Mental Breaks are slightly irritating

[Sphinxthegamecrasher!]

Before any of you start telling me "Git gud" or "Realism", hear me out.

Mental Breaks are one of my most and least favourite parts of Rimworld and is the sole reason why I sometimes personally snap and turn on developer mode just to turn one off

The reasoning is a bit.. odd though.
Its not that they happen during combat
Nor is it that they happen from the smallest thing
Its that they are sometimes completely unrelated

During a firefight and being suppressed to high hell, bleeding from several bullet holes and shoving medicine to your ally who suddenly has no heart?
Anyone would go crazy

But why the hell does it say "Final Straw: Unsightly enviroment" or even worse, the dreaded "Ate without table"

Yeah theres mods that change that and make them more realistic, but those features will never be removed because its a fine addition and another part that makes Rimworld such a great game, but the problem comes from how its simply unpredictable *as a player*

Is it a coding issue on the game's part? Is it an intentional feature? Or is it simply to annoy players like me who enjoy having things be logical and clear
Its not even close to being unheard of to break during combat and just.. stand up from your cover

But I have never heard of anyone say it was because they had a cold spot in their MRE yesterday

P.S. This is why mods like Adrenaline and Grim Reality exists and why I cant play the game without them anymore

[kongkim]

Its not unpredictable, if you look at the mood bar there are some treshholds. if they are under them there is a change of mental breakes. And the lower the mood the larger chance.
So manage their mood and its not a problem.

Ofc. its harder in the early game then later :)

[Robo]

The mood system as it stands is to primarily produce drama and conflict throughout gameplay, which conflict is a requirement for a story to exist in the first place. Not only that, its the only feature in the game that adds an internal threat, which is important since your colonists can't plot against each other without a bit of handwaving (Murderous rage exists, but it's more of a literal mental break than an actual plotting). Let's not forget that RimWorld is heavily inspired by Dwarf Fortress, which I believe Tynan himself said that Boatmurdered was a foundation for RimWorld's inspiration.

I also use Grim Reality, and I can admit that the mod does neuter some of the storytelling potential, but I believe that the vanilla mood system does a good job at producing conflict which most of the community seems to be fond of.

[brian_va]

It's just showing you the final mood hit that triggered it, not the 20 other debuffs that put them in the position of being triggered by eating without a table. Fix a few of the obvious issues, throw in a few positive buffs and breaks will be rare.

[Astasia]

Publicado originalmente por Sphinxthegamecrasher!:

Mental Breaks are slightly irritating

They are supposed to be. It's a punishment mechanic teaching you to avoid doing something. It's like dying in a RPG, causing a traffic jam in a city builder, or burning out a wire in an engineering game. Managing mood is an important part of this game and other colony management games, you are meant to be keeping an eye on colonist mood and doing what you can to keep them happy and out of mental break range. It's entirely possible to play an entire run of RimWorld without a single colonist having a mental break. Look at any negatives and solve them or counter them with bonuses. If you don't like mental breaks avoid recruiting colonists with negative traits related to mood or mental break threshold, those are more difficult to deal with but still possible to keep happy.

Publicado originalmente por Sphinxthegamecrasher!:

But why the hell does it say "Final Straw: Unsightly enviroment" or even worse, the dreaded "Ate without table"

That's just flavor text and means nothing. Mental breaks are caused by overall mood being below the mental break threshold for a period of time. When a mental break happens it just picks a random/recent mood debuff and says it was "the final straw" just to add some story to it. Mental breaks are never caused by "ate without a table" they are generally caused by several stacked mood debuffs on top of "ate without a table."

Mental breaks do not exist to cause drama or force chaos into your game, they are entirely avoidable and are meant to be avoided. The question is not "why do they exist" or "why are they annoying," it's "why am I getting mental breaks and how do I stop them" because you CAN stop them, entirely, just through normal gameplay.

Publicado originalmente por kongkim:

Ofc. its harder in the early game then later :)

I think it's generally the opposite. Early game colonists have low expectations with a huge mood bonus that allows you to get away with a lot of... negligence. As you play and build up wealth, expectations rise and you really need to be paying attention to colonist mood to keep them from breaking. I think a lot of people get used to low expectation bonuses and then start to get mental breaks in mid game "without changing things" and think it's something that's just meant to happen after a point, without realizing there are a lot of things they should be doing to manage mood by then.

