Tired of useless colonists

[LordMunchkin]

Hmm, I got by just fine in 2 instances of the plague with ordinary medicine in vanilla. Even with a level 6 doctor, there was like a 2 or 3% margin

I would not call a 2 or 3% margin "getting by just fine." 

[b0rsuk]

I just figured out another reason to stay away from OLD colonists. The game tends to generate escape pod people and chased colonists that are family members. So, when you have a 80 year old geezer and his brother drops by, he won't be much younger!

[mrm]

One of my new colonists in a mining colony (i send there useless idiots / addicted pawns for withdrawal / pyro / etc) started to set fire inside the base. Pretty quickly he started to burn, run outside, and got attacked by a... fox. Fox bitten of his leg. Then a pretty good doctor (paramedic lvl 14 med) tried to install a peg leg on him, like three times in a row. Two times with minor fail, and one with extreme fail. Pretty hilarious what he had to go trough to waste his pathetic life Well, hi was not that useless, producing kibble requires resources

Another idiot who came back to main base from smokeleaf withdrawal treatment, first thing he did is he goes into alcohol binge. Such excellent idea. Unlucky for him and lucky for me, a slave caravan was passing by. He was too dumb to resist arresting and selling him to the trader. And hi is not the first colonist that was arrested and sold to slavery

Two useless morons less in one day

[Shurp]

So after letting half a dozen escape pod refugees freeze to death, Willow Mann shows up and wants to join:

Shooting: 2
Melee: 4*
Social: 12*
Animals: 2
Medicine: 3
Cooking: 5
Construction: 5
Growing: 0
Mining: 1*
Artistic: 9*
Crafting: 1
Research: 12*

She's *almost* useless.  She at least knows which end of the gun to point at the enemy, knows not to apply the pickaxe to her teeth, and... well, I'm not sure why she's using her face to push the dirt around in the garden but she'll learn, right?

Bonus: she can cook!  Finally, a reason to keep her around!

Maybe I'll have her make some statues to brighten up the bedrooms too.

[Euzio]

Well, I captured and converted an escape pod refugee last night who was incapable of violence. The upside was that she was good at animal handling, growing and research. So I basically stuck her on those 3 and to do the majority of cleaning. That frees up the rest of my pawns to do more productive stuff. She can also help maintain my smokeleaf joint production for me to roll in the $$ when the traders come around.

It has made me think that having at least 1 pawn who is not combat orientated is actually pretty useful since they can do most of the miscellaneous stuff while the rest of the colony can focus on defence when a raid comes around.

[b0rsuk]

Artistic 9* is useless ? Wow. You don't like money ?

[Lightzy]

Most pawns are useless because the game doesn't have enough content yet.
Not enough skills, not enough jobs, not enough options.
(I'd say around 90%, according to how many escape pods I let die and how many times I reroll my colonists before starting).


Compare to Dwarf Fortress, where having a really skilled dwarf is awesome, but generally no dwarf is useless. Anyone can be recruited to the army and trained.
And if you had 20 jobs instead of 10, the likelyhood of having a truly useless colonist would be very low, making the game overall more interesting and fun.


Summary:
All you gotta do to fix this and make the game much more fun is add more skills and jobs that allow other ways of attaining same results (or new).
Like: Fishing, weaving, pathfinding (for caravans), armorsmithing, weaponmaking, etc.
Then instead of one superpawn and a million useless pawns you'll have many pawns all of which are more unique and useful

[taha]

Artistic 9* is useless ? Wow. You don't like money ?

Hell, yes, is useless. You can sell art only to exotic traders. By the time this pawn manages to get 5 small marble statues better than normal, already wasted more 100 times their value in food, heating, electricity, construction materials, sculptor table, chair, bed, etc.

That's not an investment in a potential good pawn. Is just resources wasted.

