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[Confused] Stress Problems


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Stressed out because of the game's stress mechanic?  Worry no more, put your massage table to good use where your dupe can rest in peace!

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I just lock up a dupe that can't be salvaged and goes over 65% stress.  If they make a mess or is a vomitter, free contaminated water is pumped out to a water distiller and then when the dupe dies, the body is moved to one of the graves in a far area of the base so that it wouldn't produce morbs.  I just get another dupe when it's available with 0% stress so it's kind of a cycle and a temporary work around.

 

I do hope the devs bring out more stress reliever methods, like make a sauna room using heat or even steam.  Or make a machine in the apothecary that produces endorphins when the dupes take it.  Most stress inducing problem I found is when they go to bed then wake up to go do their thing in the bathroom, come back to bed and wake up with "disturbed sleep" which could be fixed if there was a regime or scheduler to micro manage their time before they go to sleep, like send them to the bathroom then go to sleep (unless I missed out on a solution with the current update). Stepping on contaminated water is another major stress inducer however quickly rectified if you mop it off.

 

Even though my friends have backed away or complained with the same issues just like some of the people here, I'm still having fun and I'm confident that this is one of those games that given more time will shine like a polished diamond.  Heck, I'd bet the same youtubers who play this game at the current state and keep on crumbling run after run will play this 6 months - 1 year later with more content will probably still crumble because that's what they do best most of the time.  However I'd still watch them for entertainment and then discover some new youtubers/twitch streamers who'd come up with inventive ways to get around til cycle 500.

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It sure is a fun concept. But after a while, it becomes a "Lemmings Waste Management" game for me.
I'm at the 40th cycle and I've come to a point where I constantly need to mop somewhere, despite giving them showers, lavatories, massage tables and what-not.

I obviously don't play it properly, but there are few things that really bother me at the moment:
- the amount of puke they generate is insane: much more than what their body can contain honestly
- the contaminated water generated seems incredibly low in regards to the amount of pure water consumed
- puking in their main pure water resource... I mean, they need a IQ level boost :)
- I learned the hard way that, unlike cots, table massages need to be assigned; shouldn't that be harmonized?

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Massage tables should just have a slider. First dupe above the slider set stress threshold goes on the table. Same with healing pods. The dupes should just use it instead of me having to direct them.

I mean, I can't force a dupe to one specific task now unless I really go into the settings and turn of the jobs he can do, and turn off for everyone else, and then set them in priority order, so why should I micro manage their stres relief? I've set up the facilities. Help yourself, damnit.

Anyway, the key aspect here is to view your printed duplicates as exactly what they are: an expendable resource. If they become too much of a hassle for you to deal with, get rid of them. You're offered a new dupe every 3rd cycle... use that simple fact to your advantage.  

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Currently the stress system seems lacking due to the following reasons, these have been reported as bugs.

The OP's main issues should be fixed if these bugs/features get fixed/changed. So hopefully the devs will tackle these soon

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14 hours ago, Oatmeal said:

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.

I mean, I may be salty but I am not angry haha. As it stands I pointed out that stress seems broken for a few different reasons. I won't recommend the game at this point. I don't know what back door I went through? I went to steampowered.com and bought the game. o.o Also, I would like to point out that I said many times I enjoy the game up until the broken stress factor ruins it. Why would I recommend a game you can't play for more than a day before it breaks itself. You can say I don't understand the mechanics, and I even said that might be true much easier in the post, but I don't think that's the reason anymore. I took tons of advice, I learned more about the game and as far as I can tell my colony was going fine. I doubt you understand more about the games concepts than me, you are just willing to constantly deal with dupes throwing up and wreaking stuff. I mean, if you have any suggestions that I haven't tried let me know. Otherwise man you didn't change my opinion or recommendation. :)

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13 hours ago, HabdomeRaider said:

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?"

Listen to this guy, he is a lot better at talking than me. This is basically exactly what I mean. Everyone else is just protecting a alpha game they like. I mean I like the game but...you know.....its broken...haha :p

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13 hours ago, Oatmeal said:

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."

