Do you think dead bodies lower mood too much?

[user553]

I like the solution that Dwarf Fortress has: dwarves get used to death and dead bodies over time if they witness such incidents a lot.
Military dwarves with huge kill lists are basically psychopaths that do not care about anything anymore. They could be ordered to kill their own spouse and kids, and do it in cold blood without suffering any noticeable mood swing.

[Shinzy]

I kind of enjoy the aftermath of any larger fight with your colonists so ready to flip off
trying to juggle around with them just to manage doing simple tasks so they won't tip the scale to madness

I literally had to wall off a section of my base to block the sight to the bodies in one of my playthroughs just to keep it together

and I've had lot of those situations where people just can't keep it together
it's fun just trying to huddle everyone together in the kitchen

or in that fancy 5 star suite and have them form a cult of royal bed worshippers
(cause of the beauty boost)
and keep the less likely to go insane pacifists keep them chatted up
and just pray the ones you've had to imprison get incapacitated rather than die when they eventually go into rampage

it's really really rrrreaaally stressful (in the good way) and
when and if you eventually pull it off, it's really satisfying

Sure it puts any progression to a halt and makes you really vulnerable to any attacks cause there's hardly any possibilty for cleanup and repairs
but it's fun =P I llllove it

that's why I still keep the psychic wave things on, too
the process of keeping your colonists sane changes the pace of the game so much
I find it refreshing so I hope stuff won't get dramatically changed

[BetaSpectre]

I agree that it brings something new to the game, but the -25 drone incident is a one hit kill often times.

[Bog]

I'd like the negative numbers to be left roughly as is, but I wouldn't be opposed to adding some positive modifiers from combat situations.

A colonist that rescues another incapacitated colonist should maybe get a "feels like a hero" modifier that gives +20 for a day or two.

Then he/she could be the one to go clean up the bodies. 

On a related note, I'd like to be able to let my colonists carry "emergency rations" and be able to order then to sleep or eat something.

The rations wouldn't get eaten unless a colonist gets to "starving" or you order him/her to eat it. They'd make it a lot easier to keep morale up in long fights. If I go attack enemies that are besieging my base, by the time the battle's over usually everybody is urgently hungry, which is like a -20 modifier, if they have to walk 150+ tiles back to my base to get some food that can lead to a mental break before they get there.

Being able to force colonists to eat or sleep would be nice in any situation, but in combat situations especially, at least for me. Sometimes when I have 15+ colonists I'd like to be able to set up some temporary sleeping places behind my front wall and let 1/3 of them or so get some sleep here and there in shifts when there's lulls in the battle. It'd let me avoid mental breaks in exchange for not having as much firepower at any given time.

[BetaSpectre]

"Being able to force colonists to eat or sleep would be nice in any situation,"

Oh this is so very much what I'd love to see.

As for the food issue, the scattered raider sieges I've broken usually have food laid around the map, and I do build "forward" bases but since the mere automatic want to leave for a bed on the other side of the map causes quite a few of my colonists to go mad.

[Bog]

Well as far as the food was concerned, I was watching my brother play last night and he had this battle against a group of mechanoids that came. He killed off the scythers pretty quick, but had to deal with a bunch of centipedes.

He designed his base with 3 separate outer layers of defense as buffers, and has so fight a slow retreat against them. The biggest problem he had was the length of the battle. He could only maintain about 1/4 of his colonists on the front line because he had to keep undrafting his colonists as well as disabling firefighting and repairing on all of them. (the walls were constantly being damaged by inferno cannons, heavy charge blasters and miniguns) so that they'd go find some food and get some sleep, and even then they were walking 50+ tiles back to their beds.

If he wanted to get them to sleep on the front lines he could have by building sleeping spots and changing all the beds back at the base to prisoner beds, but there was nothing he could do about the food except let them go back. I mean, if he had thought of it ahead of time I suppose he could have designed his base with forward nutrient paste dispensers and dining rooms or something, but it seems a little weird to go through all that trouble to set up a decent defense.

Being able to carry food along in their inventory (say 1 meal) and order them to eat it or go to sleep without micromanaging their normal sleeping situations would have been really nice, and I don't think it would have taken away from the game at all.

[Untrustedlife]

I like the solution that Dwarf Fortress has: dwarves get used to death and dead bodies over time if they witness such incidents a lot.
Military dwarves with huge kill lists are basically psychopaths that do not care about anything anymore. They could be ordered to kill their own spouse and kids, and do it in cold blood without suffering any noticeable mood swing.

This

[Niknud]

There is a reason a lot of our returning soldiers are suffering from PTSD.  There are also stories of World War 2 Bombardiers who suffered greatly just from the thought of all the people they killed when they released their bombs.  I think the negative effects from seeing a corpse and from killing are actually pretty lenient compared to real life.

[UrbanBourbon]

The fun and good thing is that a sort of therapy mechanism is already in place. You can imprison your colonists at will and have the warden talk with them to boost mood, up to 100 (which is a minor flaw on its own). If there has to be constant stress, then all the game needs is just an automated mechanism for scheduled therapy sessions for each colonist.

One minor flaw could be that the game doesn't warn early enough when a colonist "needs" therapy. I, for one, want my colonists to be happy, not just content. As it stands, RimWorld warns the player only when the colonists are nearing their breaking point.

Why are you not happy, citizen Seraph?
Do you require therapy?

[user553]

I'd like the negative numbers to be left roughly as is, but I wouldn't be opposed to adding some positive modifiers from combat situations.

A colonist that rescues another incapacitated colonist should maybe get a "feels like a hero" modifier that gives +20 for a day or two.

+1 to this

On a related note, I'd like to be able to let my colonists carry "emergency rations" and be able to order then to sleep or eat something.

The rations wouldn't get eaten unless a colonist gets to "starving" or you order him/her to eat it. They'd make it a lot easier to keep morale up in long fights. If I go attack enemies that are besieging my base, by the time the battle's over usually everybody is urgently hungry, which is like a -20 modifier, if they have to walk 150+ tiles back to my base to get some food that can lead to a mental break before they get there.

In Dwarf Fortress, you can order your squad to carry a waterskin and a backpack with 1-2 food rations, if you want.
It makes your military dwarves somewhat heavier, slows them down and encumbers them <i>a little</i>, so it's not "free", but it helps to avoid thirst/starvation in long patrols.
Just one more trade-off decision you have to make.

In RimWorld, optional emergency ration could be incorporated into the "Gear" tab, with 3-5% slowdown effect.