Colonist: Taste and Dislike

[Bolgfred]

Dear Rimwold-Society,

Actually most colonist are happy with the same things. Only exceptions are cannibals or drug-addicts. In questsions of food or wood it's the same, as the game doesn't differ which kind of meals or items(the wooden ones) are made off. I don't wanna question the fact that every kind of tree spends the same type of wood... ehm okay, I do: wood needs more pluralism! NOW!

Anyway, my idea was to add one favorite and one hated item for any colonist. Interacting with theese items will give a mood buff. As interaction would count if he can wear these items, can see one, interact with them or crafted one.
These would be added either at the beginning or can be obtained by interaction with such an item. In addition wearing a bad quality item or fail building one could give higher chance on hate, vise versa excellent muffalo pants make a pawn more likely to like them in general.
By this there would be a inuqie individualism added for every pawn, which makes a limited difference between all colonists.

These items can be almost anything:
* material type (e.g. "He likes muffalo wool".. granite, husky meat, etc..)
* pawn type (e.g "He likes grizzliy bears" .. colonists, tribals, racoons, etc..)
* appareal type (e.g. "He likes parkas" .. shivs, shotguns, etc..)
* furniture type (e.g. "He likes Tables" .. smal sculptures, mortars, workshops, doors, etc..)

[Kain21]

I like it

[SpaceDorf]

You forgot Asketics, Greedy, Jealous, Teetollars and Chemical Interest Pawns.
Prostophobe and Prostophile ...

The good thing is .. all those Traits are perfect examples why your Idea is awesome 

[AlwaysBugged]

The good thing is .. all those Traits are perfect examples why your Idea is awesome 

As long as Tynan doesn't add even more possible negative mood debuffs sure.....otherwise I don't even want to imagine how many colonists would just barely go into a daze because their bed ain't silver, jade or their table is limestome instead of sandstone.

[SpaceDorf]

Some things at work drive me crazy as well .. why can't I change the height of my desk ..
why does my display suck .. and so on ..

I think Tastes should not be as strong as the extreme counterparts but it would be nice to add some flavor to the pawns, in that you can't built "one-size-fits-no-one" rooms or bases anymore, but have to tweak some things.

[DiamondBorne]

+1 this. You can even add these 'mini-trait' as some vague description that alter their behavior, but not as much as an actual trait. For example:

Dislike - religious: will never pray in his room.
Dislike - boomrat: won't eat boomrat meat or meal with boomrat in it. Will suffer mood loss if forced.
Dislike - dirtiness: mood loss if too many filths in the same room or within 6 tiles.
Like - Social: More mood/joy bonus from anthing that requires interaction with other colonist. Less mood/joy from all lone activities.
Like - games: Less/no joy penalty from gaming activity (ie. can repeatedly doing the same activity)
Like - stars: Will always stargazing at night, more joy from the activity.

[SpaceDorf]

Like - Slob, does not care about dirt.

[Philonious Rex]

+1 this is a really cool idea. I second the thought that I wouldn't want it to be so strong that it would throw people into mental breaks all the time. More like something you can optimize if you want to really make someone happy.
It would be fun to equip colonists with their favorite things and see a small mood boost from using them. Maybe they could get mood bonuses from tasks that ordinarily are just mundane, like cleaning or butchering.

One thing that would be kind of neat about preferences is they aren't hard lines, someone who doesn't like fighting fires can still do it, vs someone who just "won't fight fires" it would definitely add some variety vs the binary ones like won't haul.

[Bolgfred]

I second the thought that I wouldn't want it to be so strong that it would throw people into mental breaks all the time. More like something you can optimize if you want to really make someone happy.

That's exactly what I would aim for. Negative traits should take something like up to 60x stacking per encounter or day. So when a pawn is forced to cook 5 times in a row he gains one stack -5. When he has to do this every day every following stack adds -0.1 this will increase up to a year up to -11. If the anti-cook hat to go cooking everyday for a whole year he is gonna be pissed. Important thing would be that it stacks slowly over a long period of time and there is only one single thing so there isn't a huge restriction for a pawn.

[Limdood]

honestly, i would hate this.  I get that it already has a significant amount of support, but the tools don't currently exist in the game to allow micromanaging of food types in meals.  The preferred materials, times of day, furniture, apparel would be a huge hassle of micromanagement.

A big part of the game is getting things done effeciently.  preferences and the resulting micromanagement would be a rather sizeable impediment to that.  Just consider the micro that already exists with things like chemical fascination, or the inconvenience of food poisoning for an ascetic that just repeatedly refuses to eat meals.

[Yoshida Keiji]

honestly, i would hate this.  I get that it already has a significant amount of support, but the tools don't currently exist in the game to allow micromanaging of food types in meals.  The preferred materials, times of day, furniture, apparel would be a huge hassle of micromanagement.

A big part of the game is getting things done effeciently.  preferences and the resulting micromanagement would be a rather sizeable impediment to that.  Just consider the micro that already exists with things like chemical fascination, or the inconvenience of food poisoning for an ascetic that just repeatedly refuses to eat meals.

Agreed. I mostly dislike this proposal, except maybe for fixing pawns who are "too smart" should not be seen praying. Anybody who is intelligent doesn't believe in Gods. So a "too smart" should just go slap in the face anybody who is praying, just like characters slight or insult others.

But as Limdood, said, without having a food command so that our pets don't eat Lavish means nor prisoners. It would be impossible to make Vegetarian meals, protein shakes, hamburgers, gluten free breads. If the selection of food would be the same as medical treatment where we can select "how" to heal those who need treatment, then this or some of this could be implemented.

