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   Nerve staples are, "an excellent tool for turning the previously unruly and antisocial into productive and beneficial members of society-- with only a minor case of irreversible brain damage." A small implant inserted near the bottom of the skull, the nerve staple routes microscopic fibres into the 'reward circuit' of the brain to quickly condition the subject to engage in positive and obedient behaviours.

So what does it actually do in terms of gameplay?
- Immediately forces the affected pawn to join your faction
- The pawn receives a permanent +20 mood buff to simulate their newfound obedience and complacency
- Any disabled work types the pawn previously had will be rescinded
- All passions the pawn had will be removed
- The pawn will occasionally suffer bouts of confusion due to the nerve staple's invasive structure
- Researching "Neural Implants" allows creation of Nerve Staples, Joywires, and Painstoppers at the Machining Table (non-EPOE)

EPOE & RBSE Compatibility
NerveStapling is coded in a way that makes it capable of both Standalone and EPOE or RBSE integrated behaviour. Upon game start, if NerveStapling detects one of the two mods active, it will automatically integrate itself into the mod's systems. Otherwise, it will default to its own simpler systems for research and implant creation. This is entirely automatic and requires no input or bothering of the user with the traditional method of installing compatibility patches. Load Order between Nerve Stapling and EPOE/RBSE is also irrelevant (as long as it is loaded below HugsLib).

Requires HugsLib (https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=28066.0) to function.

v2.2 Download Here (https://github.com/thirite/NerveStapling/tree/master)

Change Log:
v2.2 - Added RBSE compatibility mode
v2.1 - Fixed minor error with EPOE compatibility mode
v2.0 - Updated to A17
v1.0 - Initial release

Permissions
Licensed CC-BY-NC-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/).

nice, ill give this one a try.

You can use reflection to access and modify private variables.

Yeah, that's what I had to do. But in this case it's really a "private variable that you shouldn't actually touch" sort of thing. The private variable is generated solely by the pawn's backstories and traits, but it really ought to have some publicly accessible List variable that overrides the work types/tags defined in backstory and traits. Maybe it would be a good addition to HugsLib or something to add that functionality. ^^

This is really cool, but any chance of adding mood debuffs to other colonists?

My feeling would be one that is a big debuff for the nerve stapled colonist's friends, i.e. "An unthinkable abuse of science happened to someone close to me," (not applying to psychopaths) and a lesser one that's broadly applicable, "They're using nerve staples to keep us in line. It can't happen to me, can it?" that applies to everyone in the colony equally.

The current tradeoffs are already pretty well thought out and significant, but given this is a kind of nuclear option for discipline or morale perhaps there should be some social consequences for resorting to it.

Probably I'm asking for impossible but ...

this mod seems great -something new in RimWorld, however if You could make "trait changer chip" which allows us to change not wanted traits like slothful but not without price for example making those chips extremely expensive like 15000 silver

Quote from: TREH on January 09, 2017, 03:24:26 AM
...

Apart from a specific thought for friends being nerve stapled, relevant thoughts are already there. There's a thought for a colonist being nerve stapled, a thought for a rival being nerve stapled, and a specific thought for prisoners when a fellow prisoner is nerve stapled. Though it's a good idea to have an especially bad thought if a close friend gets stapled.

Quote from: Grabarz on January 09, 2017, 04:21:25 AM
...

It wouldn't be particularly difficult to make a mod which does that simply by repurposing my code. O Negative even pointed out this mod could be easily modified to make a simple 'Plastic Surgery' mod.

Would be cool if there's a chance for the brain fruitless attempt to see some result with the help of external force in the form of a hit to the head, thunder strike, turning it off with other people medical surgery, etc. Though we can't just let them run rampant, so we need to knock them out and restart the staple, or use the failsafe and blow up their brain like how we shut down the centipede.

Hm, some interesting ideas. How it works 'in universe' is that the nerve staple conditions the brain via the reward circuit to engage in certain behaviours while also conditioning aversion to unwanted behaviours by triggering negative stimuli in response to 'negative' thought patterns.

Put simply, even if a nerve staple were removed, the subject would retain the affects, but would suffer increasing mental illness due to lack of the staple's regulatory affect. I'll have to add the surgery to remove them in the next update, and perhaps the possibility for them to be damaged.

Any chance you could make a light version that doesn't let you produce other sorts of chips? I have EPOE and I can already do that and thus it is inconsistent with other mods that I own.

This mod is simply amazing, I wish you could make true lobotomites, turn them into mind slaves with these neuro implants, mindless obedient drones.

+1 on EPOE patch

Oh, I wasn't even aware EPOE covered that. I'll make an EPOE compatible version and add it to the OP shortly.

Bug report time.

Stapled my first pawn, worked as described for a 3-4 hour game session with no problems. I saved twice during that time. When I load either save the stapled pawn still doesn't list any negative qualities, but is blocked from working the same jobs as before being stapled.

loading with debug gave me no errors. If there's any info I can send that might help, let me know.

