Any mods that make mental breaks not so game breaking?

[Gold♥Shield]

I'm mainly looking for something that will make mental breaks more of a priority based issue since I just had a pawn in a sad wander let two prisoners kill him and another one on a food binge kept walking into my freezer that was actively on fire who ended up burning to death because for some reason, the game says their insatiable hunger was more important than not turning into a human torch.

So are there any mods that do this? I'm fine with some of the more extreme mental breaks taking priority, but some of the minor breaks controlling everything is a bit ridiculous.

[SkunkPlaysGames]

Pick better pawns.

[MadArtillery]

Are you sure you are actually running a decent colony? mood is mostly an early game thing. Later on it's usually hard pressed to find a pawn not sitting at max most of every day. Extraordinary rec + dining rooms, maxed beauty bar from every room, consistent varied rec, max comfort beds, and increasingly great bedrooms should all do great jobs keeping people happy. Even my intentionally low tech colonies manage that at sky high and even my elite expectations. I'm not even the type to bother with lavish meals because I suck at keeping consistent food stockpiles and ignore negative mood from nobles and everyones clothes condition.

[The Yeen Queen]

Първоначално публикувано от VitaKaninen:

Първоначално публикувано от Night Foxx:

This isn't an issue of "no self control". This is a legit mental breakdown. I mean, dude. Tell me you know NOTHING about mental health without saying you know nothing about mental health.....

Throwing a tantrum about being hungry while in the middle of eating a lavish meal is just silly, and I doubt it would happen in real life.

This would not be an issue with someone needing mental healthcare or therapy to help them through the difficulties of dealing with an empty stomach.

We are not talking about dealing with the death of a friend here. He is throwing a temper tantrum over being hungry while he is eating, and if they destroy their own bed in a fit of rage, then they deserve to sleep on the ground.

No. He is throwing a temper tantrum over a bunch of bad ♥♥♥♥ piling on and then being left malnourished was his breaking point. The "final straw" is not the only thing that caused the mental break.

[MadArtillery]

I suppose this could be a lack of ideology dlc thing? It does make for a lot more mood management options. Owned it so long maybe mood is more of an issue without it and that is the crux of the problem? I did start playing only a month or so before ideology released I think.

[Astasia]

Първоначално публикувано от The Blind One:

The low expectations mood buff cannot be completely offset by improved living conditions.

Not really sure what you mean by this. Extremely impressive bed/dining/rec room are +6 each and is fairly easy to manage for +18 mood, as are fine meals for another +5, and that 23 mood is just about on par with the +24 from very low expectations which is the minimum you can realistically have on a map outside of naked brutality on a very small map (15k wealth is very low expectations, which is generally the value of ruins on a map let alone your starting colonists and items). Impressiveness goes up to +8 per room, and lavish meals are +12 for a total of +36 mood, just from being in the base and eating meals.

Living conditions are more than that though, having high comfort chairs in front of workstations and in the dining/rec room can keep comfort high for another +6-8 mood depending on how often they are seated. Keeping art around the base near workstations and along frequently used paths can keep their beauty high for another +5-15 mood. Keeping recreation satisfied is another +5-10 mood when needed. These are all basic and controllable mood boosts you can count on giving to your colonists as needed.

There's more though, Royalty, Ideology and Biotech all have means to give bonus opinion and mood to colonist, bonus opinion means everyone is in a good relationship for more mood from their high opinion and from lovin.

It is quite literally very possible and easy to keep all of your colonists permanently at 100 mood, with enough buffer that they stay at 100 even when injured or when they lose a family member. You can even keep mood high enough to force some colonists to work all day with no recreation because the -20 from recreation deprived just doesn't affect them. All without drugs. I mentioned drugs being an emergency thing, with proper mood management they are totally unnecessary, a crutch you don't have to lean on.

Първоначално публикувано от The Blind One:

If they get downed that's a -20 due to pain.

