Rework of the more 'unethical' actions in Rimworld

Started by Goldenpotatoes, January 31, 2016, 12:25:59 PM

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Goldenpotatoes

Doing stuff like butchering corpses is obviously something a regular colonist would frown upon, but how does the entire colony immediately know what you've done, even if done in a special, private room?

I get its for balance reasons, but with A13 implementing a drastic overhaul to the social aspect of the game for colonists, this is a better time than ever to rework how this system is handled.

Instead of colonists all immediately knowing, only people around in 'visible (can physically see the butchering process)' area will immediately know. Debuff is properly applied to ONLY them for the time being. Depending on the person's traits (eg. Psychopath, Cannibal) won't care as much, and therefore won't be nearly as immediately affected as a regular colonist. From here, the only way other colonists would find out is via social interactions with those who saw/did the act.

The more socially shy colonists would probably not bring up what happened during a chit-chat with another colonist, but the abrassive psychopath might as go as far as brag about chopping up the corpse himself during a conversation. Gossip spreads, soon everyone knows about the horrible things Fred the cannibal butcher. Work this into the new social aspect so people will hate the colonist who did it, along with a global debuff for working in a colony that approves of such acts.

This allows for more 'special' setups for the player who still wants to make a profit off their victim's corpses without suffering from the global debuffs, if they're willing to go the extra mile in selecting the right colonist for the job AND keeping it hidden from the rest of the colony. Placing area restrictions and what-not to prevent regular colonists from finding out the truth would be nice touch for another layer of social interaction and help weave together a story better, as it adds more inner-colony problems other than 'running low on food' or 'its too cold/hot'.

Bendigeidfran

This sounds rad and I feel like as you say, it would fit quite well into the new social systems.

Vagabond

Goldenpotatoes,

Golden suggestion. Not only for better social simulation, but also for more control via designations.

Cheers,
Michael

JimmyAgnt007

Ever try to keep a secret in a small town or in a school?  Its hard enough with the person you secretly admire let alone the person you butchered for meat and made a hat out of their skin.

People see someone lead into a room and not come out.  They see the strange leather you sew with at the tailor station.  The funny tasting meat.  Building the room itself they are involved in.  Why is there a do not enter sign on it?

I agree it doesnt make sense that everyone telepathically knows but a rework would involve a dynamic spread of information that has the same end result anyways. 

Wex

The funny tasting meat actually should taste like pig.
I am (obviously) not sure of that; I guess it's something of 18th hand from the explorers in the beginning of 20th cntury.
"You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant."
    Harlan Ellison

keylocke

i'd like it more if some traits prevents= them from getting penalties from selling prisoners and/or butchering them.

like psychopaths, bloodthirsty, cannibals, etc..

those guys shouldn't care if you chop a prisoner up and/or sell them to slave ships.

harkov

While we're at it. Selling/killing a prisoner shouldn't always have an impact on all colonists. For example Colonist A is seriously injured by Prisoner B. Prisoner B is sold and Colonist A is quite happy about this. Maybe this could fit in with the pawn relationships. When someone you dislike is harmed/sold there shouldn't be a mood penalty.

Oh and have colonists only visit graves of people they actually liked. Not some pirate's grave who tried to kill them.

lude

That would be great, visual triggering or gossip triggers



I would never put a raider in a grave, they don't deserve that, I just dispose of them in any way possible.

Having more  crafting control over certain things would be nice, to only have the bloodlusting psychopaths work in the soylent green room.

Tynan

I think just the basic idea of having colonists dislike someone who does fucked-up things (e.g. butchering humans) is really cool. Can't believe I didn't think of it already!

Regarding the social knowledge aspect, I'm more hesitant. This sort of knowledge modeling involves a vast amount of information and gets very fuzzy very fast. You need to model potentially hundreds/thousands of memories for each pawn (one for every instance of everything they've seen). Even if you could do it, the player can't perceive all that, which typically ends up making it just pointless fuzz complexity from the player's POV, and thus pointless entirely.
Tynan Sylvester - @TynanSylvester - Tynan's Blog

Vas

Not to mention how much it might kill an already single core only CPU intensive game that can barely run on new age computers mid-late game.  :P

However, I would like some of the unethical actions you take in the game to leave an imprint on the colony.  Like when you turn down that rescue of a guy who calls in needing your help or else the raiders will get him, you simply "hear his screams over the radio".  There's no penalty at all.

