Jump to content

[Confused] Stress Problems


Recommended Posts

Hey everyone!

I recently saw one of my favorite youtubers play this game. I decided to pick it up. The game has been pretty fun, first couple runs was just me failing to get anywhere but I soon learned how to get to the later game. I do have a problem tho. It seems about 2-3 hours into playing a "world" my duplicates slowly get stressed over random stuff and never lose that stress level. I'll notice the number get up to 10 or so percent and I'll see what the problem is (I also deco as much as I can) and a lot of times its grimy or needing to wash hands. I'll set up a nice shower and what not but they never seem to lose the negative effect no matter how many times they shower. I just had to end a game because 2-3 of my duplicates got to 100% stress and nothing I did fixed them. They would just constantly be at 100%. I have tried deco, showers, washing stations and the tables to fix their stress but again....nothing works. Is this aspect of the game just not working or is no one else getting this problem?

Anyway just wanted to get any ideas from you guys and see if I am alone on this problem. I really enjoy the game but I can't really get around it so its ruined for me atm :/

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Although its not a permanent solution, you could always make a massage table and set the priority to 9 so that if you assign a dupe to the table, they will immediately go to it and slowly lose stress over time. Other than that, it seems the main source of stress is primarily interrupted sleep (which i dont think you can solve unless you have enough outhouses for them to use before they go to sleep) and then the "grimy/dirty hands" which you can solve, again, by having enough showers and hand sanitizers (but you need a LOT of them).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

At the moment, dupes will required higher and higher decoration requirements which is fine but unfortunately they seemingly don't have a cap, so it's possible to have dupes with unachievable decoration requirements that people have found the only way to fix is simply culling dupes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Stress is something to manage. If sometimes it's decor expectations ( I have a guy with 40+, he is never happy, haha).

The best play is to mitigate it as you can. Massage tables man. They are life savers. I rotate my guys out around 15% stress to these bad boys.

Bad/unbreathable air contributes. Also clutter is a killer here too. Make sure to get that stuff into lockers!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

From the sound of it, you haven't actually reached that point of your dupes becoming 'just so perfect that no beauty can compare', ie, their decor needs are way too high. i say this because you said you had been playing for a few hours, and I assume you checked your dupes' current decor needs to see if they have reached 'primadonna stage'.

If anything, it may be due to a few factors other than those you mentioned. You may need to take a screen shot of one of your dupes' status affects where it shows the needs and the little arrows. Of course, you should check those yourself as well to make sure you didn't miss something.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It may very well be something I don't know about. From what I saw they were just wanting a shower and to wash their hands. My decor was mostly green around the base....so I am unsure if It can be like "more green?" If you get what I mean. Its just annoying to build up to a point just to have them throwing up everywhere and ruining everyone elses mood plus some start destroying things....idk. Just seems broken to me so I'll prob wait for an update to the system rather than fight with it. The game is really enjoyable but not that enjoyable that I am gonna fight with a broken system.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

i build a few of these stations depending on how many dupes i have
cvpX49G.png

when they hit like 30 or 40 i send them there, they relax and then and get back to work
 

its also smart to be careful which dupe you pick up, i usually dont grab any that have a starting expectation above +5, -10s and -15s with the uncultured perk are the best

Link to comment
Share on other sites

But for the most part, you must keep in mind that this IS pre-alpha. I don't mean that as an excuse, but as an explanation. If it is causing you some stress from your dupes getting stressed, then a wait for the update would be best, yes. until then, you could also just try different methods of doing things and messing with the game to find bugs and what-not. in the end, you'll have to keep restarting anyways, so it is up to you.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for the advice guys! I really appreciate it! Great community.

@noodog I will deff try that, I honestly didn't even think about sending them there manually. As simple as that sounds, didn't cross my mind...haha

@Oatmeal I totally understand that the game is an early build, just was frustrated cus I was really enjoying just working with what the game has now. The stress thing just kinda seemed like a big obstacle I couldn't get past. Now that I have this advice I feel a bit more confidant going late game.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A dupe's decor expectation is a factor of his/her highest skill.  The math looks something like :


decor expectation = [skill level * 5] - 20

and it doesn't care if the skill levels came from an attribute (like mole hands) or from experience.  Also, the athletics skill seems to go up indefinitely since any running around exercises it.  So in the current build your dupes are doomed to become easily stressed olympic sprinters eventually once their athletics hits 24 or 25.  The devs probably will want to even that out at some point.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Massage table really needs a rework too. I think it desperately needs to reduce stress either faster, or in bigger increments, and the dupes should use it 'as needed' instead of having to be manually sent there. Because at the moment you don't notice there is a problem until its TOO much of a problem and its too late.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Massage table should give a temporary trait like Dirty Hands or Grimy to make the stress relief stick at least a little.

I don't think the stress aspect of the game is that well balanced at the moment. The thing at the heart of the problem is the skills: they seem to increase indefinitely. But the highest skill level seems to determine their decor demand and with both uncapped they eventually become unsatisfiable.

Right now, the best thing to do is kill off your stressed dupes and get new ones. Sacrificed for the colony...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Eh. I just got done giving this game another go. I worked on a save. Everything was great, air, water, food and deco was all nice. I took the advice and I didn't accept anyone above 0 deco requirement. Everyone was at 5% max stress before I knocked them down to zero shortly after. Decided to load it back up today, played for 20 mins. All I did in this 20 mins was build a coal genny in a new small area I mined out. Look at my stress everyone is losing their minds.

I am sorry but Its not fun, and this is a video game. I have plenty of other games like this to play. I've already warned 6 or 7 of my friends to stay away from this game at the moment. I hope this gets fixed or changed because as of right now, I really wish I could get my money back.

