Install Steam
login
|
language
简体中文 (Simplified Chinese)
繁體中文 (Traditional Chinese)
日本語 (Japanese)
한국어 (Korean)
ไทย (Thai)
Български (Bulgarian)
Čeština (Czech)
Dansk (Danish)
Deutsch (German)
Español - España (Spanish - Spain)
Español - Latinoamérica (Spanish - Latin America)
Ελληνικά (Greek)
Français (French)
Italiano (Italian)
Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian)
Magyar (Hungarian)
Nederlands (Dutch)
Norsk (Norwegian)
Polski (Polish)
Português (Portuguese - Portugal)
Português - Brasil (Portuguese - Brazil)
Română (Romanian)
Русский (Russian)
Suomi (Finnish)
Svenska (Swedish)
Türkçe (Turkish)
Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)
Українська (Ukrainian)
Report a translation problem
Discussions Rules and Guidelines
Report this post
I not only isolated the cube, but I put the only person who was obsessed with into a crypto sleep casket in a room no one else could enter and new people still developed cube obsession, despite having 0 contact with the cube and 0 contact with another cube obsessed pawn.
What I have been doing is letting people who do get obsessed go through withdrawal and go into a coma and the rate of spread has been pretty consistent over the course of around 4 quadrums. There has always been one cube obsessed pawn active in the colony plus the one in the coma. Never more, never less.
Obviously if you do NOT force withdrawal and coma, over time you will have more and more obsessed pawns. I mention this consistency because it is indicative of a consistent rate of spread, not a consistent number of obsessed pawns.
Edit to mention. I pulled the pawn out of crypto sleep once I saw it was spreading regardless of the isolation. Neither cube obsession nor withdrawal progress while in cryptosleep, so I saw no point in continuing that practice.
The cube influence is spread when unaffected individuals are influenced by the cube's zone of influence area, when viewing the cube sculptures that they create around the base, and by social exchanges/word of mouth with other colonists.
The best way to deal with it that I've found is to anesthetize affected colonists prior to destroying the cube, that way they won't go berserk once its destroyed.
You can alternatively, build them a fully enclosed prison with some food so they don't starve, use strong walls ofc, and just let them vent out their rage on the walls.
Without Meta-Gaming I'll elaborate my reasons to my explanation above from a novel perspective.
Initially, the cube needs a way to spread influence, otherwise it would only affect colonists that interact with it, and therefore not be an entity that can cause discourse within your colony. For all intents and purposes to preserve itself, as it possibly feeds on the energy emitted by colonists only affected by its influence. Why it would need to do this, is currently unknown.
This is demonstrably false as you can have colonists that research it on cool down, never be affected by it meaning its not limited to the Cube spreading influence through direct interaction. This leads me to believe the cone of influence is a hypothetical "Zone" or "range" in which the Cube targets a specific colonist and draws them to it to interact with it, to start the obsession. Which may be limited, or spreads through the entire map. To which extent I am not aware without directly looking at the game's code.
The Cube sculptures are another thing that I believe must serve the purpose of spreading its influence to all the colonists, when they view its art during reactional times; The Cube wants to be worshipped, and feeds on that obsession therefore does not want to be destroyed or removed, so colonists are compelled to protect the cube or become angry if you destroy the cube's sculptures, this is done via what appears to be a psychic link, as they know the moment it happens without need for personal observation. The more colonists that are obsessed, the less likely the cube will be destroyed.
From a social perspective, it also makes sense that if people are building sculptures of it, they would also discuss the cube in social interactions to additionally spread its influence, people that are obsessed with things will unleash a tidal wave of unwanted information about said obsession whenever they have an opportunity to do so, which as Rim does draw many real world parallels this leads me to believe why social interactions may increase its influence.
Rim is a game where many players, are so busy with so many other tasks, that we pay so little attention to social interactions between our colonists, and forego on micromanaging these interactions, that it would make sense the devs would secretly squeeze this in as a way to express paying attention to our colonists social lives, pays off sometimes.
