Broken mood system still hasn't been fixed in A16.

[dosemeter]

Having said that, my other thought is that fist fights are too often lethal. It feels like half of all fist fights end in a death. That could be toned down a bit. Maybe there needs to be a lesser version of a brawl that differs from all-out melee against raiders or other known hostiles.

Yes....like smacking each other with white gloves and declaring the winner as the last one to say "Ouch"!       I agree.....death by fist is pretty brutal.

[DirectorBright]

Our colonists, at least those we start, with come from an environment where they would have been pampered by the greatest high tech conveniences. All of them would be what we would consider "pussies".

What would be very cool to see is our colonists gradually becoming stronger or desensitized to the hardships they face.   Modifiers like stoic, combat veteran, desensitized to death, etc...

I would like to see that too.

[Thyme]

Limdood: Nobody's gonna start arguing who should be in charge when there's a fucking hole in the boat and water's leaking in. Everyone would just start peddling like crazy towards the only island on the horizon. You vastly underestimate what people are capable of. Everybody (maybe even you) is a survivalist when push comes to shove. It's the result of millions of years of evolution.

That's because everybody wants to get in the same direction (geometrically and figuratively) in this case. Wouldn't work out as well in other scenarios.
I'd like to bring a quote from a famous person:

Madness is like gravity. All it needs is a little push.

[vampiresoap]

Limdood: Nobody's gonna start arguing who should be in charge when there's a fucking hole in the boat and water's leaking in. Everyone would just start peddling like crazy towards the only island on the horizon. You vastly underestimate what people are capable of. Everybody (maybe even you) is a survivalist when push comes to shove. It's the result of millions of years of evolution.

That's because everybody wants to get in the same direction (geometrically and figuratively) in this case. Wouldn't work out as well in other scenarios.
I'd like to bring a quote from a famous person:

Madness is like gravity. All it needs is a little push.

What about a fire in the house? Or a dangerous predator approaches? Or a tornado being only 50 miles away? Would people start arguing who should be in charge instead of reacting to imminent danger then?

[Zombra]

What about a fire in the house? Or a dangerous predator approaches? Or a tornado being only 50 miles away? Would people start arguing who should be in charge instead of reacting to imminent danger then?

If your colonists are beating each other up instead of fighting fires, you are bad at the game.  Get better and keep your people happier.

If that doesn't work, use the Prepare Carefully mod and make all your colonists Iron-Willed Steadfast Optimists.  Then you'll have your heroes who never flinch and always work together in perfect harmony under stressful circumstances with no leadership - just like in real life. 

[vampiresoap]

What about a fire in the house? Or a dangerous predator approaches? Or a tornado being only 50 miles away? Would people start arguing who should be in charge instead of reacting to imminent danger then?

If your colonists are beating each other up instead of fighting fires, you are bad at the game.  Get better and keep your people happier.

If that doesn't work, use the Prepare Carefully mod and make all your colonists Iron-Willed Steadfast Optimists.  Then you'll have your heroes who never flinch and always work together in perfect harmony under stressful circumstances with no leadership - just like in real life. 

How the fuck do you command berserking pawns to fight fire? You just went full git gud fanboy. You never go full git gud fanboy.

[Zombra]

How the fuck do you command berserking pawns to fight fire?

You let that one guy throw his little fit while your other 5 guys go fight the fire.  If he's causing too much of a problem, you punch him out first.  It's not that hard.

[vampiresoap]

How the fuck do you command berserking pawns to fight fire?

You let that one guy throw his little fit while your other 5 guys go fight the fire.  If he's causing too much of a problem, you punch him out first.  It's not that hard.

I said they weren't supposed to be berserking in that kind of situations at all, and you were like,"if they are berserking instead of fighting fire, then you are bad at this game." What are you smoking?

[Zombra]

I said they weren't supposed to be berserking in that kind of situations at all, and you were like,"if they are berserking instead of fighting fire, then you are bad at this game." What are you smoking?

Sorry, you're absolutely right.  What I meant was that while you can't control it completely (nor should you), if your guys are berserk all the time, you're screwing up.  The point stands that the mood system is not the disaster you're making it out to be, and doesn't require "fixing".

[Nebbie]

So in regards to the two topics here that OP conflated, yes, the system needs overhaul:

For social fights, I can understand wanting to punch someone and ending up with an all-out brawl.
What I can't understand is that noone tries to stop it and neither party stops until the other is unconscious.
Even if noone breaks it up, normally, IRL, someone gets an upper-hand and the loser would submit and/or go into a protective pose and just get bruises from them on until the aggressor figures it's been enough, probably with some agreement to the aggressor's demands.
There should be a sheriff role that deals with troublemakers by either stopping a fight that happens (and punishing the aggressor) or preventing a fight in the first place, and pawns that are in lots of sudden pain should probably go into a defensive fetal submission state for a while (both submitting and likely ending a social fight, or at least preventing wounds to eyes and other vital areas, as well as possibly hoping for mercy during a raid). Additionally, it'd be nice if relations from the aggressor's side improved somewhat if they won the fight.
More of a beef with the terrible melee combat system in general, but I also really don't like that melee fights with fists can lead to stuff like smashed eyes fairly often. I think it's not so much the chances of a particular area being injured as it is that melee incurs injuries seemingly with every blow, leading to dozens of bruises where you'd normally only expect a few.

