Build 379 Discussion

[ousire]

For me the hardest part of keeping colonists sane is right in the early game when you only have a few colonists. Like, in the 3-5 range usually. Like it's been brought up, the biggest causes of mental breaks are darkness, ugliness, and sleep/food.

When you have a ton of colonists, it's easy to fiddle with job priority to fix all of that. My most successful forts always have at least one person who's first priority is cleaning, and several growers dedicated to dealing with a large number of flower pots, and lovely carpets decorating the various areas of town. If someone gets tired of being underground, it's easy to take them off duty for a day or so.

But when you only have a few colonists, you can't do that. As nice as it would be to have dedicated cleaners, when I'm dealing with only a handful of people, I need all of my men busy at all times. There's mines to be dug, houses to be built, food to be grown, and I can't have one colonist busy all day doing nothing but sweeping up the place, or my one or two growers busy running around town dealing with flower pots.

[Tynan]

FYI all, the mental break probability thing refers to the probability per time that a colonist will go nuts, if their loyalty is zero.

Before it was set so they'd have a 5% chance of breaking every hour or so. Now it's a 5% chance every six hours. So if your colony is just boned it will still go insane, but people take a day or three to finally snap. Though it could happen in seconds.

I'd like broken colonies to _slowly_ collapse in on themselves, not all go under as soon as loyalties hit zero.

[StorymasterQ]

So, it will be: every 6 hours, there's a 5% chance that a colonist with zero loyalty would break, yes? It's not cumulative, I hope? So, at 12 hours it's still 5% instead of 10%?

[Tynan]

So, it will be: every 6 hours, there's a 5% chance that a colonist with zero loyalty would break, yes? It's not cumulative, I hope? So, at 12 hours it's still 5% instead of 10%?

No accumulation. A colonist could go for a hundred days at zero loyalty. Or break in the first hour.

[sparda666]

No accumulation. A colonist could go for a hundred days at zero loyalty. Or break in the first hour.

in the future will there be multiple stages of crazy?

like at the start, they might just be less efficient at working,
then they might occasionally just stop working and wander around,
then finally rampage

[Tynan]

Different stages of mental breakdown is something I definitely want to do.

[ousire]

I would like if colonists slowly got less and less productive if they're disloyal and unhappy. Like, if they're sick of the dark, then they'll intentionally avoid going mining or dark areas, even if their highest priority job was to mine, and instead they would go do lower priority jobs outside, or start slacking off and going idle. They might break out into little scuffles if they're aggressive and unhappy, two colonists beating each other up, but they would probably stop after a bit, unlike the rampages.

Perhaps they could work slower, walk slower, or eat more food too. Procrastinating and slacking off, or eating comfort food if they have low happiness. Stuff like that, to encourage people to either scare them to work on time and eat their exact rations lest they get a beating, or keep everyone happy enough to stay motivated and healthy

[UrbanBourbon]

What is this 'orbital trade beacon' thing exactly? How does it work?