Two-staged gauges (happiness, fear, sleep, food)

[Galileus]

I was thinking about different bits and odds I lack in RimWorld and haven't read about them really. And quite a few of those hit me with an idea to change approach to how gauges work. This is not a breakthrough - it's actually just a change in approach that could result in more flexibility in defining how our colonist are.

So, what's the big idea? Right now all gauges are linear from 0 to 100 where resting place is on 0 - and this actually cheapens it a bit. Examine the example of sleep - it drops down to 15-20% and guys rush to sleep. There is really no negative space to really look at, we all know these moments when your draftees will succumb any moment as raiders start their attack. There is really no place to take risk or try make drafted patrols - it reaches that low point and its suddenly all over.

Now, if resting point would be at 50% - meaning a limit of natural cycle (would eat, sleep naturally, would feel neutral as for happiness and fear) there would actually be a negative zone to manage, risk and explore. Again, back to example of sleep - 50% would mean colonist will rush to bed, but won't mean he's out quite just yet. You can still draft him and keep up whole night (and maybe pump full of coffee to keep in more or less working conditions) before he falls over his feet - and moreover, you can monitor his progression. This allows for all kinds of pitch-black nights with patrol duties, and would obviously result in more difficult happiness management (you can "buy" that patrol for happiness). Let's face it - right now sleep or hunger need pops up rather quickly and while you have more food than you could possibly pack on a mule and send into a sun, people get starving because they took a long walk. This is rather a cheap reason to put up the warning and cheapens the real requirement as well. Now, if that need would start to slowly get worse and more extreme from 50% down, you could actually monitor the progress of your desperate need for more food when you're clicking on these darn potato-plants, hoping for them to go faster.

More negative space also means more attention in it - you can pack it with new status changes (dizzy, shambling etc.). This goes a long way for possible future gauges too - like thirst or health. Having them all chip slowly at different areas of your character would make up for a more engaging gameplay - one where you can make a conscious decision if it is the miner or the doctor that can go on a little more without food or water. And of course I'm most interested in exploring possibilities of negative space of sleep - that could lead to ramping up debuffs as you keep one guy on too many sleepovers, night patrol mechanics or desperate all-nighters when something other than raiders goes boom and you really, really need to address that problem. Right now there is no space to experiment with that - and I believe it would go a long way to start thinking about all these gauges in both positive and negative stage.