Message to the Devs: Please just remove stress and come up with something different like "needs." Anything really. Its the only reason I can't enjoy the game as it stands. I thought it was just me having a hard time learning the game but I really just don't think your entire save should be so easily ruined. I watched Nothernlion and after seeing his game end in basically the same way....its just not fun or enjoyable and I won't be recommending the game to anyone. Great concept for a game, wish it was executed differently.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Man, I'm going to be honest here. Disliking a game because you did not understand a mechanic is a very natural thing, but trying to damage the reputation of a game because you're bad at it and blaming the game itself isn't right.

The game stress level in the game isn't broken (at least until a few hundred cycles), you're just doing it wrong. Try to find what you did wrong and correct that, could be the quality of the air, how clean your base it or the bad traits of your dupes.

You have to be a paid game journalist to blame a game because you're bad at it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I admitted I may not know every min-max way to play the game, but would the average person find it fun to min-max stats in order to do anything in this game. I love this type of game. I usually recommend these games to anyone who asks me, even if I am terrible. This one has ended in one way each time I try to play the game. I do my best on every aspect of the game....other than heat....I usually don't worry about heat. The game still ends in my dupes losing their minds. To me, having 1 stressed unit causes so many negative effects that then spread to the other dupes it just ruins the game for me. I am sorry that you're mlg and I am not at that level I guess but I do blame the game that the stressed aspect of the game, to me, is broken and not enjoyable. Sorry to trash talk the game man, but hey everyone has their opinions. This was my thread and I was just sharing my thoughts. Seeing that this thread as 900 views, maybe people are googling "stress problems" with this game? ;P Just saying. You can not like it but, I don't recommend the game because I feel like I am a more than competent player who gave the game a real shot. I found something that just really ruined it for me.

It's also a thing to point out my original problem of never losing negative effects like needing to shower or washing their hands, even if they did those every things. No one offered a solution that involved showers or sanitizing stations, but the games stress levels arnt broken? hmmmm right.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well yes, the stress level is broken, which is why no one thought about telling you to build showers or sanitizing stations.

It needs to be harder because no one use those, in the worst cases all you need is 1 or 2 massages tables and making a few paintings. As of now, it's way too easy to get the stress level down.
If you want to understand the game mechanics a little more, you should try to use the debug mode:

It should helps you understand what went wrong with your earlier bases.
PS: Never said I was good, just that I won't blame the game for not understanding stuff.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I just don't understand when you say its to easy to get it down. I have the exact set up shown by another member above, 3 of them to be exact and I can barely keep 7 dupes from throwing up constantly and ruining everyone's mood. The system isn't easy to take care of, its impossible.

I have very breathable air provided by 3 o2 gennys. Filtering out the hydrogen to a sealed room, I have at least 15k of food for them. Showers, bathroom and paintings and statues everywhere. They don't run for power, all they do is mine new rooms and they lose their ****. Its broken, Idk how else to prove to myself that its broken haha. I am being defensive, but its because its frustrating to me that its broken because I enjoy the game up until it hits that point of "broken."

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Going to be honest as well. It seems pretty ridiculous to tell others that a game is bad because you don't understand a mechanic and/or because you willingly bought a game that was still very early in development; a few weeks old at that. You even had to go through the 'backdoor' to get this game. I mean... Telling them that you didn't understand a mechanic and/or the game is too early in development would be fine; seeing as how that's the truth and not that it is bad as a whole. With it being in the stage that it is, it is going to be 'bad' or broken in the sense of an unfinished game because... It is an unfinished game.

Though. You would have a very valid point to be angry at a game that has been in early development for years.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Except the stress mechanic as it stands is broken. There are bugs that prevent you from removing the Grimy and Sleep Interrupted statuses. That's an extra stress load that you just shouldn't have to deal with. Even if you're playing correctly. And it's not "not understanding the game mechanics". Grimy says "this duplicant wants to take a shower" but taking a shower doesn't remove the effect. That's a bug. The correct answer to a bugged mechanic that makes the game harder isn't "git gud lol" but "wait for the devs to fix the bug". There also aren't that many ways to remove stress. Every time I have to manually click a dupe and assign them to a massage table, that's time taken away from playing the parts of the game that are actually, you know, fun.

The whole point of having early access is so the devs can get feedback on the game. I'm sure they'd much rather hear "These are the things that need to be improved before I can start recommending this game to my friends." than "Shut up. How dare you complain about an early-access game?"

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I didn't say that. The mention of 'The game is an early build.' and 'The game is in an unfinished state' comes with the understanding (At least it is supposed to) that the devs are working on it. Nowhere did I say 'the game isn't broken so git gud. lol', either literally or contextually. No one should come at this game with the approach of "This game is finished." Sure, it looks well-polished, but it has its glaring flaws when you get into the nitty-gritty.

Did he say, "I'll wait till the devs fix this."? No. He said, "This game isn't fun so I will tell everyone else that this game is bad." That is a clear indication that he did not approach the game, in its current state, with a mindset of the fact that this game is not finished.

The stress is broken, this is true. But it isn't so broken that it is unmanageable until the late game. But since the game isn't finished, this is to be expected and the devs are working on it.

The issue isn't the fact that they aren't enjoying the game, some people find different things to be fun and many others agree that this game is fun; but it clearly needs to be worked on, which everyone agrees with. The issue here is saying that a game is bad and he will trash it towards other people despite that the game knows it needs work, has only been out for a few weeks, and was not released as a finished game on Steam. Heck. Even the Youtuber he mentioned said he kept failing because it was due to both his own ineptitude and that the game was still an early build.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Please be aware that the content of this thread may be outdated and no longer applicable.

×
  • Create New...