Do you think dead bodies lower mood too much?

[BetaSpectre]

-14 for seeing a dead body
-4~5 for killing the dude
-14 if the dude was a colonist.

Usually after a battle the entire map is littered with half a hundred bodies or more making doing anything outside of my colony a tantrum party.

Seeing as though killing an enemy lowers mood (which it shouldn't if you ask me) by just 4 then shouldn't a stranger's body do the same unless two weeks rotted? I mean you did just shoot/pulverize the guy and go meh so why freak out when you see that he's dead.

[nuschler22]

Have you seen a dead body?  Or what's left of them? 

Have you seem someone shot by large caliber weapon?  It's traumatic.  Even if you casually walk by it, it stays with you for a while.  And I can't (and don't want to) imagine it being someone I liked. 

And that's not even going into the trauma of killing people. 

Of course it's going to affect mood.  I'm glad it's in the game.  It's realistic.

[BetaSpectre]

I've seen this before, albiet not first hand. The worse part is to see a head half blown off with the eyes still open. Made me want to vomit and I felt a little sick, but it doesn't even take a year for a person to get used to it.

There is also the smell of human flesh its simply horrible even if you do burn it. Although a few days ain't gonna make the area a nightmare just yet. And a very long time it  just all rots away.

First time is tough but it gets better for basically everything even murder. That said I completely agree about witnessing your buddies die unless you aren't capable of caring.

Never killed IRL before so I wouldn't know about the trauma of murdering others. I guess this is going to be more realistic with traits.

[Tynan]

Well, the colonists' reaction doesn't have to be realistic. Lots of stuff is unrealistic (e.g. nobody except a serial killer kills as many people as some of these colonists), so it's okay to tweak their reactions to whatever works best for the gameplay, as long as it doesn't completely break narrative coherency.

So yeah, I've been hearing this, I didn't think the effect was that bad but I guess if you pile it on with Wounded and Witnessed Death, it could be pretty bad.

For A6 I'll be looking at changing it so that rotten bodies create a much worse thought than normal bodies, which may make a lesser thought.

[christhekiller]

Perhaps even have some traits that cancel out any effects on bodies. Like you'd think an assassin would be perfectly fine with bodies, much more so than say a miner or noble.

[Crimsonknight3]

Well, the colonists' reaction doesn't have to be realistic. Lots of stuff is unrealistic (e.g. nobody except a serial killer kills as many people as some of these colonists), so it's okay to tweak their reactions to whatever works best for the gameplay, as long as it doesn't completely break narrative coherency.

So yeah, I've been hearing this, I didn't think the effect was that bad but I guess if you pile it on with Wounded and Witnessed Death, it could be pretty bad.

For A6 I'll be looking at changing it so that rotten bodies create a much worse thought than normal bodies, which may make a lesser thought.

I completely agree with your idea for A6 It sounds perfect!

-14 for seeing a dead body
-4~5 for killing the dude
-14 if the dude was a colonist.

Usually after a battle the entire map is littered with half a hundred bodies or more making doing anything outside of my colony a tantrum party.

Seeing as though killing an enemy lowers mood (which it shouldn't if you ask me) by just 4 then shouldn't a stranger's body do the same unless two weeks rotted? I mean you did just shoot/pulverize the guy and go meh so why freak out when you see that he's dead.

I think that killing pirates should give them a "buzz" like they are happy because they are defending against the depraved pirates trying to steal from them.... If your house was attacked and you managed to stop the attacker before they took everything, you would be happy wouldn't you? Then yeah you may be scared after the fact, but this would work in rimworld easily. You get a small happiness boost for killing or witnessing a pirate being killed, then after the body is left for a day or so then you start seeing negative effects because of the "rotting". The only exception to this would be witnessing a colonist killed being killed giving a bad fear and happiness debuffs and then seeing them rotting makes this EVEN worse!

[Jet Jaguar]

Maybe it's the fact that the RimWorld colonists see more corpses than anything short of a Warhammer 40K game that's bringing them down. If anything is "unrealistic," it's the neverending waves of attackers. Starvation, disease, thirst--these are all bigger problems for survival...

