Temporary Banishment Immunity for new Colonists, Third option for Refugee Chase

[erdrik]

The Chased Refugee event comes with only two options.
Accept or Ignore.

Ignoring is one thing, but the problem is Accept. I think it is too binary. Risking an accept can potentially place a liability on your colony. The way the description is worded, I get the feeling you are not suppose to know before hand what potential new colonist your getting. The problem is it doesn't work out that way.

If your colony is defended enough to fight off the Raid of a Refugee Chase, you can just accept and immediately banish if the new addition is too much of a "bad egg". You get a -3 mood debuff, that banished colonist is permanently added to your colony's history(Got a rescue prisoner quest for one of these banished souls, and the quest claimed they were previously apart of my faction despite having never "lost" a actual colonist), and have/get to deal with a Raid. None of which are particularly consequential events if you are well defended enough.

Whats worse, is you may have better odds of getting a decent new colonist by downing and capturing the Raiders.

My suggestion is to add "Banishment Immunity" to new colonists for a set amount of time. And to add a third option to the Refugee Chase called "Offer Temporary Asylum". That way if you want to risk an actual new addition, you have to deal with the consequences of it for a time afterwards if the new addition is not so beneficial. Or you can offer asylum, fight off the raid, and then the refugee will leave after a few days and you get a relationship boost with which ever faction they were apart of.

(also, maybe only include colonists that have been a colonist for more than 2 days in the prisoner rescue quest?)

[AileTheAlien]

Alternately, make the banished-colonist penalty higher, to try and get players to play with gimped pawns. ^^;

[5thHorseman]

I'm against anything that doesn't let me kick people out whenever I want. I'll just box him in a room with a tv and a nutrient dispenser until I can banish him.

[erdrik]

... I'll just box him in a room with a tv and a nutrient dispenser until I can banish him.

Any solution in which you end up using the items/buildings of the game to solve your problem rather than an unintended use of a UI element is preferable.

I mean how is your solution any different than just arresting him until banishment?
How is that not preferable to UI cheese? How does that not fit the game's theme of telling a story?

[erdrik]

Alternately, make the banished-colonist penalty higher, to try and get players to play with gimped pawns. ^^;

The reason I don't think that will work is because I believe it will just result in ignoring all Chased Refugee event.
If you make the penalty too high, especially one that can't be easily countered, the response will almost certainly be complete avoidance of the risk entirely.

[5thHorseman]

I mean how is your solution any different than just arresting him until banishment?
How is that not preferable to UI cheese? How does that not fit the game's theme of telling a story?

Story 1:
"We got a call, some 24 year old guy is being chased by pirates and needs help. Those damn pirates can taste our bullets and blades if they harm a hair on an innocent person's head! Oh. He's a lazy, abusive misogynist who refuses to clean, cook, or build anything, and has never held a gun or sword in his life. And as he ran past our defensive perimeter he insulted someone. I guess we'll have to keep him for 72 hours before kicking him out."

Story 2:
"We got a call, some 24 year old guy is being chased by pirates and needs help. Those damn pirates can taste our bullets and blades if they harm a hair on an innocent person's head! Oh. He's a lazy, abusive misogynist who refuses to clean, cook, or build anything, and has never held a gun or sword in his life. And as he ran past our defensive perimeter he insulted someone. Bam. Banished. Hopefully he'll head back the way he came to slow down the pirates, and with any luck a few of them will prove better candidates than this guy."

I prefer Story 2. And I also don't consider being able to banish anyone at any time to be "UI cheese." In any way at all. I guess that's the difference. You're trying to fix a cheat that I think is working as intended.

[erdrik]

Story 1:
...
Story 2:
...
I prefer Story 2. And I also don't consider being able to banish anyone at any time to be "UI cheese." In any way at all. I guess that's the difference. You're trying to fix a cheat that I think is working as intended.

Your stories are great. If you let them happen.
But you don't have to. Banishment can happen the instant the refugee is on the map.

Story 3:
"We got a call, some 24 year old guy is being chased by pirates and needs help. Those damn pirates can taste our bullets and blades if they harm a hair on an innocent person's head! Oh. He's a lazy, abusive misogynist who refuses to clean, cook, or build anything, and has never held a gun or sword in his life. Dunno how I know that, 'cause he is still hundreds of meters outside our colony's outer perimeter and not even remotely within anyone's line of sight or ear shot, but who cares. Bam. Banished. Also lets write his name down in the annals of our colony's history books so any future interactions with him will also cause us undue hits to our moral."

[5thHorseman]

I'm all for hiding people's skills and traits until they're found out naturally somehow. I always kinda hoped that'd be in the base game. Not just for refugees but also for the pirates, escape pod people, wanderers who join, etc.

I have no idea how it'd work exactly but I'd be very happy to playtest it.

But even if that was a thing, I still wouldn't want some artificial restriction on booting them from the colony. After taking a kidney or lung for my trouble.

[Greep]

People are way too afraid of negative moodlets.  It's -3 for a week :/  I banish whoever I feel like.  If you have problems with this you'll have fun with -40 psychic drones lol.'

Concerning the raid: last time I accepted a chased refugee I got 5 prisoners.  Yummy Never accept at a bad time.

