The point of hearing

[Bosh]

So I used a mod to irradiate my colonist and how he's completely deaf. The thing is, nothing seems to have changed at all. He can still talk to other colonists and work as normal. Does hearing only matter when trading with other factions and the like?

[Demon of Razgriz]

Well, are you sure the mod actually made him deaf? It might say he is, but did it actually change anything?

[Talesin]

Hearing affects negotiation, trade prices, social impact on other colonists, taming animals and training animals.

So yeah hearing is only needed if its a pawn with high social or animal skill.
Everyone else can be deaf and it wouldn't have any impact on your game at all.

[Bosh]

Originally posted by Demon of Razgriz:

Well, are you sure the mod actually made him deaf? It might say he is, but did it actually change anything?

Well seeing as his hearing is at literally 0%, I'd say he's pretty deaf.

[Demon of Razgriz]

Originally posted by Bosh:

Originally posted by Demon of Razgriz:

Well, are you sure the mod actually made him deaf? It might say he is, but did it actually change anything?

Well seeing as his hearing is at literally 0%, I'd say he's pretty deaf.

What I meant was that did the mod mess up and not actually make the mechanical changes behind the scenes to make him count as deaf as far as the game is concerned.

[Bosh]

Originally posted by Demon of Razgriz:

Originally posted by Bosh:

Well seeing as his hearing is at literally 0%, I'd say he's pretty deaf.

What I meant was that did the mod mess up and not actually make the mechanical changes behind the scenes to make him count as deaf as far as the game is concerned.

I don't know what you mean by "mechanical changes". Both ears have damaged hearing as an intentional side-effect of the mod, which reduces hearing by 50% for each ear, totalling 100% for total deafness. You'd think that since that's sort of only half-deafness for each each ear the total hearing would be 50%, but eh, Rimworld does stuff like that.

[Demon of Razgriz]

Originally posted by Bosh:

Originally posted by Demon of Razgriz:

What I meant was that did the mod mess up and not actually make the mechanical changes behind the scenes to make him count as deaf as far as the game is concerned.

I don't know what you mean by "mechanical changes". Both ears have damaged hearing as an intentional side-effect of the mod, which reduces hearing by 50% for each ear, totalling 100% for total deafness. You'd think that since that's sort of only half-deafness for each each ear the total hearing would be 50%, but eh, Rimworld does stuff like that.

What I mean by mechanical changes is actually changing the coding of the pawn. Normally a player should never see or even be concerned with the coding behind a game, but I have seen mods that mess up occasionally and make the graphical UI changes to make you think they took effect, but they actually haven't.

[Astasia]

In this case there is no code to mess up. Colonists function based on their stats, and the stat display isn't a visual layer, so reducing a stat no matter how it's done will have the same impact.

As Talesin mentioned though there is just very little that hearing impacts in the game, just social interactions. Though social impact is fairly important to colony cohesion, low social impact reduces the point gain of chatting and deep talks, and I think also lovin, but that said hearing is also a much smaller factor on it than social skill with only a 0.3 weight, so a total loss of hearing is only going to be like a 30% drop there.

As a side note the effect of hearing on all related stats also caps at 100%, so there is no reason to ever go above normal hearing levels. It is a very low value stat in the game.