Suggestion for this:
Deny: All Colonists -15 mood for 2 days, starts decaying over 5 more days one day at a time it drops 3 points.
    Thought: "Refused a person in need, how horrible!"
AcceptButFailed: All colonists have a -6 mood for 2 days, decaying by 3 points 3rd day and gone by 4th.
    Thought: "We failed to rescue a person in need."
Accept&Succeed: All colonists gain a +5 for 3 days.  Colonist rescued gains a +15 for 7 days.
    ThoughtColony: "We saved someone in need!"
    ThoughtRescued: "This colony rescued me, I'm so greatful!"



As for other things where you do unethical actions regularly, I suggest putting a fear factor back into the game which will affect how your friends react to what you do and your colony's overall attitude.  Here's a good example of what I'm thinking:

You harvest prisoner organs for profit on a regular basis.  Your colony's fear goes up, because now everyone's afraid that they'll be next.  Perhaps they try to avoid going near doctors, and their mood levels drop too.  "This colony scares me." -1 (stacks) "This colony does unethical actions regularly!" -10 (after 10 of the previous stacked, does not expire)

Now, what happens if one of these scared colonists has a mental break?  He could "make a run for it" where he tries to flee the map.  If he succeeds in fleeing the map, he tells some random ally of yours what happened and that one loses 30 points of rep with you, then notifies all the others which then lose 15 points with you each of them.  This includes enemies, all enemies will gain a +5 with the colony that told them the unethical things you do, and make enemy raids on your colony happen 5% more often.  This will happen each time a colonist escapes only if the escape happens 1 month after the previous escape.  In real life, a month is a long time.  In this game, it's like waiting for Friday to happen again.  So.  :|

So each time a colonist escapes, you get a hit to your allied colonies and make more enemies and each time it happens, you decrease delay between raids by 5%.

Now, that's only if a colonist escapes.  Lets say an enemy raids you and you experiment on some of their colonists or harvest their organs.  An event could happen each time you do, where the prisoner had a comm link open that immediately let those raiders know what happened.  All colonies lose an immediate 7 points with you, enemy and ally alike because you were recorded doing it.  All enemies attack you 2.5% more often, that particular colony that heard/watched their guy be butchered, attacks 15% more often and in heavier numbers, more often using sieges.

Eventually, everyone will become allied with each other to work together at taking you down and if you just keep doing it, you'll have raids come in every half day with 5 different armies on the outskirts of your map launching bomb shells all over your base from a nice safe distance, getting reinforcements in the form of snipers and shielded men with strong weapons to protect the mortar teams.  Also, killer for the game considering single core only gameplay.  But, at least it adds an unethical action system to the game that will remember over time what you've done in a way and eventually cause the game to end for you, one way or another.

Oh, and almost forgot.  There should be an option when a colonist escapes to assure that you will stop doing unethical actions to drop the permanent effects on your colonists.  This will turn your "This colony does unethical actions regularly!" thought to "The colony manager has promised to stop doing unethical things" with a +-0, where it provides no bonus or hit to mood, that expires after 3 game months.  If you do another unethical action within that time, they revert back to their previous thought, with a bonus permanent thought "This colony lies." that adds a -5 too and can't ever be changed with the "promise to stop".

New colonists will be unaffected by the permanent effects, until they witness it a few times themselves.  They'll have a -5 thought "I hear this colony does unethical things." if they socialize with any colonist with a permanent thought, and they'll inherit the "this colony lies" trait too if they should gain the permanent status themselves and had "socialized" with several that were there during the lie.  Making you have to split your colonists up if you want to remove bad traits.  Having two bases where you send new colonists too before they can see anything bad, if you lied and want to fix it.  It should have more work done to improve this but this is the best I could come up with for dealing with unethical colonies doing bad things.
Click to see my steam. I'm a lazy modder who takes long breaks and everyone seems to hate.

lude

I would like trigger warnings to be included into the game.

Like the first raid happen "The coming incident may be bloody, also it may pit you into situations where your decisions might be heavily influenced leading to to actions of cannibalism and inhumanity. If this may trigger you, please clap your hands thrice."


I wish negative actions were more on sight/visual range and would spread socially/viral through gossip and pawn on pawn interaction with randomly diminishing or increasing results.

But a13 seems to add a lot of stuff with which this might be easy to realize.

EarthyTurtle

Ahhh I remember the days... back when you could stick people in gibbet cages to rot in front of your troops, bodies sprawled across the floor. Torture was rife in the prison cells, I could hear their screams at night...

The rule of the old rimworld, where fear was a factor of control and the raiders seemed less like plundering pirates and more like liberators.