Healing Sanity

[kranthi117]

Hi All,

Many people recommended having clinics to heal sanity, but the colonists never visit a clinic until it is too late. Even when they do, the sanity bump is not high enough.

Martianborn resilience is too late game. Also, it does not cover the sanity losses due to night shift

From what I saw, smart homes are the best solution to treat the lost sanity. However, I am presented with a new problem. Colonists with high sanity are occupying the smart homes rendering them useless. For now, I am micromanaging the colonists. That is too tedious. Is there a better way?

I am facing the same problem with workshops as well.

[SkiRich]

Build clinics.
In the code, during the daily checks a colonist does, health and sanity will override any interests like eating and socializing.
They also randomly visit a clinic as well.

[NotThatHarkness]

Smart homes aren't temporary residences. They aren't for treatment. They are regular residences with a higher sanity buff. What you are seeing with them is normal.

Do you have infirmaries actually in the domes with residences? Some players separate services from housing (different domes). I always wondered how that affected sanity. If you do have that set up, maybe try building an infirmary in each dome with residences that has sanity problems.

https://survivingmars.paradoxwikis.com/Dome_buildings#Dome_Services

According to the wiki link above, infirmaries provide (building performance)/10 sanity to colonists each visit. Are your infirmaries fully staffed with medics? Vacant positions and unspecialized colonists will lower building performance.

I assume the medical center spire is supposed to be better, but the wiki doesn't specify how much sanity it repairs. That's another option to try.

[kranthi117]

Thanks for the responses guys.

I have an infirmary per dome. Also, I have one infirmary per 30 colonists. Is there a minimum threshold before the colonists start visiting infirmaries?

Despite having a fully staffed infirmary (3*2) I see several colonists sanity going below 20. This is forcing me to temporarily turn off the out of dome buildings

Many of my infirmaries are staffed by non-medics. Is that a significant problem?

[NotThatHarkness]

The colonist performance penalty for staffing the wrong specialization is something like -50, and -40 with the General Training research tech. I see a notable difference in building performance between a shift fully staffed with specialists vs unspecialized colonists. Plus, unspecialized working in a medical building won't have the +10 work performance from Emergency Training. That's to say, staffing with unspecialized could easily be part of the issue. Build a university if you don't already have one and train medics. That should help.

Also, make sure you only have 1 source of sanity damage on any colonist: night shift, out dome work (before Martianborn Resilience), or heavy workload. Doubling up on sanity damage will mean more frequent visits to medical buildings. I don't run any out dome night shifts before I research Martianborn Resilience and don't enable heavy workload on night shifts.

See the sanity section of this guide:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1748501548

The guide seems to assume infirmaries staffed with medics.

[kranthi117]

Ah. Yes, that makes sense.

[some moron]

You need to indicated what you mean by "too late" but I am guessing it is not actually too late. I just wrote a new section on Sanity here https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1811731605

[SkiRich]

As I mentioned before, visiting any service building (infirmaries are service buildings) are part of the daily interest mechanic. Each colonist randomly rolls a daily interest they want for that day and it is based somewhat weighted on traits.
Visiting an infirmary is one of those. So randomly they may drop by from time to time.
There are two overrides to daily interests when the mechanic ticks off.
Starving and Health. Both will facilitate an immediate visit to a service building regardless of daily interest chosen if they can find one nearby with open slots, otherwise they go home and you take the malus.
Barring their living conditions such as the homes you mentioned or having martian born colonists that do not take sanity hits for working outbuildings, there is no other way to improve sanity. You could limit the outbuilding to just the first two shifts. Having a third shift is a sanity malus for any service and having a third shift on an outbuilding is a double whammy.

[Jon_Smith]

What do you consider to be a sanity problem though? You don't need to run colonists at sanity 100 and, if you actually watch low sanity colonists they will tend to hover around the 30 sanity mark, dipping down from working outside (for example) then the next day gaining 20 sanity back from the infirmary, and a sol or two later dipping back down.

If your colonists are having their sanity get down to 0 and snapping there are other issues at play in my opinion. So please explain what sanity issue you have in a bit more detail? Are you just unhappy their sanity is in the yellow or are they snapping frequently?

[James187]

I don't think anyone mentioned disasters in this sanity discussion yet, so I'll just add that meteor storms, cold waves and dust storms all reduce colonist sanity quite a lot (not sureabout dust devils, marsquakes or toxic rain).

