prioritize self-preservation before other tasks.

[keylocke]

so i've noticed that a colonist is hungry or sleepy and is on the brink of going batshit crazy.
but instead of eating or sleeping, he prioritizes firefighting, healing the sick, feeding the sick, feeding the prisoners.

those are generally the tasks that seems to override sleeping and eating, which is fine if that character currently has high morale..

but maybe they should change this so that if morale is below 50% or if they're starving or if their HP is below 50% while bleeding.. then they should prioritize self preservation!

this "self-preservation" function should also activate while they are currently doing other tasks..

ie :

they're hauling something faraway from base, then they got hungry and their morale is too low.. then "self-preservation" activates to cancel the current task and focus on getting relevant stats back to normal..

basically, if morale drops below 50%, automatically focus on eating/sleeping/staying near flower patches away from corpses/etc (in that order. the sequence is important. we don't want starving colonists to sleep and die of starvation. while sleeping usually removes negative effects from tiredness while having one of the biggest boost on morale compared to other activities)

the gist is :
if morale is less than 50% or character is starving or HP is below 50% while bleeding = activate self-preservation function

[stefanstr]

Yes, that would definitely be useful. In general, the auto-priorities should follow the Maslow's need hierarchy as closely as possible, I think.

One thing that might be a problem is that if every pawn re-checks their priorities constantly, it would possibly degrade performance with a lot of pawns on the map.

[BetaSpectre]

It could just start checking X amount of time after its eaten. So instead of checking 12 times a day it might be just once or twice.

[Cr0ss0vr]

or, alternatively, it would use the pre-existing "mood" counter to check what it needs, so if the mood drops below, say 30%... self-preservation function kicks in and asks "available food\bed?" if not, carry on, otherwise go do self-preservation action...

There's already checks involved in the beds (it says "Colony members need beds" on the bottom right if someone needs a bed, so if this isnt the case, there's a bed available, also, just check stockpile for food (already listed on the top right, just do a search through that)

[keylocke]

yep, most of the triggers for self-preservation are already there..

health check, morale check, hunger check, tiredness check.. etc..

all it really needs is to add a call in those checks to run the self-preservation function.

[kingtyris]

This, this, so much this. My colonists need to stop killing themselves through stupidity.

[tarickstonefire]

Bought this today and have enjoyed watching my first five colonies all die to death, but now I'm getting the hang of it it's most frustrating to watch them die of starvation especially when they do it while making 25 meals in a row.

o_O

[Coenmcj]

Bought this today and have enjoyed watching my first five colonies all die to death, but now I'm getting the hang of it it's most frustrating to watch them die of starvation especially when they do it while making 25 meals in a row.

o_O

It's always frustrating when they're going all lemmings on us.
I have a colony going at the moment where they'll run around my meal room building things and harvesting food, and instead of picking up a meal and eating it, they'll go and eat raw food.

Or... the more traditional "WHAT?! There's a battle going on!? I ABSOLUTELY MUST go and collect that single piece of silver on the opposite side of the map!"

[ciditi]

It might be nice as a selectable sanity check for each survivor.  In my current colony I have a few people that can operate at a mental break soon status and others that will quickly go from soon to imminent and then break and start wandering around or shoot up the place.

I agree that a battle mode might be nice.  Just something to activate that would tell undrafted colonists to concentrate on tasks within the home region and forget about those prepacked survival meals across the map that need hauling.

[KarolineDianne]

I just had a colonist today who was chopping down a tree, and utterly refused to STOP chopping the tree, even as a mad boar was goring her in the legs.

She was very determined to finish her job before defending herself.

Silly AI making colonists get themselves killed, again.