-[I DO NOT OFFER SUPPORT FOR OLDER VERSIONS OF THIS MOD. THE 1.0 Release is now available.]-

A Rimworld mod for more realistic emotional responses.

This mod completely overhauls the mood and opinions effects from to bring the mindsets of the colonists more in line with my idea of a Grim Reality where people understand that they don't have a choice but to be the strongest if they want to survive. Kill or be killed. Eat or be eaten. Hat or be hatted.

---[Installation]--- Drop the folder into your mods folder in your Rimworld directory.

---[Details]--- This mod started as a few tweaks to fix issues in game that made no sense to me like how upset people got over tables or sleeping cold compared to how they reacted to more grave concerns for a colony of people who crashlanded and are trying to survive. I took inspiration from things like The Walking Dead, and other survival IPs where people are thrust into horrible circumstances and learn to cope very quickly. I formed the first version for A17, and "updated" it for B18 with quick syntax fixes. When it was time to start up a new game, I wanted to update it properly and get it pre-balanced for V1.0 release. But When I got into the code and started digging again... There was a lot more I wanted to change.

Some Examples of my Qualms with Vanilla:

1. Cheating on someone gets you disliked by -70. By contrast, selling someone's loved one to pirates get's you disliked by... -10. Tynan, who hurt you?

2. Getting married gives you a 50 points mood boost! But your wife getting shot gives you only a -25. This means if someone shot your wife at your wedding, you'd get a net gain in happiness instead of... y'know... "The most tragic backstory ever" ala Wreck-it-Ralph ;)

3. If you sleep in the cold, lack a table, and get hungry (not starving, just HUNGRY) you get enough net mood loss to be worse than your best friend dying.

4. Executing a guy who came into the colony and murdered literally your entire family... will still make you sad that he is executed. (Okay what, Tynan? What? Look at history, bro! People used to see Executions as ENTERTAINMENT! And when they think someone has it coming...)

And the worst one...

5. Romance rebuffs. I don't even have to explain this one. If you've played... you hate them.

I've overhauled the entire mood and opinions systems to balance all thoughts and situations better. The guiding design principle in this mod is largely based on the clannish nature of humans which fits from tribals who are well, tribal by nature, to advanced peoples who crashed down from the stars and now find themselves stuck in it together. The fact is that people tend to form up into groups. And killing, hurting, or harvesting MY person is worse than killing, hurting, or harvesting that guy who tried to kill my person.

People care more about their own kith and kin than they care about strangers. And even moreso, than they care about random assholes who try to hurt or kill their own. And when it comes down to it, a prisoner who killed their brother won't be missed if they die in their cell.

People no longer hate ugly pawns beyond all reason. As my wifey said, "You're not going to hate the hideous surgeon that just saved your life and soloed the enemy raid to the point of punching him in his face just for how he looks!"

Nor do they despise disfigurement to the point of assault and battery. Instead, scars are a mild positive because typically, they are received in battle as a result of protecting the colony! At the least, scars and disfigurement inspire a sense of pity in most people, rather than abject hatred. We've all seen way too many fist fights because someone was disfigured and a passerby just couldn't handle their face. In a survival scenario, presumably, people would put that shit aside and SURVIVE.

Overall some of the "annoying" mood debuffs are either lessened, shortened, or both. But the bad ones...are worse. This changes the balance of the game a bit, but I also lowered some of the "easy" positive boosts in value to compensate. Additionally, barracks are now USABLE. I just couldn't stand that people would rather sleep outside in the cold than sleep in a nice bedroom they had to share. Military does it. A lot of schools do it. Entire cultures do it for life with their whole family in a one room house. I don't buy that all people are so anti-sharing a bedroom that in a survival situation, they just couldn't or wouldn't suck it up and do the more reasonable thing to survive. Or even possibly find comfort in the proximity of others of their clan who would help them to survive.