[AileTheAlien]

Alternately, make the banished-colonist penalty higher, to try and get players to play with gimped pawns. ^^;

The reason I don't think that will work is because I believe it will just result in ignoring all Chased Refugee event.
If you make the penalty too high, especially one that can't be easily countered, the response will almost certainly be complete avoidance of the risk entirely.

I was actually being sarcastic. I'm reading Tynan's game-design book right now, so between that, Reddit, and the forum here, it's pretty clear that he wants us to have interesting stories, not just min-max our pawns to get optimum output. However, sometimes his solutions feel like sledge-hammers; Even when they don't, game-balance is hard, and the "fix" could also just make things worse.

In this case, I think the root cause of the problem, is that there's too high a penalty, for taking some pawns. Pawns that are unable to do a certain skill - those are pretty bad because all skills are treated equally by the game, but some skills are actually much more important. Combat, medicine, plants, and cooking are all highly important. Art or tailoring are much less so, because sculptures last indefinetely, and clothing lasts for about a year. So the game treats (as far as I know) disabled-art just as valid as disabled-shooting, but I only really need a single pawn with good-ish art skills, and I need every single pawn to have at least some combat ability. Another big offender is fire-fighting-disabled pawns, and especially pyromaniac pawns. Fires will wipe out your entire base, unless you put in the huge time and effort to make smaller seperated buildings, with seeperated electrical wiring (wires are flammable too, and can spread fires). Fire is just too strong in its current form, so I insta-banish any pawns like that.

[erdrik]

...
In this case, I think the root cause of the problem, is that there's too high a penalty, for taking some pawns. Pawns that are unable to do a certain skill - those are pretty bad because all skills are treated equally by the game, but some skills are actually much more important. Combat, medicine, plants, and cooking are all highly important. Art or tailoring are much less so, because sculptures last indefinetely, and clothing lasts for about a year. So the game treats (as far as I know) disabled-art just as valid as disabled-shooting, but I only really need a single pawn with good-ish art skills, and I need every single pawn to have at least some combat ability.

For hauling I tend to have secondary stockpile zones for storage, and primary stockpile zones for "production stock" that are as close as possible to the crafting benches. These "production stock" zones need a dedicated number of haulers to keep full so the crafters can do their tasks efficiently. I get real agitated when I see a crafter marching half way across the map to pick up 10% of a pile of material instead of hauling the whole thing back, because that crafter isn't there to haul just pick up materials they need to craft with. So I put a lot of effort in trying to prevent the crafter from needing to travel far in the first place.

For cleaning, a single pile of dirt can turn a decent room into an awful room. And if you don't have enough cleaners for you base that can translate into long term moral debuffs for an unpredictable number of colonists.

Because of this hauling and cleaning are super important for me.
So Im not so picky about incapables so long as they can haul and clean.

But I do agree some skills are less ... "critical" than others.

... Another big offender is fire-fighting-disabled pawns, and especially pyromaniac pawns. Fires will wipe out your entire base, unless you put in the huge time and effort to make smaller seperated buildings, with seeperated electrical wiring (wires are flammable too, and can spread fires). Fire is just too strong in its current form, so I insta-banish any pawns like that.

I loath pyromaniac pawns. Ive never even accepted one into the colony, so I don't even know how bad they could be. I just hate the idea of them. Im even an exclusively mountain base builder, so fires aren't even that big a threat since almost everything is made of stone. One thing about them Im unsure of is:
If every wall and floor and door is made of stone does that just guarantee that the pyromaniac will light up something important rather than a wall or something?

EDIT: I just had a thought that would make them less atrocious in my mind
Do pyromaniacs light trees on fire? Like just as a matter of RNG is it possible for a pyromaniac to go out of the colony into the surrounding forest and light a tree on fire instead of the colony?

[5thHorseman]

I loath pyromaniac pawns. Ive never even accepted one into the colony, so I don't even know how bad they could be. I just hate the idea of them. Im even an exclusively mountain base builder, so fires aren't even that big a threat since almost everything is made of stone. One thing about them Im unsure of is:
If every wall and floor and door is made of stone does that just guarantee that the pyromaniac will light up something important rather than a wall or something?

My experience with them is all pre-1.0 because I used to tolerate them, until one broke right before a raid. That's the main problem with them in my mind: What do you do when you have something very important to deal with, are a man down, and have to dedicate someone else to putting out fires and maybe someone else to arrest the dumbass for lighting them, and possibly getting into a fight with him while Scythers are at the front gates. Or dropping into your freezer.

EDIT: I just had a thought that would make them less atrocious in my mind
Do pyromaniacs light trees on fire? Like just as a matter of RNG is it possible for a pyromaniac to go out of the colony into the surrounding forest and light a tree on fire instead of the colony?

I think they would light them on fire, but they tend to just wander around where they are and light random nearby things. They don't seem to prioritize wood over stone, and stone will keep a fire going long enough to spread just not get damaged (much) by it.

As I said before, this may have changed in 1.0. I won't find out unless one of my rando starting pawns have the trait and I can't afford to banish them before they trigger.

[Third_Of_Five]

Alternately, make the banished-colonist penalty higher, to try and get players to play with gimped pawns. ^^;

I agree with this. It's simpler and easier to implement. And it still lets me banish pyros.

[Gwaheer]

Increasing mood debuff will make chased refugee event even less desirable.

Option to offer temporary protection without actually inviting random pawn to colony will make event more desirable.