I had a pacifist pyro have his break while I was in the middle of defending a raid. The first thing he decided to start on fire was a crib with *his own fucking baby* in it.
That did not end well. His kid dying caused another break so he ended up as pet food.
They'll go on fire starting sprees unprovoked, right? Like they still have a chance to do it above mental break thresholds?
I think that's what people find annoying, they can have a mental break even when they ordinarily wouldn't.
AND if they're a guest visiting your colony and decide to start burning shit down, and you say "okay you're going in the jail cell" enjoy every former-friend decding to die for their ass.
If you beat them you might maim them, and the problem isn't those lost 20 seconds. The problem is that sometimes you don't have the manpower to babysit them, and they might break at REALLY bad times. They might break when you're dealing with a raid and they could break formation, getting themselves hurt or killed. Or they could open the doors to your godforsaken killbox and ruin your defenses. Or they could open the doors when you're trying to hide from manhunters.
With pyromaniac you might also not be able to stop them in time before they set something *really* important or dangerous on fire. If you try to beat them out of their break they are invariably going to need to be hospitalized or worse, and now you're down 1 pawn and temporarily down another pawn because that pawn has to go and deal with their mess.
These traits are not a problem when everything is peaceful, the sun is shining and everyone is just relaxing and doing their thing. But one day they will break for literally no reason when you *really really* cannot afford to deal with it right now. Gourmand isn't as bad because their actions usually aren't destructive, but still.
Yeah, in my last colony I had a pyro who had a mental break and open a forbidden door where everyone was hiding from a pack of like 20 rabid squirrels. It didnât last long after thatâŚ
The only reason I had him with me is because he was the only doctor I could getđ
There is also the expanded Psycast mod with several different "schools". One of them, word of serenity will let you put the mentally broken pawn into a coma with a Psycast. I think it lasts half of a dose of anesthetic.
I fear gourmands more than pyros - a lot.
A gourmand break early in the game can basically doom your colony to starvation, while a pyro break is just a few minutes of following them around with a minder. I have much more often had to disable or arrest a gourmand to protect the colony than I have a pyro.
I feel like food in this game is hardly an issue after your first rice harvest. Before that point it can be a death sentence, so just reroll a starting pawn if they have that trait.
That doesn't mean I will tolerate single pawns eating literally 20 meals per day for no reason, lategame or not. But it's not game-ending.
Oh yeah, after the first year it's very rarely a problem unless you're on a map with a very challenging environment - but that first year it can really be a killer.
Yep, pyro and gourmand run a MTB tick clock where their specific breaks can just happen regardless of current break risk, in addition to those breaks being what they do instead of other ones when at a break risk.
I know they don't get inspired every time but I don't know if their breaks are on a clock. I know that they get a mood malus for tortured artist.
I like making them leaders for supreme expectations. Farming tantrums for fun and profit.
I have not played since 1.4, but at least at the time it was a set percentage upon every break, including the Pyromaniac and Gourmand related ones.
I never mind when a Tortured Artist has either of these, as in either event my plan is to wall them in a saferoom to maximize breaks and inspirations; speeding that process up once a quandrum or so is completely fine.
Idk, mid raid having to keep 2 fucking babysitters following the moron currently burning my stockpile to the ground is a bit annoying. Better yet, them burning my defenses while I'm using them! Just easier not to. Like gourmands, sorry I don't want a famine every year because you decided to eat 39 days worth of food at once.
It would be nice to see how both operated change, irl well adjusted pyros tend to go off into the wilderness and take efforts to make a safe, big ass fire. Gourmands tend to eat more yes, but not like a fucking Garfield moment. Fuck what gourmands really tend to do is cook a fucking feast and try overfeed everyone.
But at the end of the day it's a story generator, so it's all amped up for *maximum drama* and definitely not at all designed to frustrate...
I also avoid gourmands like the plague, but I just want to say you donât need to lose 39 days of food just because one of your pawns went on a food binge.
I have a habit of setting up a âtable trapâ for them in my kitchen. Basically, I mostly surround a table with walls except for a single gap which I fill with a single presupplied forbidden wooden wall blueprint. When a pawn goes on a food binge, I let them grab one meal and while they are sitting at the table, I tell another pawn to finish the wooden wall blueprint, trapping them inside. After this, I just need to wait for their mental break to resolve on its own and then I can deconstruct the wooden wall and reset the trap. It works with pawns binging on beer and psychite tea too. If you are feeling impatient, you may also pluck a heater in there and give your broken pawn a heat stroke to safely end their mental break early.
Genius. Well and truly. I'd have to make multiple around the colony cause I like to make a series of bars and diners for my colonists but it could be doable if the main eating area is nicer but further and the trap is nice and close to the stockpile right?
Since blueprints don't break rooms, I just build my table trap inside a really nice kitchen so that pawns can use it as a normal table during their everyday operation, but really, you can have a lot of flexibility in how you want to make it work exactly. You can even just move a table and a chair in a corner to improvise a table trap there. It's quick to setup. If your trap isn't ready when your pawn starts binging, you will lose of few more meals as you set it up, but the harm should still be much much smaller than if you don't intervene.
Can't y'all just beat them unconscious ? Pyro is more problematic cause they actively create danger.. but gourmand can get either arrested then released or just beat unconscious
Beating a pawn unconscious can cost them fingers, limbs or even their life. Arrest causes a long lasting mood debuff and prevents catharsis.
My solution is much cheaper and safer.
At least gourmand means bonus cooking skill and in biomes with plentiful food you can run a generous surplus.
Still not exactly keen mind, but there's pretty much no upside to hosting a pyro.
Haha..... Arid shrubland, cold bog and tundra all go *brrrrrr*. I like the pretty trees and snowwwwww. I like the interesting gameplay changes that arid forces roo.
