A higher fidelity replacement for "incapable of"?

[A Space Ostrich]

The incapable of trait always bugs me. Some backgrounds give good reasons for a character to be completely incapable of a certain task. More often though, the backstory would only really make a character slightly averse to a task. Hell, some of the backstories render characters incapable of tasks that such a person might even be really good at. I get why the incapable system is in place. It makes each colonist different, far more so than just varied skill levels would, but it also breaks immersion in a lot of ways, especially when it comes to the more realistic backstories.

I can understand why a vat grown assassin is incapable of caring (though their assassin knowledge would make them an excellent doctor, and an assassin turned doctor is a great story element) but last time I checked, I wasn't completely incapable of cooking, cutting plants, or fighting fires. Three things that Rimworld backstories would prevent me from doing if I made a character based on myself using the existing system. If I combined different backstories and traits to try and make an extremely accurate version of me, I'd likely find myself incapable of literally anything other than research, which is a bit odd considering my day job is hauling things.

Has anybody got any ideas for a replacement for incapable? I'm not sure one can be found that accomplishes what the existing system does. The only one I can think of right now is a janky system where a character won't do something if somebody else nearby can do it. So the medieval noble won't clean the floors if somebody else can do it, but will do it if everybody else is currently lying dead on those same floors.

[Serenity]

Replace it with an aversion and mood debuff. People can do stuff, but they won't like it.

[DirectorBright]

Yeah it should just be a mood debuff. If a pop star is starving to death and the fridge is full of raw rice, they're going to cook the rice, not eat it raw.

[anexiledone]

This would probably be a pain in the ass to code, but rather than flat out "incapable" for everyone, what about implementing a preference?

Everything would come with a slight mood hit. Rather than a mood hit for doing the job, have a mood hit for each "incapable" job assigned. This way it can stack.

You could eventually flesh it out further to a system of "loves/likes/neutral\dislikes\hates\refuses" job. I don't like hauling in real life, but I'd do it. Maybe a -4 mood for me being assigned to it. However, my coworker HATES hauling. So they would get a -10 when assigned. Meanwhile a back story of seeing someone die from an object failing on them, they'd refuse to haul.


This could further be implemented into a social system. Pawn A loves cooking, but he's pretty bad at it. Pawn B hates cooking, but he's a 5* chef. Pawn A dislikes Pawn B for not only hating his favorite activity, but for being better than him at it.

[SuperCaffeineDude]

When I last played the brawler trait worked similarly, though of course it wasn't something pawns could decide for themselves, it would be nice if they could do more things that they might not like in order to survive.