I tweaked a lot of opinion changes in a similar vein. People are more bothered by horrific things and less by the little stuff. Cannibals are harder because generally most cultures find cannibals horrific. Organ harvesting, killing prisoners, etc. still gives a malus, but in most cases it's a boolean value. As in, everyone gets a negative for a while if you're selling prisoners to slavers, but it doesn't stack and it's not huge, so you can cope without having to wait until a wedding to butcher your prisoners! Your pawn who butchers enemies is no longer hated by everyone because the penalty no longer stacks to the sky. On the other hand, "I butchered humanlike..." DOES stack, and it's bad. So I'd advise using a Null Trait character for the job (Bloodlust, Cannibal, Psychopath) or be prepared to suffer the consequences if you still choose to engage in this behaviour that would rightly truly unsettle someone who lacked such traits. Overall, it may be simpler to keep your colony from descending into a Stupid Spiral of Stupid over minor annoyances, and more likely to Spiral over the sort of horrors that would reasonably drive a colony to their limits.

Personally, I love this change because it means the story is so much more meaningful to me. Don't get me wrong, I CHERISH my first game that ended in a massacre of my colonists by way of manhunter deer (lovingly dubbed "Deermurdered" in my heart and memory) and all the Fun I've encountered when my pyro whent on a burny streak because someone sat in his chair and the cute girl in maintenance shot him down again, even though he asked her three times two hours apart, and he got too tired to walk to the table and eat so he had to snack on his apple while standing up and he just couldn't even! Rage face... And that's part of the fun of Rimworld in a way.

But when you're ready for a different kind of game where the story instead is gritty, realistic, serious, and sprinkled with Rimworld's little oddities (instead of riddled with them), this is an alternate style of play that may suit you. It's what I was longing for after a while, and I hope others will find it useful too.

So if you would like a Grim Reality where people care more about survival and less about whether or not they have a table to dine at or a super nice room, this is the mod for you. It will ensure that a colony that meets the survival needs is happier, and the extras are well... extra. It will ensure that people react more realistically to loss of loved ones, and the death of raiders who tried to kill them.

And most importantly: It will fix all 5 of the Major Qualms listed above.

---[Inspiration]--- Originally, the Greyer Morals mod, We Care Less About Prisoners, etc. Parts of the balancing inspired by Less Stupid Romance and Raw Crop Thoughts. This War is Mine and other survival games. The Walking Dead and other survival shows/movies. And most importantly: My wife's raging at the game over the "stupid" things her pawns were upset about compared to people dying etc. ;) Largely and mainly, the content of this mod is her idea. I'm just her code monkey!

Disclaimer: I'm not saying this is the best or perfect way to play. I just wanted the values rebalanced, and this is my preferred way to play. If you feel it is too, I'd love if you rate this mod up! Thank you! Also, from the wifey who did most of the balancing: "It's not perfectly balanced...but I tried. And let's be honest, neither was vanilla. :] But I tried to make it a little less...silly, imo."

---[Updates]--- 4.30.18 - Fixed the SharedBedroom error from A17. 5.5.18 - Changelog is too huge to list. Complete overhaul of the entire mood and opinions system. Every value was either changed or rebalanced around. MOST values changed. Some flavor text re-written. 100% B18 update, and readied for 1.0 release (will need to adjust for any syntax changes but this is the mod's "final form").

---[Compatibility]--- Save-game compatible, most likely. Have had no reports otherwise yet. This mod WILL overwrite (or be overwritten by) any mod that changes ANY of the ThoughtDefs. If you want a smaller mod to be included (say, changes just the reaction to no table), overwrite this mod with it by placing it lower. If you want this mod in it's full form, make sure it overwrites any mod with ThoughtDef changes (mood or opinion changes).

---[License]--- If you want to use my code to learn, edit it to make your own mod, or put it in a modpack, I honestly don't care. Have fun. I'd never have learned how to do any of this without doing similar and other modders who are willing to share their knowledge and their source code. So this mod is open source. If you use it in a mod pack, feel free to link back to my page here so people can fave/rate. If you like it, please fave / rate, but don't worry about using the code as you like.

---[Modder Luv]--- If you want to buy me a coffee, that's awesome and thank you! If you'd rather support me on Patreon, you can check me out here. And if not that, you could always check out the books my wife and I write, all published on Amazon, mostly available on Kindle Unlimited, and the first of my series is free on our website www.DarksbaneBooks.com if you join our newsletter. Thank you!