A More Meaningful Mood System

[O Negative]

The thought and mood systems are one of the main things that separate our beloved human pawns from the rest. They have feelings, a sense of morality, and are only capable of handling so much before they snap. However, I think there is a fairly cheap way to make these "humane" systems much better than they currently are.

Currently, the mood and thought system is incredibly linear.
There are good thoughts, and there are bad thoughts.
There are good moods, and there are bad moods.
If a pawn's mood is low for too long, they have a mental break.
That's it.

We don't need a Sims 4-esque mood system, with people's emotions and behaviours bouncing around at the slightest environmental change... But,

We could retain the current linear good vs bad mood layout. Have bad moods negatively impact stats like casual MoveSpeed and GlobalWorkSpeed, and good moods positively impact those same stats. Also, make mental breaks more of a rarity by having them associated with specific traits and uncommon thoughts - which are already linked together in a lot of ways - instead of a person's "mood."

These simple changes, I feel, would make deepen the feel of colonists being humans with actual emotions.

What are your thoughts on this?

[schizmo]

Good mood buff and bad mood debuff should absolutely have an affect on work speed, people in a good mood are generally better at their jobs in real life and people in bad moods are generally worse. I like it.

Nothing too severe though, like 35% or 50% or something.  Don't double it or cut it in half.

[A Friend]

Happiness already affects work speed.

[schizmo]

Happiness already affects work speed.

It must be subtle, I've never noticed. Perhaps visual feedback or a text indication of some kind would he helpful. (Also I'm gonna go read the wiki for the exact numbers)

[schizmo]

Thats odd, the wiki more or less indicates that mood has no affect on work speed as of A15 because they "retain their work speed even during bad moods"

Not to mention it was only 20% bonus at 100% mood so that might explain how I never noticed...

[O Negative]

Happiness already affects work speed.

Would be interesting to see how much it does, if true.

Because, like schizmo, I haven't noticed it. I've had pawns at 100% mood and 0% mood working at fairly similar speeds.

[J-Alex]

It could affect rest time as well :
- Good mood makes a good sleep and shorten rest time.
- Bad mood troubles the sleep and the colonist stays longer in bed.

[O Negative]

Using handy-dandy-dev-mode, I've confirmed that good mood -> slightly increased global work speed.

Bad moods don't have any effect on it, still

[Lightzy]

I think this is an excellent idea.

I agree that moods should affect work speed, movement, morale in combat, disease immunity gain, etc, instead of being just tantrum indicators.

But this alone won't work.

However, when combined with a suggestion I made a while back about LONG TERM sanity vs. short term mood, it would be perfect.
Here's that thread, tell me what you think, O NEGATIVE:>
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=26322.msg266262#msg266262

[O Negative]

The idea of a Sanity "need" is interesting, indeed. It would help reflect the long-term effects of struggling to survive.

Honestly, I think the main reservation the developers might have about both of our ideas involves the positive feedback loop of negative consequences arising from systems like these. Doing poorly - > less productive colonists -> doing worse -> even less productive colonists -> etc.

Even so, I hope something is implemented along these lines. After all, it's not like mental breaks currently in the game don't already make things harder for players not doing such a great job taking care of their people.

[Lightzy]

I think you're right, but not just because of the negative feedback loop, but also because of the psychological pressure faced when it seems there's 'too much' going against his pawns. That there's always this clock ticking down to game-over.

But actually I think the game gives you quite enough options to avoid that. The only time's I've gotten a tantrum in the last few A16 playthroughs was because badly calibrated AI (pawns prefer cutting stone or mining tasks to food and sleep and get to starving status etc)

[O Negative]

AI will always be flawed, unfortunately. That's why we, the players, have to be their guiding hand.

I like to think of it like fire. It starts off small, but if you let it burn instead of tending to it quickly, you're soon faced with an inferno that burns down everything you've worked so hard to build. There just needs to be a mechanic/strategy that allows for some recovery, even in the early stages of the game.