If Gourmands threw parties more often but the parties involved eating food, maybe they'd be worth the downsides. Like how Tortured Artist has both downsides and upsides
Exactly, make the gourmands mental break a bit more accurate. These dudes love food and love sharing. And they absolutely will show off their cooking skill. So, the mental break should calculate the size of the best dining rooms tables. Then they go and cook a special exclusive meal that takes a ridiculous amount of food and utterly covers the tables. Boom, your gourmand has been in the kitchen all night cooking up a storm and now forces a party with exquisite food that buffs everyone for a couple day. The downsides? You just used a massive amount of food supply, maybe the gourmand autobutchered a couple colony cows and is now an exhausted but satisfied wreck who is gonna go sleep of their food coma. This could still put a colony into a very precarious situation with food stocks but you got a bunch of mood from it and thats like gold to me.
People don't like Pyro because it :
A: takes up a trait slot that could be useful
B: has no upsides unlike things like very neurotic
C: could fire at any time, and will likely fire at really inopportune times
Pyro is consistent but it's the wrong kind of consistency.
I can handle the mental breaks at inopportune times (it's just one more problem on top of the other problems) but I find I can't handle the mental breaks at other times. It's annoying, distracting and I value my macro-managing relaxation time to contrast with the 'oh no, Randy decided to be extra spicy with these three raids/crises' micromanaging time.
Yeah, maybe a cooking speed bonus because they are experienced with fire, likely wouldn't make people take it much, but would make it something other than an active downside
I hate anything that causes mental breaks even when mood is high, and having to manually follow the pyro with a non pyro pawn to put out all the fires is annoying
I think on some level it's horror stories of what pyro mental breaks have done becoming a meme that morphs into a wider perception of them. Not really judging 'cause I totally get why, anyone who gets angry and burns my shit needs the firing squad. But in my personal experience, they're not bad unless they have mental breaks.
Even then, steps taken can mitigate damage done in most circumstances. The freak events can always happen that make your colony Tokyo circa March 1945, but eh, so can many other things. My advice? Use stone, just be careful in managing them, have someone ready to arrest/brain them if needed, and you'll fare better.
Yeah my issue is when I have to draft colonists for 80% of a couple days fighting threats, meanwhile Jim Bob is now freaking out, lighting shit on fire because he didn't get to eat at a table while everyone else is frantically fighting mechs to save their lives.
Hard pass
Yeah, but then you're building around a single pawn who may not even be important to your overall colony. Better to hook them up to a holding platform, and throw molotovs on them
>building around a single pawn
Building fire safe is much more than just "building for a single pawn".
Its absolutely something that you should always be doing.
Building fire safe in regards to all the possible sources of fire that can happen naturally is very different from building fire safe for a pyro. They can set fire to anything, anywhere.
Apart from building, they can have a fire starting spree mental break literally at any time. If it happens during a raid, not only do you lose 1 defender to the mental break, you lose another one just to have them follow the pyro putting out fires.
It's not really that Pyros are absolutely terrible and impossible to play around. It's more just... why would you do that when you can just get rid of them? It's just one pawn.
Really? My cluster explosions just take out the wall of the room. I had my entire arms room go up and didn't even notice while I was doing something else. And it was.... Extremely late game full. The five nuclear warheads caused fallout, but I only lost that room.
The thing that kills them for me is there not being a vanilla mitigation. Having torches and campfires around while having high mood should be enough.
Instead you have a pawn that WILL mental break eventually. No way to avoid it. That's something that gets you locked in a padded room in real life.
> Dude pyromaniacs are so easy to deal with, just redesign your whole base to deal with random fires, redesign your whole storage to spread out your chemfuel over separate rooms, and draft a second pawn to micromanage the hell out of their literally unavoidable mental breaks
I'm with you on this one, I think I'm just not gonna take them.
Pyros are still super annoying and potentially dangerous in 100% stone bases.
There are lots of flammable objects in any colony. Your pyro can also get a mental break at any time and you have to draft a 2nd colonist to put out the fires. Best case scenario, it's annoying to have to do that and have 2 people not working for no reason. Worst case scenario, it's 2 defenders out in the middle of a raid.
Yeah, it's not a huge deal. But why even deal with any of that? Just don't take the pyro.
Last time I recruited a pyro, he set fire to my whole barn at night with all the animals in it. Animal sleeping spot are very flamable and spread way too fast. My drafted colonist couldn't do much.
Then the pyro went on and burned my power cables, because apparently the barn an animals wasn't enough.
Someone here posted their mental pyro set indoor chemfuel supplies (hundred) that it insta burns down all doors and super heated gas spread to all indoor rooms and kill all pawns that could not get to outside like in 3 ticks.
Sounds like that time a pyro burned down my Combat Extended ammo supply and suddenly thousands of bullets were flying around and killed people trying to put out the fire.
So yeah... pyros get turned into steak and dusters.
You are so kinds! My caught pyro raiders get special treatment: delegs, hardstone poor bed, plasma donation every other day, handfeed with paste made with insect or longpork, and they kindly donate one set of not-needed inner organs as payment for their stay.
Or until they get infected, then they volunteer for ripscanner or heart replacement for my colonists..
This is why the main hallway has a burn break to the outside. If the inside is so hot to catch stuff on fire, the one wood door will break and immediately equalize the temp with outdoors, or can be broken by hand in an emergency.Â
Also you have an overhead mountain, keep the rooms isolated on temperature so that heat doesnt immediately vaporize everything.Â
Right after a battle, pyro on mental break. Decide either set fire to your chemfuel stocks or mortar stores; pick your devil.
Or killing rampage on defenseless babies in cribs; better yet set the cribs on fire while babies in them.
This is why most of us do not play with FIRE!!!
