Is There any Point in Reducing Resitence?

[Nuggs]

I don't personally feel like there is much of a point to it.I get that its supposed to make your recruitment chance easier the lower the prisoners resistence is or whatever. But if thats the case, wouldnt you just go for recruiting attempts right off the bat? Since reducing resistence takes so long to do anyway it seems like you would spend around the same amount of time just trying to recruit them straight off. But i could be worng. I'm just curious if there is actually any reason to reduce resistence before trying to recruit a prisoner. Seems like reducing resistance doesnt help give you that much of a higher chance to recruit either every time ive done it.

[MortVent]

It helps level speech

So even if you don't intend to recruit a prisoner you can use them to level your warden's speech stat.

I do it at times before releasing them, just to level it up for better trade prices (I try to keep a couple pawns with high speech so if one is sick/wounded the others can do it)

[HunterSilver]

You can't attempt to recruit someone until you break their resistance.

[stevasaur]

Take a seat around the campfire folks, it's Rimworld history time.

In the Alpha versions of Rimworld, there wasn't any resistance; prisoners just had a fairly static recruitment chance, and your pawns would start trying to recruit them immediately, but at a significantly lower chance of success than the average nowadays.

But in Beta 19, this got changed to the current resistance + recruitment chance system, where first you break the resistance, then start recruitment attempts. However, folks wanted a way to train social, so they would capture prisoners they didn't actually want to recruit, break their resistance, then let them go, to be replaced with new prisoners.

However, this process was micro-heavy and folks would forget, and they'd end up with a pyromaniac drug addict with brain scars "joining" their colony. So the Reduce Resistance option was added as a way to automate the process. It isn't any faster than regular recruitment: all it does is allow your pawn to practice social without accidentally recruiting undesirable pawns.

[gimmethegepgun]

Reduce resistance simply means that they will break their resistance without attempting to recruit them afterwards. As stated above, this is useful for leveling Speech on pawns you don't want to recruit, but it's also useful for readying drug addicts for recruitment without recruiting them for the moment. Breaking resistance can take a very long time if they're a different tech level than you, so reducing their resistance while they're in withdrawal can help you get them more quickly once they kick their addiction.