Someone didn't read my posts ;) Responding to you guys have flooded the actual post where I discredit the stressed aspect and THEREFOR don't recommend the game. I have said it a million times so far. "I enjoy the game until i reach the broken aspect, its to much to over look. I personally can't have fun with the game because of it." So why would I recommend it at this point? Hey, this game is great until 30 cycles in when your dupes go crazy and there is nothing you can really do about it :D. I will suggest you read the posts before everyone came in shining armor to protect this game.

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To everyone suggesting solutions, thank you! I have gotten trapped responding to people claiming I just can't play the game or don't understand. I have played for 15 hours, tried many suggestions to fix my problem. I learned all the aspects I thought I could. Maybe I am not the perfect player but I think there is a reason this thread is popular. Other people are having this problem. That is my main goal, put this at the top of the devs fix list (for the most part.) And I am sorry if it offends you, but I will not recommend the game alpha or not until stressed is more or less fixed. If it wasn't broken until round 400 or what ever I wouldn't have made this thread. There is plenty wrong with it at the moment that it makes it not fun to play. Doesn't matter if the game is in alpha, if its not fun, I will not recommend it.

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Now for actual suggestions how to deal with stress in the current build.

1. Build a lot of Massage Tables. My current base has just under 20 dupes and 5 Massage Tables, which I try to keep full most of the time. If you remember to keep assigning dupes to tables whenever they get a little stressed, you can keep their stress down. This method is pretty easy, but it's also really tedious. I'm hoping they make Massage Tables auto-assign soon so I can play ONI instead of Sim Massage Parlor.

2. Kill off problematic dupes. Most of your stress eventually ends up coming from a few high-maintenance dupes. You can kill these off and have fewer Massage Tables.

3. Build a stress-proof base. If you feel the stress mechanic is broken, ignore it. If you build your base right, you can play easily with 100% stress dupes. There are several potential strategies for a stress-proof base. First, you can select only Vomiter dupes for your base. You can just refuse to accept any Destructive dupes. Just let them vomit all over the place. Your base will (mostly) continue running. Second, upgrade to large batteries and coal generators. As far as I can tell, Dupes will only break small batteries, manual generators and thermal regulators. Put the thermal regulators somewhere dupes can't reach them. They don't need dupe interaction to work. Third is a plan I like to call sequestration. Lock a vomiter dupe in a room with a manual generator and don't let any destructive dupes in. In all three of those strategies, you'll want to build your base mostly out of mesh tiles so that the vomit can collect in a big pool at the bottom. Little puddles of contaminated water tend to trigger a water-collecting bug that can be really annoying.

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It's interesting to look at what is causing stress, and what isn't. If you pause the game, click on a duplicant, go to the stats tab and hover over each of the effects.

Nothing has an actual negative effect on stress except decor and interrupted sleep. Grimy, dirty, sick, whatever. I haven't seen any of those have any effect on stress, at all.

If you have enough decor, the effect on stress will always be positive. The maximum effect is +0.02/s.

On the other hand, the negative effect of interrupted sleep is -0.03/s. Somehow the net effect of interrupted sleep and maximum positive decor is -0.02/s.

So in my case, one or more of my dupes would constantly decide to get up from bed, walk 10 steps to one of the many nearby bathrooms, and then go back to bed. The result was that their stress level was slowly, but constantly, ticking upwards. There were plenty of bathrooms, the bathrooms were very close to the bed, these dupes were not "small bladder" dupes, they just weren't smart enough to use the bathroom before bedtime.

The only way to combat the stress buildup from interrupted sleep was frequent use of massage tables. That got really annoying, night after night, watching them get up and run for the toilet, and feeling like I had no way to stop it.

Is there some way to force a dupe to use the bathroom before bed that I just overlooked?

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Check this Image out. I have 4 dupes, I am only 15 rounds in. I have to micromanage them constantly going to the table to keep them from just losing their minds.

The air is fine. I have a nice shower and restroom. I am sticking with only 4 dupes for a while. They have nothing to be complaining about...yet, all I am getting is dupes slowly but surely starting to vomit everywhere and ruin the other dupes mood. Its broken...

