So, after the nine millionth tantrum spiral I've finally gone berserk enough myself to make this thread. I'm going to start with the conclusion and get to the rationale, so if you don't want my whining and only want my suggestion just read what's under the following header. In a nutshell: the entire mental break system, but the berserk facet in particular, needs to be overhauled for both playability and realism. In its current form it is not fun and it doesn't make sense.
This is my actual suggestion
The new proposed system is actually quite simple. Mental health is a bucket, and it fills and fills with no really terribly bad effects until one day it overflows and your colonist eats a bullet, or just straight up wanders off ne'er to return, or enters a cycle of alcoholic self-destruction, or whichever grisly end you prefer. When your colonist crashes on the planet he begins with a certain number of stress points depending on his background. As bad things happen instead of getting stupid ephemeral maluses he accrues semi-permanent stress points in his bucket. As the bucket begins to fill you might get minor warning signs - "Colonist A has noticed X change in Colonist B's behaviour" - or the colonist might lose good traits (like Hard Worker) and gain negative traits (like Lazy [which could be renamed to Unmotivated, or whatever]). As the bucket continues to fill you get more serious effects, like soft mental breaks. In the third phase you begin to get the most serious effects - new and nasty traits like drug dependency which, when not dealt with either through fulfilling or treating only serve to accelerate stress faster, culminating in the grisly end - a suicide, a useless junkie, whatever.
How do you prevent these spirals of self-destruction? By building up the colonist's ability to cope with stress. Part of this is giving them nice things, like a Megascreen TV, but part of it is by actually removing what they're stressing about. If you have a shitton of food saved up, for example, that's one less thing to stress about. "Gee anon," you say, "that sounds awful similar to the current system. Why have you wasted my time like this?". Well, it's close. The difference is that stress points decrease very slowly, and only when the thing that specifically caused them is addressed. A megascreen TV won't make the colonist suddenly forget that they've only got one more meal in the fridge and two more weeks of winter in the pipeline, or that it's been -40 degrees for the past two weeks and all they have is a tattered parka. If your colonist is stressed about lack of food you need food, not TVs, to unstress him. Stress points also need to decrease incredibly slowly, over a timespan of months potentially. It's not enough to just suddenly have a lot of food because of a passing trader - the colonist needs confidence that the awful thing that they were stressed about happening is never going to happen.
There are three fundamental shifts in focus here. One is that mental health is a long term issue with devastating consequences. You can't just lock berserkers in a room and let them get their mad out and continue on - if you don't deal with it, your colonist will die or become useless. It becomes a crescendo - a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Two is that mental health makes sense. Three is that mental health cannot just be "fixed" by spamming gold statues and hoop sticks. Unless you've got a homestead with all the creature comforts of their former life, the colonists will never not be stressed. You need to basically replicate the life that they lost to have them fully comfortable. In this sense the situation becomes a bit more dire. You can't just limp along from exploit to exploit while you cobble together your meme fort - you need a functioning, industrialised fortress with the comforts of home for the colonists to actually feel at home.
This has the following advantages over the current system. One, it creates better stories. Every colonist's individual breakdown will be unique. Which negative traits they acquire, what those effects are, their particular grim fate, depends on the circumstances of their problems. You could even tie certain stress to certain traits - food stress leads to gluttony, for example. Instead of mental breaks being just a thing that happens to anyone and eventually probably everyone it becomes a life or death personal struggle for each individual colonist, much like it is for any of us, to maintain resolution in the face of adversity - and each colonist will crash and burn in their own fashion. Two, it's more fun. At least it sounds like it to me. No more berserk spirals where you spend forty five minutes unable to do anything because there's never more than 30 seconds when you're not locking someone up. No more colonists throwing hissy fits because they went two days without a bed. With a single stroke it removes annoyance and adds depth. Three, it seems to me relatively easy to implement. All the requisite features are there. The game already tracks how much food you have, for example. It already tracks sleep deprivation, hunger, etc. etc. All that needs to be added is the "effects" side of the system, not the input side, and the traits by and large already exist. The stress points are the only thing that require a lot of new systems (tying particular point to particular situations), but I don't think even they would be new from the ground up.
This is me whining
The whole concept of people going berserk is just straight up fucking retarded. Full stop. There, I said it. People do not just "go berserk". Going berserk is not a thing. It doesn't actually happen. The closest equivalent to berserkers in real life is actually spree killers. There is no other IRL equivalent - a berserk colonist in Rimworld will kill anyone they see for no reason other than "I'm really mad." But even spree killers are a poor equivalence; the Columbine shooters went crazy, but they didn't go retarded. They had a very careful and relatively effective plan. McVeigh was angry enough about whatever he was angry about to kill over it, but he didn't walk into the Murrah building and start wailing on the security guards with his fists. There is no real life equivalent to berserkers because berserk status is not real.
So, to start with, the entire concept is dumb.
Secondly, the mental health of colonists is way too fragile. You crash land on a planet and within two days you start trying to kill your fellow survivors because you don't have a fucking bed? Give me a break. This ignores the huge body of first hand accounts of people who were trapped in vastly worse situations than our prissy Rimworld colonists and who made it out alive and coped with it pretty alright. Even cannibalism. Unless you've got a palatial Rimworld fort cannibalism is a guaranteed trip to berserk town.
Tom Dudley, Edwin Stephens, Edmund Brooks, and Richard Parker, a 17 year old cabin boy, were stranded at sea in 1883 for 24 days. During that time they murdered and consumed Richard Parker. Not only did they not go berserk and then continue on to murder each other, they didn't even strip off all their clothes and walk around in a daze (admittedly they were on a small launch, so walking space would have been confined).
In 1972 a plane carrying the Uruguayan rugby team crashed in the Andes, and they survived for 72 days by consuming each other - especially notable is that basically the entire plane knew each other personally, and many people ate their own family members. Number of berserk rages experienced: 0.
In 1609-1610 the Jamestown colony in America experienced an event known as the "Starving Time," which pretty much says it all. Not only did the colony not descend into murderous rage ending in total failure with everybody involved dead, the colony actually went on to 'flourish' (at least insofar as it didn't disappear for a while).
Need I go on?
People eat other people, and historically this has happened a lot. What has historically not happened a lot is a sudden outbreak of murderous rage and mental retardation leading to flailing incoherent loons wailing on each other. I think it is absolutely inarguable that berserk rage as depicted in Rimworld - a sudden snap and then unchecked murderous desire combined with total loss of all reason - does not happen in real life, and that even if it did, it's far too easy to bring on. This isn't to say that people in those awful situations got through them undamaged. They didn't. But the current system doesn't reflect that at all. That's just talking about berserk. Onto the rest of the system: soft breaks.