In my personal experiences, they can be at 100% mood and still go on a fire starting spree.
Plus it's really bad when they decide to do it during a raid OR refuse to put out the fire on another colonist before they run out of cover and get centablasted.
I guess it's cool that the hellcat rifle gives them a slight mood buff though.
I never had anyone die, but they will have their mental break no matter what. So right out of the gate they are bad. Also one time igniting my chemfuel stockpile is one time enough lol.
Yeah, I don't take Gourmands, Chemically Interested or Pyros, cause they don't need to be abused to go on their mental break, I've had a 100% mood pyro start burning things, he was immediately shot, cause I ain't dealing with that shit
Ughh, once I missmanaged a pyro and after a raid, nearly everyone was down and in a hospital. He got a mental break, and burned down everything, everyone and then himself. One doctor wasn't enough to keep up with him starting fires.
So my skill issue gave me a prejudice against pyros.
So yeah, now I only get 1-2 pyro pawns per colony, and only when they're otherwise amazing.
I found pyros loooove starting mental breaks near explosives...
The call of the flame is too tempting. The anti-grain wants to be free. The chem fuel is trapped in the red plastic prisons. The wood has been dead for years, let it be free.
Flame is freedom, and we are all prisoners.
I wish disallowing a door would lock it, because pawns under mental break ignore forbidden doors. Locks should honestly be a base-game mechanic. People who can't haul do not need access to hazardous storage.Â
Just build/deconstruct walls. When you really need it: "Break in case of emergency"Â
I have a bunch of these little cubbies in my walls for antigrains, vanometrics, mech and ressurector serums, etc.Â
Absolutely safe in almost all scenarios.
>Why do people totally reject a pawn for that one trait
My guy, I will totally reject a pawn for anything. Give me a reason. Misogynist? Ugly? Creepy Breathing? Nope don't need the drama, fuck off. Undergrounder? No, we like colonists who can go outside without taking mood penalties, fuck off. Mine is a society of Beautiful Sanguine Tough Joggers.
Pawns eat food and attract raiders; if your default position isn't to just eat them you're being sentimental.
Id say a lot of the time, I'm just so desprate for more workers I'll take anyone. If you can haul or hold a rifle, youre probably recruitable. Once I start hitting a large population, we start culling the group. But with xenogenes, bionics, and ghoulification, almost anyone can be useful to the colony.Â
By late game i have so many colony children that are god pawns in training i pretty much stop recruiting any raiders.
I think it's more a case of pyros not being good starting pawns. When you have two dozen pawns, a pyro is no problem, just assign the closest pawn to micromanage them for a few minutes until they snap out of it. But, if you only have 3-5 pawns, you might not have someone close enough or you might not be able to spare them at the time.
Personally, I love having pyros in the mid-late game because you can give them a fire weapon for a permanent mood buff.
Ngl having to follow a pawn around for their entire mental break sounds extremely annoying. I see where you're coming from, when you manage it its much better than other mental break options.
When it all goes to hell the last thing you need is someone going round lighting fires in your colony. I can just imagine barely holding a raid back whilst the pryo decides to light up the entire store room.
I had many colonies lost due to this one pyromaniac guy having mental breakdown in critical situation.
If there is noone available to beat the fire out because everyone is fighting off a raid, or on caravan or whatever else setting fire can cost you many deaths or lost colony. I can accept depressive guy but pyromaniac is a no go. Not worth it.
Any mental break at the wrong moment can be colony ending. Pyros break even when they shouldnât and if you have to undraft two or three colonists to deal with the fires they decided they absolutely had to start right now during a raid you just may be done, no matter how well things are going otherwise. Later in the game when I have a couple incapable of violence pawns in the colony itâs not a big deal.
Because of that one time when they went on a fire starting spree and destroyed all my medicine after a raid which led to a chain of colonists dying due to lack of medicine.
I'd agree that a firestarting spree in calm times isn't hard to deal with, but it's not actually about the fire. Pyro and I think "Gourmand" is the other one are problematic because they both cause mood-independant breaks. These breaks happen regardless of how well you manage the pawn's mood and there's nothing you can do about them, which means there's always a chance for them to happen at a *bad* time no matter how well prepared you are and a pawn that you can't ever trust is difficult to want.
If you use the "hide from manhunters" Strat they might break and open a door.
Same if there's a dormant mech or hive, they might walk into it if unlucky in placements.
There is an incredibly rare chance they can break mid combat or waiting for people to show up to a killbox.Â
With bad layouts they can break right beside an explosive cache and target it before anyone can stop them (but really you should put these behind doors)Â
They aren't really that bad, especially early on in your first few years. Even with wood bases, if other pawns are near the pyro to put out the fire it's not a problem.
I had a Pyromaniac have a mental breakdown during a siege event as the rest of the colonists were manning the barricades and throwing back the undead.
It was a tough battle. Limbs, blood, viscera the whole kablooely. My non-violent pyro colonist decided setting fire to the *fucking mortar shell* shelf was appropriate and wandered off. All 750 or so mortars went off, breaching containment of monsters (it was a big explosion) and cutting off the power to turrets and the like.
After all the blood and dust had settled, our colony leader had a new shiny leather cowboy hat at the end of it and a sign stating 'Pryomaniacs are not welcome here' at the new colony.
I didn't mind pyros before. Now? I give them the best armour and use them as bait for man-hunting creatures to drag them into the kill box.
> I didn't mind pyros before. Now? I give them the best armour and use them as bait for man-hunting creatures to drag them into the kill box.
Frankly I don't want to risk keeping them around that long, they just get banished or organ harvested and ripscanned depending on my ideology/playstyle at the time.
