that time i really lost faith in this game

[mightyhuhn]

yeah post like this come up now and then so here is just another one of these.

so i was playing rimworld into the late game on randy normal so a pretty casual game.
the colony is stable with like 16 pwans or so and a lot of animals.
so it's time for another infestation with just 50 insect spawning in there badroom/rec room/kitchen(18 hives they are everywhere) in the middle of the night. good part of the game happens i except to loose a lot not going to save scamming to avoid this.

so the fight takes like 30 mins(i have to pause like crazy) and the only way for me to defend is misusing animal zone to send in the ~20 muffalo in the end. of the like 70 animals in total 18 survive and i beat the 50 insects that just tunnel in.
all my pawn survive for now and i start to micro the game like no tomorrow to stop the bleeding only 3 pawns going to bleed to death at the end but only ~3 are not injured.

and here is where i through wow this was intense(and still fun) and i just notice all this was a waste of time i'm in the end game this game is over and randy doesn't even need to do anything anymore this colony is a gonna and there is nothing i can do because now it's time for EA fun game mechanics: break downs.
there is nothing in the game that stops pawn from breaking down even in an emergency like this and damn was i correct... as soon as a pawn can walk again he will break they have sky high expectations the rec room is destroyed they are all in pain the whole base is just blood and dead animals/insects/humans. there are NO TABLES anymore a war crime in this game a picnic/food to go blasphemy!
the combined mood debuffs are so bad there is nothing i can do i don't have the time to give everyone every drug that may temporary help or remove every pawns legs to avoid EA game mechanics there is no time for that...
and so i just sit there and through sure... and watched...
1 tantrum
1 going wild (incapable of violence which fights back!)
1 prison break( to let the wild person go)
1 daze
1 murders rage (directly out of the hospital bad to the next patient that is just under operation to remove an infected leg)
1 berserk

these are the ones i remembered.
now here i am thinking to myself what does this game tell me here?
to never take a close fight because it'S over anyway? that heavily injured people have 100% the same expectations in a hospital barely able to walk after a war as it is just any other day... that everyone that fights needs to be a drug addicted optimist in this game? that the thing you should fear the most in a hospital is the person lying heavily injured next to you?

[LWM]

Psychic Pulse Soother.

Or whatever that artifact is called that gives a temporary several-day mood boost.

Also, that sounds *intense* and *incredible* - I'm super impressed you survived 18 hives!

--LWM

[LWM]

Also, new mod idea:

Wow, we survived!     +10   Expires in 3 days.

--LWM

[Preechr]

Smokeleaf joints, beer and spectago teas for everyone!

[Kirby23590]

If i'm starting to loose faith and honor... And might just run away to someplace or to that outlander community saying that they better stuff than in this colony...

Well go for Yayo! Yayo for everyone! it makes you forget everything that happened so badly like that part where johnny was gutted and spliced apart by a scyther attack or where the recreation room was set on fire by a pyromaniac... or my broth-... no wait...
*sobs heavily and starts crying badly*

[mightyhuhn]

i'm sure a plus 10 will fix the issue...
https://abload.de/img/thatwillfixitrkj7t.png

[LWM]

I was going to be all "Awwww, come on, that pawn has a mood marker that's above minimum!"  And then I realized that was including the +40 from Catharsis.

Well.

Yeah, okay.  It might help, but it's certainly not going to fix the issue.  The artifact popped into my head mostly because it affects everyone at once, so I thought it would be a better bet for quickly affecting everyone.

Nice screen shot.

[togfox]

I recently walked away from a save game that was spiralling out of control. Everyone was in bed for so long that the colony ran out of food and started starving and the mood continued to spiral down. Sure, the lack of food was PERHAPS a lack of planning, but the death spiral was there and it couldn't be stopped.

I shrugged and started another colony. I'm having much more fun with my first tribal start. Curse that research penalty. 

[vzoxz0]

Buddy you better put a TV in your hospital.

[Cimm0]

How about some fire protected secondary and tertiary rec rooms with drugs and doors locked by player (until crisis hits)?

Always have several of...everything, locked away, in case of emergencies. The base's functionality needs to be hard to break, it needs to be able to function on some level, even if 50% gets destroyed.

[mightyhuhn]

Buddy you better put a TV in your hospital.

so this will give an plus 60 mood buff? with sky high expectations debuff where they are totally bored of the TV anyway?
can pawn even use it unconsciousness?

How about some fire protected secondary and tertiary rec rooms with drugs and doors locked by player (until crisis hits)?

Always have several of...everything, locked away, in case of emergencies. The base's functionality needs to be hard to break, it needs to be able to function on some level, even if 50% gets destroyed.

feel free to tell me how an incapable of walking pawn is going to use that room? the base function doesn't matter if the pawn can't use it.

don't you see it they break before they leave the hospital. the funny thing is the one of the very neurotic pawn was fine after that attack because he didn't get injured and his bed room is still standing.

just from been unable to walk you lose so much mood it's not really recoverable.

yes you can go and make hospital with signal bed setup to avoid some of the beauty issues.
yes you can drug everyone with no exception and i'm happy you don't need to and you are able to treat your pawn not as general addicts.