Soft breaks are a little bit more sensible. The idea of someone saying "fuck this, I'm going for a walk" is eminently plausible, and I think they're about the right frequency. The problem is that they have no continuing effects, and this ties into the mental health system in Rimworld entire. Mental health in Rimworld is a bar, and when the bar is full you're happy and when it's empty you're sad, and when you're sad you act out for a moment (just a moment) and then you're fine again. That's not even close to real life. In a situation like Rimworld the real threat is the grinding monotony, but also incredible stress, of subsistence living. You're not a gibbering loon one day and then cheery the next, it's a more gradual erosion of your ability to cope with stress until you top yourself or go properly mad, from which there is no (or very limited) return. Soldiers who succumb to battle fatigue, for example, do not wander off into the bushes and then return 24 hours later totally fine. Instead they get through a deployment (or most of it) pretty alright, and the wounds only show up much later. The rising crescendo of stress - which does not necessarily abate when out of danger - combined with a faltering ability to cope with it finally culminates in suicidal depression or irrationality. There's a long video by lindybeige on YouTube you can watch on the subject if you're as autistic as I am (yes, I'm aware that lindybeige is only entry-level autism).
The point is that the system is nonsensical. 'Git gud' does not address my criticisms.
I would love to hear thoughts from other people. I just... i don't grasp what you are saying.
There's three aspects to the current mood system. One of these three make sense. The other two don't.
Part 1: when a colonist gets in a sufficiently bad mood, he stops doing useful work. This is very realistic and sensible. He's upset that he's stranded on a planet he's going to die on, doesn't see the point of continuing, and goes off into the corner to sulk for a while. Or goes back to bed and refuses to get up. Depression is a real thing.
Part 2: While wandering around being useless, he strips his clothes off and freezes to death. What The Fudgepucky? This is just completely bizarre.
Part 3: When he gets really ticked off he starts randomly assaulting other colonists. What?
Now, let's suppose we remove #2 and #3 above, and replace it with something far more dangerous and realistic: personality trait ABRASIVE. Yes, that's right, unhappy people are snippy and say mean things and make everyone *else* miserable too. Ho boy!!! That's quite an incentive to keep your colonists happy!
The "part 2" is actually a nice description of being shellshocked.
You got hit by something so big, you don't know how to cope with it.
Quote from: Daman453 on July 18, 2016, 06:12:44 PM
I would love to hear thoughts from other people. I just... i don't grasp what you are saying.
It's relatively straightforward. The current mental health system in Rimworld is an outright failure. It's gamey, boring, and often frustrating. It ought to be replaced with a better system, as detailed in the OP.
"Secondly, the mental health of colonists is way too fragile. You crash land on a planet and within two days you start trying to kill your fellow survivors because you don't have a fucking bed? Give me a break. This ignores the huge body of first hand accounts of people who were trapped in vastly worse situations than our prissy Rimworld colonists and who made it out alive and coped with it pretty alright. Even cannibalism. Unless you've got a palatial Rimworld fort cannibalism is a guaranteed trip to berserk town."
YES. This is probably the biggest issue I have with Rimworld. It really, really doesn't seem logical how people would complain about eating while sitting on the ground when the millions of other people on the ship are dead and they could have been too.
No, hard mental breaks in the game are not very realistic. But within the frame of the game, long-term mental effects/problems would not work well. First off, it creates a negative spiral that becomes hard to break. Once your colonists become negative and depressed, they will continue down that path instead of being "reset" by a mental break. Small missteps early on will stack up and render most pawns uselss eventually.
Or the other way around, a pawn will die (as they tend to do) before the mental effects of abuse even apppear.
The life of a Rimworld pawn is short and intense, because none of us have actual years to play the game at a realistic pace. If you want mental breaks to be realistic, the entire flow of time in the game needs to be radically different - and that of course afffects everything else as well. So I doubt it.
Quote from: cultist on July 19, 2016, 01:10:16 PM
No, hard mental breaks in the game are not very realistic. But within the frame of the game, long-term mental effects/problems would not work well. First off, it creates a negative spiral that becomes hard to break. Once your colonists become negative and depressed, they will continue down that path instead of being "reset" by a mental break. Small missteps early on will stack up and render most pawns uselss eventually.
Or the other way around, a pawn will die (as they tend to do) before the mental effects of abuse even apppear.
But this is actually a feature, not a bug. The idea is that stress continuously accumulates until you get to the very late game and have a fully functional fort with stores laid in. The point of the new system is to change mental health from being something that you can practically ignore entirely until someone goes berserk to being something you have to manage all the time. Management of mental health comes simply from playing the game and advancing through it; as your fort becomes more capable your colonists have less to stress about, until eventually they can begin to relax again. If your fort never becomes capable your colonists continue to stress and stress until they fall apart.
In the current system even the best forts have pretty much unavoidable mental breaks occasionally. In the new system you'll only really start to see the significant negative consequences of poor mental health
after you have failed to manage it.
If your colonists die before they manage to kill themselves then oh well, but I don't think that the entire mental health system should suffer so that the players whose colonists live fast can be forced to suffer through the mental break system like those who keep their colonists alive for months.
QuoteThe life of a Rimworld pawn is short and intense, because none of us have actual years to play the game at a realistic pace. If you want mental breaks to be realistic, the entire flow of time in the game needs to be radically different - and that of course afffects everything else as well. So I doubt it.
The expected useful lifetime of a soldier in action before they pretty much fall apart is about 200 days in the US army. I think you could truncate that down to 100 days or even 50 days to fit into a RimWorld game and still be able to do justice to the major phases of mental collapse. I'm not after a realistic timeframe, I'm after a realistic progression.
Maybe a really simple implementation could be a bigger mood/stress buffer (the big mental starte bar).... with on the left the usual two bars for hard and soft mental breaks, respectively 2%-8% (changed by character background)... after this a portion of the buffer that could include some penalties.. like on focusing/speed/bench work, so from 8% to 30%.... then there could be a neutral region from 30 to 75%, then a small boost region from 75% to 90% and a big boost above 90%.
Boost could be attributes... big boost could be hero fighting skills and/or based on the character background.
I suppose this would need some balance, but should be quite simple to implement.
I couldn't test in detail the last changes, but reducing fast fluctuations and berserk chains was already discussed.
I'm playing at extreme level and is playable, with stress being a major issue from time to time.
Would not implement major changes, rather just enlarge the buffer.
Elements to buffer the buffer are also an idea ;) like wardeners cheering up stressed colonist.
