Way too many Backstories have Hauling/Cleaning disabled

[sadpickle]

As the title says. Look, I get that a lot of people from better-off worlds are not used to heavy lifting or cleaning up after themselves. But it's just ridiculous that they can't, or won't after being thrust into the situation of Rimworld. 3 random people and only one of them is doing the lifting/cleaning? Where is the justification here? I don't see how it encourages balance, since it just ensures no non-job specific hauling gets done and the entire colony looks like a pigsty. It's a bit of a chore rerolling colonists with decent builds because they don't do basic, necessary labor. There is no free lunch in the colony. Locking people out of other specific jobs is fine for RP reasons, but Dumb Labor is something that everyone SHOULD be able to do, by virtue of it's nature. I can see some real hardcases like Sheriff or Assassin flat-out refusing, and who's going to make them? But some of these special snowflakes (I'm looking at you Pop Idol) need to buck up and get with the times.

Just my thoughts.

[Limdood]

i agree.  at the beginning, dumb labor inability can really bottleneck a colony's growth.

later on, as colonists start getting more specialized, a larger base still needs a number of haulers and a few cleaners - finding pawns with good traits, but no real skills or passions can still be a huge boon just placed on carrying duty.  Finding a Steadfast Sanguine Beautiful person Would normally be someone you'd want in your colony in a heartbeat...until you find out that they're a convent child sheriff and all they can do is animal and artistic...with no passions at all.

inability to do dumb labor should be RARE (i think it makes more sense for the noble to refuse than the sheriff/assassin - I'll die before i debase myself like that!)

[chino2468]

+1 to both!
There's some really, really useless people going around - I'd straight use them as human shields during raids if it wasn't wrong.

[Kegereneku]

Just giving a +1

I'm also already bored of CONTRIVED BACKGROUNG.

For example :
Convent Child + Navy Scientist
Because of the first, Research is disabled, resulting in a illiterate & Pacifist, Military Scientist.

I don't mind Disabling Stats which have been increased by another Backstory but at least avoid nonsensical backstory. If a movie featured the above character the audience would be leaving the theater to stop wasting their time.

[Negocromn]

Agree with everything said so far.

I was playing just now, I had 7 colonists and only 3 haulers, then a wanderer joined and I recruited a pawn almost at the same time, both haulers, and my colony boomed, it was insane, I could actually finish storing my crops and my iron, reorganize my stockpiles, feed the animals, build (because 2 of my haulers were also my builders), etc.

I don't think haulers should be rare commodities, it makes no sense and it is bad for gameplay.

[Pickle]

+1 for everything

I don't change the three colonists I get randomly and I have non-haulers almost all the time, sometime two of them.

I mean, ok you were somehow important in your homeworld, but now you're naked in the savanna so move your arms guys =_=

[MisterVertigo]

There are plenty of backstories that add "working" skills (cooking, doctoring, crafting, etc) but remove hauling or cleaning, but are there any backstories that ADD hauling and cleaning and REMOVE "working" skills?

Early on if you get a pawn that can't do "Dumb Labor" they are kinda useless, unless they are OUTSTANDING at being a doctor, farmer, or cook. I usually try to have one of my starting three cover those roles though. Once the colony gets big enough to have a dedicated cleaner, you are usually taking them away from something else they may be good at. Why not have a backstory of being a "Maid" or "Butler" to increase cleaning, and maybe reduce things like social, doctor, etc. Or another called "Mover" or "Warehouse worker" that does the same thing, but for hauling. Just a thought.

[Limdood]

there is no way to "increase cleaning" or hauling for that matter.  It isn't tied to any skill. 

I could see having a few occupations that "protect" a work type so it can't be disabled by another background (a navy scientist might have research "protected", which would ignore any other background that disabled research,  sheriff and violent, sex slave and social, luddite and mining/growing, etc. - things that are intrinsic to the background).  It would work magnificently...but wouldn't really affect hauling/cleaning, which are some of the biggest issues.  It would work great if they ALSO cut the dumb labor disability out of at least half the current backgrounds that have it.

