Slow Learner trait as stress management

[Saturnus]

Although long term you'd ideally want your dupes as stressed as possible to generate water. You typically want to stretch the time to that threshold until you've set up your base for it.

I've found it very useful to cherry pick dupes with the Slow Learner trait. That means the raise in skill much slower, and therefore their decor expectations doesn't rise as fast.

Eventually they will get stressed but if you're not set up for it yet, just kill them of by building themselves into a tile at some convenient location. And use the corpse to spawn morbs which you can either kill of for the meat, or in the longer term keep as pets to generate contaminated oxygen for a puft to convert into slime.

Btw, pufts can be trapped effectively by a clean water water lock as they don't seem to be able to swim through clean water.

[tehMugwump]

You're a hard man, Saturnus, a hard man. 

[Targa_X]

Hmm, this got me thinking, would it then be beneficial to NOT provide toilets, so Dupes "make a mess", thereby giving you free contaminated water?

[Saturnus]

2 minutes ago, Targa_X said:

Hmm, this got me thinking, would it then be beneficial to NOT provide toilets, so Dupes "make a mess", thereby giving you free contaminated water?

Absolutely. However, you still need fertilizer for the meal lice but you can calculate how much you need of that per dupe you have, and then just shut down the outhouses when you don't need them. For instance, your calculation may show that unless your colony grows or shrinks, or the number of plant you have does the same, then you can shut down the outhouses for example 4 days for every one day you need them open to create enough fertilizer.

[clamjam]

Yes, dupe pee is a source of free contaminated water - if you're going to go this route, then the small-bladder trait is your friend.

[O.n.y]

I always pickup dupes with minimum decor requirement - preferably from -35 to -20. Others i just skip. This helps a lot with less fast demand on decor -> less stress. Also using massage tables once dupe reached 40% stress.

[Vilda]

Anyone else reminded of calculations from The Martian? How long I need to run oxygenator to survive while still driving forward

[Targa_X]

On 2/21/2017 at 7:52 PM, Saturnus said:

I've found it very useful to cherry pick dupes with the Slow Learner trait. That means the raise in skill much slower, and therefore their decor expectations doesn't rise as fast.

But is that actually what really happens? The slow learner trait simply says "-5 Learning" (subtracted from base stats). It says nothing about "learning gain -0.5%" or some such like other traits say. And I just tested this because I want to put off dealing with stress for as long as possible, so I started a game with 3 dupes with the slow learner trait and one of them already gained +1 athletics at the start of day 2!

[GetOutofMe]

any tips on reproducing pufts?

[Octyabr]

On 23/2/2017 at 9:49 PM, Targa_X said:

But is that actually what really happens? The slow learner trait simply says "-5 Learning" (subtracted from base stats). It says nothing about "learning gain -0.5%" or some such like other traits say. And I just tested this because I want to put off dealing with stress for as long as possible, so I started a game with 3 dupes with the slow learner trait and one of them already gained +1 athletics at the start of day 2!

See for yourself:

As I understand it, it takes 30% more time (for this one) to level up any attribute.