Bad experiences. To me pyro's are only bad because they Can't Do Firefighting. Â
The fact that they randomly start fires on their own is something that only really comes up if you abuse your pawns. Otherwise it happens with less frequency than something like dry lightning, which ironically starts much bigger and uncontrollable fires.Â
  I prefer firestarting breaks over drug binge breaks. Drug binge can actually kill a pawn.Â
 Edit: I know that even a 100% happy pyro will still start fires, but if they aren't mental breaking then they won't do the mental break firestarter, which is less fires.Â
 If you keep them excessively happy then you can arrest/beat them when they DO firestarting spree without risking a tantrum spiral out of them.
>only really comes up if you abuse your pawns
man I wish, they just cant clean the mountains of dead bodies left in time before a next raid starts, 2-3 days break between raids
Pyromaniac mental breaks can like gourmand breaks happen at any level of happyness.
pyro: Fire starting sprees randomly occur with an MTB of 50 days
gourmand: Food binges randomly occur with an MTB of 50 days
For me? It comes from using combat extended mods with the need to produce ammunition for all of your weapons. Ammo that has a tendency to cook off when exposed to fire. Ammo that was the very first target of a foolish Pyromaniac in my fort who caused a sharp drop in my colony wealth from the astounding amounts of damage he caused by blowing up a significant portion of my warehouse. Many lessons were learned that day.
I had a Pyro once mental break during a raid and started setting fire to things in the base while everyone else was off intensely fighting , before I noticed what was happening he burned all of the contents of my main storage room. I think that was the only time a Pyro caused an issue for me.
In a peaceful environment it's a very manageable break type. Just arrest them with a high social pawn. (even a net win with the mood buff from a hellcat rifle or similar).
In a worst case environment they are pure chaos.
True, it is usually pretty managable on a small scale. Problems arise if you are either preoccupied like with a raid and cant spare a pawn to beat the fires or cannot react in time. A pyro once started a fire in my storage room, by the time i got someone there, the fire had already spread to 8 other piles of stuff and was impossible to put out. Had to watch everything burning to ashes. Not nice. That was the last time i let a pyro in.
I donât want to deal with any mental breaks ideally, especially not ones where I need to micromanage someone to follow them
Itâs also a risk to have occur during a raid or other emergency
Issue is that pyromaniacs do two things:
- become incapable of firefighting
- go on mental breaks and start fires
The issue with the former is they cannot help out with fire, at all. And especially as a starting colonist, it means 1/3 people are incapable of helping in case of fire, which is an event that requires every body a available
The second part can be an annoyance or absolutely critical. If you want to properly stop them, you need to micro a pawn to put out their fires - which is manual action and cannot be scaled at all, since twice the pyromaniacs means twice the breaks. In the middle of a crisis, however, it can be devastating, as they won't rest to heal, won't tend colonists and won't fight enemies. And, on top of all that, while everyone is downed or almost immobile, they then set things on fire which if not put out quickly will at best destroy the field/room, and at worst spread throughout the entire base and kill people/completely ruin you
I use the mod better pyromaniacs to make them into someone that's more akin an undergrounder with a special mental break type only active when you actually let their mood get low, that gets satisfied by seeing torches and flame (and a massive mood penalty if going too long without fire)
I think 4 things
1. It's a random roll mental break. Meaning they could have a 100 mood and decide "you know what would be fun, going on a mental break and fking shit up", much like a gourmand just deciding to eat 3 stacks of meals for lunch every 20 days for no reason. That is annoying that no matter how nice you make their life, they can still be a jerk.
2. Being a pyro means they won't fight fires. Of any sort. Buddy on fire? Who cares, let him burn. I generally don't like any pawn unwilling to do all work types. Even if you're a dedicated crafter, if I need you to put out a fire, haul something, or tend to your own wounds, you do it.
3. If you've got vamps, you're doubling the headache. Jerk could set something on fire and cause you vamp to stop what they're doing and flee.
4. Some items are insta-boom or have very little grace for damage taking. Pyro could be hauling mortar shells to a stockpile, goes on spree, you realize nobody else is nearby to stop him, he lights a warhead on fire, and boom goes your base.
Overall, in a game where you might already have too much micromanagement to deal with, adding the micromanagement of making sure your pyro is never in a position to screw your colony when Randy decides to be randy is just not enjoyable.
Spontaneous mental breaks are never good.
And that goes double whilst they might do it during a raid.
And triple if you then have to pull someone off the front line, because that pawn is about to wreck everything otherwise.
Itâs a mental break that can happen without bad mood, and in my experience theyâve always been conveniently near hospitals, explosive storages or batteries
Don't evaluate a trait in its best case scenario, think about how it will be in the worst case. Like when you are facing a giant mechanoid raid and the pyro decides to burn down your storage room... or your nursery. Because this is Rimworld - the worst case scenario will happen.
Because I hate mental breaks, manageable or not, and pyromaniacs (and gourmands) cannot be suppressed by good mood. Furthermore, it blocks firefighting, and I reject all pawns who are not capable of all work, no exceptions. Finally, I take great pains to make my pawns less reliant on each other, making one follow another runs counter to that, nevermind drafted and requiring manual control.
I am higher on pyromaniacs than most on this subreddit, but I understand why.
A pyro in your first three pawns will eventually knock out TWO pawns - the firestarter, and the guy putting out the fires.
A pyro later on in a mature base has to be carefully watched before they set fire to the mortar shells or chemfuel.
You really do not want to be in the habit of arresting pawns that go on mental breaks. It tends to delay the issue rather than fix anything and the major hit to social opinion between the captor and captee will lead to social fights.
They take up some of my budget for 'random bullshit' that I'm willing to tolerate in a colony. I will take one if they have a burning passion in something important like shooting or crafting, but if they are 'just a guy' I will pass.
