Worst 6 traits?

[5thHorseman]

Wow so that totally sidesteps the dangers of Chem Fascination. If they're otherwise cool just make them pound smokeleaf or beer until addicted and then once a day it every night.

[zizard]

Problem with beer is that expected number of beers to addiction is more than 100.

[khun_poo]

Chem int / fasc has extremely easy workaround in the early game, where you just burn the paltry amount of drugs raiders drop that you don't need. Late game you can psychite or beer addict them. Then there's no real effects.

Within 100 days as far as I remember. Addicted colonist with alcohol will cause cirrhosis in their liver while psychite addicted got chemical damaged kidney.

How about make them addicted to Ambrosia instead? they cause nothing anyway.

Or try luciferium lol.

[Limdood]

Really don't get the people who say "just play around pyro/gourmand/chem pawns"

how?

The random unproductive breaks are bad enough WITHOUT considering the resources used up.  Add in the resource cost and it COULD be a real drain.  The part that is impossible to play around, though, is the fact that these pawns can break in the middle of combat.  Even a drugless base doesn't avoid this, as a pawn can break when a dead raider drops some flake, wander out, and get shot and killed, and (this is the important part) there is NO way to prevent it....in a game that is all about putting in the prep work to mitigate and prevent disaster damage.

[5thHorseman]

Really don't get the people who say "just play around pyro/gourmand/chem pawns"

how?

The random unproductive breaks are bad enough WITHOUT considering the resources used up.  Add in the resource cost and it COULD be a real drain.  The part that is impossible to play around, though, is the fact that these pawns can break in the middle of combat.  Even a drugless base doesn't avoid this, as a pawn can break when a dead raider drops some flake, wander out, and get shot and killed, and (this is the important part) there is NO way to prevent it....in a game that is all about putting in the prep work to mitigate and prevent disaster damage.

The big thing is, continuing on when that dumbass goes out and dies IS playing around it. Building with stone to frustrate a pyro IS playing around it. Just making more food IS playing around it. And it's totally possible. As I said I just won a game on Randy Savage and while it's true that only 1 of my 15 colonists got out on the ship, that guy was a pyro and lived alone in the colony for 5 days. Before that raid, I had 5 people with chemical interest or fascination and 2 or 3 of them were addicted to something. I had 2 gourmands, a lazy, and 2 incapable of violence.

And the ONLY one that CONSITENTLY caused trouble was the depressive.

[bbqftw]

Really don't get the people who say "just play around pyro/gourmand/chem pawns"

how?

The random unproductive breaks are bad enough WITHOUT considering the resources used up.  Add in the resource cost and it COULD be a real drain.  The part that is impossible to play around, though, is the fact that these pawns can break in the middle of combat.  Even a drugless base doesn't avoid this, as a pawn can break when a dead raider drops some flake, wander out, and get shot and killed, and (this is the important part) there is NO way to prevent it....in a game that is all about putting in the prep work to mitigate and prevent disaster damage.

we are asking the question of which traits are the worst for win%, so traits that are consistently bad are generally stronger than conditionally bad traits

Incidentally, playing on savage is like having a free optimist + hardworker on all colonist, you're not getting the full misery experience

[Limdood]

Really don't get the people who say "just play around pyro/gourmand/chem pawns"

how?

The random unproductive breaks are bad enough WITHOUT considering the resources used up.  Add in the resource cost and it COULD be a real drain.  The part that is impossible to play around, though, is the fact that these pawns can break in the middle of combat.  Even a drugless base doesn't avoid this, as a pawn can break when a dead raider drops some flake, wander out, and get shot and killed, and (this is the important part) there is NO way to prevent it....in a game that is all about putting in the prep work to mitigate and prevent disaster damage.

we are asking the question of which traits are the worst for win%, so traits that are consistently bad are generally stronger than conditionally bad traits

Incidentally, playing on savage is like having a free optimist + hardworker on all colonist, you're not getting the full misery experience

Hey nice assumptions there. 

btw, "consistently bad?"  all of the mood penalty colonists are conditional...they're not broken all the time.  Ditto with traits that cause more fights.  In fact, the ONLY negative traits that can be considered not conditional are the work speed penalties.  Every other trait is only bad sometimes....i tend to look poorly on ones that CAN kill with no counterplay besides "don't accept them" or "hope they don't break at an inopportune time"

[zizard]

Within 100 days as far as I remember. Addicted colonist with alcohol will cause cirrhosis in their liver while psychite addicted got chemical damaged kidney.

How about make them addicted to Ambrosia instead? they cause nothing anyway.

Or try luciferium lol.

No the damage is caused by tolerance, not addiction. Psychite can be maintained without increasing tolerance. Sucks that these kinds of discussions are always remedial game mechanics lessons.

[bbqftw]

Really don't get the people who say "just play around pyro/gourmand/chem pawns"

how?

