Little help :)

[Psycho Dad]

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1465310031201046648/BD5FABB9835951C46907EC8604A9F90DBB95BBEE/

I am having trouble keeping a good "balance" in keeping my pawns happy/working, I have a rec room with all types of rec...but for some reason a few of my pawns always seem to be Rec Depravied...I also have all drugs too. Anyone help me out little :)

[HunterSilver]

There are 3 reasons for pawns to become recreation deprived
1) They are away from the colony for a specific quest or on a caravan
2) They are bored with all current types of recreation
3) They cannot reach your current recreation items

I'm not sure exactly what types of recreation you have, but keep in mind that different recreation items qualify as the same form of recreation and not every type of recreation is available in the rec menu. Be sure to buy a telescope, make a musical instrument, and get a tv.

In the core game the different types of recreation are: Dexterity Play, Cerebral Play, Social, Solitary, Meditation, Music Play, Stargazing, Chemical, Eating, and TV Watching.

Items like the billiards table and horseshoes both satisfy Dexterity Play, so there's no reason to have both. Similarly, you only need a single type of drug to satisfy Chemical, having multiple is redundant. Chocolate is also a source of recreation but it's a bit expensive to grow given the amount of work it takes to plant and harvest it, compared to how little you get per harvest.

[brian_va]

also with that number of derps, youll likely need multiple sources of each rec. type given you've assigned most all of them to the same time slot.

[Jigain]

Originally posted by HunterSilver:

In the core game the different types of recreation are: Dexterity Play, Cerebral Play, Social, Solitary, Meditation, Music Play, Stargazing, Chemical, Eating, and TV Watching.

Just to nitpick a bit, I'm going to rewrite your list with the in-game designations, as well as sources in order of less to more joy per tick:

Dexterity play: Horseshoes / hoopstones, billiards
Cerebral play: Game of Ur, chess, poker
Social interaction: Social relaxation at any gathering spot (table / campfire)
Solitary relaxation: Skygazing / meditation / praying / going for walk / building snowman / visiting grave
Music: DLC music instruments
Telescope study: Using telescope
Chemical consumption: Any of the social or hard drugs
Food consumption: Chocolate
Television watching: Watching television, flatscreen television, megascreen television

Out of this list, Social and Solitary will pretty much always be available (or if you go out of your way never to build tables, only Solitary). Chemical isn't hard to fulfill either, beer is a low-tech research and can generally be made in large quantities with little work or ingredients.

Note on multiple-pawn objects:
Billiards tables, the most powerful of the Gaming Dexterity rec sources, can accomodate a maximum of two pawns at once. Due to the large size of these, it may be worth keeping a horseshoes pin or hoopstone ring, as these can be used by three pawns at once and have a much smaller footprint - although if you have the space, multiple billiards tables would be better, joy-wise.
Poker tables can be used by up to four pawns at once, twice as much as the chess table and game-of-ur board, so coupled with its more powerful recreation factor I'd always recommend building more poker tables than keeping lower-tier entertainment around.
Televisions are by far the easiest way to give recreation to a large number of pawns at once. Each pawn will require seating within the highlighted area of the television, but assuming you fill each square with a chair, tube televisions can accomodate 15 pawns at once, flatscreen televisions 30 pawns, and megascreen televisions a whopping 42 pawns at once. Do note that just using the chair does not give recreation, they need to be doing the activity "Watching television" to get the recreation from the TV. Thus you may want a dedicated room, or area of a room, for the TV so pawns do not occupy chairs for other recreational activities in order to watch TV.

(Le edit: Updated the list a bit due to faulty memory circuits)

[climbingeastofwinter]

Recreation is not the only form of mood modification. Reducing the number of negative mood factors can solve most mood management problems, but there are also plenty of cheap and easy things you can do to provide your colonists with more positive mood bonuses.

Colonists get mood bonuses from high comfort and high beauty surroundings. When asleep, comfort can be improved by sleeping in a high quality bed with a dresser and end-table nearby. While awake, using high comfort rating armchairs while using workbenches, recreation tables (poker table, chess table, game of ur board, etc) will go a long way towards keeping the 'Comfort' meter high out during their waking hours.
Beauty is an attribute of a room, but visible beauty from the tile a colonist is currently in each game tick will affect their perceived beauty meter, I believe. If you stockpile goods on every inch of floor space, your colonists are going to be affected by -15 modifiers all over the place and aren't going to be too happy with the overall beauty of their environment. If you keep your goods stored in shelves, that will eliminate the -15 item stored on floor penalty. Instead of having outside space be entirely grass/dirt, pavement, or crops, try placing 2x2 statues every here and there. Colonists will appreciate the beauty they provide to the surrounding tiles as they pass by. You can also line your walking paths with flower beds of roses, day lilies and dandelions, all of which will provide a small but constant source of 0 skill required planting work for your colonists, while also providing a solid beauty boost to the area. Indoors, you can use a well-crafted planter and pop flowers into it to create beauty both from the item itself and from the flowers.