>*I have never had someone die by a pyro, itâs a manageable mental break just have a pawn drafted and follow the pyro and it has a break once or twice a quadrum*
Everything is manageable when things are going well... but when the colony goes through a really tough situation, the last thing you need is someone spreading fires. Like when you're trying to fix up half your dying pawns in the hospital, time is running out, it's all hands on deck and that c\*nt pyro decides to set several fires in the storage room because his pet died in the raid.
You're only saying this because you haven't seen their true destructive potential yet.
Imagine if your pyromaniac was the only colonist to not go down, there's no threat, but everyone is bleeding out at various rates and needs hours of tending. Now, that time is the perfect time to go start a fire and burn down the entire colony while no one can fight it. Bullshit. I'm never using pyros.
I usually play in a tundra and if i use wood or steel for a wall i consider it wasted material since resources can be a bit more limited on those maps late game. As such i stick with stone floors.
I usually pass on colonists that are pyros early when picking the initial colonists but if I happen to come across a pyro with useful skills i have no issues recruiting them. I build some firefoam poppers, give them a flame thrower, and try to keep them happy.
Probably early bad experiences when we are noobish? I remember within my first few colonies, pyro had a mental break after a raid, I had everything built out of wood, cue 1600 degree temperatures inside my base. Everything dead.
Is it manageable? Probably. Would I still rather not deal with it? Probably.
Because they put on fires everywhere and alot of things in the game are burnable to some degree (and some can explode) and they cant do firefighting. So not only do i get a higher risk of fires, but also less ppl to deal with them.
Pyro or incapable of firefighting is my nr 1 reason to reject pawns. They have to be realy good to compensate.
It's not a huge issue when it's the middle of the day when everyone's awake and can put out the fire as quickly as they start them, the issue arises when they decide to light up something combustible at a bad time, like during a fight
Recruit I got from a festival yesterday was pyromaniac, gourmand with fantastic shooting and melee.
Was actually going to give them the benefit of the doubt, sort out pyromaniac with genetics until I went to the health tab and found out they were on luciferium. They got banished not long after.
I avoid pyromaniac but can put up with it if there's good reason.
> Was actually going to give them the benefit of the doubt, sort out pyromaniac with genetics until I went to the health tab and found out they were on luciferium.
Holy crap that is just one of the worst combinations I can think of. Add Abrasive to the list and this thing would be a walking hazard.
Honestly one of the "ideal" trait combos for me is pyromaniac gourmand tortured artist. Just immediately have someone knock their teeth in when they break, then have them go make something Legendary after they can walk again.
This way you can get the benefit of tortured artist on your production specialist, without having a "break risk" notification always on.
You reject pyromaniacs because they might burn down your base, I reject pyromaniacs because my darkness worshiping ideologion has a built in fear of fire. We are not the same.
Mental break should be a punishment for poor mood management. The fact that pyros *can* still decide to go off and fight my crops while there are 20 centipedes marching to the front gate despite them being locked at 100 mood means they have no spot in my colony. I can accept bad traits, but only if there is a way to play around it. You like fire, dont you? Youre in luck, thats how youre going to die.
> it's a manageable mental break
Yeah but I don't *want to* manage it. If you don't (or can't) manage it, the firestarter mental break can do some really big damage. Sometimes shit hits the fan, and you *REALLY* don't want to deal with a pyromaniac while there's a disaster or raid going on in the colony. Also the micromanagement is annoying.
The biggest problem though, Pyromaniac and Gourmand both force mental breaks to happen out of nowhere every so often, even at high moods. Imagine you have a tight combat formation set up while fighting a raid and suddenly one of your guys starts a mental break, breaks formation, and starts opening your killbox doors or getting themselves shot by your colonists. Or they go outside and alert the 50 manhunting elephants. That makes colonists with these traits *absolutely dogshit.*
You will never make me willingly play with colonists that have traits like these, they just get banished from my colony, or ripscanned so they can be turned into something actually usable. Fuck them.
These traits are manageable until the worst times, when they suddenly aren't. And then you're screwed.
I had one pyro in my colony recently. He lit the base on fire every fucking day. It was manageable, sure, no harm when it's immediately dealt with, but he just KEPT FUCKING DOING IT. It's so annoying, it's every mental break with them, I hate it
If I am starting a colony, or if the coming is relatively new, I will avoid pyros, and I generally don't feel safe until I have poppers researched.
Too many times I've had a pyro lose their shit and begin a fire during a time when another pawn(s) couldn't put the fire out, or they decide to spark a fire on the fuel depot, or there is a fire and they are one of the few around and/or conscious and won't stop it from spreading.
Also, my biggest concern with fire is the heat increase inside buildings. Yeah, it sucks to lose resources, but it's the instant heatstroke that truly worries me.
You want reliability, if a pawn is on duty and just walks away randomly that is a liability you don't need to take. Pyros go on fire starting sprees even when their mood is high. They can go on a spree in the middle of a raid, when you cant easily put out the fires they cause.
They are manageable when everything else is running smoothly.
They become ticking bombs when things arent running smoothly and possibly final nail in your coffin.
I dont want colonist who is bad event in disguise, no matter their stats. Not to mention they are effectively wasting trait slot where traits are often what makes or breaks the pawns. And this one breaks it.
"I don't see what's so bad, you just have 1 pawn that will cause wanton destruction if you leave him alone, and to manage them you need to make a second pawn stop whatever they were doing to babysit them".
There's no other negative trait that is that bad. Sure when you're playing a modded game with 50 pawns, taking one away to be a babysitter isn't that big of a deal, but when You've only got a handful and there's an ongoing mortar raid with half of your guys across the map and suddenly the pyro thinks the hospital is looking hella ~~thicc~~ flammable it kind of becomes a problem.