[TheMeInTeam]

It's true that incentives in the game are incongruous/inconsistent with some design intention statements. 

In particular, the mental breaks/risks from taking hits mean exposing yourself to pure RNG on high difficulties.  Some of the more recent mental breaks further distort incentives...pawn going wild is particularly ridiculous/punitive especially while colony is still small.

The implication is to win fights while taking minimal or no damage to your pawns.  Efforts have been made to remove strategies that do this or make them more expensive, but there are still several ways to defeat raids on merciless with no damage consistently w/o big investments or end game tech. 

[Limdood]

There are some tricks I use in situations like that.

I'm sure you use some yourself, but I might as well comment mine here, since there's a chance they could help.

1) have a couple drugs around.  wakeup or the psychoid leaf variety of drug can keep the doctors and cleaners on their feet and content while tending to everyone.  Smokeleaf and alcohol, or just anesthetizing badly injured, upset people to make them sleep through the worst environment and injuries.

2) Have a large enough hospital to house people.  make it beautiful as all getout.  get a megascreen TV (or as good as you can get/afford) in there.  Keep it clean and restrict pawns (except the doc) to the hospital.  This keeps them in a "nice hospital" "very beautiful" "very spacious" and available recreation while healing.

3) if you have a psychic soothe emanator (not sure of the name...the quest reward powered, placeable building that gives +mood in a radius around it), make sure it overlaps the hospital.

4) after a fight, micro the heck out of the rescue efforts.  Even if it means marking hospital beds as nonmedical, making a sleeping spot on the ground next to the dying colonists, marking it medical, setting the imminent-death/bleeding from the neck/heart colonist to no medicine, then rescue him to the sleeping spot and start IMMEDIATELY bandaging him - if he's bleeding out in mere seconds, hauling him to the hospital and then running to fetch medicine is a waste of time.  Once the bleed out is contained and death is 8-12 hours away or more, delete the sleeping spots, rezone the hospital beds, and rescue them to the appropriate beds (might give you a chance for non-doctors to clean the hospital too!).

5) forget the animals.  No seriously.  They may be valuable and as vital to the colony as the pawns, but you need the pawns healing NOW and moved to better surroundings...the few animals that survive your lack of attention can start repopulating, and the most notable reasons are:  animals are less complex.  They breed fast, they don't mental break, they don't advance skills.  Getting colonists healed up faster and with less blood loss gets them self-sufficient and allows them to get back to taking care of their own needs again.

6) If all else fails and there is NO WAY you can raise mood enough to prevent dangerous mental breaks...anesthetize, then arrest them.  you can always release them later (they will automatically rejoin your faction...no need to recruit)....keep in mind they'll get upset about being imprisoned.  I don't actually recommend this at all, as it's hard to think of a situation bad enough for long enough that dealing with an unruly prisoner and a long term "imprisoned" negative moodlet is preferable to managing it some other way, or long term re-anesthetizing.

7) High quality food....every point of mood helps in these situations.  A small stock of forbidden lavish meals that get unforbidden after a catastrophe can help....also chocolate, ambrosia, etc. (ties in to point #1).

Won't help now, but maybe in the future.  I like to make my bases with several ways in and out of each room - including bedrooms (you can avoid disturbed sleep by forbidding doors 99% of the time and only unforbid during infestations).  I also like to add a - admittedly otherwise unnecessary - "+" shaped hallway, 3-wide thru the center of my base...cut a notch in each corner right at the intersection (making the center of the + a 5x5 room) and put a turret in each corner.  These two things allow your colonists to group up or split up to tactically regroup or attack without having being blocked off from parts of the base, and the hallway allows you to fight, retreat through the middle, and keep fighting while attackers are delayed at turrets.  In short, If you're making a mountain base, build with infestations in mind.

[LWM]

Oooooh, anesthetizing!  I forgot about that entirely!

I suppose cryptosleep caskets can be used in an emergency, too!  I totally forgot I had access to some when I had someone dying of cancer...I could have popped her in there until I had a good doctor trained up.

I love the little unusual touches that can make things slightly more survivable!  In your case, huhn, maybe not enough, but still nice tactics I'll try and remember!

--LWM

[Shurp]

Drugs, drugs, drugs, and wooden logs.  Do not forget that many of your mood management situations can be solved by bludgeoning misbehaving pawns.  Very important when you have a pawn walking around insulting other pawns and driving *them* to break...

...but yes, the OP is correct that "barely surviving" a horrific raid really means you lost, because the mood penalties will ensure that the survivors eat each other.  The answer is that you really do need to load a prior save even though it seems like the 5 pawns still standing have a chance to put things back together.  Besides, you're forgetting that Cassandra will drop a dozen scythers / lancers on you in 12 hours.  You're dead anyway.