Downed pawns can't have mental breaks. Their mood can be low when they get back up, but see the bottom section about buffer time.

Първоначално публикувано от The Blind One:

If they are downed long enough for whatever reason they will lose out on their living condition bonuses

They last 24 hours, they could lose their impressive bedroom buff but it's replaced by an impressive hospital buff. They still get impressive rec room and dining room buffs if they have a TV to watch and eat a meal, and they still get the buffs from the meal itself. In addition to being stationary in a comfortable bed where they can easily be surrounded by beauty for a max comfort and beauty bonus. Mood of colonists downed in a hospital can be the easiest to manage.

Първоначално публикувано от The Blind One:

The game doesn't really give you much of a time cushion when it comes to moods, it's an all or nothing 'right now' kind of system. If they drop below the threshold, you know someone's going to break eventually, even if for the other 9/10th of the day their mood was up the wahooza.

It's kind of the opposite of that. If a colonist falls into minor mental break range they will have a mental break eventually sure, if they stay in minor mental break range, for an average of 10 days straight. Minor mental breaks have a MTB of 10 days, dipping into minor mental break range for an hour a colonist has like a 0.4% chance to have a mental break during that time. You generally have plenty of buffer time to fix their mood and have them climb back out of mental break range before it turns into a break.

Major mental breaks are a MTB of 3 days, less time to react but mood really shouldn't be getting that low. Extreme mental breaks are 0.7 days, don't zero out mood.

[Ivarukฅ(^•ᴥ•^)ฅﾉ彡]

yeah to me i only have mood difficulties with refugee style events because of their ♥♥♥♥♥♥ ideologies making up for a ton of negative mood im not gonna work on.

now i've yet to take a deep dive into the higher difficulty modes, so i can't speak to how hard it could be to manage moods there, but on the adventure story i def hit a point in progression where I'm just managing different inspirations for colonies of 30+, on one file i got more than 70 people who are also all happy. But i also micromanage the ♥♥♥♥ out of a lot of things lol.

heh i'll get bothered by teetotalers/no drug ideologies on my high life file "bro you won't even take some ambrosia?". usually the newcomers to my colonies, as soon as i convert them they don't have mood issues anymore.

[SkunkPlaysGames]

First thing I do in a new game for pawn management is edit the Lavish meal setting to remove corpses, raw food, pemmican and preserved meals. I create a new Caravan meal setting that includes them.

Next is set the clothing restriction to 60%. Clothes at 59% still retain most of their value and it's not hard to keep a continuous set of available clothing and armor if you trade smart. Drugs and armchairs is usually enough. Even just armchairs if you hunt anything that moves on the map.

Finally build tables and chairs every twenty unit radius or so throughout your base. Just put them everywhere.

[357 Magnum Ace]

I recommend Vanilla Weapons Expanded - Non-Lethal. The usual solution for a pawn breaking is arresting them or just downing them. If you pair it with simple sidearms, just give your soldiers a non lethal weapon too. Also great for slaver runs.

I like the break system, I just hate very specific breaks like abandoning the colony or, my most hated, the coma. At least with the abandonment I can just arrest and gangpress them, but the catatonic state, while it does happen IRL, I feel happens way too lightly and often.

[The Blind One]

Първоначално публикувано от Astasia:

Първоначално публикувано от The Blind One:

The low expectations mood buff cannot be completely offset by improved living conditions.

Not really sure what you mean by this. Extremely impressive bed/dining/rec room are +6 each and is fairly easy to manage for +18 mood, as are fine meals for another +5, and that 23 mood is just about on par with the +24 from very low expectations which is the minimum you can realistically have on a map outside of naked brutality on a very small map (15k wealth is very low expectations, which is generally the value of ruins on a map let alone your starting colonists and items). Impressiveness goes up to +8 per room, and lavish meals are +12 for a total of +36 mood, just from being in the base and eating meals.

