Relationship Dmg, You killed my (Love/Kin) lacks Nuance. Feels Bland and un-intu

[Swat_Raptor]

 I'm trying to consider what real positive effect the relationship dmg from killing a pawns relations gives to the Game.

I'm fine with pretty much all the other effects to relationships (even the stacking fails for attempted romance(not saying it is perfect just that it works enough)

but when it comes to the instance of a pawn killing a family member or friend there are more things that I don't like about than I do.

1: the reason for killing the pawn has no effect. often this is the result of a furious and confusing fire fight against a Raid with whom the family member participated,  but there is no difference in the Relational dmg  between killing a family member  who is apart of a Raid vs one who is apart of a trade caravan, The relational dmg is the same, there are other consequences but the relational dmg is equal and that doesn't make sense.

2: its kinda absurd that they always know who. pawns know perfectly who made the killing blow. if 5 pawns are firing a survival rifle and a pawns Father is shot to death Via survival rifle then how is ANYONE going to know who was the one responsible for the killing blow. this is the same logic behind a firing line execution and not being able to assign guilt to anyone because you don't know who had the killing bullet. Also Who is doing autopsy on the corpses of raiders and informing their loved ones on the specific cause of death? just tell them they died in the fire fight.

3: the forms of killing are not treated equally. there are many ways which a pawn can kill another pawn and be the one solely responsible but no relational dmg is applied as a result. 3 examples strip the pawn of their clothing and leave them out in the cold or take them to a freezer,  2nd activate a psychic shock lance and cause lethal brain dmg.
3rd, ignite a fire in a stone room and then drag the pawn into it. To me these would be reasons not to give relational dmg as a result of shooting another pawn because all them end in one pawn killing another yet only 1 method results in relational dmg. 

4: this encourages ridiculous work arounds of the mechanics. Lets suppose a raid happens and a pawns father is holding a doomsday rocket launcher and you have no means of downing him other than a colonist shooting him and you think the best strategy is to down him immediately because he has the most threatening weapon. You then look at your weapons and decide that your best response is to blast him with a triple rocket, you then choose that the raiders own Daughter is the best person to kill her Dad because this results in no relational dmg, and because the mood dmg is the same regardless of who makes the killing blow. While this would be a proper review of the game mechanics this is a ridiculous conclusion, the mood debuff for having to kill ones own relative is the same as general death. and also what about the mechanics the lead to this conclusion are they really all that refined.

for these Reasons I think that relational dmg for killing a relative is a mechanic which would be better if it was removed or reworked so that it is much more nuanced.

TLDR: the Relational dmg for Killing a relative is a mechanic which is inconsistent and un-intuitive and perhaps better removed altogether.

what do you guys think about the relational dmg mechanic?

[Harold3456]

Wow, I didn't even know there was a relationship thing for "you killed my family member", Tynan really does think of everything!

Now that I know it exists, though, I quite like it and think the 3 things you posted are fine.

1.) the reason has no effect, but when it comes to loved ones rationality isn't always a thing, especially in the days following (and most colonies happen in a short time span). The only answer to this I could give is a "forgiveness" possibility to roll after a certain amount of time.

2.) the situation you list here is pretty specific. In most cases I'd imagine they know because somebody else in the colony witnessed it, and the colonists talk. That would be my hand wave, anyway.

3.) you're right here, but this manner of execution is a very common exploit in Rimworld in all situations (killing prisoners, visitors, traders etc). An an obvious exploit, I wouldn't consider it an argument against.

4.) true, the situation you list is a shitty one, but it would be in real life as well. Again, I think this is where a forgiveness mechanic would come in handy.

All in all, I think this is a neat system that makes a lot of sense. I've never personally experienced it, and I imagine it must be quite rare (did you make up these scenarios, or are you just REEEEEEEALLY unlucky with family scenarios?)

[Swat_Raptor]

All in all, I think this is a neat system that makes a lot of sense. I've never personally experienced it, and I imagine it must be quite rare (did you make up these scenarios, or are you just REEEEEEEALLY unlucky with family scenarios?)

I've had 2 husbands accidentally kill their wifes Parent. and multiple other relatives had to be put down in the line of duty, and the longer a colony goes on the worse it seems to get because family member who raid then escape, come back to raid again and again, even if you replace their legs with peg legs.

overall I would agree with you that some kind of Forgive and or Forget effect would be a welcome modification. However as it currently stands these Opinion debuffs are permanent.

my response to your reply (because I think you gave worthwhile replies)

1) Sure people do get emotional at the death of a family member but their emotions and decisions are still effected by reasons and rational, people don't abandon reason and outside influence they usually are just overcome with emotion for some time, I get that some people have great difficulty changing their feelings about certain things but I would say this is the exception to the rule.

2) the situation doesn't really matter, thing is you cannot engineer a situation where people don't know who the shooter is or are even uncertain. If you have a caravan of 2 and they get attacked by man hunting wargs, and one guy accidentally shoots the other guy to death with a stray shoot and then is torn apart by wargs. In this situation everyone on rim world still knows who did what. in this case I'm guessing the wargs go and tell the family that they saw the shooter.

3) thing is that there are a multitude of ways to get the job done here. why penalize one method when there are many other ways to do it, and most of these ways don't seem to be exploits even, how is using a psychic shock lance a exploit, there seems to be no reason to penalize one and none of the others. This would be a proper argument to treat them all fairly, and thus penalize all/most of them or none of them.