I think a functional Security Station in a dome mitigates this.

Just in case this plays a part in OP's issue.

[kranthi117]

Thanks, everyone.

Yes. Disasters are one of the issues.

Since there are only so many medics in the applicant pool, many of my infirmaries are staffed with non-medics. So the building performance is typically limited to 60 (BIG mistake. I realize that now)

My colonists start visiting infirmaries when their sanity reaches ~50-70 (Not sure of the exact number). At least two colonists per dome end up becoming a renegade before sol 40 (I try to limit domes to a max of 30 colonists till sol 70). And, if a disaster strikes at the wrong time, three-four colonists become renegades

So my plan for now,

- Build a univ, set the specialization to medic, keep an eye on the comfort level of the remaining domes
- Rely on smart homes till there are sufficient medics in the colony
- Replace the smart homes with living complexes once there are sufficient medics

[Jon_Smith]

Well renegades are caused by low morale, not low sanity. I rarely get renegades unless I have the Rebel yell rule on. What are you doing to abuse your colonists so much?!?

I've never needed to worry about training or importing medics, I find the infirmaries work fine as is.
I only get sanity snaps when I am playing on max disaster rules and colonists who had been working outside get back to back sanity penalties from disasters.

Do you have a screenshot of your setup? Are you working alot of heavy workloads?
Any painful rules like Rebel Yell?

It feels like you shouldn't be getting issues as strongly as you are?

[Redlegoguy1]

Originally posted by Jon_Smith:

Well renegades are caused by low morale, not low sanity. I rarely get renegades unless I have the Rebel yell rule on. What are you doing to abuse your colonists so much?!?

Well, since low health/sanity/comfort can remove the small morale buff and even lower stats can add a morale penalty, if you were having sanity issues already, it's possible it wouldn't be hard to hit the renegade generation threshold if you weren't doing particularly well with the other stats. The renegade threshold is actually fairly high, if the average morale isn't above 65, renegades are able to generate, so if there's enough unhappy people dragging the average down to something as high as 64, renegades can show up. I think the chance must start quite low though, as in my experience I rarely get above that threshold during the founder stage, and I don't think I've ever had a founder become a renegade.

[SkiRich]

Someone already mentioned it above. Build a security station and have it fully staffed with security trained personnel.
While these do not "heal" sanity they do lesson considerably the effects of disasters on colonists when the disasters do happen.
They also trap renegades.
If you are inundated with renegades, consider the mod I made called "Internal Affairs"
Which provides a way to capture and put into a sanitorium any renegade for a fast cure.

[Jon_Smith]

Originally posted by Redlegoguy1:

Originally posted by Jon_Smith:

Well renegades are caused by low morale, not low sanity. I rarely get renegades unless I have the Rebel yell rule on. What are you doing to abuse your colonists so much?!?

Well, since low health/sanity/comfort can remove the small morale buff and even lower stats can add a morale penalty, if you were having sanity issues already, it's possible it wouldn't be hard to hit the renegade generation threshold if you weren't doing particularly well with the other stats. The renegade threshold is actually fairly high, if the average morale isn't above 65, renegades are able to generate, so if there's enough unhappy people dragging the average down to something as high as 64, renegades can show up. I think the chance must start quite low though, as in my experience I rarely get above that threshold during the founder stage, and I don't think I've ever had a founder become a renegade.

Yeah, but thats kind of my point. Sanity issues alone don't cause renegades, I feel like you'd be needing to have alot of outside workers, nightshifts, heavy workloads, disasters and a lack of comfort buildings all working in tandem to run into issues routinely before Sol 40.
Thats why I wanted to see the setup and asked about heavy shifts.

If you are running heavy shifts at night or outside and maybe don't have any parks and just a grocer I can see it happening.
But with some basic comfort coverage, targeted use of heavy workload and a decent park then I find the stats never drop that low.

[kranthi117]

First off, I am not using rebel yell. No more than one sanity hit per worker.

- I do have a little bit of an unemployment problem. Maybe 1-2 colonists are unemployed.
- I used to call a rocket from earth only after a living complex and grocer are complete

Now, what's happening is:
When I construct a Grocer (or any other service building) in a new dome, the unemployed folks migrate to the new dome. As luck would have it, the colonists with the least morale migrate to the new dome. They have a morale of ~30-50.

With average morale of 50, a dome creates a renegade in about 15 sols

This mod https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1802131001 was useful to a large extent