I like to use a combination of high quality wooden and marble statues, which tend to have low values but respectable beauty values, along with flowers (which don't really add much colony value at all) to create a colony with a moderate to high average beauty value per tile. Low quality statues and furniture get picked up and hauled off by caravan to the nearest settlement for trade.

[Psycho Dad]

right...however i see in the description where they tell you where they are board at...and says that each category drops by 7% each day however there is no actual bar or anything that shows the actual level of each pawns happiness so i can see where I am needing more rec time.

[Psycho Dad]

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1465310031201816284/2D58EBD0C9CDDDEF845F25EB409F446A22A12C1B/

My rec room...please be gentle this is just how I like to play :)

[HunterSilver]

Originally posted by Jigain:

Just to nitpick a bit, I'm going to rewrite your list with the in-game designations, as well as sources in order of less to more joy per tick:

Appreciate it =)

Originally posted by policemn_24_04:

My rec room...please be gentle this is just how I like to play :)

Hmm, you have a pretty good array of rec items and access to them isn't limited. I'm not sure how your colonists would be getting bored of All of them or just not having access. My next best guess is that they're spending too much time traveling from their work/bedrooms to the rec rooms to adequately use them.

Also you have a single tile that's not floored. I felt like that was critical to know.

[Psycho Dad]

Originally posted by HunterSilver:

Originally posted by Jigain:

Just to nitpick a bit, I'm going to rewrite your list with the in-game designations, as well as sources in order of less to more joy per tick:

Appreciate it =)

Originally posted by policemn_24_04:

My rec room...please be gentle this is just how I like to play :)

Hmm, you have a pretty good array of rec items and access to them isn't limited. I'm not sure how your colonists would be getting bored of All of them or just not having access. My next best guess is that they're spending too much time traveling from their work/bedrooms to the rec rooms to adequately use them.

Also you have a single tile that's not floored. I felt like that was critical to know.

LOL i noticed it too....after posting...amazing how much you miss when you have a BIG colony :P

Let me guess OCD kicking in..mine did! HAHA

[brian_va]

what i started doing a good while back was just scheduling 2 hours of sleep for the last 2 hours of the day, and setting the rest to anything and just let them figure it out. of course, night owls are adjusted to their 2 hours sleep starting at 8 or 9 am, but otherwise the same. maybe try that and see if its a scheduling issue.

[Psycho Dad]

Originally posted by brian_va:

what i started doing a good while back was just scheduling 2 hours of sleep for the last 2 hours of the day, and setting the rest to anything and just let them figure it out. of course, night owls are adjusted to their 2 hours sleep starting at 8 or 9 am, but otherwise the same. maybe try that and see if its a scheduling issue.

LOL i tried that i actually had all my WORK slots filled with ANYTHING...and what I noticed was ..missed work..pawns goofing off like getting high THEN trying to work LOL<seems like real life> true but funny...but not so much when your trying to make a high tier piece of armor and instead of it coming out as excellent or better it comes out as poor even when crafter is skill 19 :( LOL

[brian_va]

fair enough, maybe throw in another hour or two to make sure they don't miss out because they are far away

[melia_romulans]

Originally posted by policemn_24_04:

however there is no actual bar or anything that shows the actual level of each pawns happiness so i can see where I am needing more rec time.

Sorry, maybe somebody pointed this out and I missed it.... There is a bar that shows happiness. The background of each pawn at the top is a bar showing you their happiness level - where the lighter color is the level of happiness. If you want an even more in depth dive into happiness, you might consider installing Moody.

[Jigain]

Originally posted by policemn_24_04:

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1465310031201816284/2D58EBD0C9CDDDEF845F25EB409F446A22A12C1B/

My rec room...please be gentle this is just how I like to play :)

The one thing I'd point out is that I'd recommend deconstructing your game-of-ur boards. It has a gain rate of 80% compared to the poker table's 130% (assuming both are normal quality), and they both build up tolerance for the same thing (Cerebral play). In other words, whenever a pawn that's going for recreation picks the board, they're going to gain recreation at almost half the speed compared to if the board was removed.

Also, just as a note, poker tables only allow for up to four players at once, so you can safely move or remove four chairs each surrounding yours. I like to shove my poker tables into corners for this reason, or make a poker island by putting four poker tables together and surrounding it with chairs. Having too many chairs doesn't by any means ruin things, so if it's for aesthetic purposes you can absolutely keep them.

You look like you're pretty far into your game, so I'm assuming sky-high expectations for pawns. IIRC, you require seven sources of recreation at minimum for pawns to be able to cycle through them all. From your screenshot, I can count television (for 33 pawns at once), dexterity play (but with only one billiards table, only for two pawns at once), cerebral play (for 12 pawns at once), telescope study (for two pawns), and music (two pawns at once, the black piano looks like a modded item but the white one in the next room seems vanilla so I'm counting that along with the harp). That's five sources. I think we can safely assume you have a table somewhere, so social recreation should be available, and solitary is always available, taking us up to the bare minimum of seven. That leaves chemical and food consumption, which we don't know anything about so I'll assume none.