I don't think you should equate how you play with how average joe or a beginner plays. You know every nook and cranny of this game to milk out every last mood buff that exists. Most players won't be so well prepared to have high quality bedrooms filled with masterwork+ artworks in them. It's more realistic to assume players get a +5 on their bed, rec and dining rooms and can only support a +5 fine meals for a total of +20. By mid game when the difficulty in raids and 'fun' increases you're looking at the expectations buff having dropped of 18 points. You also lose your initial optimism which is another 10 points. You're now down by about 8 points in mood and facing increasingly dangerous situations from raids and storyteller events.

When I first started playing I noticed that my pawn moods were dropping the longer I played because of this. By the time I upgraded their bedrooms, the wealth had increased to the point that their upgrades didn't matter. This was especially problematic if you had ideology DLC that had your pawns with roles increase their expectation level by 2. I reckon a lot of starter players are having the same problem.

Now that I'm seasoned I know what to do ofc. Get an early artist to work on getting those artworks out early to buff rooms. Partner pawns up with each other for mood buffs. Increase recreation time for pawns with bad moods or utilize the biphasic sleep schedule, etc. New players also won't know a lot of the tricks such as putting a TV in the hospital for example.

As such when you first learn to play, you cannot deny that the mood system is incredibly frustrating to downright (feeling) unfair at times.

It's kind of the opposite of that. If a colonist falls into minor mental break range they will have a mental break eventually sure, if they stay in minor mental break range, for an average of 10 days straight. Minor mental breaks have a MTB of 10 days, dipping into minor mental break range for an hour a colonist has like a 0.4% chance to have a mental break during that time.

Sure until you have a large colony that got shot up and had their rooms destroyed that provided them with the critical mood buffs to keep them happy.

I remember a game a long while back in particular where I had everyone just barely survive a raid plus insectoid infestation with the main rec / dining room absolutely destroyed and having most pawns bed ridden (no proper hospital).

Food reserves were destroyed so no lavish meals to grab for any pawns. Cook disabled due to being shot up from a drop raid on top of the kitchen / rec / dining combo room.

When he wakes up he is hit with the massive lack of beauty debuff (-15) togethe, he also has no bonuses from bedroom since a speck of dirt in his bedroom prevented that, with a lack of lavish meals (loses 12 mood he'd otherwise have had), he decides to just go into a minor break dazing off for the next day and a half due to 'pain' (-15).

Now there is nobody left to cook lavish meals or even fine meals for that matter so everyone loses the +12 mood buff for that day. Everyone is also hit with the -15 mood debuff for beauty while they set foot in their destroyed rec room (or base for that matter) trying to clean up the absolute metric tonnes of crap there. Another pawn breaks and goes into an insulting spree dropping everyone else off even more and dragging them into the dark abyss further ... I mean bloody hell, just insulting spree can net you up to something like -30 mood on a pawn, sometimes MULTIPLE pawns from just one pawn breaking causing a chain reaction.

So just from the raid itself I now have no more lavish meals so I lost 12 mood
most pawns end up malnourished in fact due to all the meals being destroyed, so from -4 (emergency paste) to -20 malnourished.
In pain -10 (not quite downed but not quite healthy either)
no rec room bonus -6
no dining room bonus -6
One spec of dirt in a bedroom and it's considered trash according to the game, so no bedroom bonus either as they dragged the crap from the destroyed room and them bleeding out into their bedrooms to recover. -6
the actual room I need them to restore gives a -15 mood debuff

We're talking a loss of ~60 to ~75 mood on average for my pawns in that situation.

My pawns were hovering comfortably around 80 mood before the raid (quite sufficient I had thought). They were all at breaking point after that with the most crucial pawns breaking due to misfortune I suppose.

Despite overcoming the incredibly dangerous raid rather well with everyone intact and alive, which probably should've boosted their mood, they all broke down in tears because their favorite rec / dining room was destroyed together with the job of cleaning up the base of goop and being forced to eat paste for a few days until the harvest came in and the cook could make some good meals.

