Friendly Fire prevention system - that Psychopaths and Trigger-Happy ignore

[The Man with No Name]

The complete lack of AI coding to prevent colonists from automatically shooting each other in this game is a contentious issue. Many are fine with the ludicrously unrealistic and brutal non sequitur friendly fire incidents this can lead to, but others think it's really quite silly and spoils the game.

There are now mods that fix this issue, by having colonists hold fire instead of automatically shooting their fellow colonists in such situations. These mods have also shown that such a layer of coding does not negatively impact on game performance, or on anything else noticeable. So it has now been demonstrated that the lack of any AI coding in this area is not a technical issue, but rather a conscious design decision, perhaps so as not to remove "drama" events from the game, even if they are negative and make no sense.

The subject of friendly fire in this game has been brought up many times, and so I won't retread old ground about how nonsensical and inconsistent it is that colonists will do literally many dozens of actions automatically (eat, sleep, flee from things, view art, fight fires, watch TV, cook meals, research etc), but not have the basic "intelligence" to hold fire when another colonist is located between them and their target - they will open fire 100% of the time, without exception, as if the friendly colonist or colonists in their line of fire did not exist.

While I'm very much in the "lack of friendly prevention fire is dumb" camp, I also believe in looking for solutions that attempt to navigate a middle path, in order to find something that is acceptable to both sides of a debate.

Why not reflect players' diversity of opinion on the subject of friendly fire in the game itself?

A middle path solution would be to combine both approaches - just as some players of this game are fine with their colonists firing away without a care in the world or a thought in their head, there are others that think colonists should show a bit of common sense with the guns, just as most real people would do, and indeed how colonists themselves do most of the rest of the time in the game.

This could be reflected in the game by having colonists use an anti-friendly fire system, similar to the mods that have already been created, but have those with the Psychopath or Trigger-Happy traits ignore it.

There seems to be a lot of benefits to pawns having the Psychopath trait, without many drawbacks.

Similarly, in the real world, "trigger-happy" has a negative connotation, meaning that someone is liable to discharge their weapon at inappropriate times, thus possibly putting others in danger. In Rimworld, however, the Trigger-Happy trait is only a positive trait, as the aiming time bonus exceeds the accuracy penalty.

To conclude, a combined system such as described would:

- remove most of the possibility of mindlessly silly incidences of colonists shooting each other for no reason
- still have friendly fire "drama" incidents, but they will now at least make more sense because the shooter was a Psychopath or Trigger-Happy*
- bring a strategic layer of managing your Psychopaths and Trigger-Happys in battle without them shooting other colonists
- satisfy proponents of both sides of this debate
- reflect the Rimworld  playing community and their diversity of thought

* Note that the mods that address the friendly fire issue do not eliminate all possibility of friendly fire incidents from the game, so, even if using anti-Friendly Fire measures, it would still be possible for freak accidents to occur and for a non-Psychopath or Trigger-Happy colonist to accidentally shoot another.

[Granitecosmos]

The complete lack of AI coding to prevent colonists from automatically shooting each other in this game is a contentious issue.

Except this isn't true. The game specifically has code for avoiding friendly fire. A projectile has zero chance to intercept non-target objects (including pawns) if said objects are 3 or less tiles away from the shooter. This means you can group up 16 colonists into a box and friendly fire will never happen (this has been buffed from 2 tiles to 3 in B18 so it's hardly a new thing either). Notable exceptions to this rule are any FMR weapons like the minigun/grenades, and the incendiary launcher because of its area-of-effect damage if shot at very close targets.

The option to fight with zero possibility of friendly fire is there, it's just poorly documented. Alternatively, learn to position your troops better, then friendly fire should never happen anyway unless the enemy is engaging in melee.

There are now mods that fix this issue, by having colonists hold fire instead of automatically shooting their fellow colonists in such situations. These mods have also shown that such a layer of coding does not negatively impact on game performance, or on anything else noticeable. So it has now been demonstrated that the lack of any AI coding in this area is not a technical issue, but rather a conscious design decision, perhaps so as not to remove "drama" events from the game, even if they are negative and make no sense.

You forgot to mention that these mods only work for colonists. You can bet if devs want to implement this they will also use it to make raiders a bit more intelligent. And at that point the performance issues will start cropping up because suddenly it's not 10-15 pawns the game has to track for this but 40-60 (varies with difficulty). Although I didn't take a peek at those mods solving this issue, I'm 99% sure it's basically either advanced pathfinding for the bullets before firing the gun or a cone projected towards the enemy. Former wouldn't work too reliably at all, latter would take a lot more resources to compute and would still not be 100% reliable unless the cone is wide enough (in which case even worse performance issues). This would also break raids because those guys tend to have varied ranges and like I've said, devs would probably implement this only if they can buff raiders with it as well. You should also keep in mind the low system requirements for the game; if it breaks performance on low-end systems still recommended then it's unacceptable. And since many such people have bought the game already this requirement can't be just changed without a community backlash.

The subject of friendly fire in this game has been brought up many times...

Have you ever wondered why it isn't implemented already, even though it's been suggested a countless times? Maybe for a good reason. Maybe because of what I said, maybe because devs think it's fine. It's been suggested a thousand times already. It won't happen. RimWorld is now officially in beta and the next release will be 1.0 so the chance of seeing this in the released game is practically nil.

There seems to be a lot of benefits to pawns having the Psychopath trait, without many drawbacks.

The only real drawback of the psychopath trait is lack of social point boosts from talking. This means psychopaths will almost never have friends while they'll have plenty of enemies, making them a good candidate for the colony's boxing bag when it comes to social fights. Granted, now that people don't lose fingers in social fights this drawback is less severe.

In Rimworld, however, the Trigger-Happy trait is only a positive trait, as the aiming time bonus exceeds the accuracy penalty.

...Only if the trigger-happy pawn has a shooting skill of 13 or higher on average. Lower skill than that generally gimps their DPS, although it depends on the weapon. But pretty much every weapon has worse DPS in the hands of a trigger-happy if the pawn has 10 or less shooting skills (except FMR weapons and the incendiary launcher).

Just because it's named trigger-happy doesn't mean it makes the pawn reckless and agressive like IRL trigger-happies. The trait was clearly meant to be the counterpart for the careful shooter and both traits' goal is to modify DPS in a certain way. Careful shooters have more reliable DPS which is also higher for low-level shooting skill, trigger-happies have more dakka but less single-target DPS (and considering the trait decreases shooting skill level, they won't reach the turning point any time soon). Devs can rename them if you find it inappropriate but that's it.

The problem here is that while the suggestion sounds good, if it only works for the player's pawns it's unfair. And if it works for everyone it breaks raids and/or noticeably hits performance. The fact that it has been proposed countess times already yet has never been implemented should be a slight hint for you too.