Hard mental breaks

[Panzer]

Hello guys,

recently I tried to play a psychically deaf colony + crashed ship part combo. This was nipped in the bud by the fact that pawns now can stay at 0 mood for several days without anything happening.
I am almost certain at this point this is not intended, I really liked the old system where the pawn would go crazy when he reached the threshold.

What are your opinions? Any suggestions?

I'd rather have those mental breaks happen at the rate the soft mental breaks occur, and have the probability for breakdowns raised a little. Maybe the probability could be coupled with the level of difficulty, almost no hard breaks and slight soft breaks in builder mode, and then steadily raise it with each level, or maybe set a threshold at 'rough' and just raise it for the higher levels. Anyways, I do hope this gets changed in A10.

[Darkhymn]

I prefer the current system over the previous, both for realism and gameplay reasons. Realistically, the amount of mental stress necessary to break an individual's mind so thoroughly that they go on a psychotic rampage is tremendous. The point at which someone says "screw it" and goes and takes a nap because they're too tired or decides that they're sick of this place and want to leave are a fair bit lower. Hence, in the real world, far more people quit their jobs than go on murderous rampages through the office. I think this is reflected fairly well in the soft/hard break system, though I did post my thoughts in another thread regarding a rework of the soft break system. It seems more than fair to remove the control of the character from the player should a soft break occur, without jumping directly to suddenly needing to violently subdue a friendly because they're hungry and it's dark out.
In my opinion, raising the hard break limit arbitrarily is a way to inflate the difficulty without much regard to the impact on gameplay. I feel that a better solution is to find a way to introduce new challenges without arbitrarily making things more difficult.

[lusername]

Personally, I think they should only break from debuffs that they can't remove. If they hit a soft breakpoint due to debuffs that they can remove, they should forcibly do that action rather than simply wandering around dazed. Only when the sources of discomfort are unremovable should they become broken and dazed. People who are hungry and tired don't wander around dazed, they walk off their jobs and eat or take a nap. Breaking due to those should just have them, well, take a break, and refuse to further endure the hunger and exhaustion, not collapse on the field and starve anyway.

[Andy_Dandy]

I think mental breaks are alot easier now as well, Guess we'll see some buffing some way or the other.

[Panzer]

I prefer the current system over the previous, both for realism and gameplay reasons. Realistically, the amount of mental stress necessary to break an individual's mind so thoroughly that they go on a psychotic rampage is tremendous.

Well, I am no psychologist but starving, exhausted, people who are out to get you and a voice that says KILL KILL KILL seem like a pretty good reason to go mental or leave, keep in mind this should simulate not some adventure holiday but pretty though frontier colony life.
I do like that they dont break down immediately once they are over the threshold, but not breaking down when they are at 0 for more then half a day is just silly in my opinion.

Raising the breakdown probability would also in a sense lower the probability of a hard breakdown, they are more likely to soft break and regenerate the mood to 50 and get the +15 catarthis bonus. On the off chance they dont soft break they should go mental, it is not like you havent had a warning period.

[Boboid]

Funny I hadn't actually noticed that hard breaks are so infrequent until I went out of my way to test it.

You're right it does seem a bit too forgiving, when you really abuse your colonists enough to hard-break them they do tend to just keep working as per usual. They suffer a Global Work Speed penalty of course but it's nowhere near as bad as a Hard mental break.

[lusername]

Well, I am no psychologist but starving, exhausted, people who are out to get you and a voice that says KILL KILL KILL seem like a pretty good reason to go mental or leave, keep in mind this should simulate not some adventure holiday but pretty though frontier colony life.

There wasn't anything like that going on. They were just inside the base, all regular-like, returning from their daily work shift. The psychic drone would have added a non-removable debuff. The regular hungry/tired (and not even particularly starving) ones were things they could readily address on their own, except that the penalties for those are pretty huge for something which is really a minor matter they can fix.


I do like that they dont break down immediately once they are over the threshold, but not breaking down when they are at 0 for more then half a day is just silly in my opinion.

Raising the breakdown probability would also in a sense lower the probability of a hard breakdown, they are more likely to soft break and regenerate the mood to 50 and get the +15 catarthis bonus. On the off chance they dont soft break they should go mental, it is not like you havent had a warning period.
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[Mathenaut]

The only problem I have with soft breaks is that they'll stop eating/sleeping and I have to arrest them to keep them alive. Then it's just a pain.