Usually, in a normal game, when you get a potential crisis situation, you are given the means to solve it.
In RW, when a leg gets shot off, you can replace it with peg legs or bionic crap. Same for hands and other body parts. BUT... some bad things have no solution, (eg bad back, frail, shattered spine, etc) because it is supposed to "real", right?
In psi terms, if you have legendary royal beds, 100+ space personal rooms, with "beautiful" spouses, lavish meals and chocolate, heaters and coolers, carpets and gold floors with flowers and statues on each corner, 350+ space rec room with all the joy you can get ... guess what? Your colonist would be still become mad sometimes. That's because certain bad traits have no good equivalent. Abrasive, Volatile, Bloodlust to name only a few. And because RNG wants that way. (... Unless you mod the ThoughtsDef, of course).
Is not small matter. A colony can be destroyed because of bad mood. Mood is just as important as clothes, food, weapons or shelter. Early game we cover basic needs and basic defenses, but how many times you had those covered and you've been screwed by shit like social fight -> low medicine -> death -> death debuff -> break down -> no medicine -> death -> death debuff... etc?
I had a guy, he went from 6 shooting to 20 shooting by killing people. At that time was no statistic system, but I assume he killed over 5000 people. And he was still debuffed for observing corpses. Yep, that makes a lot of sense. I fkn killed 5000 humans, but I cant see dead people. I'm sensitive that way. Or a brawler who likes to kill "close and personal" but chunks of granite are too much for his feelings. People are more resilient than they are pictured in game. Way more. What I see down there, are a bunch of pussies totally unfit to survive in a hostile environment.
See where I'm going? Not only we need a system that uses calm/stress points from a pool, but we also need buffs / debuffs based on something more than traits and simple actions. Thoughts and socials are simple to mod but to make something meaningful, like after 1000+ kills you become psycho or after 1000 days in night-shifts become night-owl... those need a bit more than xml editing.
Better stop here. :)
I'm going to go ahead and add my two cents here; I really like Shurp's idea of nixing #s 2 and 3, and replacing it with a (temporary?) abrasive trait. That is a very accurate simulation of people under stress, and has the further benefit of mimicking a nerfed version of berserk; colonists already get in fights from social interactions, so adding the abrasive trait would mean someone really unhappy would get into a lot of fights. Mechanically it presents similar challenges to the berserk state (injury of colonists) but does so in a more realistic and more interesting way; no longer do you just lock unhappy people in their room until you snap out of it, but rather have to solve the source of their issue while keeping an eye on them, making sure they don't piss off your legendary brawler.
Quote from: brcruchairman on July 20, 2016, 05:28:39 PMmaking sure they don't piss off your legendary brawler.
Oooo, I hadn't even thought of that aspect. I was just thinking about the potential "FUN" spiral of unhappy people becoming abrasive causing others to become unhappy until the whole colony spirals into doom :) But you bring up a good point with fighting ability; keeping track of *which* colonists get into a bad mood could become even more important. And who they interact with.
This could even work with the other thread idea, that of introducing intra-colony politics. As people get angrier with each other they could split off into factions hostile to each other and you wind up having to split the base in half to keep them from killing each other.
I'm a poor writer, so I won't go into a long tangent, but I definitely agree with what you're saying, and that the current mental breaks and mood system should be revamped.
I just have a problem with the berserk!
My main pawn got in berseker in the middle of the dinning room, 3 people shot him at the same time and he lost an arm and a nose!
I got a bionic arm, but I cheated the nose back!
Ok guy, he is furios, instead of running and giving him some space, let´s shoot him dead!
Gotta love that Rimworld logic. "My lover looks angry. SHOTGUN TO THE NOSE TIME!" My pawns usually just try to beat the poor sod unconscious, but I, too, have seen shots fired. It is sadness.
i cull all pyromaniacs and harvest their organs. filthy savages, the lot o them.
The berserk feature is patently ridiculous and honestly feels completely out of place in what is otherwise a really well thought-out game. Not only does it have little to no basis in reality, it also procs at an incredible rate, even on really easy difficulties. I'm talking three separate people in the first hour. Come on, harden up a bit people.
edit: Seriously, that's like six times in a row now. Berserk from being totally joy-deprived, or eating without a table. PEOPLE DON'T DO THAT. I get that Rimworld isn't supposed to be fair, it's supposed to be a story generator, but a story in which everyone just goes berserk all the time is a terrible story. Has anyone made a mod that removes berserk from the game? I haven't been able to find one.
Yes I am with the general notion that Berserks happen to often and are way out of line.
And I like the Idea that it should be a accumulation of stuff, not a bar that goes down.
Also the severity and especially duration of those debuffs needs a serious rebalancing. ( But there are threads about that out there )
Also there should be ingame ways for the Colony to defuse these situations ..
The lvl 20 Socializer could act as Shrink and reliev some stress.
The lvl 20 Melee Dude should be able to subdue someone without harming them ( I mean we are talking Bruce Lee Lvl of Competence here )
The Shellshocked Pawn should be guided to her room and locked in, then talk with the socializer and doc. Not that the player should micromanage rescue pawn and wait until she collapses somewhere on the edge of the map before she can be rescued ..
Well yeah +10 for the First Post .. this should be worked on.
Quote from: gmillar on July 21, 2016, 05:12:32 AM
The berserk feature is patently ridiculous and honestly feels completely out of place in what is otherwise a really well thought-out game. Not only does it have little to no basis in reality, it also procs at an incredible rate, even on really easy difficulties. I'm talking three separate people in the first hour. Come on, harden up a bit people.
edit: Seriously, that's like six times in a row now. Berserk from being totally joy-deprived, or eating without a table. PEOPLE DON'T DO THAT. I get that Rimworld isn't supposed to be fair, it's supposed to be a story generator, but a story in which everyone just goes berserk all the time is a terrible story. Has anyone made a mod that removes berserk from the game? I haven't been able to find one.
honestly without the berserk thing, this game would be way too easy
Quote from: gmillar on July 21, 2016, 05:12:32 AM
edit: Seriously, that's like six times in a row now. Berserk from being totally joy-deprived, or eating without a table. PEOPLE DON'T DO THAT.
Guess what - Rimworld colonists don't do that either.
You don't understand how Rimworld mood system works. You have been misled by the pop-up message. (Colonist went berserk. Reason: ate without a table). I know because *I* proposed the pop-up message, only with different wording:
(Colonist had a mental_break. The final straw was: most_recently_acquired_negative_mood)
The bottom line is that colonists in Rimworld don't berserk from eating without a table or from being joy deprived. Eating without a table is -4, totally joy deprived is -10. That's not enough to push a colonist below the treshold. It's the total mood level that matters, not some minor negative thought that's really just a flavor message. Your colonist broke because of a combination of negative moods.
