Psychic Drone balance

[Tynan]

Keep it on topic please, random suggestions should go in new threads in the Suggestions forum. Some posts here deleted.

[Woyzeck]

Note that if you wish you can mod down the effect of this, by going to Mods/Core/Defs/ThoughtDefs/Thoughts_PsychicDrone and adjusting the <baseMoodEffect> values.

I'd like to change the no-ship drone event to only select the lower levels of psychic disturbance. Where is this located in the XML files? I've dug around and found a reference to a "worker" for the event, but no dice on finding said thing itself.

[Tynan]

Note that if you wish you can mod down the effect of this, by going to Mods/Core/Defs/ThoughtDefs/Thoughts_PsychicDrone and adjusting the <baseMoodEffect> values.

I'd like to change the no-ship drone event to only select the lower levels of psychic disturbance. Where is this located in the XML files? I've dug around and found a reference to a "worker" for the event, but no dice on finding said thing itself.

The worker is a piece of code, if you wanted to override that you'd have to compile a DLL with an alternative class and point to it.

[Darastrix]

I admit I have stopped playing the game now as my past 3 colonies have been ruined by the psychic drone at about day 30-50. No reason at all, it just drops and my colonists starts rampaging or leaving. There is no physical item I can destroy either. I don't mind being destroyed by raiders as the tactics can be controlled and developed over time which is fun. This just feels like an annoying arbitrary event without explanation. It has pretty much made the game unplayable for me.

[fraz]

As others' have said, the crashed drone event is not terribly overpowered, because it ramps up slowly, giving you time to either bolster your colonists' mood, or to end the threat by going after the crashed ship. On the other hand, getting hit with an instant -25 mood modifier for all colonists, with nothing that can be done to stop it, can result in an abrupt, unstoppable, no-fun end to one's colony. I agree with the following proposed changes:

• Both event types should affect only a subset of colonists (maybe ~50% for the no-ship event vs ~75% for the ship event)
• The no-ship event should perhaps have its effect capped at something less severe than -25 (maybe -15 or -20?)
• As others have mentioned, it would be very useful (not just for psychic drones, but in general) if colonists could actively resist a mental breakdown by recognizing when their mood is getting dangerously low and proactively taking measures to improve their mood (e.g., by playing a game, drinking alcohol, seeking out fellow colonists to chat with, or - if they have a cabin fever modifier - going outside)

[PsychoForge]

I think if it hit only some of your colonists it would be better, hitting all is abit harsh when is nothing to remedy the problem as for the falling ship piece i havent had one yet so cannot comment but im hoping if i do get one i can bomb the hell out of it and smile from a distance. HOPE being alot of that statement hehe I also posted 2 other bugs in bug forum, one for cremation and other about burying people.

[Ramsis]

Small batch of ideas that we could try and then see if it's a better way of dealing with it:

First day or two after it hits there is no panic: Means you have two days to either prepare to live with it for a few more days or gives you some time to go mess it up.

Smaller batches of panic that ramp up much faster.

A certain radius around the thing that causes the overall panic over time.

Make the event have a check put in place that requires you build the ship support component first before the Storyteller is willing to drop it (doesn't apply to Ricky).

Just a few small ideas. This really makes me hope that we have some better ways of dealing with stress and panic in the upcoming medical update.

[Piata]

I think psychic drones are a little too common but that might because there's so little you can do about them. In general, it's very hard to stop people from having mental breakdowns once they reach a certain point so a reliable way to keep them sane while still incurring some kind of penalty would be ideal.

Some ideas:
- have a games room where people can play video games so you lose productivity but keep your people from going insane.
- have a colony psychologist (benefits from social skill), which also causes you to lose productivity
- research tinfoil hats

[Nasikabatrachus]

I've found the -25 event to be mostly quite manageable, as long as the colony is set up well and there haven't been any other shocks to the system, like a battle or a dead colonist (it has usually arrived on its own, in my colonies). I think many players might not fully understand the happiness modifiers they can implement themselves and so feel helpless when their moderately unhappy colonists suddenly get pushed over the tipping point.

[Mathew_01]

I'm taking the same approach as Darastrix. every time the event fire's (on chill) its always right after a or DURING a battle. it makes the game unplayable as every colonist, without exemption, breaks and its game over.

I Love the game to death, but i'm am not touching it until this issue is taken care of. (officially or a mod that removes the effect)

[Xanting]

I have found the psychic drone event to be very inconvenient at times as I tend to run my colonists far to gather materials that have dropped. This event becomes a much more serous problem when it happens anytime before or after a major battle. On cassandra classic difficulty in the day 150-200 range, raids tend to be significantly bigger then my population and the combination of injury, corpses, and lack of eating or sleeping due to being drafted tends to tip them right over the mental break point. I do manage them well enough that only 2-3 have mental breaks and I managed to subdue them and re-recruit them each time, it is very frustrating that this event comes around and I have no hard counter to it unlike the crashed space part. I think instead of a flat -25 to mood it should cause an affect that causes one of your colonists to go insane but when you incapacitate them they remain apart of your colony and you do not need to re-recruit them, exactly like the secondary random affect the crashed space ship part causes.

[mccartercar]

Just edit the file and remove the negative.
On a serious note, why not assign everyone a frequency and have the alien signal affect them either good or bad based on what signal was being produced?

[wild alaskan]

well i survived two drones in one game, neither crashed and made a ship part. I think the key is to take every one off of mining and make sure everyone is sleeping in beds and has a nice floor and a big room with lights. Unfortunately about 8 mechanoids came a blew up my mostly completed ship while my colonists died trying to defend it shortly after the second drone

[Tynan]

Okay, I'm going to hotfix this. Alpha5b will have this even disabled. You'll still get the psychic drone from the ship part.

If you want to disable it yourself, go into Mods/Core/Defs/IncidentDefs/BaseIncidents.xml, and find this text:

Code Select Expand

  <IncidentDef>
    <defName>PsychicDrone</defName>
    <workerClass>IncidentWorker_PsychicDrone</workerClass>
    <chance>1.2</chance>
    <minRefireDays>8</minRefireDays>
    <favorability>Bad</favorability>
  </IncidentDef>

Set <chance> to 0.

[kronicmeerkat]

I have played 4 games since the update and every time this damned core thing wipes out the colony
its not something that can be countered unless you have some extremely good tech