How to counter Hideous Environment when strip-mining?

[Gold♥Shield]

My pawns are constantly depressed because my map is 40% mountain and I'm strip mining them a base into the mountain. The immediate issue I'm noticing is the amount of filth and chunks littered everywhere but with the limited amount of pawns I have, cleaning and hauling isn't a top priority at the moment. I'm trying to smooth the walkways and walls as they progress and not digging out massive chunks at a time, but they are still depressed from the environment.

I set two of my pawns to basically just clean and haul at this point but it's still not enough. I have marble walkways everywhere between my buildings, torches illuminating the dark areas (not where I'm mining though), and flooring in all the buildings except my stockpile warehouses.

Any ideas?

[starbabylon]

I would not strip mine the whole base right away, but add rooms on a needed basis: freezer, dining room, small prison, small hospital/dormitory is enough to start with.
Smoothing raw rock/floor takes lots of time and is unnecessary imo too, at least in the beginning of a settlement. Flooring is not either, not yet.

set horseshoe recreation outside close by (build a roof where the colonists stand to throw the horseshoes) and concentrate on growing areas and hunting and build little bit by little bit.

Well, some players are way more experienced than me, but that's how I do things. And the more colonists you get, the more things you can do at the same time. Apparently, you are still short on manpower.

[Hunt Daddy]

What you are doing is a good start but if you are unable to keep the area that you are working at least neutral beauty by hauling and cleaning than you are moving too fast into the mountain to keep up with making it prettier. So you can mine less often and smooth, clean and haul more often if it is really affecting your pawns that much. You can also make a temporary home right outside the mountain and wait to start your mountain base until you have more pawn power. You can also just accept that your pawns will be upset until the area of the mine is complete and the risk of mental breaks that come with it. You can also put in some doors and some artwork, statues, monoliths, whatever to make the room more beautiful to combat the ugliness of the mine. It also pays to create small temporary utility rooms. If you make the room with chairs, a table, etc. than they won't run all the way home to eat a meal but go to the nearest table and get back to work. And if this temporary room also is prettier than it gives them a time in nice environment so they will be less depressed. Also, if in your mountain base you find areas that you can remove the roof from you should make this small area into a room where your pawns can go to see the sky and get rid of the been underground/inside forever debuff. You can even make this skyroom into a small garden and make it pretty. Finally if you have access to beer or psychite tea that can help you power through the ugly mining phase - I wouldn't use smokeleaf. It's cheap but it also makes your pawns work so slow. My current playthrough is also in a mountain range in the far north where it is permanent winter so I have been dealing with mining and making sure my colonists don't hate it too much. Also one more final thing, if you have a colonist with a passion for mining then only use that one as they will get a mood buff from doing something they like and that will help offset the ugly environment. Set everyone to do what they have a passion for if you can. Too bad NO pawns like hauling or cleaning.

[Gold♥Shield]

I guess I should have mentioned this isn't a brand new home. I already have a decent base set up. This is an expansion to continue my base since I can't go any further in the open without leaving myself massively exposed to raids.

I do like the idea of mining a little dining room - I hadn't thought of that before and that would remove the eating without a table debuff.

Will adding lights to the mining areas improve mood at all? They don't have the darkness debuff so I'm unsure if light will do anything for them.

[brian_va]

i've stopped smoothing walls, much faster to mine them out and replace with marble walls, only a 1 beauty hit. easily countered with some garbage art at some point. same for the floor.

Originally posted by Gold♥Shield:

Will adding lights to the mining areas improve mood at all? They don't have the darkness debuff so I'm unsure if light will do anything for them.

theyll work faster.

i also do the add room as needed approach. just kinda plan things out, where the freezer, storage, bedrooms and so are going to roughly be. you can always change things, but its easier if you get it roughly right from the start.

[Tohtori Leka]

The solution is simple. Just set cleaning and hauling top priority to everyone who isn't doing other crucial work like cooking, growing etc. so the mess will get cleaned as you go. Even your miners, so they mine out a tile and then clean up the mess and then continue mining if no one else gets to the job first.

[Raymond]

there is a way, but they are costly. You can just place down walls and floor as you mine, but it will cost you stone which aren't really that plenty, or you can smooth everything but they are also time consuming. Putting lights in the mine can also increase their mining speed, so they can spend lest time in there to get the job done.
the best way to counter this is to give your colonists better living condition, better food and/or drugs to help them tank the debuffs.

[SP1]

Imo my personal way is to have 1 dedicated colonist doing nothing but art sculpture all day so when they sleep or eat they get a mood bonus instead of a malus. This will take some time to build and take quite abit of early game resources but will be worth it instead of your colonist just throwing tantrums everywhere

Make sure you reroll your dedicated art colonist to have atleast 8 points in artistic to get good quality sculptures

[Sugar Show]

git gud.




I mean mine faster.