When you reach the end of the long study needs to finally destroy it, you may be met with the message "No colonists are willing to do this." when you select "Destroy Golden Cube." You're literally soft locked until you recruit new colonists to destroy the cube, and at that point the influence in your colony may already be so strong, new colonists may be compelled to become obsessed before you can destroy the cube.
Upon doing so if possible, causes them all to go insane via the psychic link disruption.
The Cube is love, the Cube is life.
Keep in mind this is from a novel perspective, and may not reflect the current state of the developers intention or design of the Cube itself.
I agree with your premise that the cube 'needs a way to spread', but I don't agree with your initial belief that it requires anything beyond the cube being present. You are starting with a flawed assumption, that being that the cube can only spread influence if itis interacted with.
You have no basis for that, but it's the start of your entire statement.
Based on my findings, I posit that it spreads simply because you have the cube. Contact is not required, socialization is not required, and all of those nice little touches they added for obsessed pawns to do is not required.
And my evidence of this is that the obsession spreads when nothing is on my map related to the cube other than the cube itself and no pawns have any contact with anything cube related nor with any obsessed pawns.
And yet, new people become obsessed despite that. That is 100% evidence that the spread requires no contact with the cube, nor other obsessed pawns, nor anything else cube-related. It also has been a very consistent rate of spread, which suggests a simple timer with minimal if any RNG factor to it.
I also have considered the cube has a radius effect, which someone else mentioned above, that will create newly obsessed pawns even through walls. I'm currently testing that in my game by building an isolation chamber where no other pawns will get anywhere near it, rather just not inside of it as I had been doing. It won't rule out a radius, given that the map is only so big, but it will establish if it's a radius less than 40 tiles or so.
I get you're saying the cube just randomly selects 1 colonist every so often and everything else is just flavor of the event.
Specifically, I'm emulating obsession with the cube itself for fun.
And while I totally get that you were mainly just doing 'RP' of it, that isn't of any help to the original thread creator who had specific questions. RP answers do nothing but confuse the issue for him, and it's his thread. That's why i asked for more clarification.
I'm dealing with the cube for the first time, so I've been trying and testing all sorts of things to try to 'understand how it works.'
Next time, I'll just let my pawns do what pawns do and let the story unfold.
I've dealt with it a number of times, I do fundamentally believe that the cube sculptures and word of mouth may actually increase the chance for those colonists to be the next in line for influence and thus become "Selected" by the cube. If that makes sense as I've noticed colonists that only share social interaction with obsessed colonists become obsessed next, in a colony of over 25 colonists mind you, I'm looking for the purpose of that, as there's actually not many "flavor" things I can think of, other than the loss of productivity the sculptors would serve.
While it may not actually be that complicated, as from a meta-perspective, the same fundamental is established by making it 100% a "Random colonist is selected" every <x> number of hours or days or may increase how fast the next selection happens.
Granted, its not something I actually paid much attention to either as what happens with large colonies.
My reason for this? I have multiple settlements - My larger colony only a few people were affected, like, 2 or 3, the cube takes a long long time to study to destroy, so it had plenty of time to influence far more people.
The number of people may cause the dilution of the influence spread, if it is indeed affected by whom views the sculptures, and whom socially interacts with whomever.
My other colony, a smaller colony of 5, all became obsessed within the first few in game days of having it. As a closer circle will have far more social time with one another. I actually had to send other colonists from my main colony, to destroy it, because they were all obsessed, they all generated nearly 3 times as many cube sculptures as my other colonists.
In the larger one, there was only a small handful about 15-20, in my smaller colony, there was 48 sculptures. (( Obviously, more colonists obsessed means more colonists that will make them, but could also mean more chances for colonists to become obsessed to create a self perpetuating cycle))
This tells me two things: 1. The time in which pawns may become influenced, is also a range, rather than a singular set outcome that occurs after a set amount of time as my first colony, I actually spent less time studying it to destroy it because I was annoyed I couldn't send my obsessed colonist on a caravan, it was only then I began to religiously study it so I could destroy it.