[Wasted]

managing mood IS the game

[eMYNOCK]

Publicado originalmente por Astasia:

I think it's generally the opposite. Early game colonists have low expectations with a huge mood bonus that allows you to get away with a lot of... negligence. As you play and build up wealth, expectations rise and you really need to be paying attention to colonist mood to keep them from breaking. I think a lot of people get used to low expectation bonuses and then start to get mental breaks in mid game "without changing things" and think it's something that's just meant to happen after a point, without realizing there are a lot of things they should be doing to manage mood by then.

the easiest examples... recreation, food and sleeping places.

the wealthier and more settled in the people get the more and different recreational buildings they will want... they eventually will "demand" better food than just raw rice and simple meals... and they will demand their own bedroom... or at least really impressive barracks.

they don't want to run through dirt all day either... so they will ask for tidy floors.. ideally without blood stains.

i'd say.. as a rule of thumb.. if you "the player" don't want to life in your settlement.. why would your pawns want to life there either?

if i can't stand the place i have to life in its only natural that i will eventually break down.

[Veylox]

You're cheating because you can't manage mood, not because there's fluff text telling you about "ate without a table". That's coping. Just ignore it if you think it's not realistic enough, and tank the mental break without cheating anyway. If you erase it through cheats you're obviously never going to learn how to prevent it to begin with.

It is not unpredictable either, you just have to average out to a positive mood for your pawns and you can do that after learning how to mitigate the worst negatives and how to spread the best positives. Then you just check on the mood tab on a per-pawn basis from time to time when someone's getting low to figure out what isn't being automated well/what specific event is causing a disturbance.

Mood is a major threat, but definitely not one you have no control over, provided you learn how to deal with it

[Veylox]

As for the early vs late difficulty when it comes to mood, I feel like the game is at its easiest late-game, when you can still stack positives but the expectations can't go higher. Only at that point does the positives get a clear advantage, before that you're just on a mood rollercoaster trying to get the next big positive before you gain more expectation.

If you're really fast about it, you can start stacking huge cheap positives in the mid-game before your expectations go too high, and have real good mood for a few months, but you're still gonna run into trouble as long as expectations didn't reach +0 (or below 0 depending on ideology roles, royalty etc). When drugs come online you can stabilize your colony much easier, since you always have a back-up plan and a few days to fix things in case average mood starts to tank. I guess extreme wealth management in a barebones colony can also stabilize mood forever but it's a really annoying way to play since you just wait and basically progress nothing

[Sphinxthegamecrasher!]

For everyone here practically attacking me for "Coping" and "Just manage better" I would like to remind you I didnt say the system is bad or am I ignoring the huge "Mood" bar
What I am saying however is the messaging and presentation of the system is annoying more than the system itself. Most of you simply jumped to conclusions

As for the cheats, yes I am coping, but I also like to play games for enjoyment, and if things going right is my enjoyment, I dont see it as a problem

As for management, I think having armies of cleaning bots, organized storage, an enclosed mountainside fortress leading to every environmental aspect being in my hands, every recreational facility (and over four hours of designated rec time next to the 12 or so hours of "Anything" time), alongside as good of a drug, food and ideology support as my tech allows.

I know I am not the only one, and I know that every single person here has overlooked one or two things as far as mood goes such as that permanent bruise a pawn happens to have or a clumsy pawn breaking the chair they were sitting on causing them to for some reason stand away from the table and eat on the floor

My colony as of right now is as stable as possible with the only mood debuffs being dead allies, Neutral Supercharge, Pawn traits, "Disturbed sleep" since the hospitals are always active or the Sky-high/supreme expectations

The moodbar is fine, the system is fine, the presentation isnt. It sends mixed messages and sometimes forces a break the second the pawn reaches "minor" threshold
It has RNG and unpredictability outside of the shown system, that is why I called them "Irritating" not bad.