[anexiledone]

I think the penalty for seeing the death of a colonist should be pretty severe. But someone trying to kill me, I don't know if I'd feel horrible about killing them. I've seriously injured someone who broke into my house before, and I felt bad but not bad enough to lose it. One of those "wish it didn't have to go that way" rather than "oh my god what have I done?"

Maybe add a new stat to characters called Toughness. It improves from negative events that are over a certain threshold. Then your hardened veterans wouldn't care much, and people with a violent background or job could have an initial boost to it.

Heck, could even go further into the game by making "squads." If a squad leader is around, it improves squad member toughness based on leaders toughness and social skills. Imagine killing the leader of a raid and seeing some of the underlings panic.

Of course... I have no idea how feasible any of this is in the engine. But it's a thought to throw out there!

[esk81]

Maybe, the penalties for this things are ok in general terms. Could be nice to see more colonist traits in game to deal with it.
A violent trait, surgeons or doctors don't have to be so affected by seeing a body.

[Ink.]

I don't, I mean, if you imagine from the POV that is the people in these situations, it's bad enough to have to essentially make your own society, but to then consistently live in fear of conflict and almost regularly see bodies? Would be terrifying.

But esk81 brought up a good point. What if you have a vet that has hundreds of kills? What about the fact that one of my characters backstory was that he was an assassin? I definitely think the penalties could see a reduce for those who have essentially been broken (potentially with emotional breaks and stresses for those reasons aswell) but not be as effected from a death or from killing somebody. I do also think that killing someone should have a much larger impact than just seeing a body.

The great thing about the in depth characters is that, you can have a colony of criminals and killers mixed with teachers and priests, and it would be cool to see them change. Imagine a priest resorting to violence for survival, a killer that has to learn to depend on others and is afraid to see his friends die.

[anexiledone]

If they can handle being part of a spaceship crash, I don't see why they have so much trouble with dead bodies.

Plane crashes are extremely traumatic to survivors. Now imagine being in the vast ocean of space, in a ship being torn apart, people being sucked out into the black empty nothingness as you all struggle to take refuge in an escape pod. Then being thrust through the atmosphere into a world that is completely alien to you.

The people who land in game have optimism about their current situation. By the way they react to combat, they should kill themselves by the time they land.

[UrbanBourbon]

There's an imbalance. I'd say if there needs to be harsh mood penalties for seeing corpses, then we need characters who aren't so affected by dead bodies, such as those 'incapable of caring' or sociopaths (which are practically the same IRL, but different in RimWorld, since Sociopath is a trait). Then that guy could be the colony's undertaker. Either that or limit the stacking effect of seeing multiple corpses.

An alternative solution would be depression or shock, something temporarily debilitating, anything to replace the insanity that makes the colonists attempt leaving so consistently, which in practice results in hostile behaviour, which sometimes can be stopped only by a fatal beating... See what I'm getting at here? The problem may not necessarily be the amount of mood penalty, but the consequences of broken will, or the tools that the player has in his disposal to deal with the said broken will.

Also, I wouldn't mind high-end tech, such as maintenance bots... Robots have no feelings, right?

Dead corpses could also be covered with blankets, to conceal the worst gore. RimWorld colonists have clothes now, yes?

[BetaSpectre]

Just had 100% of my colonists go insane from a little mortar fire from inside of a mountain and 3 consecutive raider attacks on randy. It was interesting to watch lost 0 people from the fight itself it was the reconstruction that made everyone go F this I'm outta here.

Two raider groups pushed to retreating one completely wiped out a total of about 80-90 raiders here. Autosaves have probably over written everything xD.

Continued to watch a little bit after and spawned some colonists everyone went insane before they even got back into the base.

Its pretty much No power, no food, dead body, dead colonist, dead raider, ugly blood. They last about a day then go insane before getting any work done. Even if I spawn 20 colonist they'll just go rampaging against each other. I haven't seen a colony break down like this before its interesting to watch but frustrating if you actually wanted to do something.

