Tired of useless colonists

[Shurp]

You'll be desperate for a warden with 13 social by the time you finally do find a prisoner that passes your overly strict selection criteria.

What are the odds of a social 13 warden recruiting a 99% difficulty pirate?

Useless *bullet to the head*

BTW, I already have a social 7 warden.  He'll get the job done for any prisoner 95% or better.

[Shurp]

Some colonists, while not technically useless, are damn near close to that. What can Bee do in my flat Ice Sheet colony ??

I was going to say "mine", then I saw "flat".  Ouch.  Well, she can still Grow.  So come harvest time she can plant enough crops to feed herself.  That's my key criteria -- not being a liability that others have to support. 

She also doesn't have the "nonviolent" tag, so give her a gun and tell her to go shoot up a wall and she'll eventually be useful in combat.

[StoryTellerNicholas]

So I thought it would be fun to try the lone explorer start on an ice sheet (with some mountains, not sea ice!), and I was doing pretty well with Cassandra Extreme but had the consistent problem that all the newcomers who wanted to join Engie (yes, Engie popped up at the 10th choice for a starting colonist) were all complete garbage.

So Engie was happily building her base when a polar bear snuck up on her and ate her.  *sigh*

Is there any way to get useful recruits on extreme?  And by "useful" I'm not asking for a lot -- not a drug addict, not a heart attack waiting to happen, not blind or brawler or unable to mine and farm.  Someone who is actually an asset rather than a mouth to feed that attracts pirates.

And if the only way to get decent recruits is to drop the difficulty level to a boring medium... is there any other way to make the game more exciting?  Hmmm, if I build statues with my surplus silver maybe I can attract more numerous / well equipped pirates to give the crew a challenge?

I feel your pain man, this happens to me like every other colonist. The game gets frustrating when I have a colony
of 7 people, but only one person can do dumb labor. Its like being a mom with six mouths to feed, and twelve bullies
that like to pick on them.

[cultist]

Sheriffs that were Convent Children

There really should be a line of code preventing useless childhood background combined with useless adulthood. Convent sheriffs have like 2 skills open and none of them are the ones they get points in.

[LordMunchkin]

Use the soylent green mod and every new colonist will contribute to the colony! 

[Shurp]

Use the soylent green mod and every new colonist will contribute to the colony! 

Hmmm, this just gave me the thought that the nutrient paste dispenser would actually be useful if you could feed human corpses into it without receiving the cannibal penalty.

"But Engie, this is humans, isn't it?  It doesn't feel right."
"What are you talking about?  This *was* humans.  But now it's unidentifiable green goop.  Bon appetit!"

(Is this what the Soylent Green mod does?)

[b0rsuk]

Some colonists, while not technically useless, are damn near close to that. What can Bee do in my flat Ice Sheet colony ??

I was going to say "mine", then I saw "flat".  Ouch.  Well, she can still Grow.  So come harvest time she can plant enough crops to feed herself.  That's my key criteria -- not being a liability that others have to support. 

She also doesn't have the "nonviolent" tag, so give her a gun and tell her to go shoot up a wall and she'll eventually be useful in combat.

I'm actually researching Mortars just so I can make use of my several crappy colonists. Incendiary IED traps are surprisingly good against (tribal) clusters. It's unusual tactics time.

Bee spends most of her time hauling (fast walker), stonecutting, mining when there's a chance (still more than growing). I'm not letting her plant in my sunlamp room (4 tables, the rest is gravel potatoes). Farming space is just too valuable to let her mess up, one "failed harvest" is 1 1/3 paste meals lost. When it's -39*C outside we call it Spring. She also has the honor to open cryosleep caskets (I remember one that contained several megascarabs).

[XeronX]

I have to agree on the Pyro thing and since A16 dropped I swear that particular trait show up so often now.

Granted I use the mod that make all pawns capable of hauling/cleaning regardless of traits.

But I have gotten incrediably picky about who I will accept. No Pyro, Psychopath, or Abrasive period. Tend to avoid Brawlers, Any mentally unstable, and any addicts. Also will not take any "no violence" pawns until I have decent defenses set up and at least 10 other pawns that can shoot.

  I am at the point where if they call me asking for rescue, I just let them die since I have no clue what their traits are. And rescuing a pyro and taking the bullets just to have to send them out to fist fight a grizzly naked and take the mood hit on the rest.

Finally got my colony up to 13 pawns in year 6 but for the first 3 years was pretty much stuck between 1-5 pawns.

[Shurp]

Here we go, another crashlanded space refugee:

Oleg Geradon
Incapable of Violent
Shooting:0
Melee:0
Social:8
Animals:4
Medicine:11
Cooking:4
Construction:0
Growing:0
Mining:2
Artistic:0
Crafting:1
Research:0

Yup, I'm letting him freeze to death.  In a well developed colony with turret filled killboxes he could at least be a chef or a warg trainer.  But out here in Iceville he's just a mouth to feed.

[LordMunchkin]

Oleg Geradon
Incapable of Violent
Shooting:0
Melee:0
Social:8
Animals:4
Medicine:11
Cooking:4
Construction:0
Growing:0
Mining:2
Artistic:0
Crafting:1
Research:0

Oleg Geradon=Soylent Cola.

[XeoNovaDan]

Here we go, another crashlanded space refugee:

Oleg Geradon
Incapable of Violent
Shooting:0
Melee:0
Social:8
Animals:4
Medicine:11
Cooking:4
Construction:0
Growing:0
Mining:2
Artistic:0
Crafting:1
Research:0

Mmm... he could've made a decent medic. Judging by the way you're going about that though, you probably have plenty of those... so yeah, useless (unless Plague..?)

Same goes for warden, I suppose.

[Thyme]

[...] Bee spends most of her time hauling (fast walker), stonecutting, mining when there's a chance (still more than growing). I'm not letting her plant in my sunlamp room (4 tables, the rest is gravel potatoes). Farming space is just too valuable to let her mess up, one "failed harvest" is 1 1/3 paste meals lost. [...]

I can recommend Fluffys work tab mod for such cases. It lets you diversify work priorities (do at your own risk!). You can set a crappy grower to do "plant crops" only, but not "harvest crops". Or set several pawns to do the wardening (read: deliver food) but only your social psychopath to do the recruiting. Both cases are the same person, the workload was too much. Using that support method she can now do both tasks sufficiently and has free time to occasionally haul stuff around!

*Given the huge amount of work types, you also get 9 priority settings instead of 4.

[Shurp]

Mmm... he could've made a decent medic. Judging by the way you're going about that though, you probably have plenty of those... so yeah, useless (unless Plague..?)

Same goes for warden, I suppose.

Yes, I already have two doctors and a warden in my colony of three people.  And the way I'm killing off pawns I don't need a warden much anyway

Plague is admittedly a concern.  I did buff herbal and regular medicine to 60%/90% because otherwise they're pretty useless.  I suppose if I hadn't and I was losing colonists I wouldn't be so picky about replacing them.  But then I could easily wait until *after* they died to replace them; no need to pick up crappy pawns in advance and thereby increase the likelihood of diseases and larger raids killing them!

[cultist]

I have to agree on the Pyro thing and since A16 dropped I swear that particular trait show up so often now.

That's because the Pyromaniac childhood background now gives the trait automatically. I believe that's new for A16.

[XeoNovaDan]

Hmm, I got by just fine in 2 instances of the plague with ordinary medicine in vanilla. Even with a level 6 doctor, there was like a 2 or 3% margin