Reimagining Mood: Weariness
Posted: Wed Jul 05, 2023 8:05 pm
So I've had an idea recently to reimagine mood and sanity into a system which acts less like Sims moodles and more like a stress meter that is more actively managed. A transition from making mood less of the current circumstances that your character finds themselves in and more of a gradual building up of stress that your character will eventually have to take some time relaxing to recover from. It might sound a little lame to have to worry about having to manage another meter but hear me out because I think this system can bring alot more value to the game then mood currently does.
Alright so first we are going to throw mood and sanity out of the window, instead we are going to track two other values: Weariness and Comfort. These aren't just renames they function in a way that is different from mood.
The first statistic we track is weariness. Weariness represents the amount of stress and pressure that has piled up onto your spessman over the events of the shift. Weariness is a number that starts at 0 and increases whenever something that would stress your spaceman out happens to them. Many current mood events that normally give a negative moodlet that has an expiry timer would increase your weariness, such as looking into a heretic rift, being stabbed with a knife and made to start bleeding, eating bad food, being knocked into critical condition, being set on fire, being dismembered, etc.
Likewise mood events that would previously cause positive moodles would decrease weariness, such as drinking a nice drink, eating some food you like, getting a hug, having a smoke, etc.
There would be no effects that temporarily increase or decrease weariness, all events that effect weariness would lead to permanent changes, and as such a negative event would need a positive event to counteract it.
Having low weariness would provide effects similar to the effects having high mood now provides, and having high weariness gives you the effects that having low mood would have.
The second statistic we track is comfort. Comfort represents generally how physically comfortable your spessman is at any given moment. Circumstantial things effect comfort, and no effect will ever permanently increase or decrease your comfort. For example, being in the bar, sitting in a chair, listening to good music would see spaceman with a high level of comfort. However, a spaceman trudging through cold dark hallways, covered in blood, with a broken leg would be very uncomfortable. Many mood events that are circumstantial such as being in a room with good décor would effect comfort instead is weariness. Some, such as smoking a cigarette, may effect both, comfort while you have a lit cigarette in your mouth, and a slow decrease of weariness caused by the nicotine in your system.
Comfort acts as a modifier for events that decrease your weariness, having a high level of comfort makes events that decrease your weariness more effective, a security officer who doffs their armor and goes to have a donut in the breakroom will restore more weariness than a sec officer who just munches on a donut while out on patrol. Having a low level of comfort limits how much weariness you can restore within a time window, if your leg is broken and are lying on the floor covered in blood, a cigarette is not going to do much good in cheering you up.
I believe that this makes the mood system more interactive. Instead of just having to wait around for negative moodlets to go away, you can actually do something about it to directly undo it's effects, and instead of positive moodlets being more or less useless when you are already at max sanity, you have a clear reason to do sanity restoring activities at a given time as a reaction to an event, rather than as a permanent obligation.
There is a little more depth to be seen here, but this represents the groundwork of my idea.
Alright so first we are going to throw mood and sanity out of the window, instead we are going to track two other values: Weariness and Comfort. These aren't just renames they function in a way that is different from mood.
The first statistic we track is weariness. Weariness represents the amount of stress and pressure that has piled up onto your spessman over the events of the shift. Weariness is a number that starts at 0 and increases whenever something that would stress your spaceman out happens to them. Many current mood events that normally give a negative moodlet that has an expiry timer would increase your weariness, such as looking into a heretic rift, being stabbed with a knife and made to start bleeding, eating bad food, being knocked into critical condition, being set on fire, being dismembered, etc.
Likewise mood events that would previously cause positive moodles would decrease weariness, such as drinking a nice drink, eating some food you like, getting a hug, having a smoke, etc.
There would be no effects that temporarily increase or decrease weariness, all events that effect weariness would lead to permanent changes, and as such a negative event would need a positive event to counteract it.
Having low weariness would provide effects similar to the effects having high mood now provides, and having high weariness gives you the effects that having low mood would have.
The second statistic we track is comfort. Comfort represents generally how physically comfortable your spessman is at any given moment. Circumstantial things effect comfort, and no effect will ever permanently increase or decrease your comfort. For example, being in the bar, sitting in a chair, listening to good music would see spaceman with a high level of comfort. However, a spaceman trudging through cold dark hallways, covered in blood, with a broken leg would be very uncomfortable. Many mood events that are circumstantial such as being in a room with good décor would effect comfort instead is weariness. Some, such as smoking a cigarette, may effect both, comfort while you have a lit cigarette in your mouth, and a slow decrease of weariness caused by the nicotine in your system.
Comfort acts as a modifier for events that decrease your weariness, having a high level of comfort makes events that decrease your weariness more effective, a security officer who doffs their armor and goes to have a donut in the breakroom will restore more weariness than a sec officer who just munches on a donut while out on patrol. Having a low level of comfort limits how much weariness you can restore within a time window, if your leg is broken and are lying on the floor covered in blood, a cigarette is not going to do much good in cheering you up.
I believe that this makes the mood system more interactive. Instead of just having to wait around for negative moodlets to go away, you can actually do something about it to directly undo it's effects, and instead of positive moodlets being more or less useless when you are already at max sanity, you have a clear reason to do sanity restoring activities at a given time as a reaction to an event, rather than as a permanent obligation.
There is a little more depth to be seen here, but this represents the groundwork of my idea.