As for the mood system, there's lots more wrong with it.

Let's start with mental breaks:
Broken pawns should really prioritize eating if starving, and forget their mood problem temporarily while eating (and permanently if eating solves their mood).
Pawns shouldn't remove clothing as part of sad wandering. It makes no sense (people pretty much only undress from madness when dying of hypothermia, not when they have a fit about the sorry state of their room) and is incredibly frustrating due to micromanagement (let's all play Hunt the Forbidden Pants!, the party game your insane uncle insists builds character).
Most people will smash stuff when in a rage. Starting fistfights with everything that moves is not too realistic.

Now, as for the mood system itself:
There's no penalty to unhappy colonists besides mental breaks (which really seems to be why mental breaks that make no sense are in the game to begin with). Why aren't people less productive when they're sleep-deprived and sad?
There's also no benefit to happy colonists.
No respect for hierarchy of needs. Generally speaking, people who are starving do not care a single iota about not having a fancy enough bedroom. A lot of the issues with having too frequent mental breaks is because stuff like having an old scar on the leg compounds with other minor issues atop serious stuff like starvation. Similarly, people dying of malaria should probably not be complaining that the doctor disturbed their sleep (which shouldn't even be possible in their condition) by coming in to treat them after dark.

[vampiresoap]

So in regards to the two topics here that OP conflated, yes, the system needs overhaul:

For social fights, I can understand wanting to punch someone and ending up with an all-out brawl.
What I can't understand is that noone tries to stop it and neither party stops until the other is unconscious.
Even if noone breaks it up, normally, IRL, someone gets an upper-hand and the loser would submit and/or go into a protective pose and just get bruises from them on until the aggressor figures it's been enough, probably with some agreement to the aggressor's demands.
There should be a sheriff role that deals with troublemakers by either stopping a fight that happens (and punishing the aggressor) or preventing a fight in the first place, and pawns that are in lots of sudden pain should probably go into a defensive fetal submission state for a while (both submitting and likely ending a social fight, or at least preventing wounds to eyes and other vital areas, as well as possibly hoping for mercy during a raid). Additionally, it'd be nice if relations from the aggressor's side improved somewhat if they won the fight.
More of a beef with the terrible melee combat system in general, but I also really don't like that melee fights with fists can lead to stuff like smashed eyes fairly often. I think it's not so much the chances of a particular area being injured as it is that melee incurs injuries seemingly with every blow, leading to dozens of bruises where you'd normally only expect a few.

Haha yeah, good point. Realistically the colonists would probably drop whatever they are doing and go watch or break up the fight (It'd be pretty awesome and hilarious at the same time if everyone ends up circling the fighters and cheering as the fight goes on haha!) But as of now our colonists do NOTHING. They just keep on playing that horseshoe in the very same room the fight broke out and be like,"eh, just another day in Rimworld" lol.

[Shurp]

Just a random addendum to this thread: the shape of the human face has been heavily modified by evolution to protect against fists.  "Social fighting" has a long history.  Losing teeth and eyesight are common problems with bare-knuckle fighting, as is broken hands. 

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/brv.12112/abstract

"The protective buttressing hypothesis provides a functional explanation for the puzzling observation that although humans do not fight by biting our species exhibits pronounced sexual dimorphism in the strength and power of the jaw and neck musculature. The protective buttressing hypothesis is also consistent with observations that modern humans can accurately assess a male's strength and fighting ability from facial shape and voice quality."

[Limdood]

So in regards to the two topics here that OP conflated, yes, the system needs overhaul:

For social fights, I can understand wanting to punch someone and ending up with an all-out brawl.
What I can't understand is that noone tries to stop it and neither party stops until the other is unconscious.

I've had 7 brawls in my new colony in A16 (even using 3 kind colonists with prepare carefully...apparently the recruits are jerks).

Not one brawl resulted in a colonist being "downed" - every brawl ended with both pawns walking off to the hospital under their own power.

That aspect of the system, at the very least is "fixed" - some fights probably do go until one side is downed, some might even still go to death (really don't see this...since social fights have been implemented, I have NEVER had a colonist be killed in a fight where a painstopper wasn't present), but they don't HAVE to...I have 7 examples of proof that, at least in A16, it is POSSIBLE for a social brawl to end in perfect consciousness on both sides.

[Shurp]

What was their melee skill like?  I don't know if melee skill improves defense against melee attack. But regardless, a high melee skill pawn is more likely to beat down another, and I imagine if the other has low skill it's even more likely.

Also, don't forget that you can manually draft your pawns and have them beat down the useless pawn who started a fight with your lead crafter

[Zombra]

For social fights, I can understand wanting to punch someone and ending up with an all-out brawl.
What I can't understand is that noone tries to stop it and neither party stops until the other is unconscious.

I've had 7 brawls in my new colony in A16.  Not one brawl resulted in a colonist being "downed" - every brawl ended with both pawns walking off to the hospital under their own power.  That aspect of the system, at the very least is "fixed" - some fights probably do go until one side is downed, some might even still go to death, but they don't HAVE to...I have 7 examples of proof that, at least in A16, it is POSSIBLE for a social brawl to end in perfect consciousness on both sides.

Confirmed, I've seen plenty of fights where the combatants will just slug each other a few times, then go about their business with an angry gleam in their eyes.