Tired of useless colonists

[b0rsuk]

And why have twice as many meals when once as many is enough ?

Maybe the solution is having colonists develop interests over time. They would gain a passion or two, and have a random skill unblocked. The chance would be inversely proportional the the number of skills they already have. Above certain limit, say, 5 unblocked skills, the chance would be 0.

[Shurp]

All I want is the ability to put nobles in irons and force them to work my fields and mines.  Hmmm.  But then I can't really trust them with an assault rifle, can I?

Wow, that could create an interesting dynamic... a useless colonist shows up; you can force him to be a soldier or a worker but not both.  Which do you pick?

(No no no, "hat" is not an acceptable answer! :-P

[Yoshida Keiji]

For the past many games, my main worry is that all of them Im getting like three unable of violence out of 12, where from the other fighting 9, only two are shooters.

I'm getting so pissed at this RNG that now I'm gonna start getting rid of the non-fighters. In this game, a third non-fighter came asking for rescue and was a flake addict. Before this guy, an escape pod came with a Luciferium addict who I left to die, crashed within my base...walked away like 20 tiles and collapsed there.

The third non-fighter that was being chased cost me a shooter and then in his withdrawal went mental and killed another non-fighter while I was getting ready to fight a Psychic Ship with the only 2 shooters I have and was about to kill one of them in his berserk so I turned my gunner around and shot the bastard. As result of this bad colonist group, on 4th of Aprilmay 5504... I'm back to only FIVE pawns.

1. Non-fighting Doctor, Social, Researcher.
2. Minner.
3. Cook, Crafter.
4. Shooter, Artist.
5. Shooter, Constructor, Miner and Researcher.

...and just came out of a Toxic Fallout. This is of course all in Tribal.


I came to wander:

"How many non-fighters per game do you usually get?"

I'm literally averaging 3 out of 12.

[Jibbles]

I came to wander:

"How many non-fighters per game do you usually get?"

I'm literally averaging 3 out of 12.

It's pretty common for me to get them too.  Especially booting up a new game and choosing which pawns to start with.  I used to roll with whatever they give me. Now I end up with 1 or 2 incapable of violence out of 3 a bit too often if I do that.  It was really noticeable when I was starting new games back to back for mod testing.

[Yoshida Keiji]

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1136101685#_=_

My latest game reached a population peak of 9 colonists of which 3 were Incapable of Violence, downed to 5 members of which 1 was Incapable of Violence... Now 4 are being kidnapped and the solo survivor is... of course the single non capable of violence...

https://imgur.com/a/FHeOI

[BoogieMan]

Yeah.. Seems like only 2 out of 10 are any good.

I think there are too many effects which disable jobs, and some professions add bonuses to skills they can't even perform which in most situations shouldn't be allowed. How do you even get through life on a world like those in this game being so horrible and unable to contribute? I imagine people like that should only be common a developed world where resources are readily available. Far less so on a semi post apocalyptic world.

[mvargus]

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1136101685#_=_

My latest game reached a population peak of 9 colonists of which 3 were Incapable of Violence, downed to 5 members of which 1 was Incapable of Violence... Now 4 are being kidnapped and the solo survivor is... of course the single non capable of violence...

https://imgur.com/a/FHeOI

Wow, that is harsh.  In my current game I've had one refugee, 5 prison recruits, and 1 hospitality recruit.

The refugee won't do dumb labor, but has a 20 research now and came with 12 medicine (passion)
One of the prison recruits is a brawler who won't do dumb labor, but is now a 20 cooking
2 of the prison recruits have no limitations.  One is my top miner the other is a non-specialist who usually hauls/cleans but also backups the cook.
the other 2 prison recruits are both near-sighted, but make up my melee team.  They work my night shift, mostly cleaning and hauling, but also crafting.  One won't do medicine, the other won't do social.
The hospitality recruit was brought in to be a shooter and backup grower.

Some of these recruits came in with poor skills, but are now useful because I found a way to take advantage of what they could do.

I will admit I avoid recruiting drug addicts, pyromaniacs and people who have lost limbs before I can capture them.

[khun_poo]

Get the psychic shock lance. Shock those raider with capable skill you like. Hope you're not fried his/her brain.

After the raid, capture him/her and lock him/her down in your luxurious prison you have forever.

[b0rsuk]

You know it's really strange players are encouraged to recruit their colonists from among bloodthirsty killers.

I wrote a script once that randomly matched any childhood background with adulthood background, and results were averaged after a few thousands of "colonists". The amount of "disabled" colonists wasn't as high as you think, but my generator code was naive and assumed all backgrounds were equally common. Plus I had no idea what to do with kickstarter backers (how often they spawn). But that's just direct job disabling from background, not counting serious health issues like cataracts (breaks shooting), pyromaniacs (not fun during a raid), drunks, etc.

[SpookyMunky]

Is it just me or does the pawn creation RNG vary depending on the situation you come across them in ?.. e.g. any free ones falling out of the sky / requesting to join / are fleeing from pirates are usually pretty awful, to the point that I just turn them all away or let die out in the wild unless they have a big relationship with someone I already have... Invading pirates are a little better, but still quite rare to see the magic decent pawn you want... then for me the best *seem* to be when you have a caravan take care of a pirate outpost for another faction ?