Exactly what b0rusk said. One addition: you get the "eating without a table" as the final insult because eating is something colonists do a lot of.
BTW, have you considered building a table? And a stool to sit on? If you put it in your freezer your colonists don't have to walk far to get food and eat.
You guys that are such detractors of the system do realize that the various mental breakdowns the pawns can have in game fit the bill almost exactly for real-life psychotic breaks, right?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychotic_break
Symptoms can range from delusions, catatonia, to outbreaks of depression, to violent outbursts. They can be caused by many things, but accumulated stress is one of them.
The pawns aren't having a breakdown from not eating at a table, they are having a breakdown from all of the other super-sucky shit you are making them do
"........ So, I am living in a hole carved out of the side of a mountain, on some uncivilized dirtball in the middle of nowhere. I am not going to see my friends, family, or even my homeworld again. We are constantly hungry, get attacked by the locals (that hate us), sleep on the floor, and I work 8+ hours a day chipping out a tunnel in the rock. I haven't seen the sun in weeks. I am pretty sure that we are eating human flesh and wearing their skins. And I can't even eat on a fucking table. All this work, all this blood, sweat and tears, and we can't even make a goddamn table and some stools to sit down at. You know what, I am SICK AND TIRED OF THIS! FUCK THIS, AND FUCK YOU! NO DON'T TELL ME TO CALM DOWN!"
-cue mental break-
On a related note, it is actually pretty easy to prevent mental breaks among colonists, so long as you don't treat them like shit. Strange concept, I know.
Now, don't get me wrong, I have many issues with the various mental aspects of the game ("I want a private room!"? Fuck off, cotton-candy-panties, you just crash-landed on a hyperviolent, ass-backwards frontier-world, you should be glad to be alive, much less have a bed.), but mental breaks are actually one of the aspects I have the least amount of trouble with.
Don't overwork your colonists, give them nice, tasty food and comfortable surroundings, and prevent/limit trauma.
Yes, people can be "comfortable" killing people when their lives are threatened, but react with remorse and horror when the adrenaline wears off. It is called "killing in hot blood", and happens in real life.
Uh, Boston? You realize that the article you cited is actually a very poor fit for your argument, right? It lists many other symptoms, and specifies
explicitly that symptoms vary greatly. Berserk has an almost uniform presentation, while a psychotic break has an extremely wide range of presentation. I'd also note that psychosis is losing touch with reality, while a berserk state is characterized by a singular emotion (e.g., rage) and violent behavior. Psychotic break no more fits the bill for berserk state than cerebral edema fits the bill for food poisoning, despite both having a symptom of nausea.
All the above said, I feel that your interpretation of events leading up to the berserk state is correct; it's not one little thing that puts them over the edge, it's an accumulation of a lot of things. I don't believe that the problem is people are playing the game wrong, but rather I think people are upset with this particular method of presentation because it doesn't mimic reality. Psychotic breaks are extraordinarily rare, while simple frayed tempers and irritability are quite common. I believe at least some in this thread are advocating a system which allows for a broader breadth of gameplay without reducing the difficulty. Toothyp1cks put it quite nicely:
Quote from: toothyp1cks on July 19, 2016, 04:59:37 PM
If your colonists die before they manage to kill themselves then oh well, but I don't think that the entire mental health system should suffer so that the players whose colonists live fast can be forced to suffer through the mental break system like those who keep their colonists alive for months.
I think some of this could be resolved by adding more ways people break other than dazed or berserk... And maybe limit dazed and berserk to hard mental breaks and have soft ones be something else.
i LOVE this suggestion. it promotes progress, from being without potted plants and TVs too potted plants and TVs and chairs and food and etc.
Quote from: Dread Zep on July 21, 2016, 04:24:43 PM
honestly without the berserk thing, this game would be way too easy
Surely you have more imagination than that. Berserk is not the only difficult thing in the game. Adjust a couple numbers on a couple other events and boom, it's just as hard again. Besides, I'm specifically talking about easy difficulty.
Quote from: b0rsuk on July 21, 2016, 06:36:12 PM
Guess what - Rimworld colonists don't do that either.
You don't understand how Rimworld mood system works. You have been misled by the pop-up message. (Colonist went berserk. Reason: ate without a table). I know because *I* proposed the pop-up message, only with different wording:
(Colonist had a mental_break. The final straw was: most_recently_acquired_negative_mood)
The bottom line is that colonists in Rimworld don't berserk from eating without a table or from being joy deprived. Eating without a table is -4, totally joy deprived is -10. That's not enough to push a colonist below the treshold. It's the total mood level that matters, not some minor negative thought that's really just a flavor message. Your colonist broke because of a combination of negative moods.
Yeah actually I do get how it works, thanks. Doesn't really affect my point. None of the things that happened in the game would realistically contribute to someone going violently insane. If a bunch of minor things really added up to a wanton murder spree like that, the world would be a much more dangerous place.
Quote from: Shurp on July 21, 2016, 07:41:13 PM
Exactly what b0rusk said. One addition: you get the "eating without a table" as the final insult because eating is something colonists do a lot of.
BTW, have you considered building a table? And a stool to sit on? If you put it in your freezer your colonists don't have to walk far to get food and eat.
BTW, I probably eat at a table about once a week. The rest of the time, I'm sitting in front of a computer, standing at a desk, or maybe walking somewhere while I eat. It really doesn't bother me at all.
And yes, I did consider building a table, but it seemed like a lower priority than aquiring food, building some way to preserve it, building somewhere to sleep, and fending off raiders and mechanoids, all within the first few days. I'm literally talking about a matter of days, on Phoebe Chillax/Basebuilder.
I also get why Tynan made not eating at a table affect mood. I don't actually have a problem with that. What I have a problem with is the quantum leap to berserk, and the overbearing effect that moods seem to have on the game at this time.
Quote from: Boston on July 21, 2016, 08:47:50 PM
You guys that are such detractors of the system do realize that the various mental breakdowns the pawns can have in game fit the bill almost exactly for real-life psychotic breaks, right?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychotic_break
Symptoms can range from delusions, catatonia, to outbreaks of depression, to violent outbursts. They can be caused by many things, but accumulated stress is one of them.