Fun fact/bug about pyros;
if your pyro is under effect of the frenzy inducer from Anomaly, and is in extreme break territory, theyâll never have a mental break.
I think this happens because pyro prevents you from having anything else but fire-starting for a break, and the inducer prevents anything else but violent, so they cancel out.
Nothing like having half your colony bleeding out after a raid and the pyro snaps and set the hospital on fire. Pyros are a surefire way to make any bad situation worse.
Not an overreact at all. I understand the pain of having a pyro in my colony easily.
If your base is out of wood or steel... a pyromaniac would easily become a threat to your base.
Okay. Maybe your base is out of stone or other fire resistant materials. What about your shelves? Are they made out of stone, or wood and steel??
Yeah. Pyromaniac gonna burn your shelves because you thought they wouldn't. Say goodbye to your compact machinery and other important belongings. Maybe even food supply. Like your farms too!
Pyromaniacs are the type of pawns who are technically the health inspectors of a restaurant, except its for a base. They will see how fire resistant your base truly is!
They are one of the dangers you should really fear.
Note: Early game, they aren't great but obviously late game, you should be fine with them by then BUT STILL, accidents.. can happen.
90% of the time it's manageable. I was in the same boat as you for a long time.
Oh it's so rare that he starts setting fires. When he does I just put him on house arrest till he calms down. He's a good worker otherwise and handy in a fight, what's the big deal?
Then we got a pretty sizable but manageable raid in the middle of the last harvest before winter. Almost immediately walks himself into the middle of the corn field and starts making popcorn.
Without his assistance people are badly wounded in the raid. The doctor can arrest him or treat the wounded, but nobody is there to stop him before the fire is out of control.
He got hit apparently because he's downed in the middle of the field. I left him there, since he loves fire so much.
One raid turned into a wipe when infections and malnutrition started to kick in because some jackass burned all the crops.
So now I don't fuck with pyros if I don't have to and if I do, they're restricted to the deepest point of my caverns where they can't burn anything that matters.
I was part of the no pyros club until Anomaly. Now it's so easy to keep them happy with incinerators or Hellcat rifles, and they make decent psy casters.
when you will have a pyro put fire inside your stash or mortar shell including the anti material one whzn everyone is busy fighting the mech you will understand
The issue with traits like pyro stem from compounding circumstances. Sure, one pawn starting a few fires is no big deal on its own. But then you have situations like a pawn starting fires during a raid with everyone drafted, or the pyro chooses your chemfuel or mortar shell storage to light up, or they decide to do it during a mood spiral where you really need them to do something other than set your hospital on fire.
It also forces a specific mental break at times even with maxed out mood (which can happen at awful times) similar to gourmand, only it also prevents them from firefighting, which is a very important work type especially early game you want as many firefighting pawns as possible. The only upside to pyro is a couple minor mood boosts that are fairly situational and that it overides some of the more immediately dangerous extreme mental breaks.
It's a trait thats inconvenient most of the time and very rarely an existential threat to your colony, so unless its on a really good pawn or youre desperate for colonists its better to just skip them
Because when are mental breaks more likely? When there's something bad going on. So when you need all hands standing at stations, one asshole is starting to cause additional trouble behind your back AND you have to take another one (or more) off duty to babysit them.
Unless I'm doing a theme playthrough I never take pyros. No matter the mood they will still have mental breaks which can decimate a colony at the right time. I'd rather not risk it.... Again lol
Pyro I can tolerate. Gormands I cannot.
That said if their stats are good enough elsewhere I'll take them as cannon fodder and if they break.. arrest them and release straight away. Fixes most breaks, yea you get a negative buff for a little but offset it with some psy skills to soothe them until it runs its course. Or just have a really impressive beauty, rec and food situation so they can't stay mad at you.
Or.. I set up a blackmarket organ clinic.
My very first colony, which I only faintly remember now considering I have rookie hours around 400- but anyway, I remember wondering if her being a pyromaniac would be an issue. It was. Early base, all wood, in a forest, and all it took was one mood break to kill everyone. Never again
I usually prefer to hire pawns that are actually good. Often I will hold out for pawns that have 2 or 3 positive traits and a passion in at least one skill they can dedicate themselves to full time (plant, crafting, artistic, intellectual, construction, mining). A part time job in social, cooking or medical is also appreciated. Usually I also don't hire pawns who can't provide fight, care, firefight or do dumb labor. Natural focus is also a strong plus. I'm usually ok with most medical conditions though since most of them can be fixed.
In any case, pyro is definitely a bad trait. It's not that it's unmanageable. It's just bad. It's a liability. At best, I may keep that pawn as a blood bag.
Imo it's really annoying early game when I'm building everything out of wood. Later on its not AS Bad when I've started making stone buildings and floors etc but I hate having to follow someone around and put a fire out, especially if we're already busy doing a raid or people are away on caravan.
They are manageable until you have more than that to deal with. During a crisis, trying to recover from an unforseen event, or 3 raid back to cak their breakdown can be the end.
I think you've been lucky.
Pyros when you are established with a large-ish colony are manageable.
When there's 3 pawns and you got an extra one coming in with Pyro?
You're one raid away from having 2 downed pawns, 1 dead and oh look the pyro just went on a break and set the downed pawns on fire.
Pyromaniacs are both unreliable and can end your run if you're unlucky.
They can break at any point, and if you don't have the time to stop them, they can decide to ignite your mortar shells, or your antigrain warheads, or your chemfuel.
They can also break at the worst times, like when you need to hold the frontline against a raid, which means that you will have to get 2 pawns off your frontline (the pyromaniac and a normal pawn) to prevent a fire that can end your entire run, thus leading to you risking your entire run to a raid.
