Originally posted by OP:

I think in order to truly make something like what I mentioned balanced, it would probably have to be baked into the game or need a specialized effort. I did recently make a suggestion post about outposts/checkpoints that serves as a semi-design document or at least brainstorm, with ideas and considerations, although not streamlined or presented in such quality that may be expected if I were being paid for it.

Now that I think about it deeper though, I might have to take back what I said.

Districts are notoriously bad (way too high opportunity cost), and I'm not sure how much balance you could truly achieve trying to work off of the average well-being just by itself. Because you get both the beavers enjoying their lives at the primary district which add to the well-being bonus, but since it's an average, it still accounts for and is hampered by beavers in a far-off district doing their jobs elsewhere.

So it kind of equalizes it, but it comes at a pretty great cost.

This seems like it would be efficient for making well-being bonuses consistent throughout entire days of workflow, minimizing minor fluctuations per beaver based on... Whatever their priority jank prioritizes. And instead makes it consistent...

But as for the use-case I mentioned, it could cut back on average well-being significantly just by having a decent amount of beavers in a district not catered to, because again, it is an average.

Theoretically it could be better if beavers were at minimum affected by the average but also affected by their own well-being, so the worst off beavers would get some benefit, but it wouldn't cut back on individual productivity. Like if we were to envision two districts, one district had happy beavers, the other had okay beavers. The okay beavers would, under this implementation, still receive average bonus buffs, while not bringing down the beavers in the primary/happy district.

Even then, you still have to make the decision if that average well-being bonus is worth separating them into their own district... And if it wouldn't simply be more efficient to have them travel longer to do their jobs at night and at day, given the bonuses they would get if they simply lived at the happy district. Because the difference in movement and work speed bonuses could be quite major even then.

But I'm looking at this in regards to trying to fix an issue with how the game handles districts. Admittedly, that's a big ask for a modder to fix. And it probably wasn't even the intended goal.

I approve of not deleting comments by the way. I am an advocate for archiving shameful behavior. (At least when it is relevant, no desire to flaunt or showcase past mistakes if the person has changed of course. But still a useful reminder of imperfection and the journeys we all need to take to better ourselves. So it shouldn't just outright be erased, even if the person has changed.)

Originally posted by OP:

Something I do want to see done that might be super simple though, is a mod that makes it so that a beaver's hunger and thirst, the green section, is doubled in size (you can move the rightmost position of the red bar back to accommodate the size change of the positive part and not just make them live longer), put a divider line in the middle of the new green bar, and have it so whenever that bar is reached, beavers prioritize eating and drinking above their jobs (but still not any currently queued tasks.) So they don't consistently starve and dehydrate themselves multiple times a day, inflicting debuffs on themselves and well-being penalties, polluting the game-world with their notification bubbles, because their implemented priority system has a pretty huge oversight.

Because how they work now, is that they won't care to eat or drink during work hours until it's far too close to the red bar, so they just won't eat or drink until they shoot themselves, and the player, in the foot.

Originally posted by ModAuthor:

Thanks for the detailed comment. Next time if you need more characters, you can create a discussion :) From your comments, I like two suggestions because they are both good and reasonably achievable with mods:
1. I can make so that Wellbeings is updated once at day-start only and does not fluctuate during the day. That way you stay with what you started.
2. I can make a "mix" between personal and global well-being. A formula (and maybe customizable) may be needed here instead of just (Global + Personal wellbeing) / 2, could be an (ax + by) / 2 with x and y determined by user with a "well-thought" default settings.

I would probably, if possible, make it so that well-being is updated every time it changes if there is a net positive to be gained. But regarding net negatives and losses, it only updates to accurately portray debuffs and negatives at the end of the day/start of the new one. So as long as the net number of the buffs go up, it updates, reapplies it, etc. But if ANYTHING goes down, it waits until the reset period to apply it.

Otherwise, you are prone to get beavers (individually or communally) affected by multiple guys who decided to sleep before drinking or eating. And then he dehydrates and starves in his sleep. And then you will start the new day cheated out of positive bonuses you could have had otherwise.

And if we were to consider the whole thirst and hunger debuff thing, that would mean that the guy would have to be starving for quite some time before he gets his debuff. Specifically, he would need to start a new day still starving, to get his pretty massive debuff, both to well-being score and the individual debuffs associated with those needs. Which, he's highly likely to eat before he starts his job in the morning. So it will minimize negative fluctuations to manageable times for the player and the colony.

It's weird, but it should be a good band-aid fix to improve player experience regarding their otherwise funky AI and self-destructive decision making. Should make games more consistent while not eliminating negative feedback. Even if it does err on the side of caution for the player, sometimes that's what you just got to do when working with something as funky as this.






Regarding number two though, I would personally suggest the ability to have kind of an "either-or" system. So, my idea is essentially, all beavers derive wellbeing benefits from the average wellbeing score by default. However, if any beaver has an individual set of benefits or improved well-being scores, the game overrides the default (the communal well-being score) and applies the localized individualistic benefits instead to that individual beaver. And on the contrary, you can also have it so that if a beaver ever reaches a negative wellbeing or negative threshold individually, his individual negatives override the communal positive system. Allowing for debuffs and consequences to still affect him.

Which of course, could be paired with #1, meaning he would feel those negatives at the beginning of the next day, which would remain until the mod detects there is a positive fluctuation to his stats, allowing him to increase his well-being dynamically throughout the day and shed the debuffs at the times he addresses those issues, at the beginning of the work period for the new day rather than multiple times throughout the day inconsistently.

You could also add exceptions, like specifically for broken teeth and injuries, that maybe they can be applied immediately when triggered, rather than waiting until the end of the day. That seems fair and manageable to me, at least regarding what those debuffs are supposed to do, which is provide sudden penalties to your production which you have to work around or solve. (As opposed to the dehydrating and starving debuffs, which just get triggered frequently due to bad AI priority.) Could be optional checks (maybe enabled by default,) similar to the "healthy beavers" mod.


I would say that a negative well-being score should not communally affect beavers, but the positive benefits should. And then individual positives override communal positives if the individual positives are greater. Of course you can include options for the player to tweak it, maybe someone wants communal negative-wellbeing to be a thing. But I wouldn't imagine that would be on by default. (Also I would make sure to mark which settings are which by default.)

Additional application cases for communal benefits could be either of the following:
1. If the beaver has ANY negative needs, (shelter, food, water, etc.) communal benefits cannot apply to him. All of his individual needs must be 0 or above.
2. A beaver has to have an individual overall wellbeing of 0 or above to benefit from communal benefits.
(Either can be paired with the first mod to make it so he doesn't shed the communal benefits until the start of the new day as his problems persist)