Pyro trait discussion

[b0rsuk]

What I find absolutely unbearable is the micromanagement it enforces. Whenever a pyromaniac breaks - and they break no matter the mood - you need to draft other colonists and keep them on standby, following the pyromaniac around and neutralizing him. And you have to do it very diligently.

In last game, I had two pyromaniac builders returning from a poison ship sabotage. One of them had mental break on the way back, and started fires in winter. Then before my colonists could go back and rest, the second pyromaniac had a break in the same area. A few hours later, I noticed that a steel wall of ancient danger room is burning. I *could* draft my colonists again and arrive in time to extinguish it with people who barely had some sleep, except... at this point I decided fuck it. They make the game unbearable. I have to babysit them. So instead I just watched the wall burn, release 2 scythers and 2 centipedes with heavy charge blasters. Now it was a melee colony, so I set up an ambush and meleed scythers to death. But that would be too simple. My pyromaniac, one of the 2 that had a break, started another break and ran right in front of scythers, so I had to ambush them early. He got a nasty wound and lost a jaw, other colonists got wounds. Then the pyromaniac ran in front of 2 heavy charge blasters. I was frustrated at this point and rushed 2 centipedes in melee, they killed my colonists, pyromaniac woke up so I drafted him and made him charge the centipedes, because I wanted to see him die. Yup, I threw away a tribal colony which achieved 5 devilstrand dusters in the first year.

Pyromaniacs make me want not to play the game. And now imagine something like that when you have two colonies. It's a micromanagement nightmare, Rimworld turned into paperwork. And they don't even have 'catharsis' or similar cooldown period, so it doesn't matter it usually last a short while. It can't be ignored and it happens pretty often.

I would tolerate it if they had lower mental break threshold and their soft break was changed to firestarter. Then I could prevent many mental breaks by giving the guy preferential treatment, and that would involve many of the game's systems like comfort, food, beauty. Chemical interest and fascination are similar, but not so terrible. They don't require excessive micromanagement when they break, they stay at home, your doctor will automatically rescue them and at worst they can hurt themselves by overdosing.