The pawns aren't having a breakdown from not eating at a table, they are having a breakdown from all of the other super-sucky shit you are making them do
"........ So, I am living in a hole carved out of the side of a mountain, on some uncivilized dirtball in the middle of nowhere. I am not going to see my friends, family, or even my homeworld again. We are constantly hungry, get attacked by the locals (that hate us), sleep on the floor, and I work 8+ hours a day chipping out a tunnel in the rock. I haven't seen the sun in weeks. I am pretty sure that we are eating human flesh and wearing their skins. And I can't even eat on a fucking table. All this work, all this blood, sweat and tears, and we can't even make a goddamn table and some stools to sit down at. You know what, I am SICK AND TIRED OF THIS! FUCK THIS, AND FUCK YOU! NO DON'T TELL ME TO CALM DOWN!"
-cue mental break-
On a related note, it is actually pretty easy to prevent mental breaks among colonists, so long as you don't treat them like shit. Strange concept, I know.
Now, don't get me wrong, I have many issues with the various mental aspects of the game ("I want a private room!"? Fuck off, cotton-candy-panties, you just crash-landed on a hyperviolent, ass-backwards frontier-world, you should be glad to be alive, much less have a bed.), but mental breaks are actually one of the aspects I have the least amount of trouble with.
Don't overwork your colonists, give them nice, tasty food and comfortable surroundings, and prevent/limit trauma.
Yes, people can be "comfortable" killing people when their lives are threatened, but react with remorse and horror when the adrenaline wears off. It is called "killing in hot blood", and happens in real life.
I don't really disagree with any of that. It also doesn't really address my point that the berserk effect specifically is unrealistic and incredibly annoying. Like brcruchairman said, there are a whole bunch of different things that can happen to a person under stress, but mindless bloodlust is incredibly uncommon. As has been mentioned already, there are countless examples of people stuck in horrible situations who never go berserk in any way.
If you watch game messages closely, you will see that psychotic breaks are indeed an inspiration. "NAME is no longer wandering in a psychotic rage."
I would simply like to have more possible effects for mental breaks. Minor mental breaks have variety. Major mental break is wandering. Extreme mental break is berserk.
A colonist walking around, throwing dishes and other items at walls DF-style. Scratching a sculpture of the person he hates. Kicking a plant or a chair pot over. That would be a major break, not extreme break.
Hopefully major and extreme breaks are next for expanding.
Just wanted to drop by and say that I fully support those who think the Berserk feature is broken and really improperly implemented. I agree with toothyp1cks about the unrealistic and frustrating nature of this behaviour state.
I got especially upset about it when I recently played a custom tribal scenario where I started out with a couple of tribesmen and very limited supplies. The game actually played out well and I managed to fight of most threats pretty good. Well, until my tribe started going berserk... And let me tell you the reasons of this:
* Someone watched outsiders die (well that's reasonable, could probably make people feel bad)
* Almost all my tribesmen felt they lived in an ugly environment. REALLY? If I choose to start the game as a tribe (which is an official feature introduced in the last patch) I don't expect my "tribe" to come from some kind of utopian super city with all the luxury items you can imagine. Still I had a lot of flowers etc. and in general I believe the environment for my tribemen was more pleasant than how most tribes with the same technology level would live in IRL.
* People was sleeping in the same room. Yeah, sure. I know this has been a basic characteristic that has been in the game for a long time. But well... If you look at most both recent and prehistoric tribes you will find something that's pretty common: Tribesmen do/did not have a separate room only for themselves. And guess what? It doesn't make them sad! Wierd? No, don't think so.
* Someone's dog got attacked by a cobra and died. Yes, this is a sad event. But I'm pretty sure the nature of this tragic loss still would not contribute to someone going nuts and trying to kill the whole tribe. No, there are many more important things to focus on.
I don't know, perhaps I could have prevented some of the above by tweaking the scenario settings (haven't been looking into those that much yet) and make the game behave a little more realistic. Though I realised I've perhapsed ranted more about the lack of adaptation for the "tribe" feature than the actual berserk mode. I still believe that the Berserk mode is a misaligned and strange behaviour for normal "colony" game play as well though.
Some basic ideas to improve the system:
* Perhaps keep the berserk mood but make it extremely unlikely that it will ever occur.
* Introduce more types of mental breaks, which are more likely. As some people have already suggested.
* Make tribal gameplay make sense (doesn't really belong to this thread though).
* Tweak the mood system to make a little more sense. For example look at the IRL scenarios toothyp1cks described and try to realise how ridiculous the current in-game mental/mood system is.
* Allow us to fine-tune a lot more settings when creating a scenario, then you can maybe keep the current Berserk mode for those who like it. If there just would be an easy way to make the mental break-downs to behave a bit more realistic.
It's a great game in general though, but this is to me a big issue which (for me) ruins much of the immersion and gameplay experience.
Hi! I've just register here after playing some weeks, and i've seen this thread. I think my real life experience could help a bit, not that i've been a colonist in an alien world ::) or an explorer lost months in a jungle, but well, several years ago one of my best friends had a psychotic break, me myself years after that fell into a deep depression with anxiety attacks and what not. Due to that events and other circunstamces, i've known several people(some of them relatives to me, like girlfriends and friends) with different mental problems, anorexia, OCD, schizophrenia, depression or just stress driven anxiety.
First, to be fair, i have to say that i've never seen any of that person get into some state similar to the game berserk state, but i have to say too that it's not as absurd as some people seems to think.
You know, people, generally speaking, can break for really tiny things. I think the most correct way of seeing it is like someone already wrote in this thread, little things build up, accumulate and sum one to another until you vent them all. You HAVE to vent that sum of things, if you don't do it at the proper time, lets just say that they do it for you, and that's how one thing that seems really tiny for one person makes another person to break down.
The night my friend had the psychotic break, he talked stupid things for hours, he got naked at the middle of his house in front of his mother, brother and other friends who was trying to help. He finally calmed down and we managed to convince him to take a tranquilizer, or that was what we thought... he didn't "eat" it, he did just pretend to eat it ::) . So later at night, when we friends and brother wasn't there and he was only with his mother, he tried to escape from his house, someone thought he was trying to commit suicide because he tried to escape by the windows of the house ::), so the police came, and well, you can imagine what a mess.
First things first: yeah, some people get naked for no apparent reason when they "break down" (and he's not the only one i know that did it) ;) , and yeah, people stop doing things they do all days and instead they speak stupid things.
So, that are two things that i can asure all of you, without any doubt, because i saw it irl, that is perfectly normal in a situation like that.
The berserk thing... that's other thing, i've not seen it, but it happens. I know a woman that lost her son because he and his cousin was simply arguing, the cousin got too much angry took a knife (again, things build up, obviously he didn't take the knife ONLY because the discussion with his cousin) and kill the son. The poor woman ended up with a son dead and a nephew in jail.
