We need to talk about mental breaks

[ShadowKatt]

So mental breaks changed with 1.1. No longer will your pawns wander aimlessly, ignoring everything until  they fall over from starvation or from exhaustion. Now they are smart enough that they can take care of their needs while being uncontrollable, aimless liabilities to your colony.

The last mental break I had(ironicly enough, the Last Straw for me to make this post) was a sad wandering. A sad wandering that lasted for THREE DAYS. During that time obviously he was useless, walking around eating raw food because why not? Eating without a table despite it's right there? Sure. In fact it was an aimless wander with the sole purpose of finding every single thing that could possibly make his mood worse. The ONLY reason it came to an end is because he was DYING of hypothermia and finally fell over as a corpsicle.

Mental breaks before ran the gamut annoying to disasterous. Now we've shifted that window to make the annoying ones just as bad. It's not just a matter of a tantrum that might blow up your whole armory. Now you'll just lose your colonists for whole chunks of the year. Three days, five days, without knowing if there's a cap what's to prevent a mental break from going on indefinitely.

There needs to be some kind of mitigating action besides beating them unconscious and hoping they don't die in the process. I agree with the way the breaks were changed but it was never balanced.

[LWM]

Wow.  I totally know people like that.  100%.  Days before they can pick themselves back up out of bleak despair....

There's the "snap out" of it mod that you might like to try.

[ShadowKatt]

Wow.  I totally know people like that.  100%.  Days before they can pick themselves back up out of bleak despair....

There's the "snap out" of it mod that you might like to try.

I have snap out. I didn't originally, but after having some pawns that went upwards of five days of just wandering I said enough. Now I have a new colony, things aren't great(I had fiancees who broke up) and so moods are in the pits. In any other circumstances this might not be a big deal but with three people and two of them in near constant breaks, and no one with good social for Snap Out to work with, I am losing whole months because there is simply nothing I can do. No food because they're wandering instead of growing. No power because we can't get research for batteries. Until we lose some of these negative moodlets we can't get anything done, and my options are none. Sit and deal with it. Let the game just run because I can't do anything. Turn the speed up, walk away, make a sandwich, come back and watch while my broken pawns autopilot.

I can appreciate the mood system but this is like the tornados. Nothing I can do about it, no way to mitigate it. This is flash storms if the rain wasn't delayed, just turned off entirely. It sounds a little petty and i know there are people out there better than me who can keep their pawns happy in a dank and dingy barracks, but for the not absolute hardcore this just doesn't work.

[Lexa]

To make matters worse, arresting a pawn no longer interrupts their mental breaks if its a mental break without a target. That sad wandering guy with plague? Will get right back up from his prison bed and sad wander in prison.

I really hate how these changes force me to use blunt force trauma on my own pawns.

[B@R5uk]

When game is broken save/load is the best cure.

[Pangaea]

Is this about the lack of toilet paper?

[LWM]

Is this about the lack of toilet paper?

Heh.  Very good.

I wonder if there might should be two sets of options for a storyteller: difficulty (danger) and difficulty (mood).

You know, a mod that scales down all negative mood modifiers would be fairly easy to make!

[Breadbox]

I don't get why so many design decision of the game seem intent on taking all control away from the player and frustrating them.

Sad wandering is a 'Minor' mental break yet it's usually way more detrimental or dangerous than tantrum or even catatonic breakdown. At least it's either over in a few seconds or they stay in their room instead of wondering into danger.

I think mental breaks could use a rebalance in severity, sad wandering is just obnoxious in that they last FOREVER and they doesn't so much as react even as their eyes get pecked out by ostriches. Being hit by hostile unit should pre emptively end sad wandering without the catharsis mod buff imo.

[LWM]

"Oh, the world is full of pain and misery.  Come ye ravens, pluck my eyes out, for what's the point of living anyway?  Or ostriches, close enough."

But yes, once they get actually injured (at a minimum), if it's a "minor break", they should be running the F away.

[gCvdA]

There is also the idiotic situation where pawns are in combat and should be scared shitless, but decide to go on a food binge because the environment is unsightly and they just saw two unrelated corpses, wandering into the line of fire and kill themselves.

You can't have a mood system only be realistic when it's detrimental to the player. The pawns are probably going to get PTSD from watching their friends get their brains blown out, but definitly not from "oh fuck there's so much trash on the ground and I haven't played poker in a day despite the fact that if I did I'm probably dead now"

[B@R5uk]

...Come ye ravens, pluck my eyes out, for what's the point of living anyway?..

There is a saying in Russian "Would my eyes see it not!" which is commonly accompanied by a facepalm. In this case this saying's applied quite literally.

[fritzgryphon]

There is also the idiotic situation where pawns are in combat and should be scared shitless, but decide to go on a food binge because the environment is unsightly and they just saw two unrelated corpses, wandering into the line of fire and kill themselves.

The game could use combat-related mood modifiers in general, they just don't exist.

In combat, the peacetime moodiffs would go away, or be heavily reduced.  Then combat ones would be dominant, and they would cause the breaks.  These could include:

I was hit by a weapon recently -5 (flat)
I took x damage (-x/5)
An ally died near me (-10)
A projectile passed through or landed in my tile (-projectiledamage / thesumofmyarmor)
A melee enemy is near me (-proximity x threatlevel / thesumofmyarmor)
I am currently injured (-health / totalhealth * 5)

Some of these would also exist as opposites for positive buffs.  "An enemy was killed +5".

Then your colonists would have new mental breaks, like "flee", "cower", or old ones like berserk or sadistic rage, depending on their traits.  If battles go poorly, you would gradually lose control over your troops until they rout, just like real life.

Ostensibly the game is not primarily a combat game, and combat suppression is ignored.  But that is little comfort when, even though combat makes up a few percent of total game time, it accounts for 99% of the colony losses.

Not that the current system isn't funny though.  Last straw:  "I'm cold", so tantrum a mortar shell.

[Hatti]

There is a almost insta snapout button in vanilla. Its called "Meele Attack" 

[5thHorseman]

You can't have a mood system only be realistic when it's detrimental to the player.

Replace "mood" and "realistic" with pretty much any other noun and adjective that work together and you've got the reason I stopped playing this otherwise fun game.

It seems like every change they make is to make it harder to actually enjoy the game. Not play. Enjoy. People complain for years that their pawns walk away form a table, eat, then complain that they didn't eat at a table. That's not fixed. But if someone figures out a way to *gasp* kill a raider without taking any damage? MUST PATCH THAT OUT NOW.

Sorry. Unrelated rant is unrelated. Please carry on.

[LWM]

...Come ye ravens, pluck my eyes out, for what's the point of living anyway?..

There is a saying in Russian "Would my eyes see it not!" which is commonly accompanied by a facepalm. In this case this saying's applied quite literally.

Can you share the original saying?  Because I need to add that to my vocabulary.