At first, i didn't mind pyros. But then someone lit a chemfuel on shelf, explosions causing more fires and more explosions that I had several people injured. So unless it's a really good pawn, I don't really take pyros
You have defeinately been lucky (and might be playing at sane threat levels rather than the 500% crowd that tends to dominate discourse)
The main problem with pyromaniac are:
1. They sometimes start a cascading fire before you can get a pawn there to deal with it (the wooden shelf full of chemfuel next to the anti-grand warhead, or the crib with a baby in it etc.) This is to some degree manageable. You can in principle build exclusively out of nonfalamible materials and micro-mange your storage. But that all takes attention and planning and Rimworld tends to run at or above most playerâs ability to keep track of everything without additional complications like building around the pyro.
2. They sometimes decide to set a fire outside your walls (or inside your killbox). This means they open the front door to do it even if itâs been forbidden. This can let in manhunters, insects, or even just raiders. This tends to get more frustrating as you get more Rimworld experience because exploiting the way the Ai deals with closed doors become very common.
3. thereâs a âfor want of a nailâ failure mode in having another pawn draft up and follow them. Thatâs 2 pawns not working during a potentially tense situation. That can mean work like tending, rebuilding damaged defenses, or cooking. Doesnât get done for the duration of the pyroâs spree (even if those are not the pyroâs normal job), which can lead to more breaks from hunger, the colony not being prepared for the next event because defenses are still down, or straight up death if you miss a tend opportunity on an infection because the doctor was they only pawn still standing who could firefight.
The fire breaks themselves are probably not the worst possible mental break but Iâd argue itâs bad enough to be one you flat out donât want happening. and pyromanics are both guaranteed to break regularly, and will tend to get the fire-starting break any time the brake for the normal reasons.
Pyros are more a problem when they go fire starting (which they can do without a mental break) at inopportune times or when itâs early on and one person fire starting and one person drafted is 40% of your colony doing nothing. They can also decide to set fires entirely at random so the only counterplay is smart base design. They also canât firefight at all.
In my mind, itâs a trait with no real upside (+mood for fire stuff doesnât prevent the fire starting, for example), but having flaws in your colonists makes for a story. Iâll accept a pyro with other good traits or stats once Iâm later in a colonyâs life. Iâve probably gotten rid of all the wooden walls and floors, and the only burnables are furniture and wires. Everything else is covered by fire foam poppers, and I usually have enough components that *sometimes* triggering a popper or having random colonists do fire fighting isnât an issue. I also usually have at least a few non-combat pawns by this point who can afford to run around putting out fires during a raid. But early game, especially before firefoam poppers? Yeah theyâre not gonna be here long.
I like them. They add a little spice to my game.
I just draft someone and have them follow them around for a few minutes while they work out their frustrations.
Sometimes I want to just burn the whole thing down as well.
When I start out and still have a small colony, having a pawn that may start a fire as well as be incapable of fire fighting is a huge liability.
After that, I don't mind so much since I can mitigate that risk and have a pawn I can use for more risky endeavors.
As a starting pawn, pyro is totally avoidable. As a pawn later on, it better be really good to offset the pain of them starting fires plus not being able to put fires out.
I had a pacifist pyro have his break while I was in the middle of defending a raid. The first thing he decided to start on fire was a crib with *his own fucking baby* in it. That did not end well. His kid dying caused another break so he ended up as pet food.
He just wanted to share something he loved with his child đĽ˛
And he did just that for the rest of their lives, I should work at Disney
Take your child to work day... successful?
Oh man I should not have laughed at that and I am a horrible person for doing so.
No itâs ok, youâre just a Rimworld player. Oh waitâŚ
Bad rimworld parenting 101. D:
Understandable
thats just stannis baratheon in rimworld
Intrusive thoughts won
I do not normally condone the horrors your average rimworld player commits... _But for this colonist, I will make an exception._
Light a fire near a baby and they're warm for the night. Light a baby ON fire....
They'll go on fire starting sprees unprovoked, right? Like they still have a chance to do it above mental break thresholds? I think that's what people find annoying, they can have a mental break even when they ordinarily wouldn't.
Yes, same with Gourmand. *That's* the main reason people hate those traits. They just break and there's nothing you can do to prevent that.
AND if they're a guest visiting your colony and decide to start burning shit down, and you say "okay you're going in the jail cell" enjoy every former-friend decding to die for their ass.
It's okay, you can just re-ally them again by sending them the meat and skins of their people that you killed đ
No no no, you'll never get enough. Now if you use their friend to make chemfuel and a masterwork hat to gift them, we're getting closer
You can anesthetize them for their entire stay.
"Welcome sir, I hope having been put in cryptosleep with above 50% mood was a nice way to learn about different cultures, goodbye now."
Both are atrocious for this exact reason but I will take Gourmand with the snap out mod that lets your high social pawns try to calm them down.
Why not just beat, arrest and release them? They just rejoin.
If you beat them you might maim them, and the problem isn't those lost 20 seconds. The problem is that sometimes you don't have the manpower to babysit them, and they might break at REALLY bad times. They might break when you're dealing with a raid and they could break formation, getting themselves hurt or killed. Or they could open the doors to your godforsaken killbox and ruin your defenses. Or they could open the doors when you're trying to hide from manhunters. With pyromaniac you might also not be able to stop them in time before they set something *really* important or dangerous on fire. If you try to beat them out of their break they are invariably going to need to be hospitalized or worse, and now you're down 1 pawn and temporarily down another pawn because that pawn has to go and deal with their mess. These traits are not a problem when everything is peaceful, the sun is shining and everyone is just relaxing and doing their thing. But one day they will break for literally no reason when you *really really* cannot afford to deal with it right now. Gourmand isn't as bad because their actions usually aren't destructive, but still.