So ultimately, for your 31 pawns, it comes down to not enough slots for them to do recreation at. If you have 29 pawns set for recreation during the same time slot, with three categories of recreation being limited to two pawns at a time, it's going to take (29 / 2) 14.5 days on average for a specific pawn to get to use a specific recreation source, while it'll take them approximately seven days to get bored of every single recreation source you provide. This can be solved in two ways - either build more billiards tables, music instruments, and telescopes... or assign them recreation in shifts instead. Simply by assigning two hours of recreation to five pawns at once over 12 hours, you reduce the average time to get to a limited recreation source to (5 / 2) 2.5 days, much shorter than the seven days to get bored, and the issue will be gone.

Hopefully this helped explain why you have an issue with recreation and how you can take steps to solve it. If you have any questions, do feel free to ask. :)

Originally posted by melia_romulans:

Originally posted by policemn_24_04:

however there is no actual bar or anything that shows the actual level of each pawns happiness so i can see where I am needing more rec time.

Sorry, maybe somebody pointed this out and I missed it.... There is a bar that shows happiness. The background of each pawn at the top is a bar showing you their happiness level - where the lighter color is the level of happiness. If you want an even more in depth dive into happiness, you might consider installing Moody.

That's just the mood bar. It shows the net value of a pawn's thoughts, not the amount of recreation they need. While recreation levels can give thoughts with a +10 to -20 assigned to them, the colonist bar will not let you see how much of it is based on recreation - for that you need to check the pawn's Needs tab, which coincidentally also has a recreation bar. Hovering over that bar will also tell you what recreation types you have and that pawn's tolerance for them.

[Psycho Dad]

Originally posted by Jigain:

Originally posted by policemn_24_04:

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1465310031201816284/2D58EBD0C9CDDDEF845F25EB409F446A22A12C1B/

My rec room...please be gentle this is just how I like to play :)

The one thing I'd point out is that I'd recommend deconstructing your game-of-ur boards. It has a gain rate of 80% compared to the poker table's 130% (assuming both are normal quality), and they both build up tolerance for the same thing (Cerebral play). In other words, whenever a pawn that's going for recreation picks the board, they're going to gain recreation at almost half the speed compared to if the board was removed.

Also, just as a note, poker tables only allow for up to four players at once, so you can safely move or remove four chairs each surrounding yours. I like to shove my poker tables into corners for this reason, or make a poker island by putting four poker tables together and surrounding it with chairs. Having too many chairs doesn't by any means ruin things, so if it's for aesthetic purposes you can absolutely keep them.

You look like you're pretty far into your game, so I'm assuming sky-high expectations for pawns. IIRC, you require seven sources of recreation at minimum for pawns to be able to cycle through them all. From your screenshot, I can count television (for 33 pawns at once), dexterity play (but with only one billiards table, only for two pawns at once), cerebral play (for 12 pawns at once), telescope study (for two pawns), and music (two pawns at once, the black piano looks like a modded item but the white one in the next room seems vanilla so I'm counting that along with the harp). That's five sources. I think we can safely assume you have a table somewhere, so social recreation should be available, and solitary is always available, taking us up to the bare minimum of seven. That leaves chemical and food consumption, which we don't know anything about so I'll assume none.

So ultimately, for your 31 pawns, it comes down to not enough slots for them to do recreation at. If you have 29 pawns set for recreation during the same time slot, with three categories of recreation being limited to two pawns at a time, it's going to take (29 / 2) 14.5 days on average for a specific pawn to get to use a specific recreation source, while it'll take them approximately seven days to get bored of every single recreation source you provide. This can be solved in two ways - either build more billiards tables, music instruments, and telescopes... or assign them recreation in shifts instead. Simply by assigning two hours of recreation to five pawns at once over 12 hours, you reduce the average time to get to a limited recreation source to (5 / 2) 2.5 days, much shorter than the seven days to get bored, and the issue will be gone.

Hopefully this helped explain why you have an issue with recreation and how you can take steps to solve it. If you have any questions, do feel free to ask. :)

Originally posted by melia_romulans:

Sorry, maybe somebody pointed this out and I missed it.... There is a bar that shows happiness. The background of each pawn at the top is a bar showing you their happiness level - where the lighter color is the level of happiness. If you want an even more in depth dive into happiness, you might consider installing Moody.

That's just the mood bar. It shows the net value of a pawn's thoughts, not the amount of recreation they need. While recreation levels can give thoughts with a +10 to -20 assigned to them, the colonist bar will not let you see how much of it is based on recreation - for that you need to check the pawn's Needs tab, which coincidentally also has a recreation bar. Hovering over that bar will also tell you what recreation types you have and that pawn's tolerance for them.

Very informative thanks!...would be nice if a description for each on each recreation would be in the game...would help. LOL but this is really good now I know what to do..just a FYI i have ALL drugs for pawns to use...and MAN do they like em all HAHA