We need to talk about mental breaks

[Jibbles]

Three days, five days, without knowing if there's a cap what's to prevent a mental break from going on indefinitely.

umm what... 3-5 days? Sure you don't have mods that would cause that issue? Anybody else want to confirm this?

[RicRider]

As others have said, I think Snap Out is the only solution to this one. I've tried more creative things like psychopath brawlers with wooden clubs to drag them into prison but it ended up with lost limbs and deaths so the novelty wore off quickly. Generally I've always thought the RimWorld default mental break mechanics are hysterically overblown so I always modded this part of the game. I don't know if She Foxy's Grim Reality is updated yet or not but that was such a good mod for making things more realistic so they get less mental breaks and goes well with the Snap Out mod.

[RicRider]

come on, there must be a mod out there?

I wish caravans were not actually part of your colony, but like pawns that you could promote into 'caraveneer' status or something that would then become uncontrollable to you but be like friendlies on the map who are part of your faction. Most of the time they hang about maybe helping with hauling or wasting your food, but if you order them to go on a caravan or something they pack themselves and get off the map and deliver your goods or whatever. At any point you should be able to unpromote them too and bring them back to normal colonist status. I'd like to see caravans more automated and more mods like that new one Empires.

Set Up Camp is really great as well for getting rid of a lot of nonsense with caravans. It's just good if someone gets plague on the road you don't have to go and make a whole new colony and waste time loading that map just to tend someone with healroot. There's also Encounter Map Resources if you want something to do while someone is healing up from the flu and you've got bored miners around.

While there's a lot of mods that improve the whole experience once you've left the base, I haven't seen any that improve the packing. I'm not ashamed to admit I use dev mode sometimes to kick them out of the colony onto the road instantly depending on the circumstances and my desperation.

[fat cunt]

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.

conceptually, combat debuffs and "morale" would be a cool system. there's a bit of that with respect to how pawns react when on fire, but a "terror" or "suppression" system would add more depth to combat, and potentially expand the breadth of acceptable strategies. things like pawns actively moving away from thrown grenades, or adjusting their cover/breaking LOS when pinned down. rather than the binary "fighting to the death" and flipping to "fleeing RIGHT NOW" when one more pawn dies, there could be a gradual ramp up to that point. as more pawns die, perhaps desperation manifests as greater inaccuracy and time between shots, or the opposite, where pawns ignore survival and all mob a threat together in a berserker rage.

in any case, i'd say unpredictability in the way that enemy pawns act is only a good thing. anything other than pawns just throwing themselves into the meat grinder. even if you can't directly control it, "random behavior" analogous to mental breaks, but for combat, can be fun if it feels like genuine agency. if it feels like human-like behavior (because humans can be irrational in the moment), it's worthwhile.

[Ukas]

It must be the gazillionth thread gamers are complaining why the exact moment, when people loose their minds, doesn't make more sense. Come on. Read a book, understand better, sympathize more, be real, something. It is not a rational situation. Having a mental break when starving, or while seeing corpses during combat is actually very realistic scenario. But people who haven't starved, or haven't been in combat have hard time to grasp how it works in reality. It doesn't make any sense. Can be pretty idiotic. But it happens in millions of ways the game can't even start to simulate. It's called crazy exactly because it's crazy.

[ShadowKatt]

It must be the gazillionth thread gamers are complaining why the exact moment, when people loose their minds, doesn't make more sense. Come on. Read a book, understand better, sympathize more, be real, something. It is not a rational situation. Having a mental break when starving, or while seeing corpses during combat is actually very realistic scenario. But people who haven't starved, or haven't been in combat have hard time to grasp how it works in reality. It doesn't make any sense. Can be pretty idiotic. But it happens in millions of ways the game can't even start to simulate. It's called crazy exactly because it's crazy.

I don't have a problem with them making sense or not. You're right, crazy is crazy and sometimes the thing to set someone off is just that, the last straw. You know, there's a carpet of bodies outside, a psychic Ai overhead, the base is covered in blood, but can someone PLEASE tell me why no one in this god forsaken hellhole can bother to cook and we have to eat PASTE every day!?

My problem and the reason I started this thread is that there's nothing we can do about it anymore. If someone breaks they're just gone. They don't get hungry and fall over, they don't get tired and fall over. Arrest them and they stay broken. And they lose all sense of self preservation or will to live. Your options are let them wander, potentially to their doom the first time a mad rabbit pops up because half the time they won't even fight back, or go out there and beat them into submission. There's no middleground, no compromise, and for such a minor break, just wandering in a daze, it's potentially a death sentence since, as mentioned above, they'll continue to take care of their needs while they're broken and so there's nothing to stop them from going on until they just decide their over it...today? Tomorrow? Next week?

I'm not a youtuber, I don't have video evidence to back up my statements. All I can say is the longest break I've had was five days, and I've had several that went three. And I have no idea if there's any reason they couldn't go longer. We need something to mitigate these. Either a cap in the code or some kind of method, like integrating something like the Snap Out mod into the game(Not my first choice but might be the only one).