Back to my friend, do you really think that in that state, escaping from his home with the head full of paranoic ideas, if police would tried to catch him by brute force instead of speaking to him, he wouldn't tried to hit them, to defend himself?
Of course he'd tried it. You know, one or two days later at the hospital, he was still confuse and i had to convince him that i was not some sort of secret police/army agent with micros on my car ::)
Therefore, and taking in mind that these things happened long ago, so i can be totally honest right now, i don't think the mental thing in the game is THAT bad. It remember me that situations from time to time, and i can TOTALLY see that type of things happening in a situation like the one the game shown us.
All that said, i think there are two things that are "too much", or viceversa:
- Berserk state happen just too much, it's too much common. Imo it's not an unplayable too much, but yeah, it's a game, something like between 1/2, 3/4 the current probability i think would be more playable and more realist.
- You have to fill that times that berserk doesn't happen, because i can assure you things WOULD HAPPEN in that situation, oh man, without any doubt. And i think dazed and alcoholic can fill the empty space. Also, dazed characters could run out the base into the wild from time to time
Well, sorry for the wall text and my english(i don't usually write that much! And i'm not a native english speaker), and for the "sad story" ;D But well, i thougth it could help some irl experience.
Berserk had been implemented before non-lethal fights were implemented. Maybe it should just be updated so raging colonists don't intend to kill others, but just hit them a few times ? Raging colonist would punch anyone who slights (or slighted recently) him. Once or twice.
Quote from: jimutt on July 22, 2016, 04:19:07 AM
Just wanted to drop by and say that I fully support those who think the Berserk feature is broken and really improperly implemented. I agree with toothyp1cks about the unrealistic and frustrating nature of this behaviour state.
I got especially upset about it when I recently played a custom tribal scenario where I started out with a couple of tribesmen and very limited supplies. The game actually played out well and I managed to fight of most threats pretty good. Well, until my tribe started going berserk... And let me tell you the reasons of this:
* Someone watched outsiders die (well that's reasonable, could probably make people feel bad)
* Almost all my tribesmen felt they lived in an ugly environment. REALLY? If I choose to start the game as a tribe (which is an official feature introduced in the last patch) I don't expect my "tribe" to come from some kind of utopian super city with all the luxury items you can imagine. Still I had a lot of flowers etc. and in general I believe the environment for my tribemen was more pleasant than how most tribes with the same technology level would live in IRL.
* People was sleeping in the same room. Yeah, sure. I know this has been a basic characteristic that has been in the game for a long time. But well... If you look at most both recent and prehistoric tribes you will find something that's pretty common: Tribesmen do/did not have a separate room only for themselves. And guess what? It doesn't make them sad! Wierd? No, don't think so.
* Someone's dog got attacked by a cobra and died. Yes, this is a sad event. But I'm pretty sure the nature of this tragic loss still would not contribute to someone going nuts and trying to kill the whole tribe. No, there are many more important things to focus on.
I don't know, perhaps I could have prevented some of the above by tweaking the scenario settings (haven't been looking into those that much yet) and make the game behave a little more realistic. Though I realised I've perhapsed ranted more about the lack of adaptation for the "tribe" feature than the actual berserk mode. I still believe that the Berserk mode is a misaligned and strange behaviour for normal "colony" game play as well though.
Some basic ideas to improve the system:
* Perhaps keep the berserk mood but make it extremely unlikely that it will ever occur.
* Introduce more types of mental breaks, which are more likely. As some people have already suggested.
* Make tribal gameplay make sense (doesn't really belong to this thread though).
* Tweak the mood system to make a little more sense. For example look at the IRL scenarios toothyp1cks described and try to realise how ridiculous the current in-game mental/mood system is.
* Allow us to fine-tune a lot more settings when creating a scenario, then you can maybe keep the current Berserk mode for those who like it. If there just would be an easy way to make the mental break-downs to behave a bit more realistic.
It's a great game in general though, but this is to me a big issue which (for me) ruins much of the immersion and gameplay experience.
1) Having stuff stored on the floor, having stockpiles visible in general, makes an environment "ugly". Get weapons stored in racks, and move stockpiles out of common areas.
2) Just because someone/a group is "primitive" or in a tough spot doesn't mean they like to be dirty, or live in dirty environments. Clean up that dirt and blood.
3) I agree with you with regards to multiple people sleeping in the same room. In fact, it wasn't common for people outside of the very wealthy to get separate sleeping quarters until the 1800s/1900s. However, the more serious debuff is in the form of "disturbed sleep", as that one stacks for each pawn moving around.
4) It wasn't the dog dying that put the tribesperson over the edge. It was the dog dying
on top of everything else: the stuff stored everywhere, the dirty living spaces, getting woken up multiple times at night by people moving around, etc.
i like the new hide in my room mental breakdown.. also the beer binging..
i wish there's more soft mental breakdowns like : cuddle with my pet chinchilla and sleep in a fetal position mental breakdown or going on a chocolate binge while watching tv mental breakdown.
Quote from: noxLP on July 22, 2016, 05:54:13 AM
Hi! I've just register here after playing some weeks, and i've seen this thread.
...snip...
To survive in hostile conditions, one must have certain "perks". Over-sensitive, weak, prone to illness or mental breakdowns, lazy, etc are more than sure some of the deal-breakers.
Your friend is living in a civilized place, but put him in a life or death situation. He suddenly upgrades from a mental pacient to a liability. (To be honest, he would be the first sent to face the raiders, barehanded and naked).
My point (and I guess also Tynan point) is that not everyone is mentally / physically fit for a rough and dangerous life as colonist / settler. My problem: in the current state of the game, no-one besides Psychopats and Cannibals are.
I think it's quite clear that peoples opinions differ about how different things should affect the mood of our pawns. Personally I think I'll try to put together a rebalance mod which suits tribal gameplay better. Putting less weight on separate rooms, dirt etc. I still believe that the Berserk mental break need some modifications and rework but when it comes to general "mood modifiers" I guess it depends a lot on the player and what kind of backstory you've made up for your own characters and game.
Although if you just want to get rid of the Berzerk break I put together a really quick Def edit which you can get here: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=729294240
As someone mentioned "Berzerk" is the only "Extreme" level mental break right now though. So I decided to replace it with the "psychotic daze" break for now. Though my plans is to put together a larger more cotextual rebalance mod later on. Haven't been looking into Rimworld modding very much but I do work as a software developer so it really shouldn't be impossible. Just need some more of that precious time...
What I noticed in 14c that the animals don't seem too nuzzle my tribesmen.
