Colonist reactions to violence and scary things

[newcadence]

In Rimworld, colonists are a bit too fearless in the face of danger. If their voice from above tells them to run at the guy with the assault rifle, they'll do it. This isn't very good for a game about storytelling.

I reckon there could be temporary health and mood effects of being in danger.
For example, a colonist could experience fight or flight, loss of reasoning skills which could lead to mental breaks, adrenaline rushes to increase speed and strength while straining the body.

Perhaps if you play like me and hunker down until the siegers who are shelling you run out of ammo, your colonists would have a constant mood down because of the looming threat of having an artillery shell full of napalm land on you or your loved ones. Afterwards your colonists may have mood debuffs like "being shaken" after experiencing shelling for a while.

Or even more exciting, imagine if your miner Richie was off to mine that steel vein when really he should be drafted inside because of the pack of manhunter wargs that just spawned. If Richie lost a leg to a warg before nailing it in the head with a pickaxe and scrambling inside, I think Richie would have a pretty big fear of dogs, or animals in general.

Now, peg-legged Richie is still useful for his level 16 mining, so you send him to dig out your brand new dining hall chiseled in the mountain for your 40 colonists. But because of a lack of foresight on your part, you forget to leave pillars of rock to serve as supports, and Richie is pulverized by solid mountain falling on him. What does Matilda, Richie's wife think? Would she ever step foot into a home carved into a mountain, for fear losing a limb or worse to an avalanche of rocks?

ya dats all

[1000101]

Aquired traits based on gameplay experience would be an interesting mechanic.

[falconbunker]

Agreed 1000101

[keylocke]

yep, acquired/dynamic traits are one of those long requested features.

[Wex]

I am still waiting to see raiders break, at the tought of charging an automated sentry machine gun. Or be shell shocked, after being bombarded.
Right now, they either charge you all, or they withdraw. They never rout and panic.

[keylocke]

i dunno. i think in some of those long maze traps filled with sandbags and corpses, some people have reported that raiders go berserk in the older alphas.

i haven't really seen it myself since i don't really like making maze traps. (maze traps are kinda slow for my taste.)

but i used to see some traders go berserk occasionally when they hang out in my corpse-filled killzones/killboxes..

anyways, there are already some combat-based mood debuffs such as pain. (more mood buffs/debuffs can be added/modded in eventually) but most of these things are just temporary and mostly affects mental breakdowns.

i think what OP wants is dynamic changes to character traits, which actually affects their personality.

ie : someone who wasn't a cannibal can gain cannibal trait, or someone who used to be incapable of violence can slowly become a blood thirsty psychopath, etc..

the traits of the pawns could change based on their experiences.