The random unproductive breaks are bad enough WITHOUT considering the resources used up.  Add in the resource cost and it COULD be a real drain.  The part that is impossible to play around, though, is the fact that these pawns can break in the middle of combat.  Even a drugless base doesn't avoid this, as a pawn can break when a dead raider drops some flake, wander out, and get shot and killed, and (this is the important part) there is NO way to prevent it....in a game that is all about putting in the prep work to mitigate and prevent disaster damage.

we are asking the question of which traits are the worst for win%, so traits that are consistently bad are generally stronger than conditionally bad traits

Incidentally, playing on savage is like having a free optimist + hardworker on all colonist, you're not getting the full misery experience

Hey nice assumptions there. 

btw, "consistently bad?"  all of the mood penalty colonists are conditional...they're not broken all the time.  Ditto with traits that cause more fights.  In fact, the ONLY negative traits that can be considered not conditional are the work speed penalties.  Every other trait is only bad sometimes....i tend to look poorly on ones that CAN kill with no counterplay besides "don't accept them" or "hope they don't break at an inopportune time"

chem int break is ~50 day mtth last time I check and that is with eligible drugs on map, depressive under a lot of game states is going to put you at mental break or bump you up severity tier far more than once every 50 days.


Technically workspeed also conditional since you can just make them haul all day. Negative workspeed also beneficial for crafters under some situations too

[5thHorseman]

Incidentally, playing on savage is like having a free optimist + hardworker on all colonist, you're not getting the full misery experience

I played on Savage because the test would be invalid on Merciless. I refuse to go through all the garbage required to just survive in that mode, so all colonies are doomed to perish. In that case, all traits could be considered equal as they all would lead to failure.

[TheMeInTeam]

Incidentally, playing on savage is like having a free optimist + hardworker on all colonist, you're not getting the full misery experience

I played on Savage because the test would be invalid on Merciless. I refuse to go through all the garbage required to just survive in that mode, so all colonies are doomed to perish. In that case, all traits could be considered equal as they all would lead to failure.

On the contrary, if we're going to rank traits in any reasonable capacity there must be some objective reasoning that prefers some to others.  Broadly speaking, bad traits do worse under optimal play than less bad traits.

If you're willing to toss the optimal play requirement then you wind up with some arbitrary/preference based picks, which is what has happened in this thread to a degree.  It's fine to prefer one trait to another for whatever reason, but it's an ineffective way to organize thought around which traits are actually the worst and why.

It is significantly easier to work around things like chem int/fascination than depressive, which is going to foist breaks on you by force in many circumstances on the highest difficulty, sometimes beyond player control.  It's a really bad trait and a serious candidate for the worst trait outright.  Gourmand and pyro can screw naked brutality starts, but depressive screws that too AND is significantly worse for pawn net contribution throughout a colony's existence.  Slow pawns are also significantly worse than chemical fascination, etc.

[5thHorseman]

It is significantly easier to work around things like chem int/fascination than depressive, which is going to foist breaks on you by force in many circumstances on the highest difficulty, sometimes beyond player control.  It's a really bad trait and a serious candidate for the worst trait outright.  Gourmand and pyro can screw naked brutality starts, but depressive screws that too AND is significantly worse for pawn net contribution throughout a colony's existence.  Slow pawns are also significantly worse than chemical fascination, etc.

Strange that I somehow came to that conclusion even though I didn't play merciless.

[TheMeInTeam]

It's magnified though.  Pessimist might make my top 6 for example, while other than extremely early pyro wouldn't...in fact pyros are mood-positive if you give them some random raider molotov.

[fritzgryphon]

I don't think it's possible to define worst 6, even if a difficulty level and playstyle is specified.

In an "optimal" run, only traits that cumulatively add up to total colony loss, or colony death spiral, really matter.  Minor setbacks can be recovered from as if they didn't happen.  Game-ending traits will totally depend on factors like biome, map, difficulty level, global events, colony skill composition, tech level, etc.  Gourmand is trivial to tolerate on temperate, permanent summer.  On early ice sheet, or during a pre-hydroponics toxic fallout, then lol.   Now that we have food assignments, I feel depressive could be largely managed with lavish meals, but only if you have the food and a good cook.  Any negative trait can be tolerated, if it applies to your only doctor.  Also, player preference is huge; even the most hardcore will have pet peeves.  I refuse pyros just because one killed my colony once.  Trait significance is different for every context and changes over time.

Can we agree that, in all contexts, it's ideal to refuse pawns with a bad trait balance, and discard the ones you have at the earliest opportunity?  Especially at low populations, when population intent is sending you lots of free recruits to choose from.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but traits do not affect pawn value at all.  A volatile abrasive is worth the same as a fast-walking optimist.

Whenever I recruit a new pawn, I look to see if there's an existing, equivalently-skilled pawn with bad traits that I can get rid of.

[bbqftw]

Some traits like beautiful / ugly have very large market value modifiers.

Whenever I recruit a new pawn, I look to see if there's an existing, equivalently-skilled pawn with bad traits that I can get rid of.

Yep. This seems to be what the game pushes you to do.