Lets talk happiness modifiers!

[Timber]

Alpha 2 was released some time ago and with it came a period of great mental instability among colonists. Early game seems to be the hardest to get through in my experience. There has been lots of talk about what can be done to keep colonists happy and how it can be achieved in the most efficient way.

There seems to be lots of confusion about what the perfect bedroom should look like, what modifiers stack, what works on colonists during sleep, what a good kitchen layout should look like and so on.

If you have questions about how happiness works - drop a line! With this thread I would like to encourage you all to share your stories, designs and findings (with pictures) ! I know you efficiency maniacs are out there.

[Monkfish]

Early game is by far the hardest in terms of mental breaks, but that's to be expected. You've just crash-landed on a strange and desolate (also sandy) shithole in the back of beyond, have very little in the way of food and resources and have to build everything from scratch. If I were in that situation, I'd be pretty pissed/tense/shitscared too.

Anyway, you can mitigate mental breaks early on by getting a building constructed and some food planted immediately. Initially, prioritise two people on construction to get the first building up and completed ASAP (or mining if you're burrowing into the hills instead) and always set one person (your best grower) to immediately start planting potatoes otherwise you'll have a food issue very quickly, which will lead to mental breaks. The first building should be sufficiently large to house the colonists' beds, a cooker/NPD, some batteries, some lights and some plantpots. Once that first building is up, take one person off construction duties and set them mining as you'll be pretty low on metal, if not out, by this point.

A little later on in the colony's life, you should research carpets and put them in your high traffic areas, they do wonders for mental stability. I've had colonists drafted un-noticed and on the verge of a mental break when they're released. They run off, get some food, kip in their large carpeted room and are back to normal after a day.

Also, probability of mental break has been reduced quite considerably in Alpha 3, which should help no end.

[ShadowTani]

Getting Started
The things I do to get an efficient start with few to no mental breaks is this:

• I start my colony near a steam hole. This ensures a smooth supply of power in the beginning.
• I make a berry farm; berries give smaller yields than a potato farm, but grows faster. This reduces your vulnerability to blights.
• I make the steam generator and wall it in such that it becomes my first house, I put the sleeping spots inside. This deals with the penalty of sleeping outside.
• I put up a research table outside; amusingly, I don't bother with a dedicated research room before everything else is complete.. Including the research. xD
• I research "better picks", "carpets" and "improved food dispensing" first, in that order.
• I make a community bedroom, which include a food dispenser - that will later be converted into the official colony prison.
• The generator room goes from temporary community bedroom to temporary prison room.
• At this point I usually dedicate someone to cleaner duty. I clean both inside and outside.

After this the colony is usually stable enough to not experience too many mental breaks in my experience. Also, when I dig into the mountain, such as for creating the defense areas etc., I tend to do that in smaller portions - where I alternate between smoothing the floor and digging.

Keeping dead human bodies out of sight is also important as it's one of the few mood penalties that stacks. I personally don't use graves, but build an incineration room at a later point (a room or cave, to prevent rain from interfering), where I stockpile dead bodies and have them burned with a few [usually poorly aimed] molotovs.

Community bedrooms VS small bedrooms
I posted this in another thread and thought it might be valuable to include it here as well; luxurious 6x6 single bedrooms is of course "the best", but if you are among those who want a big colony population and need to be a bit more efficient with bedroom space then this is likely of concern:

Actually, a 3x3 bedroom do give the cramped interior debuff, which is a -10 debuff that is persistent during sleep (unlike darkness and environment moodifiers - meaning lamps and plants are in theory wasted on a bedroom).

A community bedroom will on the other hand give a total penalty of -3 when the spacious interior buff and shared bedroom debuff is combined. However, the interior size moodifier will only last while you stay in the bedroom while the shared bedroom debuff will last throughout the work day which is more undesirable; this is because it's during labor the colonists are at an actual risk of having mental breaks as refilling their needs, such as hunger and sleep, also refills happiness and thus reduce, if not eliminate, any such risk.

So that people chose the community bedroom solution is not really ideal.. I'm guessing they don't have a throughout enough understanding of the moodifiers or believe it's a more efficient solution for having an oversized population - however, I would argue in the case of setting up bedrooms for a larger population it could actually be more beneficial and just as efficient to make 1x2 bedrooms for everyone rather than community bedrooms.

I admittedly haven't thoroughly tested the 1x2 bedroom solution myself yet though because I never go over 20 colonists anyway and thus haven't had a need to be greedy with the bedroom space - so take that as theoretical for now. I will try with that solution for my next colony. :3

PS: I do know how modifier is spelled, I'm just being puny with "mood modifier".

I've tested the 1x2 bedrooms by now, and I can say they work perfectly fine for keeping the colonists happy - you don't get any lingering mood penalties from it (as opposed to a community bedroom).

Raid related mood modifiers
The worst mood penalties you get after raids, such as witnessing people die, observing corpses and getting wounded. However, they also provide fear bonuses, and as most should know fear provides the loyalty if it's higher than happiness.

There are some specific things to considerate about this though. First of all, you will not get both "seeing death" penalties from the same corpse. Secondly, witnessing someone's death is better than observing a corpse due to the fear bonuses they give - for observing a corpse the fear bonus get capped at 10 which is too low to prevent a mental break. Witnessing someone's death however give an instant fear bonus of 25, and obviously also goes much higher than that, providing just enough fear to prevent a mental break. Wounded characters (under 75 health) also gets a nice fear bonus of 20.

In other words, people that participated recently in a combat is surprisingly mentally stable - the mentality issues after battles therefore only happen if you don't clean up the corpses fast enough, or use someone who didn't participate in the battle to do the corpse cleaning.

[Phienyx]

1x2 bedrooms as in the size of that bed itself?

[ShadowTani]

1x2 bedrooms as in the size of that bed itself?

Yeah, just the bed, no lights, plants etc. The modifiers those things provide, and the darkness penalty, isn't counted while the colonists sleep anyway in addition of going away as soon as you leave the room - so there's nothing to lose from such a design. You'd rather want to keep the corridors lighted than the bedrooms.

[Timber]

1x2 bedrooms as in the size of that bed itself?

Yeah, just the bed, no lights, plants etc. The modifiers those things provide, and the darkness penalty, isn't counted while the colonists sleep anyway in addition of going away as soon as you leave the room - so there's nothing to lose from such a design. You'd rather want to keep the corridors lighted than the bedrooms.

Remarkable that it works out just fine but I wonder if it's a suitable long term solution. I doubt Tynan intended for it to work that way - cramped environment penalty is there for a reason.

[ShadowTani]

Remarkable that it works out just fine but I wonder if it's a suitable long term solution. I doubt Tynan intended for it to work that way - cramped environment penalty is there for a reason.

Probably, but for now, in A2, the cramped environment penalty is only there while they are inside that specific room - which means, it's of no concern since there are no long term effects, and while they are inside the room they are sleeping anyway (i.e. a process that refills happiness and thus reduce, if not eliminate, the risk of mental breaks). The point was that these tiny bedrooms are currently a better solution than community bedrooms if you are concerned with mental breaks. :3

I can imagine a solution for this if Tynan wants to change this behavior is to have colonists that are affected for a prolonged time of the cramped environment penalty to have that penalty transform into a "feeling claustrophobic" penalty, which will be a lingering penalty more severe than the "shared bedroom" penalty.