[b0rsuk]

You can deconstruct the bad statues, besides for selling I make grand statues. And now after the room quality change I get stacking "impressive workshop" "impressive bedroom" "impressive hospital" "impressive rec room" bonuses, on top of the +15 beautiful environment. I can feed my prisoner nutrient paste and he doesn't rebel despite go-juice withdraval (-35). It typicall gets one nice large statue to get "impressive" or "slightly impressive" status now. I have them in every major room.

[Stormfox]

Another good example of a pawn that is perfectly fine. I mean, yeah, I would not jump up in joy about her statline, but no disabilities, some relatively high stats and a few passions to go along with them and she can learn to shoot?

And about art - even a poor wooden statue is worth about 150 silver, takes up one space and can be crafted quickly. Equivalent value relations for stone.

But then, if you absolutely have to play on some mega-hardcore setting where your mere survival hinges on having perfect quality panws, maybe you should consider the game settings the problem, not the fact that solid, middle-of-the-road potential colonists are not tailor-made for your scenario. I thought you *wanted* it frustratingly difficult - is having to wait quite some time for a feasible pawn not part of that difficulty?

[Shurp]

"Having to wait some time for a reasonable pawn"

But the thing is, I'm being (in my mind) *un*reasonable about how *poor* of a pawn I'm willing to accept.  I just want shooting, growing, and mining skill of 2 or greater without any horrific impediments (abrasive, pyro, etc).  Yet I keep getting pawns with godlike skill in social, research, or art which I simply don't need -- and the inability to perform basic colony maintenance tasks like shooting pirates or planting potatoes.

And btw, for making money all I need is a pawn that can walk faster than 2 squares/sec to go back and forth between the giant pile of smokeweed 5 squares away and the crafting spot.  He cranks out cash faster than any skilled artist.

(Willow's now 11 Artistic skill is great for making bedrooms nicer.  And I found out how to stop other pawns from gawking at the artwork.  Create a "No Art" zone with a square for each sculpture.  Then invert it so the colonists can go everywhere *except* there!)

[CptEgo]

I definately think the whole 'incapable of' thing should be removed. Imagine starving to death because you just refused to touch a stove or carry a rock, it just doesn't make sense.

[taha]

You can deconstruct the bad statues, besides for selling I make grand statues. And now after the room quality change I get stacking "impressive workshop" "impressive bedroom" "impressive hospital" "impressive rec room" bonuses, on top of the +15 beautiful environment. I can feed my prisoner nutrient paste and he doesn't rebel despite go-juice withdraval (-35). It typicall gets one nice large statue to get "impressive" or "slightly impressive" status now. I have them in every major room.

There are plenty of ways to make money. You don't need to introduce another production chain in your colony for that. For me at least pawns with passion and skill in artistic, social, animals are just a waste. (because usually they get stellar values in those skills and crap in useful ones)

Basically I want shooting, construction, crafting, growing, cooking and medicine. In that order.

... And your initial post was about making money, not about beautification of the base.

[Thyme]

Pawns mood affect the global work speed which is a major contribution to work performance.

Just because you don't use artists doesn't mean they're useless, it's just not your playstyle.

[Limdood]

And btw, for making money all I need is a pawn that can walk faster than 2 squares/sec to go back and forth between the giant pile of smokeweed 5 squares away and the crafting spot.  He cranks out cash faster than any skilled artist.

You do realize you can completely ignore speed for smokeweed right?  Set a critical stockpile that only accepts smokeleaf on the crafting spot interaction space, then set a stockpile 1 square left that accepts smokeweed.  Set the crafting details to drop on floor.

Your crafter will now not move AT ALL, and will craft smokeleaf into smokeweed as fast as it's progress bar will move, and will "drop" it right into the smokeweed stockpile.  If its not enough spaces to hold the smokeleaf, extend the stockpile to a 2x2 zone which should keep the crafter crafting while others haul

great use for those industrious pawns you blow the legs off of - if you want to keep em but don't have any useful leg replacements yet.