E5EEC6227334FF3D735E7DF22EB4ADAF99B1D623

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49 minutes ago, kylemcqueen75 said:

I doubt you understand more about the games concepts than me, you are just willing to constantly deal with dupes throwing up and wreaking stuff. I mean, if you have any suggestions that I haven't tried let me know. Otherwise man you didn't change my opinion or recommendation. :)

Not actually trying to change your opinion since that is your opinion after all. You're free to have one. There'd be no point in telling you to do something in a forum when you have different tastes; not better or worse tastes, just different. But as I said, the issue was the whole "Telling friends to stay away" bit that you said. Do I care if you do it anyways? No. You will do what you want, which is fine. But the fact that people have survived much longer, heck, the fact that I have survived much longer than the 30 days you mentioned, hints at you doing something wrong, somewhere. This brought on the thought that you didn't understand the mechanics or strats fully, which is understandable since they are a bit wonky at the moment. That was pretty much it, and not much more to it.

 

But yeah. Strats. There are actually quite a few ways to survive for a long time. Personally, I am not a fan of the 'use contaminated oxygen as your oxygen' strat since it feels kind of too cheaty, though perfectly fine. But it is a good way to last a fairly long time.

To summarize a few things that can impact the full run, including stress management:

!. Don't accept every dupe. Keep your count manageable. Every player has their preferred character types, and some do like to min/max their choices for the much later game. There are various strategies on who to pick, what traits they should have, and a few other filters in deciding on who stays or who goes. That's something you just slowly slip into though, and can be a little daunting to jump right into.

2. Don't expand too fast; more area means more oxygen that needs to be filled. Know how to seal off areas. Although currently, too many airlocks can cause some issues since they destroy air and water; that means oxygen as well as CO2.

3. Be liberal and careful as to where you place your structures. Always plan ahead and be mindful of your future placements. Sometimes, being hectic with your placements can have a snowball effect when you run into an issue; you need to build this to handle this, but since you did this, you need to move it for this, all while having to deal with a sudden possible emergency that leads to juggling out of control.

4. Keep an eye on their decor needs, as well as the decor around your base.

5. Massage tables are your friends and always keep track of your stress, because sometimes, you may be too focused on a task and don't realize that they are past 80% already.

6. Keep an extra eye on their current stats menu. The changes are gradual, not instant.

7. Blue does not always mean fully breathable. And if they are suffocating or holding their breathe, it can affect stress... At least... I am very certain that it does seeing as how there are times where it is the only possible reason as to why it is going up, yet the info pop-up doesn't show it.

8. Disturbed sleep... Probably one of the more annoying ones and possibly the major one that you can't fix. At least to my current knowledge since there is no way to force a dupe to use the toilet.

9. Learn the structures. If you never have, research everything and know what to research first and last. The first one should usually always be farming tech, but then it is up to you, who you chose, and how you plan on setting up your base layout.

10. You will fail. A lot. A common trait of Klei games is that you must be prepared to die a lot. Especially since this is an alpha build which comes with the additional annoyance that the bugs and unreadines can cause. A lot of this game will be the experience you gain through trial and error as a player.

 

All of this can affect stress either indirectly, or directly, based on the player and their decisions for their Dupes.

 

Also... That is really bizarre. They shouldn't be puking with stress THAT low. If anything, I would have to guess that they are soiling themselves and not puking. But if they are puking, then that is a big issue.

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Its not the failing that gets me, I think overall I just don't like the way you HAVE to play in order to last. I prefer building a nice base that is "realistic," if you know what I mean. I don't find it fun to cover my base in paintings in order for the decor to be good enough for my dupes not to implode haha. I don't like to micromanage tables, I deff don't want to see my base filled with contaminated air. I wan't a balance of all these things that make sense. I understand the game is in alpha but I didn't expect such a huge problem to be just ignored. I didn't see much about it on the forums, people are just doing things to get around it when they should be pushing devs to make a fix or just temp remove it so you can play the game realistically. These random strats on how to jump around the stress problem isn't fun :/

Also, one of my fav youtubers "Northernlion" started up a second play through today. I am interested and willing to bet how it ends haha.

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2 hours ago, kylemcqueen75 said:

Check this Image out. I have 4 dupes, I am only 15 rounds in. I have to micromanage them constantly going to the table to keep them from just losing their minds.

The air is fine. I have a nice shower and restroom. I am sticking with only 4 dupes for a while. They have nothing to be complaining about...yet, all I am getting is dupes slowly but surely starting to vomit everywhere and ruin the other dupes mood. Its broken...

