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It sure does! Thanks

I just had a game where I was installing a bionic leg and after a catastrophic failure my patient died because his brain was removed. It's good for a chuckle, but I'd prefer to see a slightly more realistic failure like dying of blood loss.

Also, an rng added to whether or not the part is destroyed upon failure would be nice. When you fail in a minor way while putting on a bionic leg it'd be nice if that didn't always mean the bionic leg was destroyed.

Had a quick browse to see if any mods address this but I wasn't sure what to search for, anyone have a referral?

Torture prisoners to lower their recruitment difficulty but also decreases their stats and add negative health effects.

I don't know why but I just want to be able to treat my prisoners as horribly as possible

Actually my point is that the tiled path I'm referring to *is* the shortest, direct, straight-line route between points A and B, but I  see my colomists regularly wander off it, through unpaved (slower movement rate) terrain, then back onto it, meandering their way from A to B.

I've been seeing them do this even before beer and drugs were in the game, so it can't be that.

Maybe it's by design to have a certain randomness in the pathing. Still, it doesn't seem right.

I caught what you meant. Definitely check out that mod that was linked, it seems to address the issue. I haven't gotten to mess with it yet but if it works as described it should help.

It's hard to explain the details of it if you aren't familiar with pathfinding algorithms, but the short version is that it intentionally doesn't try very hard to find the shortest path and strongly favors moving towards the destination, even when there are things in the way.

And to answer the question you didn't ask, try my Better Pathfinding mod here: https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=26563.0

I'll definitely check your mod out, thanks!

You know what, I didn't even think about that. You may be correct and it's probably just that simple.

So yeah, what's the deal with pathing? Why do people rarely take a straight path? I notice frequently people will travel in an arc to get to a destination rather than going straight to it. I hope other people know what I mean. Not necessarily a perfect arc but I mean they will rarely just go in a straight line from point A to point B.

I didn't think much of it but it recently caused me some major issues when I was attempting to send some guys around a group of mechanoids and had they traveled in a straight line they'd not have been noticed, but for some reason the pathing drew a path that arced towards the mechanoids even though it was not the most efficient travel route.

I'm mostly just curious what controls pathing and why colonists don't necessarily always travel in a straight line even if that would be the shortest distance?

Don't assume, "Well he just must not be doing X. If he did X he'd have won"

I literally had my gunners drawing fire in one direction while I took my melee people around back to get a better drop on him so he wouldn't have time to throw moltovs. I was moving people around, re-positioning, and attempting to work around my base, I even fell back for a moment and instead of coming out he just stayed there and started hucking moltovs all over. The more I would try to move away and get him to re-position the more he'd just start setting things on fire. As much as I had things in stone at this point, I simply didn't have everything and I wanted to prevent all the collateral damage, which is perfectly reasonable for someone to assume they could accomplish given the circumstances presented.

Trust me, micromanagement is and will always be used.

As I said, he engaged them in melee combat and won... All of them... As in he downed them all with his fists and they had weapons. And if your guys have shields, no I don't think using melee against guns is a bad idea, especially if you have overwhelming numbers.

My point hasn't been, "What is the best possible result to get the best possible reward/prisoners/loot" it's "How the hell did this one guy down four of my guys in melee combat and then those guys got taken by the raiders, and my gunfire completely missed everyone constantly."

I'm also not sure what you mean by saying "This is for your shooters, it's a bad idea to use melee against a gun don't you think." It seems like you've been saying I should have sent my guys with guns in to attack him with melee and at the same time saying that's a bad idea? I wouldn't typically use a person with a gun for melee since they can't wear shields. Unless I'm misinterpreting what you're saying.

How is not using a melee weapon more beneficial besides being more likely to incapacitate other than kill? Actual curiosity, since you're recommending it.

Sounds like a glitch or poor combat tactics.

I normally have 3 shooting, and I used to deal with raids with over 50 Pawns against 8-10 colonists normally.

You can literally use your fists to melee that molotov guy down if he were alone.

Again, please, I beg of people, read things first. I said I sent in melee.

Well I did state that I had a bunch of weapons so I'm not sure why anyone would get the impression that I was relying on miniguns. I also stated he downed my melee guys, not my ranged guys. Since he wasn't going down and my ranged guys were mostly missing I just sent four melee guys in to overwhelm him. Tanked it all and downed them despite them having weapons.

I appreciate the responses but I'd encourage people to please read things first. Responding in such a way would give other people reading who also just skimmed a false notion of events if they just catch what you say.

As for things I hadn't explained before, I had about 10 turrets set up, estimating. They were sappers so they went through the walls and even though I did have turrets scattered around, naturally they went for the spot that was still vulnerable cause that's what sappers do. But I'd argue that that still is no excuse for one guy tanking all that melee and gun fire no problem.

As for fog/darkness. I simply can't remember at this point. Again, there is a point where these kinds of factors should be outweighed by excessive force. Cover your eyes and throw 500 darts at a target and I bet a few of them hit.

The moltov guy just had a standard vest on. No power armor. As far as meleeing the people kidnapping I kept being like "Okay they'll definitely hit him this time, definitely, 100%, no way they are going to just walk in, grab someone, and walk out unscathed, they have plenty of time." Until it was too late to catch up to them. Some of them even came in and then chose to dig there way out rather than exiting through the opening they made, giving my guys even more time to blast at them. The moltov guy did have cover, as he came through a hole he dug in my wall, but yeesh even with cover, that was a lot of fire concentrated on him from multiple directions, and the raiders that came in to take people were definitely wide open.

