Battle Adrenaline

[Quasarrgames]

It seems like almost always after a battle, my colonists will just mental break. What's going on in their head?! They just think "now that the enemies are gone, just screw the colony! I'm running off to nowhere because these bodies freak me out and i don't wanna put out all these fires." It annoys the heck out of me!

It would be nice if there was this thing where during and up to a day or two after battles, colonists would get this "heat of battle" or "adrenaline rush" thing where their mood bar would just freeze where it was and not rise or fall. This way people wouldn't just mental break right after a big battle. It would also make attacking siege camps a lot easier (although that's not really much of a concern).

[BetaSpectre]

Most people like this idea

[Somz]

Yeah, it's a good idea in my opinion as well.

Having won a battle just to see the pawns go nuts afterwards is priceless.
For everything else there's mastercard. :3

[Rahjital]

Yeah, the situation of colonists thinking"Excellent, we are winning, most of the raiders are gone! ...urgh, I'm so hungry. SHRIKE! THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!" and going on a rampage is rather infuriating. The fear mechanic worked very well to prevent this in the earlier versions, it's a shame it was removed...

I would want to see this solved by there being a lower limit of 15 or so for a few days after battle. Freezing the mood in place would be rather weird, since exhilariated colonists would stay that way even after the battle when the whole colony lies in ruin. Setting a lower limit would mean you would still have to care for your colonists so that they don't go insane when the adrenaline rush wears off.

[Somz]

Yeah, the situation of colonists thinking"Excellent, we are winning, most of the raiders are gone! ...urgh, I'm so hungry. SHRIKE! THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!" and going on a rampage is rather infuriating. The fear mechanic worked very well to prevent this in the earlier versions, it's a shame it was removed...

I would want to see this solved by there being a lower limit of 15 or so for a few days after battle. Freezing the mood in place would be rather weird, since exhilariated colonists would stay that way even after the battle when the whole colony lies in ruin. Setting a lower limit would mean you would still have to care for your colonists so that they don't go insane when the adrenaline rush wears off.

Indeed that is true. Though personally I'd give a amount +# happiness in case they survived an attack, degrading by the amount of friendly pawns fallen, let's say, for 2 days or so. (1 wouldn't be enough in my opinion, after a battle most of the times colonists sleep for a day to begin with.)
This way they could withstand the "seen corpses" and "seen friendly units die" 'debuffs', for a while, giving enough time to clean up at least a part of the mess.

Adrenaline rush would be great nonetheless, freezing the 'needs sleep' / 'tired' value for a time, that'd be realistic too by the way, and colonists (again) wouldn't suffer mental breakdowns as often.

[Rahjital]

I'm not sure if a mood boost would suffice, though. The colony usually lies in ruin after a big raid and most colonists have the ugly environment, hungry, tired, seen somebody die, wounded, shared bedroom debuffs (more in bad situations) would make some of the colonists immediately break anyway before things can be fixed, while the ones not taking the brunt of the battle would be really happy... hmm, the second part actually sounds good. Perhaps apart from disallowing the mood to go below a certain treshold, colonists should also get the happy thoughts you mentioned, with a flawless victory giving greater boost than one where you lose a colonist?