[theapolaustic1]

such as those 'incapable of caring' or sociopaths (which are practically the same IRL, but different in RimWorld, since Sociopath is a trait)

Something quick on this note: Not entirely true. Sociopaths are entirely capable of feeling empathy/caring (keep in mind the rimworld use of 'incapable of caring' is medical, as in caring for someone who is ill), just not really "sympathy". They care, but their motivation is themselves. (One of my ex's was/is a sociopath, very legitimately so; obsessive, manipulative, did everything in their power to make me suffer from codependency issues â€" but oh, she knew exactly how it made me feel and she did it out of love, she told me both of those things flat out to my face. She cared about me, but cared about me more as a possession and status object than anything else. Y'know what they say about crazy.)

On the note of the actual topic of the thread: In terms of mechanics alone, ignoring the real world logic discussion, the dead body debuff is too potent. That is a fact. The question is how to make it less potent and justify it.

Possible suggestions (most of these I feel would be best implemented alongside each other, some require more work than others to implement though):
1) As was mentioned earlier, give them a boost to happiness for killing a raider. Make this bonus last a short amount of time (about a day), while the debuff for killing someone is dependent on when their body is disposed of. You might not feel guilty for killing a guy who came at you with a gun, but leaving his body to rot in the sun might cause a twinge of guilt to appear now that the adrenalin is long since gone. This one, I feel, is the easiest to implement and could probably make the issue become much less complaint-worthy on its own.
2) Rather than decrease the debuff, increase the "buzz" as someone gets more comfortable with killing (or if their background would suggest it). Think of it as job satisfaction. The better you get at it, the more you do it, the better you feel about doing the colony good. You still feel crappy about letting the guy get his eyes eaten by flies, but you feel a lot more satisfied about the fact that you got him down in the first place.
3) Some traits remove the debuff or reduce it. After the game is further in development, this could even be done in creative ways. A near sighted colonist might be worse at shooting, but they also would probably be less upset over a corpse in the distance, because, well, they can't make out how bad it looks. Then of course you can have the "history of murder" types get a buff instead, etc.
4) PTSD. Thousand yard stare. If someone gets too used to killing, their other abilities start to suffer (and his mood, obviously, takes a massive hit). Some weights are too much for just one man to bear, your entire colony needs to be able to take part, even the diehard soldier needs to be allowed a bit of time with the family to remind him he's human. And this brings me to my last suggestion.
5) Therapy. In essence, this already is what the Warden priority does: When you capture someone after a battle, their mood will be atrocious, and they'll be on the edge of a mental break. The "Convinced by warden" mood item prevents your prisoner from immediately assaulting the first person to come feed them. You could present this a few different ways: A dedicated room somewhere quiet where you can send your high-social character to help them talk it out, or just a task that effectively prioritizes "having a social chat" with people who are low on mood. The guy who goes around after a battle checking not just that everyone has a minimal amount of open holes in them, but that they're not in shock. (This also has the side benefit of giving those nobles and minstrels that everyone hates a combat utility of sorts and possibly a reason not to immediately sell them into slavery).

[UrbanBourbon]

(keep in mind the rimworld use of 'incapable of caring' is medical, as in caring for someone who is ill), just not really "sympathy".

You are right and I made an error in that I had completely forgotten that 'incapable of caring' refers to nursing. It should be renamed to exactly that - 'incapable of nursing'...  *grumble*

(One of my ex's was/is a sociopath, very legitimately so; obsessive, manipulative, did everything in their power to make me suffer from codependency issues � but oh, she knew exactly how it made me feel and she did it out of love, she told me both of those things flat out to my face. She cared about me, but cared about me more as a possession and status object than anything else. Y'know what they say about crazy.)

That, sir, is narcissism. That whole paragraph has narcissism written over it. She was a narcissist, not a sociopath
Sociopaths definitely do NOT care, do NOT feel love or empathize.
At most, a sociopath might be disgusted by the sight of death, but he definitely would not be demoralized by the loss of all the people.