[Deadflag]

Първоначално публикувано от Night Foxx:

I mean, they're not game breaking. None of them.

Speak for yourself, it's a sandbox game and they're game-breaking. Under no circumstances would any human being ever do what the Rimworld pawns are setting out to mimic lol

[VitaKaninen]

Първоначално публикувано от Deadflag:

Under no circumstances would any human being ever do what the Rimworld pawns are setting out to mimic lol

You don't think so? It has happened in the past history of our world, and not that long ago. Read up on communism of the past few hundred years, and how many deaths it has been responsible for, and the things that they did under it.

Also, I think a zombie apocalypse would cause a lot of what we see in this game, and I am being dead serious.

[The Blind One]

Първоначално публикувано от Deadflag:

Първоначално публикувано от Night Foxx:

I mean, they're not game breaking. None of them.

Speak for yourself, it's a sandbox game and they're game-breaking. Under no circumstances would any human being ever do what the Rimworld pawns are setting out to mimic lol

Ah man, I had to eat paste?

Time to break and go on an insulting spree! (minor break, somehow)

I insulted this guy for -42 mood and these two other pawns for -30 each (debuffs lasting 2 days for some reason) before finally calming down teehee.

One pawn is now going into a serious mental break and starts digging up the grave of a beloved ex-colonist and drops him off at the dining room for everyone to see and the other person went into a drug binge and is now a crack addict (-35 mood for the next 30 days trying to kick his addiction).

Ah yes good times ...

[357 Magnum Ace]

Here's a creative vanilla solution. Get a slave, ideally one who has high psychic sensitivity as a trait. Give this slave a joywire, a circadian halfcycler, and a psychic harmonizer. Then you just treat it well, give it fine or lavish meals, good clothes, and otherwise just keep it happy and area locked to be around your colonists.

Additionally, if you have ideology you can manage some breaks with your priest role by consoling them before they pop and if you have Royalty there is a higher level psycast which will stop breaks after they happen.

[The Blind One]

Първоначално публикувано от VitaKaninen:

You don't think so? It has happened in the past history of our world, and not that long ago. Read up on communism of the past few hundred years, and how many deaths it has been responsible for, and the things that they did under it.

Bro these commies be working in the tank factory with food worse than nutrient paste, no shelter, no heating, ratty clothes, 16 hour work day, no days off and no rights and they still be buzzing working for the glorious revolution without as much as a mental break allowed during WW2.

Granted you'd get executed if you did protest ... but these guys be making sure everything went to the victory of the soviets.

[MadArtillery]

Hey at least be glad heart failure from stress isn't in the game to my knowledge, had that happen to me once, coming back is much worse than going out.

As for think of the newbies argument. Stressors encourage growth, if what you are currently doing isn't working as well as it used to it encourages expanding ones horizons. And masterworks? Really? What are you using? Small sculptures? It's very hard not to have an overabundance of wooden sculptures and 1-2 per room isn't much of a stretch and keeps the artist happy by working on them. Sounds like you do have ideology, have you considered our lord and saviour diversity of thought? Honestly drowning in mood is pretty easy with ideology just by doing whatever you set it to do.

Failure and stressors are both important parts of the learning process. Take it as an opportunity to expand your horizons rather then hold on and fighting for what you are currently doing. Throwing up a temporary (or permanent) tables in bedrooms usually solve any dining room shenanigans pretty easy I often use them as secondaries and a broken rec room doesn't really stop rec even temporarily. Walks, telescopes, social chatter around a table in a nice lovely bedroom, music if you have a throne room. Lots oh options. Terrifying someone actually got minimum beauty from hanging out in what sounds like a bedroom, whew talk about rough living. Completely ignoring drugs entirely is probably not the smartest, it's quite easy to have some psychite tea available and used in a 100% safe non addictive manner. 1 cup every 2 days.

Redundancy is important! Even better done clever and cheap! Singular points of failure fail