I had a mixture of cats and timberwolves as pets which also had kids but none of of my Tribespeople got nuzzled.
I also noticed that in my 14c colony the outbreaks of berzerk/dazed states was a bit more often than in alpha13
Especially since I had about the same Colony Layout, enough food, seperate rooms, and a mostly dedicated cleaner.
Sure Randy E. did his thing but nothing I could not handle. But still I had a breakdown about every other week.
This was really annoying.
Also the pain my Pawns feel from old scars is way to much, especially when we can't do shit about it in vanilla which really
irks me. ( And don't tell me there are mods for this .. I do have them, exactly because of this )
I think we're getting off track.
My point isn't that the mental breaks themselves are unfun or unrealistic. It's the process that leads up to these mental breaks that causes the problems. I'm all in favour of a murder-suicide mechanic that might function similar to Berserk! (bonus points if gets up in the middle of the night and starts slitting throats) or gibbering loons getting naked and so forth - I want bigger, more disastrous mental breaks, if anything.
My problem with the system is that mental breaks are too frequent, too nonsensical, and too inconsequential.
1. frequency
Mental breaks happen, yes. But they don't happen overnight. They happen after being subjected to grinding stress day in, day out, for hundreds of days. 200 days or more, according to the US army. 400 according to the British army. That's how much active deployment it takes for a soldier to burn out and become useless as far as their studies are concerned. What Rimworld misses is that mental breaks are not a stress relief valve, they are the point at which stress overcomes ability to cope with stress which causes the person to become mentally ill. So a mental break happening after two days being stranded is patently ridiculous - and having the entire colony go berserk in stages so that you end up in a rolling berserk that never ends is worse, and it's not fun.
2. nonsensical
Covered in the OP, but basically although mental breaks have a superficial resemblance to real life, they do not capture the complexities of the situation and end up being way too comically abstract and plain frustrating.
3. inconsequential
As frustrating as mental breaks are, they don't even matter 99% of the time. Colonist goes berserk? Forbid the door leading to the room he's in and wait it out. Who cares, L O L. Only when the random number generator decides to fuck you over do they matter, and when that happens there's sweet fuck all you can do to rectify the situation. Mental breaks - or rather mental illness entire - needs a better system where the consequences are dire but you have real tools to address the situation. Instead of just having a berserk cycle, have colonists who break (after months of build up) become suicidal, or alcoholic, or any number of other interesting break-state options that will persist and be a problem for years to come. Minor maluses like irritability and so on that add stress to other colonists as the mental break builds would be cool too.
I will reiterate here: the breaks themselves are not necessarily the problem (though the berserk break ought to be replaced with something more interesting and realistic, like a murder suicide plot that causes the colonist to stockpile weapons and then try and kill anyone he's got social links with before offing himself over a course of days). It is the manner in which they occur.
Well said.
I fully support your points.
And my last post about the frequency of events should support this too,
since the flaws become even more obvious when small stress relievers go missing.
Quote from: taha on July 22, 2016, 07:14:01 AM
Quote from: noxLP on July 22, 2016, 05:54:13 AM
Hi! I've just register here after playing some weeks, and i've seen this thread.
...snip...
To survive in hostile conditions, one must have certain "perks". Over-sensitive, weak, prone to illness or mental breakdowns, lazy, etc are more than sure some of the deal-breakers.
Your friend is living in a civilized place, but put him in a life or death situation. He suddenly upgrades from a mental pacient to a liability. (To be honest, he would be the first sent to face the raiders, barehanded and naked).
My point (and I guess also Tynan point) is that not everyone is mentally / physically fit for a rough and dangerous life as colonist / settler. My problem: in the current state of the game, no-one besides Psychopats and Cannibals are.
Well, my point with that wall of text was that EVEN in a civilized place, as you correctly call it, without hard and large dramas, just because of an accumulation of what could seem poor reasons if you separate them, psychotic breaks and other temporal and permanent mental problems provokes situations similar as those we see in the game (not berserk but similar, naked in front of other people, hide in room, no eating, no working), and well, of course my point was that i've seen it at first person too.
So, in a situation like the one the colonists have to endure, that problems SHOULD be much more common that in our civilized cities and countries, that's without speaking about specific, personal perks or personalities, just statistically so to speak. Specific perks and personalities obviously should influence in all this, and i think it does now, right? I'm not really sure. And that's of course speaking about people accustomed to live in civilized places, tribes should be different as they are accustomed to other things, and of course speaking of reality since some arguments given in this thread were that it's not realistic, not speaking about game balancing that as you can see in my last paragraph, i agree berserk state is too much common, it's just annoying.
@noxLP
You could have made your conclusion more pointed out .. I only understood it on my second read.
For further support of mental breaks being to comman and comparison with real live :
3 out of 5 every 10 days would be between 60% and 70% percent of the total population.
lets say despite of the given living conditions ( and some 2nd and 3rd world countries have it worse than most colonies )
four billion people would go berzerk/mental every two weeks. ..
well <"insert end-of-world scenario here"> for comparison.
Thats worse than Lost or Walking Dead.
Quote from: SpaceDorf on July 22, 2016, 12:27:45 PM
@noxLP
You could have made your conclusion more pointed out .. I only understood it on my second read.
For further support of mental breaks being to comman and comparison with real live :
3 out of 5 every 10 days would be between 60% and 70% percent of the total population.
lets say despite of the given living conditions ( and some 2nd and 3rd world countries have it worse than most colonies )
four billion people would go berzerk/mental every two weeks. ..
well <"insert end-of-world scenario here"> for comparison.
Thats worse than Lost or Walking Dead.
Well, i'm not a native english speaker, and you know how people in internet tend to just don't believe you, so i wanted to state that i lived it irl myself :P
But basically i think we agree, mental breaks themselves are not that unrealistic, they are just too much common and many times the player just lack a way to prevent them.
yeah, english is not my native language either.
and I meant pointing out more in an optical way.
Your actual point came at the end of a long paragraph in a short sentence with no optical distinction.
On the RL accounts of mental breakdowns, lets not go there :)
The way it is currently worded does make it look ridiculous sometimes.
(http://wstaw.org/m/2016/07/22/binge_1.png)
What would actually be helpful is if the "Reason" was the largest negative mood debuff, that way you could tell what was actually driving your colonists crazy.
