists it happens). This is defenitely not best setup when it comes to being proficient but I enjoy it most. I usually use predators/dogs for most of hauling work - no need to feed them, all you need is good handler.
I'm not picky with colonists when I do a challenge or roleplay for fun. The only need I find to take colonists that are not perfect is when I for some reason fucked up somewhere and I need fast addition to my defenses cos I either get too much wealth in short period of time/run into energy problems with colony relying on turrets/i'm short on resources for defenses - extra manpower is what I need then, i'll welcome anyone who can hold weapon.
I would love to play on permadeath and roleplay way more this game, but as much as I love this game I think in it's it current state it's not ready for that yet(at least in my eyes).
I think there are two standards that should be applied when deciding whether or not to accept a colonist:
1) When raiders show up, is he an asset in the firefight?
2) When raiders aren't around, is he able to do anything useful to earn his food?
If you can answer "yes" to both of these, keep him. Which usually means as long as he has two good eyes, willingness to fire a gun, and can grow and mine and do any one other thing you can find a use for him.
Anyone else, go ahead and devmode / destroy tool / *click*
Bah. Just run enough mood bonuses, that your colonists don't mind a bit of organlegging/trafficking; MUCH more profitable.
These are the things I usually take into consideration before recruiting:
Demand for their skills. If I need crafter, and this guy crafting level is high then I am taking him.
Good traits. Well if they have meh traits as long as its not pyro pyro its ok.
Family relationships. I have this weird thing which makes me accept and recruit family members regardless of their abilities.
If he or she fits my story. I use Edb's prepare carefully and my colonists have medieval backgrounds, so I wont be accepting spacemen anytime soon.
I take anyone who isn't a pyromaniac, it is the one trait I just don't have any patience for. I've never had a pawn show up (one way or another) that I haven't found a use for - except for pyromaniac - they have a horrible accident with all of the fellow colonist hitting them over the head when they are in bed. Mood debuff is worth it for getting rid of those menaces.
Ironically, I do like fire - but I've never had the urge to go set something on fire that is important to my continued survival.
I took in a guy who was capable only to do this: firefighting, artistic, violent, animal handle.
Originally I accepted him only cause he is father of one of the original three, but he turned out to be one of the more usefull colonists. Mainly due to the fact he is lvl 19++ shooter ;D Oh, and hes psychycally sensitive pessimist
Quote from: Bozobub on June 24, 2017, 04:06:52 PM
Bah. Just run enough mood bonuses, that your colonists don't mind a bit of organlegging/trafficking; MUCH more profitable.
Good point. You can always run a resort that funds itself with organ harvesting. Although this probably doesn't work well in cold climates -- unless you use drop pods to fling the organs over to the neighboring settlement where you want to sell them?
If you can't sell them (or their bits and bobs), simply eat them and make fashionable eveningwear. And hats, of course.
For a while I looked for people who was able to do everything because when I wanted something to be done like, right now, I really hated choosing a random colonist, asking him to do it, and get a « Nope ! ».
Now I changed my strategie, I give my pawns less different jobs so they get really good at one or two things (which can be a real issue if loose THE miner or THE cook, but well), so it's not that much of an issue anymore. I even like having one or two pawns who do only combat, art and research, so that they are concentrated in researching/making money, and don't quit their jobs for days to "haul urgently" dead man cloth on the other side of the map.
The only thing I look for is people with a passion in some interesting jobs, no matter the level they have. I also tend to be indulgent with families and teenagers. And for the traits, well, pyromaniac are really annoying, I haven't paid attention to them at first and got a colony with five of them, since then I just destroy them each time they do their « crisis », no micromanagement anymore. (Fun fact : a pyromaniac with no ams can't help you in any way, but can still set fire on the only cable between your base and your main power source).
I avoid Ugly and Staggeringly Ugly traits as much as I can too, I have nothing against them, but colonists do. In addition I'm using a mod that improve the social stuff a bit (I think it's Rumor and Deception) and whoa, the ugly 14 yo girl I bought from a pirate merchant just because I felt pity for her is so sad, she wants to leave because she has no friends, she goes in sad wanders because people insult her. That's so harsh, why ?