Drugs seem to have a few too many downsides

[Lightzy]

I tried doing a drug colony, you could say.
Found it a bit too harsh. Kidneys are expensive.

I understand it's a tertiary feature and not a main one, but it could probably be a bit better an investment.
Basically ALL drugs are addictive, with seriously harsh penalties to health when used and sanity when abandoned, even just beer or ganja. Your guys can't even have a smoking circle once in a while without 'weed dependence' or whatever


Also, regarding economic validity:
I think that drug cooking should never include the crafting skill (does it btw? For some reason it wasn't very clear to me ingame). Let it use cooking, or science, or a combination, or whatever.

This so that when you don't have a crafter, you can still have a pawn that 'does' economy

[Gonumen]

IMO Drugs are good as they are. They are one use boosts for your pawns. For example:
You need this job that requires a lot of time right now and your colonists is exhausted? You can use wake-up.
There is a raid/siege and you need to make sure you are going to hit those shots? Drink go-juice.
Oh, you pawn is on edge of breaking? Use yayo or flake.

You can set beer and smokeleaf use to be used once a day but only if their mood is below a certain level.

I agree that they have a high chance of addicting your guys but that's a risk you have to make. High risk - high reward. If you remove they risk part you are left with, basically, an option to make your colonists super humans that are always happy.

And getting them out of addiction is not that hard to be honest. If you make sure they are comfortable and have beautiful envioroment the -35 penalty won't matter that much. I had my yayo addict sit on a good+ armchair with a nice sculpture in the corner making components all day and after that they had a fine meal. That's about +30 mood in it self.

[DeathWeasel]

My problem with drugs isn't so much that they are addictive; I don't mind that when I have hundreds of them in storage. The problem I have is that they cause health problems a little too often. Over the course of two years on a social drug policy, half of my colony had developed asthma, cancer, or both.

[ReZpawner]

Addictiveness is kinda imbalanced. I really wish that they would get hooked after using drugs for a period, not just a static chance. Yayo also seems like the best choice right now, since it only affects bodyparts that can be recycled.

[Blastoderm]

They cause permanemt damage often, which renders colonits near-useless forthe rest of the game. Not worth it for increased work time for several hours\days.

[Lightzy]

They cause permanemt damage often, which renders colonits near-useless forthe rest of the game. Not worth it for increased work time for several hours\days.

Yup.
But again it's not a core game mechanic, it's something on the side that can be totally ignored without a problem. But the penalties for touching it are a tad too severe for the feature to be attractive at all.

I also agree with gradual addiction and not immediate static chance.
And yeah like that guy said if you build a nice dining room you don't need drugs anymore. So if they're just a fun thing to play around with, they could probably be more fun to play around with

[Daguest]

Between addiction, permanent health issues (luci), various diseases, they are not worth it IMO. There is also the increased resistance, so basically even beer start to be useless at some point.
I stopped using any drugs altogether, including beer. The mood bonus will barely offset all the work I have to do, and the mood malus from harvesting kidneys. I keep a bit of smokeleaf for those "lost my parents, my friends" situation though.

Also, having drugs and a chemical fascination character is a sure way to have a dead pawn, or a very problematic one, to say the least. Will make your pessimistic pyromaniac look like a stable pawn to have around your fuel.

[zeidrich]

Luciferum is a tool for a specific situation.  That bionic steadfast hardworking craftsman doctor of yours comes down with Malaria, and your secondary doctor can't keep up with the treatment, and he's at like 50% immunity and 60% disease progress and the gap's not closing fast enough.  But he can crank out devilstrand cowboy hats like nobody's business, and he's the only one you trust to install all these bionic limbs that your caravan is coming back with.

A raider you downed a few days ago was carrying some luciferum.  If you would administer it, the boost to Blood Filtration you'd get would save the doctor's life.  The colony would be able to easily afford the treatment with his skills, at least long enough for him to install some new bionic limbs into his assistant, and let him catch his skill up a bit.

I like the drugs system.  Drugs, long term they ruin you. But they give a short term boost. You recruit a marginal pirate, who has low skills, but high passion? Drug him up on yayo and wake-up for a while, let him earn his stripes.  He can craft the heck out of whatever you want without sleep.  If he gets addicted, who cares? He's doped up on it anyways.  When the tolerance gets too high, kick him off of it so he doesn't overdose and ruin his kidneys. When he starts to go through withdrawal, let him go on smokeleaf for a while to help his mood.  And in the worst case, if he doesn't really work out, and just starts to have mental breaks without really being worth the trouble, arrest and execute him. Or you could send him on a doomed caravan mission if you don't mind that.

Or in my case, I got a neurotic hard worker who was hooked on smokeleaf when I didn't have much (I'd been growing psychoid) so I used yayo to manage his mood, and some wake-up to give him incredible work speed, and had him develop his construction skill incredibly fast.  He developed a psychoid addiction, which I let him keep while I tried to let the smokeleaf addiction fall, but I accidentally forgot that I had a small plot of smokeleaf growing, and a job to role joints on an old forgotten crafting spot, so he went and made himself a joint and fell back into the habit.  In the mean time, his tolerance is rocketing up, and he finally has kidney failure, so I decide to try to let him kick the psychoid habit, and let him manage the mood with his smokeleaf addiction.  All the while this guy (Wes) is my most productive pawn.  So I harvest a kidney from a tribesman that attacked.  Unfortunately, the smokeleaf plot was very small, and I forgot to monitor how much smokeleaf I had and he went into withdrawal from that, and the fact that I harvested organs made it just that much harder to manage his mood and he went on a yayo binge, OD'd and got brain damage.  I finally got him completely clean, and he's still incredibly talented.  Having 50% consciousness slows him down, but he can still make some high quality constructions.

