Raider corpse madness death spiral

[AlexxKay]

So, as discussed in a previous thread, I've been having trouble with Raiders.  I've learned some new tactics, which may help, but I also want to call Tynan's attention to something I've seen multiple times now.  The "corpse madness death spiral".

Once there are >10 raiders in a raid, I start to run into a problem.  Even when my defenses are good enough to kill them all, I don't have time to *recover* before the next assault.  Besides just dealing with the raw damage they caused (to both people and stuff), the raider's *corpses* are a huge issue.  Each one of them makes my people freak out.  I can bury them, but that *necessitates* putting colonists in freak-out proximity, and also takes up a significant amount of time/effort.  If I micromanage to get all the corpses buried fast, then my colonists start to go hungry, which upsets them further.  Even if I manage to avoid a mental break, I've lost several days worth of progress on the colony itself.

When I get hit by a raid of 20, there's a large chance that I just can't ever recover.  I literally cannot get all the corpses cleaned up before another wave of raiders hits.  And then my people start going crazy left and right.  What looked like a thriving colony is quickly reduced to madness and death.

Some suggestions:
* Make seeing corpses less of a negative.
* Have the impact of seeing corpses diminish over time.  ("Yeah, that dead body is gross, but I've been walking past it for two days now, and I'm getting used to it.")
* Make hauling/burying corpses cause positive mood.

[ITypedThis]

I agree.

I also think that your second suggestion would be best in my opinion.

[renwold]

Having a violence threshold for individual colonists would be really interesting, so a new or inexperienced colonist could instantly lose her mind if things went south, while the battle-hardened veterans wouldn't even blink. You could even have something like a chance of developing PTSD which could cause issues during peacetime, like a debuff that goes up for time out of combat which would mean non-combat setbacks like power outages could set them off.

[Rex705]

I don't have any issues with dead bodies it's all about proper colony management. Get a butchers table and chop them raiders up for yummy food to give to your prisoners. Once you get in the groove of cleaning up after every raid it's not a problem and doesn't even cross your mind. You can also get some cool mods to help with clean up like "Cremation Stuff" and Cremation Chamber"

[ShadowTani]

I disagree, mental breaks have already been nerfed for A3 and it's not that much work effort to clean up the place:

1. Dig out a room in the mountain
2. Make a body stockpile there
3. After each raid have a few priority hauling (if you don't have already - you should though!)
4. Have someone throw in a Molotov, problem solved

Most of the time you should have plenty of time left before next raid doing this, even on Randy ... Also, colonists are mentally hardened after a raid (if they participated) its when you keep the bodies piled up for days during peacetime they get mentally unstable.

Raid related mood modifiers
The worst mood penalties you get after raids, such as witnessing people die, observing corpses and getting wounded. However, they also provide fear bonuses, and as most should know fear provides the loyalty if it's higher than happiness.

There are some specific things to considerate about this though. First of all, you will not get both "seeing death" penalties from the same corpse. Secondly, witnessing someone's death is better than observing a corpse due to the fear bonuses they give - for observing a corpse the fear bonus get capped at 10 which is too low to prevent a mental break. Witnessing someone's death however give an instant fear bonus of 25, and obviously also goes much higher than that, providing just enough fear to prevent a mental break. Wounded characters (under 75 health) also gets a nice fear bonus of 20.

In other words, people that participated recently in a combat is surprisingly mentally stable - the mentality issues after battles therefore only happen if you don't clean up the corpses fast enough, or use someone who didn't participate in the battle to do the corpse cleaning.

To sum it up:
1. Mood modifiers that stack have caps, so seeing x10 or x20 raider corpses have the same mood effect.
2. Seeing raiders die give great enough fear bonus to prevent mental breaks. Only colonists that didn't participate in the fight is at risk, or if you don't bother to clean up the corpses for long enough.
3. Your colony won't fall apart by simply having at least one derp priority hauling instead of growing potatos, really... It's a bad excuse that you can't get it done before the next raid - a few times it's true, but not constantly.
4. If you really have constant raids you shouldn't be having mental break issues, because as pointed out, colonists that participate in raider fights get mentally hardened for some time (ruled by fear).

If the problem is keeping track of colonist needs like food and rest during a raid then I can understand it's a bit more complicated, but there are many good tactics to take care of that even during the most hectic raid rush hours, just ask for tips and tricks. :3

[FtDLulz]

Having a violence threshold for individual colonists would be really interesting, so a new or inexperienced colonist could instantly lose her mind if things went south, while the battle-hardened veterans wouldn't even blink. You could even have something like a chance of developing PTSD which could cause issues during peacetime, like a debuff that goes up for time out of combat which would mean non-combat setbacks like power outages could set them off.

Sounds really interesting, I like it.

[Nasikabatrachus]

I haven't had much of a problem with mental breaks due to raids or corpses. The biggest problem for me is removing them all before the next one. If anything, the corpses help prevent breaks by raising fear, and thus increasing loyalty, although the bulk of the fear bonus comes from witnessing death.

[Architect]

I haven't had much of a problem with mental breaks due to raids or corpses. The biggest problem for me is removing them all before the next one. If anything, the corpses help prevent breaks by raising fear, and thus increasing loyalty, although the bulk of the fear bonus comes from witnessing death.

And with that sentence we all decided to not to take a stop at Nasikabatrachus's colony any time soon XD

[RazorHed]

Since Alpha 3 started I've hardly had any problems with mental breakdowns, and those usually come from when I send colonists
across to the far corner of a 300 x 300 map and then they mistakenly think they have enough time left before they get tired or hungry to go back to that corner for the 2 potatoes they left behind.

First thing I build is a 5x6 room for a prison , then a 5x6 room for colonists . Then after I get power , a growing area, cafeteria , and some sort of defense I make sure every colonist gets a 5x6 room with a flower pot. That seems to work well enough to improve their attitude enough over night to not go mental during or after a raid due to witnessing death or corpses. 

[chaouki]

Since Alpha 3 started I've hardly had any problems with mental breakdowns, and those usually come from when I send colonists
across to the far corner of a 300 x 300 map and then they mistakenly think they have enough time left before they get tired or hungry to go back to that corner for the 2 potatoes they left behind.

My only problems is guys like Nobles or Assassins who are not capable of doing anything wandering around forever just to discover they can't get back in time to eat/sleep. Maybe I should wall them in all the time unless there is a raider attack?

[Pirx Danford]

Since Alpha 3 started I've hardly had any problems with mental breakdowns, and those usually come from when I send colonists
across to the far corner of a 300 x 300 map and then they mistakenly think they have enough time left before they get tired or hungry to go back to that corner for the 2 potatoes they left behind.

My only problems is guys like Nobles or Assassins who are not capable of doing anything wandering around forever just to discover they can't get back in time to eat/sleep. Maybe I should wall them in all the time unless there is a raider attack?

Since A3 if you build a table its automatically set as gathering point for idle pawns.
You can unset that and use tables to control where pawns idle around at.

[kidak]

Personally if I get a noble or an assassin I lock them up and best them until I can sell them... People Who can't fight get the same treatment.