Reason: bonded animal died
Just wanted to stop by and give my two cents on this particular subject in the game. Just some background; I have quite literally never made a forum account for any game ever but I got into this game when I got tired of searching for hardcore survival games after finally getting bored of don't starve, and decided to try this one skeptically as it is still in alpha. I quickly realized, as other players I'm sure can agree to as well, that this game has immense potential for what it is on the surface - a bunch of pegs with heads on them hovering around. The mechanics are subtly designed so that quite literally anything is possible in any given map, and the modding possibilities are endless, further pushing the games future potential. That being said I really wanted to contribute to the development path of this game in any way possible even as a lowly forum poster complaining about frustrating mechanics, so let's get into it.
The most interesting aspect about this game imo is "pawns". Each has their own quirks and story so that they are humanized just enough where things like defending the colony from waves of enemies holds much more gravity than just dragging a box over units and b clicking the pirates. I think its clear at this point that survival games are few and definitely not few and far between on steam, but as most of us can probably attest to they are mostly quite awful. What makes rimworld different, as the Cassandra Classic and Randy Random (what a dick) can attest to, is the unique story that is told with each different pawn, colony, and game. From what I've seen and read the game creator shares this vision and wants this particular survival experience to be much less cut and dry then build shelter, get food, defend yourselves, make people happy. That being said I think the "mood" and "breakdown" mechanics do need to be addressed.
I believe both splits of opinion on this discussion have valid points. However I also believe the whole realistic or not argument is moot because the biggest issue with the current mood system is that it very drastically stifles the story telling potential that an improved system could accentuate in the game. I believe the OP is on to something very close to what should be the actual system. To start, I think the OP's system is just a more in depth version of what the current system attempts to emulate. When your pawn/pawns first land on the colony they have mood modifiers "new colony optimism" or "low expectations" to balance out the starting hardships of getting a working colony on its feet. In addition, marriages, parties, having bonded pets and some good old fashioned lovin' provide these mood boosters as well that make the hardships of life just a little bit more bearable. Thats the good part. The bad part is when these aforementioned parties and marriages balance out the psychological disstress that comes with having friends and family brutally die in combat, fellow colonists accidentally getting shot in the back of the head by friends and family during combat, harvesting innocent prisoners' organs before mercilessly executing them, the colonist having to eat their friends during a toxic fallout when food is scarce, or more morally gray issues some colonists may disagree upon like harvesting the organs of an innocent visitor to save one of the vital colonists, and the list goes on.
For all of the possible complex situations that can arise with the current mechanics of the game, and again I'm still astonished at the wide range of these situations with such a seemingly simple game in alpha, the effects of theses situations on the pawns are decidedly linear. It seems people are focusing on the fact that yes, a pawn eating their husband (sorry for the macabre situations) can be made up with some beers and a giant marble statued filled rec room with a billiard table. And yes, it is annoying when the scientist/cook with a combined shooting and melee skill of 3 goes berserk because he ate without a table and attacks the psychopath front lining captured and reformed pirate with a giant sword and power armor. But whats more important is the story that can be told of your starting rich colonist that makes it singlehandedly through a tough winter, fends off waves of pirates alone all the while keeping stable enough to use her social skills to convince others to join her. The possibilities and options improving the mood mechanics are so incredibly vast, so I'll try to keep this at least kind of brief and let the rest fall to your imaginations.
Implementing this "bucket style" stress system has many merits. I wanna reiterate the OP's points and maybe go a bit more in depth with them to show all of the possibilities. Firstly having a system like this opens up many more quirks and attributes to each pawn to personalize them even further. This, like I mentioned, has the added effect of creating even more humanized pawns increasing the gravity of each action they have to do as well as how devastating it would be if they finally pass. People that make it past tough passings of spouses or whatever it may be could develop a stronger and more stable psyche. These mentally strong pawns can lead and guide those who may not be strong themselves. There's no reason your starting rich solo colonist who singlehandedly got the colony off the ground should have the same exact chance of giving up on survival and becoming distressed as the newly added wandering glitter world chef, who if not for his ability to make a sandwich would immediately be kicked out of the colony. They would become leaders, and the support that the rest of the colony relies on for hope and guidance. That way, when your starting pawn/pawns tragically pass, the colony has lost more than just the three guys with the highest shooting skill. Pawns who have made it through tough times with their head up will continue to persevere, while the the softer and weaker colonists will not. This is realistic, and adds more depth to each individual pawn.
Secondly, as the OP mentioned, mental health is a deeply complicated and intricate aspect of human life, and it feels like an accessory on the sidelines in the current state of the game. It can't be overstated the importance that this system could have on the stories being told by each game. The newly made widow who takes a walk in the middle of the night to take some time to contemplate when suddenly a pirate raid comes and she's isolated. The glitter world socialite who on the surface is loves making small talk with visitors and benevolently turning new recruits who has inner demons from not knowing what the point of it all is who only finds solace in a fellow colonist with the same struggles. Like I said it feels like I can type for hours at all the possibilities but i'll leave the rest to your imaginations. The point is these are the possibilities, the reality is send them to drink beer build a big room with carpet and a TV.
Third, think of any good survivalesque TV show (the walking dead comes to mind). There are struggles with reasons to continue on, morality issues of killing, those who are more tolerant of harsh conditions and those who need comfort, etc. These are all possible stories that can be told that open up countless possibilities. There's a reason pirates exist in the game, none of them care about the morality issues of raiding, killing, and kidnapping. Adding quirks like this to the mood system can also color the way you handle your colony. Benevolent colonies are going to have troublemakers who see survival of the fittest as black and white. And pirate colonies would have misfits who think their methods of survival are a touch too brutal. But I'm straying a bit too far from the current discussion with future possibilities so I'll refocus on the mood.
The point is the situations and complications that can arise within the game are dramatic, life threatening, and diverse while the mood system is quite linear. The mood bar shows this as it can go up or down, up is good down is bad. As I said before I have read a lot of posts and tried to get an idea of the game creator's vision, and it seems one of the problems with this whole idea is that it may be a bit more complicated than we're making it out to be to actually implement this. So I want to open up the rest of the discussion to maybe some ideas that could make this system a reality without it being too intricate to implement, and if not just stress the merits a system that this could have so that maybe something like this shows up a little higher on the roadmap to the games progress than many other lesser tweaks.
Quote from: Boston on July 22, 2016, 06:57:09 AM
3) I agree with you with regards to multiple people sleeping in the same room. In fact, it wasn't common for people outside of the very wealthy to get separate sleeping quarters until the 1800s/1900s. However, the more serious debuff is in the form of "disturbed sleep", as that one stacks for each pawn moving around.
Oh, I noticed for myself you can avoid the disturbed sleep debuff in a large sleeping area by placing the beds far anough apart
I have not figured out the best distance yet, but I think 4 tiles is enough to not disturb the sleeper.