combat and mood

[fallonsky]

so after trying out alpha 5 one thing has really stood out for me and more or less caused the death of two forts.

when we still had fear and happiness med to large fights would usually make happiness drop to almost nothing but the fear from (I think it was) being shot and the death of the enemies would keep people over the breaking point for a bit until things died down and you have time to clear the body away. Now I find however that mood just falls really fast and my colonists can't even fight a pack of two riders without someone starting to break and then going nuts as I try and get them away from the fight. 

Last battle I had on day 93, the combined death of four of my eight colonists and the wave of dead bodys at the wall just wrecked mood. Two people went mad, killing one of my last two guys before being subdued and after all that a squirrel went mad and one hit KO'd my last man.

I won the battle but lost the war :/

[BetaSpectre]

Not sure if you still have the psychic ship still active. It lowers your mood by like 25 enough to enrage all your colonists and stall everything.

[esk81]

Agree. The mood of the colonist it's very fragile. I disabled the psychic ship thing and i still have a lot of colonist loosing their minds just for seeing a couples of bodies and having hungry.
Every time I fight a large group of tribals or pirates, 3 or 4 colonist breaks, even if no one dies.

[BetaSpectre]

Its the dead bodies that really make them go mad.

TBH dead bodies should only do that when out rotting after say two weeks.

[Headshotkill]

I think currently colonists are just a bit too fragile, I mean when I was busy building the ship people went crazy because they had to sleep in a room with 5 other colonists and had to eat some raw food because there was no power. You should get a mood increase from building the ship, it's your last hope to get of that planet so why would you go mental and start breaking stuff when you just have to wait for 3 MORE DAYS and leave!?

I think we should have a base mood increase from building the ship, something like +15 or so.

[artemas]

Yeah, the collapse rate of the post-battle body-hauling phase gets pretty over the top, especially on the higher end, when battles take longer, and there are way more enemies.

What was the rational for removing fear and loyalty, does anyone know? Presumably there's something in the works, but I felt it worked pretty well.

[userfredle]

Fear was actually one of the reasons i found this game so incredible, You can use fear or good mood to keep colonists, and this system protected them during combat which i found even more awesome

[Vulkan]

Colonists should get desensitized to violence & death over time, and there should be more things that increase mood, including more lasting effects.

[Sinnick]

Colonists should get desensitized to violence & death over time, and there should be more things that increase mood, including more lasting effects.

I'd like this as well.  The first battle a given colonist takes part is should be the most brutal for them, emotionally.  After that it should steadily level off.  Maybe even make them lose the ability to for social/caring if they take part in too many fights too close together?

[fallonsky]

its not the psychic wave because i did the patch that tynan said to do.

I usually make my front line a bit farther out to make sure people don't break from the dead bodies so I guess i was naturally prepared for that but what i meant is that my colonists are usually at about half mood and when combat starts they suddenly find themselves in a fight for their lives they throw hissy fits because the fight happened before breakfast and they happened to be hit.

i know you are hungry but you can have your honey bunches of nope AFTER the raiders are not trying to paint the walls in your blood.

perhaps we should have something like an adrenalin bonus or something like that when they start a major fight sort of how fear worked in the old alphas. they would get really frightened by all the death and shooting and its only after that died down that they would get breaks from bodies and being hungry?


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