Hearing stat should affect aiming time/be useful in some way

[its so balatrover]

Hearing currently does nothing if the pawn in question isn't trading, but it's essential in the real world for situational awareness and ergo important for combat. Hearing something before you see it will help you be aware of it earlier and expect where it's coming from, and the hearing stat should reflect this.
Impaired hearing should increase the aiming time for a pawn by a not-insignificant amount, say 25% at 0% hearing capacity (values are up for debate). A deaf pawn will have no idea there's a raider coming around the corner until he sees them and that reduces their reaction time, thus increasing aim time.
Conversely a pawn with over 100% hearing stat should have aim time reduced (by how much I'm not sure, let's say 10% for 125% hearing as that's the max currently possible in vanilla, maybe 15% at 150% if archotech ears will be a thing) as having adept hearing will allow one to listen for certain sounds in an otherwise chaotic environment and be prepared before the threat emerges.
The obvious way to push hearing past 100% is to use bionic ears, but I think Consciousness stat should also affect hearing. It's more difficult to make out sounds in your environment when you're in pain, drugged, or otherwise below peak performance, and this would balance out the hearing buff as it's now dependent on Consciousness like other important combat stats (i.e Moving and Manipulation). Likewise increased consciousness will also positively affect hearing like it affects all the other stats.
LMK what you think. I dislike having stats on a pawn that do absolutely nothing if they aren't filling a very specific niche i.e Talking and Hearing, and making these more relevant to a pawn's capacities seems like a fitting and realistic choice as the game is already simulating body part and organ damage.

[Ann☆ﾟ.*･｡]

situational awareness and the ability to detect nearby enemies or animals with hearing is not important, at least for the players, who is basically a god that can see your base surroundings. though if you want it to be better, bionic ears could improve/reduce social outcome, for example reduce mood change when being insulted (translating those bad insults into less insulting little banter with special hi-tech language machine) or gain small mood bonus by playing music in the ear.

[Astasia]

Ya doesn't make sense to me. If you have proper base defenses and know where the enemy is going to enter from, not being able to hear shouldn't significantly reduce the speed you shoot at them. If anything it could almost be argued to be the opposite, as a deaf shooter is not going to be distracted by the sounds of gunshots. There's a reason people use ear plugs during any sort of recreational shooting. Colonists could also be using some sort of HUD and AI assistant to help with things like situational awareness and indicators of where sound is coming from and what people are saying, this is something any mobile phone can do today.

As far as the importance of hearing, it has a significant effect on multiple social stats and animal taming/training. Social impact is a skill all pawns use for normal conversations and determines the power of the opinion modifier for social interactions, with poor hearing the effect of the opinion modifiers applied by that colonist are reduced causing other colonists to like them less. Colonists without hearing also can't get mood bonuses from music, or I think gain recreation from playing instruments. So having poor/no hearing is a bad thing on any colonist. The only thing that doesn't exist is a reason to have above 100% hearing, but bionic ears are still useful to fix the "disfigured" status of a colonist that has lost an ear without the penalties to hearing of the cochlear implant.

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by soulja boy:

...LMK what you think. I dislike having stats on a pawn that do absolutely nothing if they aren't filling a very specific niche i.e Talking and Hearing, and making these more relevant to a pawn's capacities seems like a fitting and realistic choice as the game is already simulating body part and organ damage.

I agree in principle - I dislike "empty" base attributes/stats when they should, or could, be logically applied to... stuffs.

That's doubly true for penalties. IOW - Attributes/stats should have "meaning" and their significance should be highlighted when they're lacking.

eg: A character can't tie their shoes without fingers.

But, in Rimworld, we ain't go no shoes...

So, there's some game-mechanic stuffs to consider - How much should those things matter in terms of effecting/affecting gamplay.

I think Hearing is lacking enough, and should be significant enough, to warrant some kind of reactive modifier. IOW - It wouldn't prevent things that aren't directly related, but it may produce something in something that could be related in certain conditions.

Aiming time may be a good choice.

But, I think a defensive penalty might be the better choice. For one, it's not going to be so very visible to the player and prompt a relative number of /rant posts... For another, it doesn't come into play until a bad thing has already happened - Getting shot/shot at. (Shooting at people and stuffs is always a net positive.)

But... I don't think we have any defenses that can be easily penalized. (Melee Dodge, maybe)

There's also no real "reaction time" or some kind of initiative pulse to work with.

In the above train-of-thought approach, you choice of "Aim Time" seems to be a decent compromise.


But... hoo-boy... Imagine the anger of some players as their pawn takes too long to get a bead on the enemy that finally kills them. That "aiming" animation taking a suspiciously long time for reasons unknown to them... the player screaming at their pawn to "shoot," the anxiety build-up, then the discovery that they "choosed porly" in their pawn selection for weapons, and then the rush to scream at you for ever suggesting such a thing on the forums... worth every byte in the patch...

The "REEEEEEEEeeee" sound you hear will be from the Cochlear Implant they decided not to buy from the Trader.

[its so balatrover]

Originally posted by Ann☆ﾟ.*･｡:

situational awareness and the ability to detect nearby enemies or animals with hearing is not important, at least for the players, who is basically a god that can see your base surroundings. though if you want it to be better, bionic ears could improve/reduce social outcome, for example reduce mood change when being insulted (translating those bad insults into less insulting little banter with special hi-tech language machine) or gain small mood bonus by playing music in the ear.

it's important for your PAWNS, not the player. ofc the player knows where enemies are but the player can't shoot them. pawns will only start aiming at a target once it's in their vision, and reducing aim time with hearing would be the equivalent of "I hear someone coming around the corner so I should train my weapon on that area."

[Astasia]

Pawns are drafted and told where to stand and where to fire and when to shoot though, with quite some accuracy, so that even colonists without eyes have a reasonable chance of hitting enemies. You can consider this the effects of the player being an archotech AI fully controlling the pawns, or some visual/audio network that every colonist is hooked into and listening to receiving information from cameras and orders from "somebody."

A colonist standing in formation waiting for the enemy would already have their weapon drawn and ready and wouldn't need to wait to hear "foot steps" from 20-30+ meters away around the corner of a wall to get ready. Aiming time is also a mechanic of every single shot they fire, not just the first shot in combat, so even in other cases where you are correct and hearing could help a pawn be more aware of a threat, it wouldn't apply to the aiming time of every shot of that fight. Like the standard weapon with the highest aiming time is the sniper rifle, people sniping with a sniper rifle are generally well out of hearing range of the enemy.

Now if there was an "unholster time" mechanic, where colonists took some amount of time to ready their weapon when drafted or first entering combat, and you wanted to say hearing should affect that, I could agree with that.

[The Blind One]

Hearing stat should affect social interactions and related activities such as bartering imho.

If someone is deaf or bad in hearing it makes interacting with them socially much harder and is a big hindrance to social life for most hearing impaired folks.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by The Blind One:

Hearing stat should affect social interactions and related activities such as bartering imho.

If someone is deaf or bad in hearing it makes interacting with them socially much harder and is a big hindrance to social life for most hearing impaired folks.

It does though. Both of those things.