My smaller colony, however, I knew already, and began research immediately, all pawns were obsessed long before I could destroy it.
I also feel that many many of the game's mechanics are significantly complex and many simple factors compile to affect outcomes such as shot accuracy, medical success, etc, and I feel the developers need for complexity may also be instilled within those flavors as intended mechanics.
The first colony is a massive complex, many pawns work, and eat, at times where they may never even see each other unless they perform the same tasks - Like sowing, or construction, or cooking.
My second colony is a mining facility set up for the purpose of excavation of materials to create for the purpose of supplementing the main base, and to give the main base breathing room from raids. The base itself is much smaller. Which would allow more social time, as well as more time to view sculptures.
Of course, it could also be that there is a range emitted by the cube and those outside that range are safe. This could be explained by the huge size of my first base, but my scientists that sit next to the thing while doing research was never affected with it, and was the one that directly studied it.
My first response wasn't Rp, my second response was addressed to you, was indeed RPish.
Currently I only have my own experience and anecdotes, some of which may be erroneous, as I didn't want to look into the games coding to spoil myself on how it actually works, for all intents and purposes I think the fun in these things are best experienced, first hand.
Whats interesting, why I believe social interaction may increase it, are the colonists that were affected, were ones that already had previously established, good social relations with one another.
and the ones that did not, were colonists that were the insular type- meaning they were very frequently insulting other colonists, instead of having good interactions- Those colonists unaffected, were my researchers that sat next to it the entire time. Both of them.
So while you may disagree with my reasoning, these are my findings, spared from in game code meta-gaming.
So while your cryo sleep experiment may have yielded that the cube can still influence pawns at random, that does not objectively prove that it cannot spread faster if left unchecked as per my findings between a huge colony, and a smaller one at much different rates of spread.
You very well may have just reduced spread, and with no active obsessed pawns, the cube has to select more pawns at complete random to keep players from trivializing the event simply by dumping them into cryo.
So, I've done further experimentation and also looked through the game's "History" log for all cube messages since I got it, which is over a (game) year ago. And I believe your conclusion is correct. The cube seems to be required to have one obsessed pawn who is not comatose nor in crypto sleep and if those conditions are not met, it just picks another pawn to become obsessed.
The history of my game shows that the 'spread' is always, 100% of the time, occurring shortly after the previously obsessed pawn goes comatose. This has occurred, like clockwork, 23 times in my game.
I also had one other unique situation that seems to confirm it as well. During a quest where I was 'housing' a group of visitors, instead of one of my own pawns becoming obsessed when the previously obsessed pawn went into coma, one of the lodgers became obsessed.
The quest completed before they went into a coma...but as soon as they made it entirely off the map, one of my pawns became obsessed.
I'd call 24 repetitions without variance a pretty good indicator that's what is going on.
I cannot speak to any other methods in which it will spread if you do not isolate the cube and obsessed pawns, because I haven't let any of that happen in my game yet. I felt the need to first test trying to control the obsession. Basically a 'control study'. Now that I feel I understand containment and its limitations, I'll be comfortable seeing the opposite side of that.
Here's the containment facility I had the cube in by the end. It's not only a room where other pawns are restricted from entering, it is surrounded by deep water on 3 of 4 sides and quite far from any areas where any pawns ever work. I wanted to rule out it having a radius attraction effect that went through walls...
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3250773152
According to the wiki:
The Cube can be easily disposed of via Caravan dumping or transport pod, but doing so does not remove a colonists obsession with it. This means that if you get rid of the cube but do not destroy it, all colonists obsessed with the cube will eventually develop cube withdrawal and fall into a coma.
I assume dumping it in the pit would have the same effect. I have a pit on my map. I could test that, but I don't want to have to remember to send my dark study researcher down to study it every few days. If i think of it I'll try it once I actually get the option to destroy it unlocked, before destroying it.