How to Increase Happiness???

[iReaperzxz]

This is the only thing that I have run into that I do not know how to fix?
What helps happiness and gets rid of fear?

[CmdrQuartz]

Right now? Not much... you just have to try and make the environment as pleasant as possible with carpet and smooth stone as well as getting someone to clean up the rubble. Presently about the only positive modifier for happiness is socializing, there's "pleasant environment" but I haven't figured out exactly what makes that.

[nnescio]

This is the only thing that I have run into that I do not know how to fix?
What helps happiness and gets rid of fear?

Nothing gets rid of fear (other than removing conditions that cause fear without a set duration, like darkness). Or, in other words, penalties to fear are nonexistent.

The standard method to raise happiness is to carpet rooms and put potted plants in them. This raises the "beauty" ratings of the surroundings and increases the colonists' happiness. Unfortunately, the happiness increases don't last a set duration, and disappear immediately when your colonist leaves the room.

(Flower pots only have a effect when a colonist is within 2 tiles of them. This is ridiculously short, making them impractical except in the most frequently visited areas, like bedrooms and dining rooms. Also, the bonus to beauty seems to disappear when a colonist is sleeping, as they can no longer see the pot.)

There are three other bonuses to happiness. These actually last for a set duration, unlike beauty bonuses. The first is the "new colony bonus", making it useless except for your first three colonists, and only on the first ten days. The second is the "social chat" bonus. Colonists will occasionally chat with each other, which grants this bonus, stacking up to three times. Colonists with higher social skill seem to grant higher bonuses to people they chat with (but not to themselves). This is hard to control except by building your base to include common work areas and dining rooms. In theory you can "force" you colonists to chat by drafting them and ordering them to stand together, but this method is highly impractical and should be considered as only a minor, incidental bonus.

The third method is via chatting with the warden. This method is usually only applicable to newly recruited prisoners, 'though it lasts for quite some time. You can actually use this on your colonists though, but it involves arresting them and recruiting them again (just think of it as psychiatric therapy). This can be quite useful on large colonies when you already have a large workforce, and gives the warden sizable boosts to his social xp.

Chatting with the warden can stack up to forty times, giving rise to ridiculous bonuses, especially when you have a warden with a high social skill. I've personally witness overall bonuses of >100, 'but that was on a previous version and may no longer be true in v254b.

That said, psychotherapy can be impractical when you have a low colonist count, as imprisoned colonists can no longer work and may take some time to be recruited again, especially if your warden's social skill isn't high enough (<10).

As you can see, none of the methods for raising happiness are really reliable. As such, the best method to maintain happiness is to avoid penalties to them. To do so, frequently-visited areas should be kept clean when possible, and kept lit to avoid darkness. Carpeting also helps here to cancel out potential penalties for ugliness. Rooms should be at least "cramped" (and not "very cramped"), which require a minimum of 7 walkable tiles and beds (the pillow part) to not be located at a corner wall, with flower pots to increase the beauty level. Alternatively, you can go with non-cramped rooms (minimum of 27 walkable tiles) if you don't plan on using and maintaining flower pots (flower pots are less effective in bigger rooms, due to their small "beauty" radius). In any case, try to avoid housing colonists in a common bedroom if you can help it, to avoid the "sharing a bedroom" penalty.

Also, try not to let your colonists go hungry (or tired, but that is less of an issue). Keep backup power in batteries to prevent paste dispensers going offline in eclipses, and try not to haul all food into the stockpile so that your colonists still have something to eat in a solar flare. Keeping some wild plants near your base can also help here.

(You can 'cheese' the nutrient paste dispenser by drafting and undrafting doctors/wardens to make them drop food on the floor, creating an artificial "stockpile" for a later date in the event of a solar flare. Colonists will sometimes eat dropped food when they don't have anything else to eat.)

Of course, even with most precautions taken, your colonists can get unhappy really fast when they see corpses. This is nearly unavoidable after battles. At that point, fear is the only thing keeping your colonists from suffering a mental break. Colonists gain bonuses to fear when they are wounded or if they witness somebody (colonist or raider) dying.

Which brings up another point, you can maintain loyalty far easier through fear than happiness. Unlike happiness, they are far more sources of bonuses for fear, and nothing subtracts from fear itself. If you choose to do so, you no longer need to clean or beautify any rooms, and you are free to house all colonists in cramped quarters, saving significant space. Darkness now becomes an advantage, allowing you to save power. Gibbet cages also require less maintenance than flower pots, and their effects last for quite some time (instead of expiring immediately, like flower pots).

In any case, even if you think that the fear mechanic is 'cheesy', you may still want to employ fear to keep your colonists in line, as they become unhappy too quickly after combat. In extreme circumstances, you may want to purposely wound colonists (order another colonist to shoot them with a pistol, or order the depressed colonist to melee wildlife if there aren't any friendlies nearby), which raises their fear substantially, preventing mental breaks. This can be roleplayed quite well, especially when the colonist doing the shooting happens to be a commissar.