All drugs all the time is not going to work just like real life.  No drugs none of the time will work, but you'll have to manage it, or you might end up with addiction from leftovers from a cargo drop or raid falling into the hands of someone with a chemical fascination.  Drugs are generally just a tool with upsides and downsides.  Booze and Smokeleaf are relatively safe mood enhancers when used occasionally.  Yayo is good for a quick powerful mood enhancement to avoid a break or to work through the night catching up.  Wake-Up is good to help get through a backlog of work, useful along with yayo but likely to cause an OD especially if it starts to be a habit.  Go Juice is good when you have a mechanoid raid and your best marksmen are in bed fighting off sleeping sickness or previous injuries. Flake is good to sell, but risky to keep around as people who go on a binge might go get themselves addicted to psychoid.

They're not good things.  They're not bad either.  They're tools, and they have downsides. The downsides can be mitigated, and pawns can always be disposed of or put into cryptosleep.

[Panzer]

The real bad stuff like damaged kidneys or braindamage only happens when your colonists start to build up tolerance, small tolerance is like a warning sign, if someone reached medium tolerance put him off that stuff immediately, organ failure is imminent.
Luciferium is a pretty sweet deal, you need 1 pill every 6 days I think? And it heals scars over time. I usually give some to a few select colonists around medium to late game, when I can keep ordering traders and keep the supply steady.

[mumblemumble]

Drink go-juice.

I was under the impression it was injected...

But like others say, drugs are a deal, they aren't means to be an all the time thing, or completely safe.

Luciferium I refuse to use, based on principle, and what the root words seem to imply

[Catastrophy]

I make yayo. Lots of it. For selling. Unhappy people about to break get a nosefull. I also have beer. Around 200 bottles. It's always "one drink a day" on beer - the rest of the stuff gets administered when I deem it necessary.
I don't even allow the joints - it makes people slower and eat more - I can't have that in my jurisdiction. I've never hit a case where an existing colonist develops a dependancy. RNG luck I guess.

But yeah, for steady use the drawbacks seem prohibitive - currently reviewing my production prefs - beer is definitely not worth building infrastructure for. Little profit - little mood boost. Yayo is OK, but with growing population I see nutricrops heavily competing for grower time and other non-nutri crops.

[Daguest]

The real bad stuff like damaged kidneys or braindamage only happens when your colonists start to build up tolerance, small tolerance is like a warning sign, if someone reached medium tolerance put him off that stuff immediately, organ failure is imminent.
Luciferium is a pretty sweet deal, you need 1 pill every 6 days I think? And it heals scars over time. I usually give some to a few select colonists around medium to late game, when I can keep ordering traders and keep the supply steady.

Tolerance is a micromanagement nightmare. It will grow over time for some, but not all, colonist. By just allowing them to use drugs, even beer.
Which is the reason why I stopped beer, which was the last "drug" I was using. I was bored to check the tolerance every week or so, then see when it went away to allow them the beer again. It was tedious, annoying, and the benefit was ridiculously small.

Want the mood buff ? Lavish meal, nice dining room, nice rec room, nice workshop are your friend. No micromanagement, no tolerance, no risks, no special crops + special workbench + trader only resources.

Drugs in Rimworld are realistic. You can make ton of money with it, but every good dealer will tell you, you don't use your merchandise.

[Hieronymous Alloy]

As best I can tell the point of Luciferium is to make a bionic death squad, drug them up, and then keep them on cryosleep until there's a fight.

Luciferium *dramatically* increases weapon accuracy -- as in, a pawn with only 6 skill in shooting and "trigger happy" will hit every shot at max weapon range on luciferium.

As to the lighter stuff, with beer at least, the default "social drugs" setting (as best I can tell anyway) makes them take it if they need Joy. If your fort doesn't have any other joy sources everyone will drink themselves into cirrhosis. If your fort has lots of other joy sources they'll drink sparingly and be fine.

[Daguest]

As to the lighter stuff, with beer at least, the default "social drugs" setting (as best I can tell anyway) makes them take it if they need Joy. If your fort doesn't have any other joy sources everyone will drink themselves into cirrhosis. If your fort has lots of other joy sources they'll drink sparingly and be fine.

That part is not entirely accurate. I have a rec room with all the joy possible (the best TV, 2 chess table, a billiard and an horseshoe pin), they still drink themselves into tolerance, forcing me to switch them off from time to time. Also, chemical... trait will push them to take drugs no matter what. Even outside binges.

[Lightzy]

I'm certain that light drugs such as beer and ganja could be integrated better into the 'core' game.
Less penalties for use, more incentive for creating and using.

As of now there's no real incentive to use them, and the penalties are too harsh. That's what the topic is about anyway.

There's nothing in the game that prevents you from getting a beautiful dining room or any of the other things required for max happiness.

Another reason why the RPG pawn specializations from Judgement would work amazingly in Rimworld. What if you simply CAN'T make superior furniture, because you specialized your builder in defensive structures in order to be able to build turrets instead?
Then you NEED stuff like beer.

The game plays a lot better if there is redundancy and workarounds to problems, where not all solutions are always available every time. It's more elegant design.