Ideology Roles/Specialist discussion - what's the best/worst?

[Hykal]

In my current run I'm running a transhumanist/techpriest-esque colony. I chose Research specialist and Production specialist as I think that makes the most sense. Here's my current views.

The bread and butter: The Leader and the Moral Guide are easily two of the best. ''

The Leader can give speeches like Royalty noble pawns and Command Drive to make a pawn go faster. They can have a combat boost to make pawns fight better as long as other pawns are nearby.

Accuse is deceptively useful. If your colony has Charity as an Essential precept, you are more or less required to save people that are running away. However, with Accuse, you can start a bogus trial, giving said pawn the Guilty status and more or less banishing or executing them without a debuff (assuming your Ideology is cool with executions).

The Moral Guide is also the single thing that ensures other pawns can convert to your Ideology. Preach Health is great for speeding up a pawn's healing or if they've got an infection or a disease. Reassure just ensures a pawn is happy with their current Ideology but a well run colony more or less never requires it. Counsel is AMAZINGLY good, it can cancel out a negative thought (a dead relative, etc) by giving the pawn a buff equal to the negative. So if the pawn has a -20 from a dead parent, you can use Counsel to counteract that.

You do need high Social for both roles which more or less makes Social one of the most useful skills in the game so far.

Production Specialist has an ability to make your other pawns to work faster and requires a pawn to have 6 Construction and 6 crafting. Each item they build/craft has a +1 to its equality, so a Normal Assault Rifle becomes a Good Assault Rifle. It does disable stuff like haul/clean/cook but that's fine. It's basically a stronger version of Tortured Artist without the need of mental breaks.

Research Specialist however kinda sucks. It just makes your pawn, and the ability makes other pawns, research faster. It's something you want to give to a pawn early in the game. Not so useful for normal pawns but I assume it's great for tribal playthroughs. At some point, my Researcher gets the role stripped from her because she's already a passionate researcher with 18 Intellect. If it makes the scanners get double the locations/nodes, it might be worth it but otherwise, you don't really need this one.

Has anyone tried Melee and Ranged Specialists? I hear you can do some crazy stuff with the latter if you've got a pawn with Trigger-Happy and use its ability. Not sure how good Melee is, the Berserker thing lasts a short time and your Dodge already caps at 50% anyway.

[Astasia]

Mining, Research, and Plants are mostly the same, +70% speed for the task and an aura that adds +40% to nearby colonists. These bonuses are multiplicative, and if you have two of the specialists working together their auras affect each other, giving them a bonus of like x2.4 speed over what they would have otherwise at their skill level. Add work drive to them and they reach work speeds normally only achievable with the most OP of mods before. I feel like they are all quite strong and fun to play with.

Production and Ranged specialists are truly OP though. Production specialist allows you to spam out masterwork and legendaries without an inspiration. With one of those everything in your base can be legendary quality pretty easily.

Ranged specialist has -50% aim time with an -40% aim time aura. These are additive not multiplicative, meaning with 2 ranged specialists next to each other with their aura turned on they have -90% aim time. It's nuts. Stack the leader combat aura buff and your colonists shred enemies.

I haven't tried the medical or melee specialists, other than a test I did to confirm the medical specialist ability was broken a few days ago.

[CC]

There is a guide "ranking" them. I like Production for obv reasons. Ranged/melee are ok, but I take any boost in melee over a ranged boost.

[Zane87]

The medical specialist can be great as well if you mod to fix the immunity drive ability, as it's basically a panic button for infections and the general medic buffs help quite a bit.

The animal specialist likewise helps with taming and it's useful in colonies focused on that. Plus it can calm a maddened animal so 1 less manhunter, but I honestly don't see the usefulness there (unless it's a maddened trumbo?).

The issue with those 2 is... You can only have 2 specialist slots and ranged + production are easily the best, by very far, with plants and maybe mining being a viable alternative.

Animals is situational, medical you only really need 1 or 2 anyway, research saves some time but that's really it and while melee probably is extremely powerful, who really wants to rather go melee than ranged in general anyway and thus in that case you rather have ranged specialists anyway.

Therefore, 2 are OP, 2 are very good and the rest just pales in comparison

[Cat®]

There is no doubt in my mind leader and spiritual leader are the two best. Production specialist is also pretty dang good and recommended if available.

The two I have big issues with is medical and melee; medical is amazing but comes at the cost of pacifism which can be crippling for a colony in the long-term. I'd be very worried about wealth issues. Melee is neat but risking friendly fire, if I have understood their berserk ability right, seems like a way to turn your best fighter into a raider. Not obligatory to use it but if you aren't I'd probably settle for not using it at all.

Shooting specialist in contrast is fine if your colony is doing well enough to field a dedicated soldier; they shoot good and help others shoot good-erer; nothing to complain about there.

Animal\Plant\Mine\Researcher seems situational to me with no strong case one way or another. They're strong, but you pick them based on whether they fit into the colony rather than because their bonuses are worth having. But if you can fit them they're definitely nice; just not leader or spiritual leader nice.

[Hykal]

From what I gather, Melee Specialist should be something akin to Ranged Specialist, they should make other Melee fighters tougher. Maybe it gives buffs to pain resistance, uncapped dodge, or move faster.

Kinda wished handheld shields are a thing in vanilla so they can bite their shields like beserkers. They're like fire and forget animals except you can't calm them down.

[Cormac]

it always depents how/what you are playing, right?
do you play as a canibalistic tribe with more than enough "food supply influx", neither farming nore ranching sounds interesting.
do you play on an open field with nearly no mountains? suddenly, the miner uses all its usefullness.
if you play on a lower difficulty because you add a chalange by your idiology (i.e.: mining disallowed), the combat specialists loses some of their interest.

it always depents on the kontext of your colony, and based on how you play, some of them might become extrem usefull while others loses any usefullness

[Makeithappen]

I didn't think to add or remove roles. I have only the miner specialist in this playthrough. I wanted to try the combat roles another time. If I remove the nudist thing I could get human primacy and get production specialist. I had no idea how OP production specialist was.
I am getting bored with the nudist thing. I really want some clothes now. Thought I was limited on my rituals. I didn't realize i could have 6.

[qualified turtle ship]

IMHO the passive +7 boosts are really the only reason to go for melee specialists.

The berserke ability is limited and a double edged sword. The way it works is that your pawn goes on a berserke mental break and for 3 hours basically function like a released animal and is no longer player controlled. Not useful for melee blocking or picking off high value targets nor is it all that good at keeping them alive. Its usefulness is very situation. Bc it is treated as a mental break there is no way to turn it off... so if the raiders runaway through something dangerous you left on the map like a mech cluster or bugs, your beserked pawns will chase after them until the entire 3 hours is up.