But then again, for most of this I dislike the idea because it seems too restricting. I myself finish a game and move on to a new game in a different biome and keep cycling constantly. So if I were playing in Ice Sheet, I would probably have no access to certain materials, and pawns who would be affected by these ideas would see my colony in jeopardy all the time. If I don't have wood in Ice Sheet, then what? All my colonists in negative mood forever?

I personally find Mental Breaks to be too exaggerated. All pawns look like pussies to me and I can't believe all the stupid/childish/gay reasons why pawns enter into these states.

[Bolgfred]

honestly, i would hate this.  I get that it already has a significant amount of support, but ...

Very hard words. Please, don't feel threatend by other peoples opinion. This is an idea. Probably it will not be realised soon or anytime, so it's just about a harmless concept in theory.

...the tools don't currently exist in the game to allow micromanaging of food types in meals.  The preferred materials, times of day, furniture, apparel would be a huge hassle of micromanagement.

A big part of the game is getting things done effeciently.  preferences and the resulting micromanagement would be a rather sizeable impediment to that.  Just consider the micro that already exists with things like chemical fascination, or the inconvenience of food poisoning for an ascetic that just repeatedly refuses to eat meals.

I think you misunderstood the intention behind this. I actually doesn't fokus on having much more micromanagement. I'd wish to have pawns making their own decisions. Mean, if there are two chairs with different materials a pawn will pick the one he likes more and becomes happy. When there are muffalo and camel wool clothes he might avoid the camel as he hates them. Then there is food, he might walk 5 tiles longer to pickup the ones he likes more( i think about a MRE-lover who gets happiness bonus from survival meals).
As there is only one good and one bad, every problem would be solved by providing two elements, of whatever your doing, and you never have to think about it if you don't wish.

And food types needs to be improved, that's right.


To get the point vice versa, what would be the elements you'd wish to remove or change?
Your comment sounds like you'd wish to reduce the personal behaviour of single colonists, as it seems to interrupt your gameplay. For me that's intresting as I have a total different view on this.

[Limdood]

i would dislike dislikes...

lets say I have a pawn who doesn't like muffalo meat.

You've just cut out a primary source of food on most temperate or colder maps completely arbitrarily.  If i instead try to continue to hunt muffalo and keep meals separate....somehow?  All it takes is one meal made with muffalo to "contaminate" a stack...a behavior i don't see going away any time soon because said behavior is a game design decision to reduce the things the game has to track (namely the individual stats of everything within a stack).

Lets explore further....likes and dislikes would add a big step to ANY mod that adds new content, and many mods that are currently advertised as "does not break saves" would almost certainly not retain said quality if added midway through a game where a pawn's relative likes and dislikes of any items added by the mod don't yet exist.

Even adding PREFERENCES (pawn prefers X type of chair over Y type) would be problematic, because it would be an invisible system that could easily cause frustration.  Say i made my dining room chairs out of turtle leather because it fits the color scheme with the jade tables, but my prison chairs were marble because marble is easy to get and has high beauty.  If i had a pawn that preferred marble, he may very well grab a meal, walk right past the dining room next door and sit in the marble stool in the prison 4 rooms over.  This ALREADY HAPPENS with numerous complaints in the forums of "why won't my pawn walk to the dining room to eat!?! now he has "ate without table" mood!"  Preferences would add ANOTHER invisible system that could cause these kinds of frustrating interactions, and the worst part of those interactions is that the mechanics...the nuts and bolts of when and why and the exact circumstances that the pawns choose to do those actions...are hidden from the players...how far will a pawn go to sit in a preferred material?  who knows!

It's the reason that I chime in on threads like this one, as well as all the ones that try and get the game to invisibly guess when a pawn should do something ("why can't my pawn haul the steel he was mining before going to bed?  why can't my pawn build the turret before repairing wall?")

You mention that you want more personal behavior on pawns vs. less...but when you're situating pawns to deal with a psychic ship or a raid, do you get annoyed when half the pawns randomly undraft and wander around, or are you happy about it?  i'd guess annoyed.  Same thing when Redfields passes Jerbear in the hallways and suddenly they're punching each other and now you've got a constructor with a destroyed pinky and a warden with no nose....that's personal behavior, but it's frustrating and removes control from the player.  Frustration tends not to be a very good emotion to regularly court in a video game.

[protocol47]

I like the spirit of the idea, but I agree it could get cumbersome if every single pawn had it, and it seems to be a little too broad. I think food or pastime preferences would make sense, it gets a little too deep for me if they are bothered by the material the dining table is made from. I'm okay with certain clothing constraints, but having someone who doesn't like parkas would be problematic in an arctic biome.
It could be implemented so it only effects a few random pawns, where most other pawns won't really care. They are just glad to still be alive. In this case it would really be more of a new set of traits versus a brand-new system.
Maybe just have a few pawns who have a single strong like/dislike, like one guy who wont eat rat, or one who loves chess and plays whenever he can. This way the day-to-day won't require a ton of micromanaging but you still get that personalized feel.

[qsdoosix]

I really don't think it is a good idea.
It will need ridiculous amount cost (either micromanaging and stockpile space and resource) to keep everyone can have their favorite things in hand. Yes maybe you will feel OK if there are someone is not comfortable with his food/bed/whatever, but not for me at least. Besides, In this game, pawns are not bounded to a single workspace, what can i do if i have one pawns hates wood chair and one love wood chair and both of them is good at crafting? The only option is ignore it and build a chair with third material, and this design just become useless.