Propagation of thoughts

[Thunder Rahja]

I don't know if this has been suggested yet, but I think it's a good change that would benefit Rimworld and add more depth.

How it is now: Steve just executed a prisoner, and his mood instantly dropped. But the rest of the colony knows, instantly, and their moods change too. How did Frank, who is mining deep into the mountain, hear about it as quickly as Joe, who was just outside the prison?

Steve would obviously be the first to know about the execution, so he'd have a negative mood impact. But as soon as he steps outside the prison, he and Joe talk, and Joe learns about what happened, and has a similar, but slightly lessened mood impact from hearing about it instead of seeing it first. Joe moves in to haul the body to the incinerator, but he passes by Frank on the way, who recognizes the prisoner from last week's attack and figures out that he was executed. All three of them talk about it while having lovely dinner, telling more colonists about what happened. However, the more down the line it spreads from Steve (the originator), the less impact (and/or duration) it has on other colonists, to a point. Think of how news changes depending on how many people have passed it along by word of mouth, while the witness gets the full effect of actually seeing it happen.

In order for this system to work, people should not react to hearing the same event twice. Each original thought will need to be assigned a unique ID of sorts to help with tracking who's already heard what. Thoughts should pass freely whenever two colonists talk, perhaps one one-way thought transfer per "chat", with the strongest discussed first.

This leads to the possibility of certain colonists avoiding mood changes from thoughts. If you have a segregated colony (i.e. beds and food for miners in the mountain, and houses next to crops in an open field), that would be a good way to demonstrate how this would work.

Additionally, depending on the personality of the person, it may affect him or her more or less than others.

[EarthyTurtle]

could be interested, though could end up being flawed if not done correctly. It might be the case that people who work in rather isolated conditions might never find out. Or it might end up getting self perpetuated where 1 person finds out twice and the cycle continues.

[EarthyTurtle]

Or it might end up getting self perpetuated where 1 person finds out twice and the cycle continues.

Read my fourth paragraph, sir.

Ah misread that my apologise.

[keylocke]

+1 on the idea of this thread.

i'm enjoying reading about these new ideas dealing with the internal problems of a colony,
since i've been playing tower defense ever since alpha 1. 

i would also like relationships like :
* someone's daughter got shot in the head and now lies comatose in bed. what should the parents do? how would the rest of the colony react?
* it's an emergency, someone's fiance got shot in the heart. would the guy donate his own heart to save her?
* etc..

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anyways, yea. the dude mining far off in the mountain shouldn't have ESP instant thought transmission. i like the way that some people may know something that others do not.