[murlocdummy]

nnescio,

you, sir are awesome.  This is one of the best (and only) guides I have seen on keeping your colonists in line.  I never tried increasing fear due to the fear that high fear would increase the likelihood of mental breaks.  I never considered the idea that fear was beneficial.

As a sidenote, I always called arresting low-loyalty colonists to be placing them in "reeducation" facilities.  In comparison to all of the other methods, I've found that occasional "reeducation" is extremely effective, as it increases loyalty for a number of days at a time.

[Stickle]

I just hope the fear and happiness are significantly reworked. Fear is too easy, and it's also ridiculous. Being constantly terrified does not lead to loyalty, or stability, and you'd probably be much more likely to break down under that strain... Now, the game doesn't have to, and shouldn't, be completely realistic, but the way it is is just too.. caricatured.

I think it would be interesting if we had a system where happiness and fear did marginally different things, and worked together to determine the states of our colonists, instead of just picking whichever is greater. For example, too little happiness could lead to a breakdown, and so could too much fear. An extremely happy colonist colonist would be in little danger of going crazy, but maybe a little fear would make them a tad more productive, or something? More thought would have to be put into it, obviously, but such a system would be a lot more compelling, and a much more interesting mechanic, than what we have now.

[W1Z25]

atm the easiest way to keep your colonists "happy" is by use of fear... make them fear you and you cant not make therm happy

[Merry76]

atm the easiest way to keep your colonists "happy" is by use of fear... make them fear you and you cant not make therm happy

You mean "loyal"... The colonist does not get happy from fear - at all. Most fear inducing events decrease happiness for a good portion.

If you want happy & loyal people, you have to plaster EVERYTHING with carpets and line the walls with flowerpots. Seriously, my bases look like gardening stores sometimes.

[ShadowDragon8685]

If you want happy & loyal people, you have to plaster EVERYTHING with carpets and line the walls with flowerpots. Seriously, my bases look like gardening stores sometimes.

Can people path through flowerpots? If not, it seems to me that flowerpots would be better than sandbags at the old WSWSWSWSWS pattern. Especially if you set up a firing line where there was no cover whatsoever and raiders had to either beat on pots or doors to get at your colonists, and double-especially if you set it up so colonists could leg it through doors when their pots were almost destroyed.

[nnescio]

If you want happy & loyal people, you have to plaster EVERYTHING with carpets and line the walls with flowerpots. Seriously, my bases look like gardening stores sometimes.

Can people path through flowerpots? If not, it seems to me that flowerpots would be better than sandbags at the old WSWSWSWSWS pattern. Especially if you set up a firing line where there was no cover whatsoever and raiders had to either beat on pots or doors to get at your colonists, and double-especially if you set it up so colonists could leg it through doors when their pots were almost destroyed.

Pots block movement, but offer no* cover.

(*Or maybe it does, but it shows up as 0%)

[Merry76]

Flower pots are rather useless in battle. You can place a few in your shooting yard so a colonist does not go bonkers while he is skilling up that shooting skill.

Or you could try if the enemy tries to hide behind flower pots for cover, despite the fact that they seem to offer none. That would be hilarious.

[murlocdummy]

Flower pots are rather useless in battle. You can place a few in your shooting yard so a colonist does not go bonkers while he is skilling up that shooting skill.

Or you could try if the enemy tries to hide behind flower pots for cover, despite the fact that they seem to offer none. That would be hilarious.

You mean make a series of flower pot lines for the sole purpose of having the enemy cower behind them?

Their death would be glorias.

[Merry76]

Their death would be glorias.

You just made my day!

[ShadowDragon8685]

Can people path through flowerpots? If not, it seems to me that flowerpots would be better than sandbags at the old WSWSWSWSWS pattern. Especially if you set up a firing line where there was no cover whatsoever and raiders had to either beat on pots or doors to get at your colonists, and double-especially if you set it up so colonists could leg it through doors when their pots were almost destroyed.

Pots block movement, but offer no* cover.

(*Or maybe it does, but it shows up as 0%)
[/quote]

They don't need to offer cover. The wall offers cover. The pots just need to be there to prevent hostiles from pathing through the sandbags and getting into melee.

[Goo Poni]

They don't need to offer cover. The wall offers cover. The pots just need to be there to prevent hostiles from pathing through the sandbags and getting into melee.

* amused by the image of raiders being thwarted by a base with humble flowerpots in front of the walls and doors

[nnescio]

Pots block movement, but offer no* cover.

(*Or maybe it does, but it shows up as 0%)

They don't need to offer cover. The wall offers cover. The pots just need to be there to prevent hostiles from pathing through the sandbags and getting into melee.

If you have sandbags adjacent to a wall, they both provide cover (assuming a colonist is near both).

Still, the flowerpot method would work. Just use...

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P P P
WSWSWSW
instead.