Since I am already about 4 or 5 pawns beyond my self imposed limit, I only recently started paying attention to downed pawns again when I noticed one with a name I usually end up liking in past colonies was down at an outpost.. think my brain went "yay, squirrel old buddy !, good to see ya!!" so I checked his sheet : https://i.imgur.com/m1SEmJ8.jpg

OK, chemical interest is pretty far from ideal, but I had been wanting to test the treatment for it the psychology mod adds (the only other one I have had in this game died from the flu after destroying their liver before I could get a doctor skilled enough to treat it), so I patched him up and let him tag along while my caravan continued it's goals.  There was one other downed pirate beside him with an even better sheet, but I grudgingly left him to die (for not being a squirrel haha).

It's still early days of me checking this, but since then I can't seem to go on a raid to one of these outposts without seeing someone downed that would be a lot better than some of my own, and get seriously tempted to grab them hehe.  Whereas for once I checked every invading pirate in that screenshot and couldn't see a single one I would even remotely want, much the same as usual

For comparison's sake here is the latest colonist that dropped out of the sky and I felt forced into at least rescuing since he was the brother of one of my starting colonists (thinking don't you dare decide to join!), after I gave him an artistic neurotrainer, doing what he does best ... https://i.imgur.com/tdbwoiz.jpg ... I am just noticing that he seems to have appropriated the only remaining power armor suit I have too, while Northfield crawls into hospital after being shredded by rockets yet again, lol.  If his sister ever pops her clogs it will be time for him to practice his melee skills... naked, with a lump of wood, against panthers, muwahaha.

[b0rsuk]

Is it just me or does the pawn creation RNG vary depending on the situation you come across them in ?.. e.g. any free ones falling out of the sky / requesting to join / are fleeing from pirates are usually pretty awful, to the point that I just turn them all away or let die out in the wild unless they have a big relationship with someone I already have... Invading pirates are a little better, but still quite rare to see the magic decent pawn you want... then for me the best *seem* to be when you have a caravan take care of a pirate outpost for another faction ?

Each human in the game has a childhood background and adult background. A colonist is made up of a combination of the two, plus some unspecified fairy dust I can't figure out without access to source code and knowledge of C#. Anyway, they are drawn from several pools, including:

- spacer (those who crash land, people in cryosleep caskets)
- raider
- tribal
- trader
- wanderer (presumably visitors etc, these are often used to show off kickstarter backers).

So YES, raiders are definitely drawn from a separate pool. Okay technically it's not separate pools, each background has a list of situations he might appear in, for example a badger tamer might belong to raider, tribal, and wanderer. Then a badger tamer may show up as a trader, tribal, or raider.

Raiders tend to have bad Construction and Growing scores, not that these skills are hard to raise. They have better than average combat skills. "Spacers" and civilian colonists have better worker scores, but surprisingly often some jobs disabled. As of alpha 16 when I tried it, tribals had somewhat better Melee scores, but poor Research and Artistic. NO bonus in Animals or Growing department. On the other hand, they had very few jobs disabled. Perfect worker ants ! Note if you start as Lost Tribe, wanderers you get are usually with tribal backgrounds as well, so it does have this long term nice effect - capable colonists. Traders - I don't remember, but probably higher Social scores.

[SpookyMunky]

Interesting, I wonder if there has been another pool added that would be something like defender (since they technically aren't raiding and seem to be a lot nicer candidates for capturing) as an added incentive for people to get out and about from their bases even when the rewards for some of these outposts don't seem to be worth it ?

That or yet again I am looking into things far too much with too little data to go on so far since I hadn't been paying attention to their sheets until maybe 3 outposts ago hehe.  I think another few outposts have popped up in my game recently so I'll be sending out another attack caravan soon, before randy throws any more annoyingness at me like the sleeping sickness that has kept everyone at base for months instead of the short R&R I was expecting .

Hmm, I can hit two of them with one caravan and fit in a couple of friendly bases for some trading with a 20 day round trip... might be a plan.  More fun than checking the code .  I'm tempted to also send out a precious resource mining / attack caravan in the opposite direction that includes Urist, see how well he can wield his lump of wood  .

[Yoshida Keiji]

Medieval minstrel must be the worst adulthood backstory ever, is there any worse?

[TheMeInTeam]

Sheriff is on par with minstrel as a terrible backstory.

Note that if your pawn is capable of violence, that pawn can be a "shooter".  Brawler trait gives me pause handing them a gun due to the mood hit (don't want mental breaks during a raid).  Anything else and they can shoot an LMG or minigun through a crowd with the best of them, or just shoot close range with shotguns and such where post processed curve won't screw them much.

Or you just pop out of a door vs isolated raiders and melee them 5 vs 1, even with just steel clubs this will put the target down fast, and if they don't have a strong melee weapon they will not do significant damage on return hits.

[Canute]

Good thing is, B18 got a new feature, Banish colonist.
Bye Bye Sheriff, thanks for the fish and leave your clothes here.