[Jibbles]

It must be the gazillionth thread gamers are complaining why the exact moment, when people loose their minds, doesn't make more sense. Come on. Read a book, understand better, sympathize more, be real, something. It is not a rational situation. Having a mental break when starving, or while seeing corpses during combat is actually very realistic scenario. But people who haven't starved, or haven't been in combat have hard time to grasp how it works in reality. It doesn't make any sense. Can be pretty idiotic. But it happens in millions of ways the game can't even start to simulate. It's called crazy exactly because it's crazy.

At the end of the day it's a game, so the mechanics should be fun over realism.  If you want to aim for realism then there's a lot I could easily point out that isn't realistic.  You tell people to understand cause these are harsh conditions, but look a pawn could break without seeing death, without going into combat, who isn't starving etc.  A pawn with kind trait can go on murderous rampage over something stupid and minuscule etc., it's inconsistent.   Truth be told, I think a lot of these things are here to get people talking.. So you can see the 1,000 post about a colonists losing their mind over a table & do something stupid & unrealistic that gets them killed etc. Let me tell how great the immersion is when you have an highly intellectual pawn beat up a room full of chemfuel. The problem is most of it is gimmicky so many players ask for better system or to have a bit more control. It gets old fast.

I don't get attach to my pawns cause of their skills or traits or things that they do.. I get attach cause I'm trying to keep them alive to spice up my game in some way, it's my "goal". If I treat them like meatbags then difficulty gets thrown out the window as there are always more pawns to show up. There's hardly any consequences approaching the game that way & I could see it not being rewarding by keeping them alive only to lose them to long mental breaks.

There's no middleground, no compromise, and for such a minor break, just wandering in a daze, it's potentially a death sentence since, as mentioned above, they'll continue to take care of their needs while they're broken and so there's nothing to stop them from going on until they just decide their over it...today? Tomorrow? Next week?

I'm not a youtuber, I don't have video evidence to back up my statements. All I can say is the longest break I've had was five days, and I've had several that went three. And I have no idea if there's any reason they couldn't go longer. We need something to mitigate these. Either a cap in the code or some kind of method, like integrating something like the Snap Out mod into the game(Not my first choice but might be the only one).

I'm very curious about the length of these breaks since this isn't the only place I heard about it.  I haven't been playing but ran a quick test the other day and didn't experience it, don't know if there's unstable version currently out there or if it's behind some conditions.  But it's pretty common for Tynan to sneak in changes in updates that would obviously piss off players without listing it in some patch notes. Those aren't usually up for debate unless it's an outright bug. People have requested the total opposite of that change. So at this point if it is true then I wouldn't be surprise if he gives some kind cheesy ability in royalty like psyche powers to disrupt mental breaks, something like that.   

[Ukas]

don't have time at the mo to answer all of your post but...

A pawn with kind trait can go on murderous rampage over something stupid and minuscule etc., it's inconsistent.

Have you seen the movie Falling Down? Also, about every serial killer is described by neighbors "he was a nice, silent guy"...

[Jibbles]

It's not like the only example I have under my sleeve.  Defending the mechanics with that kind of logic doesn't change the experience. It's still gimmicky.

[Lexa]

Lets not fuss about the details, the problem at hand here is that we have no option besides beating a pawn to near death to calm them down anymore. Even for minor breaks, which now suddenly became much worse than before. Was fine when they'd do that for a bunch of hours, collapsed and then got better but now it goes on for ages.

Might i remind you that a year in rimworld has only 60 days and a pawn wanderound around in sadness for 5 days is equivalent to a whole month being spent doing nothing at fucking all? Its not right.

[Bozobub]

At least, not for a minor break.

[8roads]

don't have time at the mo to answer all of your post but...

A pawn with kind trait can go on murderous rampage over something stupid and minuscule etc., it's inconsistent.

Have you seen the movie Falling Down? Also, about every serial killer is described by neighbors "he was a nice, silent guy"...

In rimworld, 'Psychopath' is the conflicting trait of 'kind'.
And why do you assume people don't read book?

[5thHorseman]

Have you seen the movie Falling Down?

I have not. Was it super boring because he went on a 5-day wandering spree due to his own choice to not eat at the table someone painstakingly set up near his walk-in freezer?

[LWM]

Have you seen the movie Falling Down?

I have not. Was it super boring because he went on a 5-day wandering spree due to his own choice to not eat at the table someone painstakingly set up near his walk-in freezer?

Where's the rolling around laughing face, anyway?  That was very well said.

[Ukas]

Have you seen the movie Falling Down?

I have not. Was it super boring because he went on a 5-day wandering spree due to his own choice to not eat at the table someone painstakingly set up near his walk-in freezer?

Where's the rolling around laughing face, anyway?  That was very well said.

Would have been if we weren't talking about murderous rampages.

Anyways, if your pawn does sad wandering for 5-days, you might want to check your mods. I haven't seen a 5-day mental break of any kind. Not even 3-day. Pretty sure not even 2. One pawn did wonder slightly more than one day.