[Proposal] Psychology update #528
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This design doc needs a pretty significant grammar pass. In addition it's often too specific in some places (we don't need to know the exact thresholds or percentages for events/systems) and too vague in others (describing reagents affecting mood but not how their mood affecting properties are stored).
I also see some conceptual flaws with the concept that I think need to be addressed.
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| In this simple way, a medical specialist can create recommendations for your work environment (maybe you should put more flowers in your department). | ||
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| When the emotional state level drops below neutral (sadness, depression, deep depression), black-and-white shaders with different coefficients and slowing effects are applied. When reaching the depression state, the character may commit self-anti-resurrection with a probability of 0.15. This process occurs if you have an item that deals damage in some inventory slot or in your backpack... If there are none, then any item from the ground can be picked up for this act. If there are none of those either, static objects can be used: microwave, crematorium, etc. |
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We shouldn't have automatic suicide mechanics in the game ever.
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This is not an outright suicide... After that, you can return to the round.
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It is still bad, we don't want this kind of messaging to be a game mechanic and especially on the official repo.
It is not the first time we removed such messaging when it showed itself due to another feature being added.
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| By the way, it's worth mentioning that triggers are selected randomly in volume and order for each player at the start of the round, but there's also the possibility to make some of them permanent. For example, clown and mime equipment has a positive effect on representatives of all races. | ||
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| The second system is the chemical content of the organism. Each solution provides an instantaneous positive effect (calculated per ounce of substance) and a long-term negative effect to express a kind of dependency... So, eating a chocolate bar will give you 5 units of emotional state (for each ounce of substance) and you'll lose 10 units over the next 15 seconds. There are also restrictions here, for example, ethanol doesn't affect dwarves. |
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Does this add an entity effect which increases mood? Or is it baked into reagents specifically?
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| The psychology system currently consists of 3 trigger systems and a psychological analysis system. | ||
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| The first trigger system is visual, which applies various effects depending on what you see. The field of view is 5 tiles (objects behind obstacles like walls are not visible, of course). Visually, you can be affected both by items on other players (for example, a clown's mask) and by any other object... All trigger objects in their prototypes can have both positive and negative effects. Additionally, they can affect all races or only some of them. Along with race restrictions, there's also a whitelist for roles, so that, for example, a roboticist wouldn't be afraid of borgs while others might be scared of them. |
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Overall the triggers system feels very poorly communicated to the players and easily gameable if some are permanent fixtures, like being around someone in clown/mime clothes. Also telling people how they feel in a roleplaying game doesn't make much sense and limits character expression. I'd go about this in an entirely different way.
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To be honest, I do not know how to make a psychology system otherwise... How to influence something without
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Well, you can only leave a trigger for debris and puddles...
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Or I can give players a choice of possible triggers. And already something specific will be selected from this pool.
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| ## Roundflow & Player interaction | ||
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| This innovation works from the beginning of the shift and, as I described earlier, does not force players to worry too much about their emotional state, which does not change the overall pace of the round. In my opinion, players can safely consult a psychologist at any time, but in order to encourage them to take this action, I added one event that randomly changes the emotional state of the character with a probability of 0.3. In addition, I would like to add a brainworm-type antagonist in the future, which would have to identify a person's negative triggers through analysis and then cause hallucinations in the form of them, thus bringing him to a critical state in order to leave the host for procreation (which is not a RDM process, but a calm RP wagering). Nevertheless, I assume that some players, having identified their triggers with the help of a psychologist, will put them in a small room in large numbers, which will give a significant change in their emotional state. And at the moment, I have not provided any systems to limit this situation. Of course, for the most part, these mechanics are for the medical department, and in general, they fit in well here, not changing much, but only expanding the current capabilities of the psychologist. |
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A 30% chance per player is a huge amount. That will mean 30% of the station would now have to see the psychologist majorly disrupting round flow in a really un-intuitive and punishing way.
English is not my primary language, so there are errors and stylistic inaccuracies. But I'll fix them. |
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You need to add your proposal in the |
Unfortunately, I'm busy at the moment. I'll definitely do it later. |
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Forwarding some thoughts we had about sanity/psychology from downstream EphemeralSpace/ephemeral-space#10 We didn't get into stuff about suicide or tangible effects on gameplay, rather we focused on sensory effects. |
Your June 16 proposal sounds interesting. I will probably replace the suicide system with various shaders and sound effects. Thanks for the suggestion! |
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Hello, thanks for your contribution but after internal discussion and a read of the current iteration of the design doc, we've decided not to accept this proposal. We're sorry for the loss of time spent on this but the following concerns lead us to this decision:
We're not necessarily against the idea of giving the psychologist content, further punishing messy workplaces or prolonged isolation, or adding sanity mechanics. However, this doc does not add these features in a way that is currently desired upstream. |
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I do want to stress btw that there is a mood mechanic accepted as a proposal: if you take a look at the Revolutionarys Rework, the whole loyalty mechanic needs coding. It's just not an end-to-end psychology system. :) |
Sorry, I just want to clarify. Are you saying that a different, similar proposal was accepted instead of mine? Or that my idea was partially approved for implementation, meaning I can start working on this mechanic? |
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Check out the Revolutionaries refactor inside the docs website: https://docs.spacestation14.com/en/space-station-14/round-flow/proposals/revolutionaries-codeword-rework.html There's an entire loyalty mechanic that is driven by chaos that happens in the round. Was accepted last year. So there is a need for some of a "mental state" but just not a moodlet/mood system because it interferes with RP. Did just want to note that, sorry if it was confusing |
I've read about the "Conversion" mechanic. It sounds interesting. So I'll try to draft something the next time I have some free time. The only thing I wanted to check with you is one detail: Are you considering adding visual triggers that would change the LHP level? I'm referring to leaflets, flags, and other revolution-related paraphernalia. |
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If my understanding is correct, a "major" update means we need to do this... Please let me know if I've misinterpreted the wiki articles.