Psychotic breaks and mood.

[Geokinesis]

Currently psychotic breaks aren't that scary unless the colonist that breaks has a good melee weapon/skill. If not the colonist just ups and punches a few times and is incapacitated or killed.

Psychotic breaks are also super easy to avoid, as long as someone has a bed and eats and you have some graves you are pretty much free never to worry about mood till a psychic drone/ai core turns up. In general mood seems too forgiving, for a basic colonist the threshold is 10%. For them to get that low they either sleep in the corpse stockpile or are bleeding out on the battlefield. Whilst there are some traits that raise the threshold they don't have that much effect overall.

A small change would be have the colonist use their weapon rather than default to melee. (Although it could be abused by people de-equipping colonists when at imminent threat levels.)

Other ways would be to add new behaviours to the break; say a colonist breaks but instead of being hostile starts fires around the base OR appears to carry on but plants a bomb. Anything that would make them a threat.

Maybe have a two thresholds, the first one being something like 'rebellious' where the colonist works but against the colony; during their normal tasks they have a chance to set fires/bombs, cook meals that give food poisoning, damage patients being treated/infect them etc. You can arrest them as normal but you might be tight pressed and be willing to risk the chance of bad behaviour.

Then the second one being the berserk one as per normal.

Basically mood is too forgiving a mental breaks are too easy to avoid and not a real issue for the player.

[EarthyTurtle]

Not really an issue if your colonists are not physically sensitive or hyper sensitive. To be honest I tolerate the psyche drones as they are right now, I wouldn't really care to see them elaborated. Maybe as a rare event but otherwise they don't suit the game that well. I'd much prefer see some other events added. Personally I just don't really care much for psyche drones.

However in terms of players 'giving up', 'dazed' or 'rampaging' I would definitely like to see some development there. Indeed using a fire-arm if their given one would be excellent and add a challenge. I would also like to see more options in dealing with these mental breaks. To me it never made much sense that when their dazed and wandering around all you can do is arrest them and try re-recruit, compared to knocking your rampaging dangerous colonist out and them taking him back to his bedroom to heal up. Usually where he wakes up and starts doing it all over again. I say at least add a 'rescue' option for dazed colonists, they need help not confinement.

Perhaps also an option to talk down a rampaging colonist, sending in someone with high social to 'Talk them down' with a percentage of success based of the skill level. 20/20 could have a good 90% success rate compared to someone who is 3/20 and only has a 5%.

[Geokinesis]

Not really an issue if your colonists are not physically sensitive or hyper sensitive. To be honest I tolerate the psyche drones as they are right now, I wouldn't really care to see them elaborated. Maybe as a rare event but otherwise they don't suit the game that well. I'd much prefer see some other events added. Personally I just don't really care much for psyche drones.

Exactly my point, mental breaks aren't a credible danger despite mood being major thing.

However in terms of players 'giving up', 'dazed' or 'rampaging' I would definitely like to see some development there. Indeed using a fire-arm if their given one would be excellent and add a challenge. I would also like to see more options in dealing with these mental breaks. To me it never made much sense that when their dazed and wandering around all you can do is arrest them and try re-recruit, compared to knocking your rampaging dangerous colonist out and them taking him back to his bedroom to heal up. Usually where he wakes up and starts doing it all over again. I say at least add a 'rescue' option for dazed colonists, they need help not confinement.

Perhaps also an option to talk down a rampaging colonist, sending in someone with high social to 'Talk them down' with a percentage of success based of the skill level. 20/20 could have a good 90% success rate compared to someone who is 3/20 and only has a 5%.

I mean maybe they need to be recruited again as they got so broken down by the colony they'd have to be convinced to come back.

[wolfman1911]

Would it really be abusing game knowledge to take weapons away from someone who is on the verge of a psychic break? I mean, do you really trust Jimmy, who has recently started talking about some creepy shit, to be standing post with a gun?

[Wex]

On a siege, one of the siegers, was a melee junkie, with depressive and too smart as tracts. All I did was killing one of his allies, and in the night (darkness penality) he went on a rampage against his friends. Friendly fire and his rampage after, they decided to storm my defences. Siege broken. 

[Mathenaut]

I don't think psychotic breaks are supposed to be a Damocles' sword that the player needs to stress the management of at all times.

It's a bottom bar to prevent negligence and abuse of the needs of your colonists.

If anything, this speaks toward the need of other content to manage.