Aw fug. I guess I will have to detour the code responsible for querying if a work type is disabled or not. I didn't want to if I could get away with it, because detouring code can cause mod incompatibilities. Oh well.

anything for steam? Would be sweet if you could

I don't have any plans to add any of my mods to Steam and ask that no one attempt to do so.

Quote from: Thirite on January 22, 2017, 01:59:56 PM
Aw fug. I guess I will have to detour the code responsible for querying if a work type is disabled or not. I didn't want to if I could get away with it, because detouring code can cause mod incompatibilities. Oh well.

Hope it works. Been waiting for a surgery=pawn conversion for a long time, and opening up all jobs was huge, even at the cost of skills and passions.

Also, my interest has nothing to do with all the other 'mad science' mods I've downloaded....  ::)

Had a random thought; Maybe you don't have to detour code.

Any time I apply the nerve staple in my game in works as intended. The problem is on load, a small part of it is not retained. I'd be content with the ability to refresh the nerve staples when I load in. Either a follow up surgery labeled 'reactivate chip' or a right-clickable action on pawns (like the capture action) that has the same name.

Then I realized you could add flavor to this. Maybe it's not enough to have the chip, the chip has to receive input from a transmitter to function properly. The chip has all the access it needs to make changes to the victim subject, but doesn't have the processing power on board to trigger those changes. If power goes out, all the nerve stapled pawns could get all their stats back and get a growing mood debuff as their head clears. This also limits using stapled pawns in caravans as the transmitter has to travel with them. You wouldn't even need a new building, really. Just apply the on/off check to the comm station or reuse the trade beacon sprite if you go about it this way.

I'd have no problem toggling the thing on and off when I load in to get full functionality, and I think the extra flavor/limitation would be nice too.

Hmm, interesting idea. But like I said earlier, the pawn isn't temporarily controlled, the nerve staple causes permanent changes to the reward circuit of the brain. Might be fun for a "mind control crown" thing which isn't as permanently embedded as a nerve staple though.

But for the whole thing on stapled pawns losing enabled work abilities on game load, there's no need for the player to do that manually- that doesn't even make real sense. I can just automate that via code. I'll fix it asap, just haven't gotten the time to sit down at my computer for a few days now.

This looks really cool going to install this tonight! Makes me miss Alpha Centauri. Hmm Rim Centauri......

Hehehe, no more drone riots! ;D Can I ask, what would nerve-stapling do to someone with an addiction, say Luciferium? It wouldn't neutralize the beserk-until-death if the drug were forbidden would it?

It won't remove Luciferium addiction or side effects, but now that you mention it, it really ought to remove other drug addictions.

Quote from: PiwahnahKitteh on February 05, 2017, 12:36:50 AM
Hehehe, no more drone riots! ;D Can I ask, what would nerve-stapling do to someone with an addiction, say Luciferium? It wouldn't neutralize the beserk-until-death if the drug were forbidden would it?

I dont see luciferium as a drug addiction as it is more of a new body function, you kinda... "Mutated" by using luciferium, became a time-bomb wolverine.

Quote from: Techgenius on February 06, 2017, 02:00:20 PM
I dont see luciferium as a drug addiction as it is more of a new body function, you kinda... "Mutated" by using luciferium, became a time-bomb wolverine.

True, it is a sort of mutation/evolution, but it is an addiction in the sense you have to keep consuming the Luciferium to prevent breakdown of the mechanites/eventual death of colonist ;D Glad to hear the nerve-stapling wouldn't change that element though, since the mechanites should (theoretically) repair the change caused by the nerve-stapling.  ;D This is totally going in my next colony

Recap of the description on the first post:

• Nerve stapling causes a pawn to lose any destructive or degrading traits
• If applied to a prisoner makes them immediately join your faction.
• A permanent +20 mood buff is added to simulate their newfound obedience and complacency
• Pawn's refusal to engage in any type of work is rescinded.
• All passions are gone forever
• All skills suffer a 25% hit (eg: a skill at level 20 would be knocked down to 15).
• Nerve stapled pawns will also occasionally suffer states of confusion from the brain's fruitless attempts to undo the affects of the nerve staple.

I like all of this list except for #6 where the great skills that make a pawn desirable are removed.
Why then would I want the pawn?

The many thousands of experience points it takes to level up represents a long history of a pawn's life; repeating that same experience for that same pawn seems like tedium.

Updated to A17! Now working as originally intended thanks to use of Harmony's excellent tools.

Downloading ... It ..... Right..... Now    ???

Updated to v2.1
- Fixed minor error with EPOE compatibility mode

could we get an RSBE compatability patch?

Sure thing.

Updated to v2.2
- Added RBSE compatibility mode

An army of medieval mindless drones?
Gimme some!

Thanks!