Guards and Unknown Threats

[keylocke]

agreed, maybe right next to the ironman mode toggle option.

[Colonist51]

a "scout" is just someone you can send to investigate an event that occurred hidden in FOW if the notifications "intrigued" you. ie : if you think it warrants your attention. you are in no way required to send scouts all the time.

a "patrol" are just idle people you have around that you can automatically set to walk around in groups automatically attacking mad animals and predators that are within your patrol route. they're like a temporary group of mobile meat-turrets.

so, "wasting time" isn't exactly what they're doing. most of your assumptions are based on your faulty interpretations of what each tasks are supposed to do.

Spot on. Perhaps the biggest single practical benefit of having guard work is to make the colonists who suck at everything except shooting/melee actually useful. I'm pretty sure the vast majority of us have ran into situations that we just couldn't find those combat-experienced colonists something to do. Hell, if you're unlucky enough you can get a colonist with the "psychopath" trait who can't do any type of work except hunting.

With the guard duty mechanism in place, those otherwise useless colonists would be able to protect the colony from threats and provide a passive mood boost to all colonists. This is not even to mention all the benefits of having guards/scouts in a game with toggled Unknown Threats and/or FOW options.

IMO, there's nothing to lose here, not even for hardcore Rimworld conservatives like Kegereneku (disabled warnings and FOW would be togglable). Only to gain.