[quxzcover]

+1 to everything said
in a12 i remember that maybe a quarter of my colony couldn't do dumb labour, on average, with a bout 8+ people.
now its well past half. -_-

[DNK]

Absolutely (title).

Instead of fully disabling any labor type (for any backstory type), it should just come with a significant malus to mood.

Like:

-20 did dumb labor today (1/day)
starts to fade out in 1 day, over 36 hours

That'll stack up quickly, but if you absolutely need another set of hands, then you have it as an option if they're otherwise content.

[Aarkreinsil]

Right, here we go.

Having a model who can only hunt animals and make sculptures is bad enough, but having people be INCAPABLE OF VIOLENCE seems to be the jazz nowadays.

Especially since they will happily engage in social fights, but won't even try defending themselves from being killed by a snow hare or a squirrel that's tearing out their eyes.

It should just be like you suggested. In that it works like the brawler or nudist trait. You can still make the people do the things they hate, after all it's a matter of life and death. But of course it will affect their mood.

It would even add to the game if your pacifist empath healer had to kill someone in self-defence, in turn getting a massive mood hit and suffering a mental break from it.

Now if people call for help and offer to join, I tend to always turn them down because I can't have a look at their traits and stats. No more "incapable of dumb,caring,social,violent,skilled" people please xD

[Drahkon]

Myself, I'd rather it just popped as a 'negative passion' as it were, very low or 0 starting skill with extremely slow gain, maybe with a nerfed max skill and/or a 'green thumb' type stacking mood debuff. Perhaps even with a double flame version.  Completely disabled skills could still exist but be very rare, like that fire phobia background could still disable firefighting.

On that note, it'd be nice if there was a little more sense all around as far as colonist generation.  Random is quick and easy, but add a little guidance it and it can make if feel more real.

Passions: 0-5, 0 disabled, 1 hate, 2 dislike,3 neutral, 4 passion, 5 burning passion
Then have backgrounds apply weights to a randomized base like with skill levels.
This also means that silly things like 'the brawler with a burning passion for shooting and no melee skill/passion' can still happen, but are less common. >.<

[Boston]

As with almost everything else in Rimworld, we can turn to real-world colonial examples, including my personal favorite: Jamestown.

The initial "settlers" of the Jamestown colony were mostly "gentlemen" (think Rimworld nobles) and their servants, and the colony was founded in effort to find gold (amusingly enough, with all the recent complaining about gold). Because they were "gentlemen", they thought they were above most forms of manual labor, and refused to do very much, leading to an overworked workforce.

The first leader of Jamestown, Capt. John Smith, implemented policies like "he who does not work, does not eat". It made him an enemy of the "gentlemen", and he was forced to return to England with a (know assumed to be an assassination attempt) gunpower burn. One of the "gentlemen" took over leadership of the colony, and turned over many of John Smith's work-related policies.

In that winter ,known as the "Starving Time", something like 70% of the colony either starved to death or died as a result of malnutrition/bad-water related diseases. The colony even sometimes resorted to cannibalism.

The next batch of colonists included actual craftsmen,  and even though the colony stopped looking for gold and starting growing cash-crops, like tobacco, Jamestown ended up being taken over by the English Crown.

[blerkz]

I agree, in my latest game it seemed about half the wanderers that joined refused to do any hauling. I had to resort to some of them having a little accident.

[Aarkreinsil]

I agree, in my latest game it seemed about half the wanderers that joined refused to do any hauling. I had to resort to some of them having a little accident.

Yeah, luckily it's even easier than in DF.
Cook them with heaters, freeze them with coolers.. making them punch grizzly bears doesn't work with people who refuse to do any violent deeds, but those you can just send into your array of steel deadfall traps and watch the magic happen.
If you're really mean, build an execution place of wood deadfall traps, so they can die slowly and horribly from all the small injuries.