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Perhaps you have a specific bug, stress isn't a problem this early in the game.

Ps: You should try to be nicer to your dupes and build the restroom next to their beds. 

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There are a few things you can do to combat the stress problem.

First, public enemy number one when dealing with stress in the early game is Sleep Interrupted. Any time your dupe has to wake up in the middle of the night, they get a 0.03%/s stress debuff which adds up to 18% stress over the course of a day! This is likely the cause of most of your problems. Eliminate as many sources of Sleep Interrupted as you can. Watch your dupes as they sleep and see if and why they wake up. Move snorers farther away, make sure there's good airflow around the beds. However, there's nothing you can do about your dupes waking up to potty in the middle of the night. You just have to take the 18% stress hit. Double However, there's a bug that prevents Sleep Interrupted from clearing away sometimes even if your dupes get a full night's sleep. If this happens, SAVE and RELOAD. This will clear the Sleep Interrupted status, whether bugged or legitimate. Either make sure only to do this if you know the dupe slept all night, or accept a minor cheat as compensation for a broken stress system.

Second, decor can add up to a good amount of stress reduction over time, and it doesn't have to be plaster your whole base with paintings. Storage Compartments, Batteries, Ladders and Algae are all -Decor debuffs. Keep them farther away from dupes' beds and workstations. They don't have to be that far, I think all those things have a decor range of 1 tile. Dupes work on the left side of workstations and sleep on the left side of beds, so the storage compactor to the right of your generator is fine, but the battery on its left is draining your dupe's decor whenever he runs on it. Focus your decor efforts in places where your dupes spend all their time; that means beds, massage tables, and various workstations. Personally, I think one painting over each bed looks nice. Do the same with lighting. Every bed and workstation should be lit. That's another +15 decor. Even a small amount of decor can give dupes a -0.02%/s stress reduction.

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I find the people who do not use switches and valves to regulate their duplicant's exposure to machinery are often the ones complaining about stress.

Then again stress is actually the only way I have found to create an approximation of a timer...  but this warrants more experiementation...

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On 2/26/2017 at 4:13 AM, kylemcqueen75 said:

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 :/

I'm in a hurry, so sorry if someone has already answered (i didn't have time to read the comments here),
but i think you will find that grimy. washing hands etc are not what is causing stress.
Rather than checking out what is on their status in red, hover over the "stress" score, and it will tell you exactly what is currently effecting them. They will have buffs and debuffs, and then an overall movement.
There is a guide to stress on these forums if you would like to know more about each stress effect.
Generally though, it's usually low decor, full bladder, or stepped in contaminated water.
If there is any contaminated water around your base, you could try routing it to a collection area, using mesh tiles.
This way it's not sitting around and getting on your dupes feet.
Decor value is best fixed by spamming pictures and statues all over your base, as well as making sure you sweep up any ores and materials laying around on the floor. It's especially a good idea to place decor where your dupes sleep, as you know they will be in this area for a decent portion of the cycle, and you may as well have their stress decrease while they sleep.
Another alternative is to have massage tables instead of beds.
You will have to manually set your dupes to use them at night time (high priority), but they will stay on the tables during the night, as it counts as sleeping.
You should only really need to do this if their stress is already very high. It's not something you would need to do every night just to maintain stress levels.

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Regarding adding lighting to improve decor/lower stress, it looks like floor lamps are much more effective than ceiling lamps?  Floor lamps give much better results in the Decor interface, I suppose that is meant as a trade-off - floor lamps take up valuable floor space while ceiling lamps do not.  

I've do try to put floor lamps near my Dupes beds though I can't imagine how their stress is lowered with a halogen lamp shining right at them all night long :) 

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On 3/14/2017 at 1:20 AM, DoctorOverlord said:

Regarding adding lighting to improve decor/lower stress, it looks like floor lamps are much more effective than ceiling lamps?  

I've do try to put floor lamps near my Dupes beds though I can't imagine how their stress is lowered with a halogen lamp shining right at them all night long :) 

Whenever I check the decor overlay, lighting is worth +15 regardless of source.

I've never understood why dupes like sleeping with the lights on though. Maybe they're afraid of the dark?

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