If it was just about "managing" the mental breaks it would be fine, since thats something that I dont have an issue with and frankly enjoy. I love seeing just one minor break alert and then seeing it vanish after i forced the pawn to go the ♥♥♥♥ to sleep or eat, But I dont love whatever creates the relative RNG

Last save was killed by one pawn going on a tantrum during a firefight.. And the target was the mortar shells.
I didnt reload the save, because said pawn had "Serious pain" despite being woundless, because I said "meh, the scars are expensive to heal"
I had three pawns left after the raid and they got clapped by a raid of hive next

But I did reload a save because a pawn got up from cover due to sad wander, stood in front of a charge sniper and got their head blown off... and their mood was debuffed by "Hungry" and "Outdoors" and they reached minor break threshold where the pawn next to them had like.. four bullet holes and was "Extreme break threshold"

[Sphinxthegamecrasher!]

P.S. Current hours? 1700 and counting

[InsertCoin]

No one was " attacking " you, they was just explaining the systems behind mood, you should know this if you have 1700+ hours as you said

[Veylox]

I don't know why you'd assume someone in minor break threshold shouldn't have a minor break if there's somone next to them in extreme break threshold. Everything's fine here. It's not even unrealistic, people also break over different triggers and at different times

If you don't like that the game uses a random moodlet debuff as the "last straw", just ignore it or mod out the last straw sentence

[Sphinxthegamecrasher!]

Publicado originalmente por InsertCoin:

No one was " attacking " you, they was just explaining the systems behind mood, you should know this if you have 1700+ hours as you said

Well you quite literally just used passive agressiveness to tell me no one is being agressive so...

Also there were a lot of good notes there and good points. I also know most of them which is what I explained in my message, countering the good notes with my own atleast somewhat good notes

And the game isnt only about realism, it shows that in a fair few examples. But once again, ignoring my point.
The rng, the arbitrary times at when a pawn freaks out, which is lethal in combat times when sometimes you have to have a person drop food next to another person so they can get out of their threshold and sometimes you being unable to spare the paranoia due to the hordes of explosive fire breathing mechanoid rats.. That is my point. Its annoying because it is randomized.
And if you have such a fantastic rimworld experience where you never have issues over mental breaks ever, please tell me how annoyed you are when things go down the toilet? If you say not at all then I would be inclined to call you a liar for the simple fact that humans arent 100% rational and everyone has their breaking point, as you literally just said. I came here to express an irritation and to see others' experiences, not to hear someone being an armchair general

[Wasted]

Publicado originalmente por Sphinxthegamecrasher!:

Publicado originalmente por InsertCoin:

No one was " attacking " you, they was just explaining the systems behind mood, you should know this if you have 1700+ hours as you said

Well you quite literally just used passive agressiveness to tell me no one is being agressive so...

Also there were a lot of good notes there and good points. I also know most of them which is what I explained in my message, countering the good notes with my own atleast somewhat good notes

And the game isnt only about realism, it shows that in a fair few examples. But once again, ignoring my point.
The rng, the arbitrary times at when a pawn freaks out, which is lethal in combat times when sometimes you have to have a person drop food next to another person so they can get out of their threshold and sometimes you being unable to spare the paranoia due to the hordes of explosive fire breathing mechanoid rats.. That is my point. Its annoying because it is randomized.
And if you have such a fantastic rimworld experience where you never have issues over mental breaks ever, please tell me how annoyed you are when things go down the toilet? If you say not at all then I would be inclined to call you a liar for the simple fact that humans arent 100% rational and everyone has their breaking point, as you literally just said. I came here to express an irritation and to see others' experiences, not to hear someone being an armchair general

try a lower difficulty maybe. on high difficulty its even more frequent. it can be a bit tedious even at times, but i enjoy the challenge. have to pause more often thats for sure. I will have mental breaks at the most inopportune times and they will be un stoppable, for example the pawn has a break then destroys something very valuable and there are no pawns near to stop them/

[Sphinxthegamecrasher!]

Publicado originalmente por Wasted:

try a lower difficulty maybe. on high difficulty its even more frequent.

Do you know if its how quickly they start their break from their mood hitting the "minor" level or if its just how often they do it?

Perhaps the challenge truly is in the unfairness, which is why I hold firm in that I dont think its a bad system, and which is why I truly can never rate the game a perfect 10, since I play the game for the strategizing and management portion, especially loving the part of figuring out how the hell am I gonna get through the current raid or catastrophe.. The breaking of valuable things is damn annoying tho it just feels petty sometimes lol

Also I wish I didnt have to pause so much since the game is chugging along at 120-150tps on a 120 mod and 10 colonist world (tho the drones do affect that unfortunately) and I just wanna get that one project finished man :c