As you said, RNG was not on my side to a point of, "K, time to put this down and go vent on the forums a bit."

This game is incredibly stupid sometimes. I had literally 12 people with varying weaponry from minguns to charge rifles, to snipers, all blasting at this guy and he took shot after shot after shot without going down plus the majority of the time my guys couldn't hit him. All the other raids just wandered around outside for some reason, didn't bother coming in to fight, eventually he downed four of my colonists and they decided to kidnap who they could. All the raiders flooded in to base, and again my remaining 8 colonists could not take down a single one of them. They walked right past people, snatched up my colonists, and just left. The majority of the downed people were my melee guys because even though they had armor and weapons, the guy holding the moltov cocktails downed them all. Hoooooooow. HOOOOOOWWWW

Shooting scores 10+ for a huge chunk of my colonists, plus a number of good melee guys. Christ... Moments like this make me wonder why I waste so much time on video games.

Ever want to release one of your prisoners disfigured in order to send their colony a message? Maybe you're tired of your friendly neighbors royally screwing you over on trade prices. Maybe you just want the satisfaction of others noticing your sadistic acts and reacting to them appropriately (besides your own colonists).

So my idea is this: Fear. Simple as that. Create a faction stat that allows other colonies to fear your colony and this will effect how they behave towards you. Like all things in this game there should be benefits and disadvantages to how you choose to use this feature, so allow me to elaborate on how those would work. But first I'll explain ways in which the fear stat functions.

First and foremost fear is contingent on prisoners making it home alive. They must survive to tell their tale, be it of horrors or of hospitality. How you treat your prisoners while they are with you will dictate how much fear the colony develops towards you. Fear also spreads via word of mouth and while the colony the prisoner is from is effected the most, other colonies will slowly increase in fear, too, as they hear about your sadism.

Mind you, if your prisoner dies in your custody then they will never get to tell anyone about what happened, and no effects will applied. However, if you let them go and you want to increase fear you can:
- Removing organs, eyes, body parts
- Not feed the prisoner
- Leaving him in a disgusting cramped blood soaked environment
- Keep the prisoner for overly long periods of time
- Strip them naked.
All these things will contribute to the horror story they'll tell when they get home. Meanwhile, if you want the prisoner to tell good stories of you you can do things like:
- Feed them well
- Use medicine to treat them
- Perform beneficial operations
- Give them a deluxe prison cell
- Release them promptly
- Engage them in friendly chat

So that's how to create and relieve fear, let me turn now to how it could effect the gameplay. As with everything in this game usually a balance is what you're striving for, too much in any on direction and you'll encounter problems. Everything has advantages and disadvantages so let me start off with advantages of being feared
- Colonies that are still willing to trade with you will give you better prices related to how much they fear you (social stat still has an effect, too)
- Raids may result in enemies fleeing sooner (before you've downed 50% of them)
- Colonies may send you "good will" packages to make sure they don't get on your bad side
And now some downsides to being feared. Most of these come from if people fear you too much, making managing the stat important.
- Friendly colonies that fear you may not want to send people your way, traders or otherwise, for fear of their safety
- If fear raises too high, there is a breaking point where even a friendly colony may attack you
- In certain situation where several factions fear you significantly, they may all mount a coordinate attack on you all at once. One colony sets up a siege, another sends in a direct assault, perhaps another sends sappers.

Not being feared would also have it's own set of pros and cons. Let's start with the cons this time
- Prices being jacked up because everyone thinks you're a pushover
- During raids when a friendly faction would normally just send help, they'll instead request money first
- If your fear dips in to the negatives friendlies may try to bully you. They'll start demanding payments that if you don't comply with will drop their friendliness towards you until eventually they become hostile
The pros are simple
- increased visitors
- increased traders
- increased friendly assistance (even if it's for a fee)

I think this adds an interesting feeling to the game that it lacks. Being sadistic now and poorly treating prisoners has no real major consequences aside from potentially a colonist having a bad mood, but even that is fairly limited. Having people actually react to the horrible things you do in a fearful way makes those things have more weight. Making you feel like your actions towards prisoners have a real effect beyond just being potential recruits, or forced organ donors. When a prisoner exits the map you'll get one of those box prompts to the right and if you choose to click on it you can read the factions reaction. Some flavor text here that would be selected based on how well or poorly the prisoner was treated could be added.

You'll have to think about what's best for the colony. Should others fear you so you get better trade prices and respect, but possibly may cause some friendlies to lash out or outright hide from you. Or treat everyone with goodwill and have the best relationships you can manage between you and other colonies but have them all think you're a pushover, jacking prices way up, and bullying you for money. Is it better to be loved or feared?

I'm sure this idea could be expanded on significantly to add all sorts of different benefits and disadvantages to each side of the spectrum that I wasn't able to think of while sitting down and writing this. I don't know if I have the know how to create something like this but I figured I'd throw the idea out there and see if it sparked the interest of anyone else or just to see if anyone likes it and wants to elaborate on the ideas I've presented.