Being Picky

[Toast]

As noted by others, "Incapable of X" only matters in certain circumstances, those being:

-- X is something that directly saves lives (firefighting, medical, fighting to defend your life and those of other colonists)
-- X is something that no one else in the colony can do competently already
-- X is dumb labor

You can get by with a low percentage of colonists in the first category but too many of them will spell your colony's doom eventually. The second category is far less important but still matters because those colonists are still eating your food, making messes to clean up, and adding to your colony wealth.

The Dumb Labor category is, in my opinion, a strange mixture of both. You absolutely need some pawns to haul and clean. Without cleaning, your pawns will be miserable and have constant food poisoning and poor medical care. Cleaning literally saves lives by reducing infection rates. Without hauling, crops rot in the fields, unsightly garbage like corpses cannot be removed, you cannot run an efficient base at all because materials are strewn everywhere. Trained animals can somewhat relieve the burden but good luck getting a pig to burn a corpse or refill a campfire or open a cryptosleep casket (yes, for some damn reason that is a hauling job). But you do not need *everyone* to be able to do these things, only *enough*. And how many *enough* is will vary from base to base.

Unfortunately a full 25% of randomly generated adult pawns are Incapable of Dumb Labor. Without getting into whether that should be changed (yes), it means that you need to be extra vigilant about making sure you have enough pawns to do the basic, dirty tasks that make a base run efficiently. Personally I will never recruit any pawn who won't haul unless they 1. are a superstar in multiple other areas and 2. those other areas make it possible for them to be doing SOMETHING useful all day instead of wandering idly. Research and art are ideal, cooking/crafting is also a strong possibility in a base with sufficient resources.

[The Nickman]

Personally, anyone character who wont do dumb labor is already a deal breaker for me... theyve gotta have some pretty fucking spectacular scores somewhere else for me to change my mind, like 12 or more medical skill etc

Honestly, I'm not as picky on dumb labor as I used to be. Your colony can seriously operate fine with only 50% of your pawns capable of hauling and cleaning, you just need to prioritise their tasks properly.

It's violence that I'm really careful about these days. I'll happily carry one or two of these shmucks in a ten-man colony, but too many more and you just get outgunned in raids.

[Gohihioh]

I'm usually extremely picky with colonists - I play with hospitality mod cos I don't like vanilla behaviour(if I play on vanilla I instantly send unwanted colonists on suicide caravan missions and in general I tend to accept more not 'perfect' colonists than with hospitality).

I don't mind colonists being incapable of some kind of work, I look at traits and if they are good specialists in field I need. I usually have at least 1/10 of my colonist on priority 1 cleaning>hauling duty, rest just help up with cleaning/hauling when they have nothing to do(with specialized colonists it happens). This is defenitely not best setup when it comes to being proficient but I enjoy it most. I usually use predators/dogs for most of hauling work - no need to feed them, all you need is good handler.

I'm not picky with colonists when I do a challenge or roleplay for fun. The only need I find to take colonists that are not perfect is when I for some reason fucked up somewhere and I need fast addition to my defenses cos I either get too much wealth in short period of time/run into energy problems with colony relying on turrets/i'm short on resources for defenses - extra manpower is what I need then, i'll welcome anyone who can hold weapon.

I would love to play on permadeath and roleplay way more this game, but as much as I love this game I think in it's it current state it's not ready for that yet(at least in my eyes).

[Shurp]

I think there are two standards that should be applied when deciding whether or not to accept a colonist:

1) When raiders show up, is he an asset in the firefight?
2) When raiders aren't around, is he able to do anything useful to earn his food?

If you can answer "yes" to both of these, keep him.  Which usually means as long as he has two good eyes, willingness to fire a gun, and can grow and mine and do any one other thing you can find a use for him.

Anyone else, go ahead and devmode / destroy tool / *click*

[Bozobub]

Bah.  Just run enough mood bonuses, that your colonists don't mind a bit of organlegging/trafficking; MUCH more profitable.

[Mufflamingo]

These are the things I usually take into consideration before recruiting:

Demand for their skills. If I need crafter, and this guy crafting level is high then I am taking him.

Good traits. Well if they have meh traits as long as its not pyro pyro its ok.

Family relationships. I have this weird thing which makes me accept and recruit family members regardless of their abilities.

If he or she fits my story. I use Edb's prepare carefully and my colonists have medieval backgrounds, so I wont be accepting spacemen anytime soon.

[makkenhoff]

I take anyone who isn't a pyromaniac, it is the one trait I just don't have any patience for. I've never had a pawn show up (one way or another) that I haven't found a use for - except for pyromaniac - they have a horrible accident with all of the fellow colonist hitting them over the head when they are in bed. Mood debuff is worth it for getting rid of those menaces.

Ironically, I do like fire - but I've never had the urge to go set something on fire that is important to my continued survival.

[Mkok]

I took in a guy who was capable only to do this: firefighting, artistic, violent, animal handle.

Originally I accepted him only cause he is father of one of the original three, but he turned out to be one of the more usefull colonists. Mainly due to the fact he is lvl 19++ shooter  Oh, and hes psychycally sensitive pessimist

[Shurp]

Bah.  Just run enough mood bonuses, that your colonists don't mind a bit of organlegging/trafficking; MUCH more profitable.

Good point.  You can always run a resort that funds itself with organ harvesting.  Although this probably doesn't work well in cold climates -- unless you use drop pods to fling the organs over to the neighboring settlement where you want to sell them?

[Bozobub]

If you can't sell them (or their bits and bobs), simply eat them and make fashionable eveningwear.  And hats, of course.

[Pickle]

For a while I looked for people who was able to do everything because when I wanted something to be done like, right now, I really hated choosing a random colonist, asking him to do it, and get a « Nope ! ».

Now I changed my strategie, I give my pawns less different jobs so they get really good at one or two things (which can be a real issue if loose THE miner or THE cook, but well), so it's not that much of an issue anymore. I even like having one or two pawns who do only combat, art and research, so that they are concentrated in researching/making money, and don't quit their jobs for days to "haul urgently" dead man cloth on the other side of the map.

The only thing I look for is people with a passion in some interesting jobs, no matter the level they have. I also tend to be indulgent with families and teenagers. And for the traits, well, pyromaniac are really annoying, I haven't paid attention to them at first and got a colony with five of them, since then I just destroy them each time they do their « crisis », no micromanagement anymore. (Fun fact : a pyromaniac with no ams can't help you in any way, but can still set fire on the only cable between your base and your main power source).

I avoid Ugly and Staggeringly Ugly traits as much as I can too, I have nothing against them, but colonists do. In addition I'm using a mod that improve the social stuff a bit (I think it's Rumor and Deception) and whoa, the ugly 14 yo girl I bought from a pirate merchant just because I felt pity for her is so sad, she wants to leave because she has no friends, she goes in sad wanders because people insult her. That's so harsh, why ?