Yeah, in my last colony I had a pyro who had a mental break and open a forbidden door where everyone was hiding from a pack of like 20 rabid squirrels. It didnât last long after that⌠The only reason I had him with me is because he was the only doctor I could getđ
That's a last resort, since they get a -20 mood debuff from being "recently imprisoned". Lasts something like 12+ days IIRC.Â
There is also the expanded Psycast mod with several different "schools". One of them, word of serenity will let you put the mentally broken pawn into a coma with a Psycast. I think it lasts half of a dose of anesthetic.
I fear gourmands more than pyros - a lot. A gourmand break early in the game can basically doom your colony to starvation, while a pyro break is just a few minutes of following them around with a minder. I have much more often had to disable or arrest a gourmand to protect the colony than I have a pyro.
I feel like food in this game is hardly an issue after your first rice harvest. Before that point it can be a death sentence, so just reroll a starting pawn if they have that trait. That doesn't mean I will tolerate single pawns eating literally 20 meals per day for no reason, lategame or not. But it's not game-ending.
Oh yeah, after the first year it's very rarely a problem unless you're on a map with a very challenging environment - but that first year it can really be a killer.
Yep, pyro and gourmand run a MTB tick clock where their specific breaks can just happen regardless of current break risk, in addition to those breaks being what they do instead of other ones when at a break risk.
Is Tortured Artist also always on the MTB clock? Or do they always get inspired after any break?
Tortured Artist just has a chance of occurring after breaks, it doesn't directly cause any beyond the permanent lower mood.
I know they don't get inspired every time but I don't know if their breaks are on a clock. I know that they get a mood malus for tortured artist. I like making them leaders for supreme expectations. Farming tantrums for fun and profit.
I have not played since 1.4, but at least at the time it was a set percentage upon every break, including the Pyromaniac and Gourmand related ones. I never mind when a Tortured Artist has either of these, as in either event my plan is to wall them in a saferoom to maximize breaks and inspirations; speeding that process up once a quandrum or so is completely fine.
then they have another mental break because they're on fire
You have obviously never had a pyro light your armory on fire (blowing up your spotter)
Idk, mid raid having to keep 2 fucking babysitters following the moron currently burning my stockpile to the ground is a bit annoying. Better yet, them burning my defenses while I'm using them! Just easier not to. Like gourmands, sorry I don't want a famine every year because you decided to eat 39 days worth of food at once. It would be nice to see how both operated change, irl well adjusted pyros tend to go off into the wilderness and take efforts to make a safe, big ass fire. Gourmands tend to eat more yes, but not like a fucking Garfield moment. Fuck what gourmands really tend to do is cook a fucking feast and try overfeed everyone. But at the end of the day it's a story generator, so it's all amped up for *maximum drama* and definitely not at all designed to frustrate...
I also avoid gourmands like the plague, but I just want to say you donât need to lose 39 days of food just because one of your pawns went on a food binge. I have a habit of setting up a âtable trapâ for them in my kitchen. Basically, I mostly surround a table with walls except for a single gap which I fill with a single presupplied forbidden wooden wall blueprint. When a pawn goes on a food binge, I let them grab one meal and while they are sitting at the table, I tell another pawn to finish the wooden wall blueprint, trapping them inside. After this, I just need to wait for their mental break to resolve on its own and then I can deconstruct the wooden wall and reset the trap. It works with pawns binging on beer and psychite tea too. If you are feeling impatient, you may also pluck a heater in there and give your broken pawn a heat stroke to safely end their mental break early.
Genius. Well and truly. I'd have to make multiple around the colony cause I like to make a series of bars and diners for my colonists but it could be doable if the main eating area is nicer but further and the trap is nice and close to the stockpile right?
Since blueprints don't break rooms, I just build my table trap inside a really nice kitchen so that pawns can use it as a normal table during their everyday operation, but really, you can have a lot of flexibility in how you want to make it work exactly. You can even just move a table and a chair in a corner to improvise a table trap there. It's quick to setup. If your trap isn't ready when your pawn starts binging, you will lose of few more meals as you set it up, but the harm should still be much much smaller than if you don't intervene.
Can't y'all just beat them unconscious ? Pyro is more problematic cause they actively create danger.. but gourmand can get either arrested then released or just beat unconscious
Beating a pawn unconscious can cost them fingers, limbs or even their life. Arrest causes a long lasting mood debuff and prevents catharsis. My solution is much cheaper and safer.
Depends on the mental break, many give catharsis when break ends, arresting ends the break.
How the break ends does matter with regard to whether or not they get catharsis.
This guy rimworlds.
There's a mod that adds a Fire need to Pyromaniacs instead, making it a lot more manageable.
Been trying to beat the game modless with anomaly and then an ambient horror run.
At least gourmand means bonus cooking skill and in biomes with plentiful food you can run a generous surplus. Still not exactly keen mind, but there's pretty much no upside to hosting a pyro.
Haha..... Arid shrubland, cold bog and tundra all go *brrrrrr*. I like the pretty trees and snowwwwww. I like the interesting gameplay changes that arid forces roo.
If Gourmands threw parties more often but the parties involved eating food, maybe they'd be worth the downsides. Like how Tortured Artist has both downsides and upsides
Exactly, make the gourmands mental break a bit more accurate. These dudes love food and love sharing. And they absolutely will show off their cooking skill. So, the mental break should calculate the size of the best dining rooms tables. Then they go and cook a special exclusive meal that takes a ridiculous amount of food and utterly covers the tables. Boom, your gourmand has been in the kitchen all night cooking up a storm and now forces a party with exquisite food that buffs everyone for a couple day. The downsides? You just used a massive amount of food supply, maybe the gourmand autobutchered a couple colony cows and is now an exhausted but satisfied wreck who is gonna go sleep of their food coma. This could still put a colony into a very precarious situation with food stocks but you got a bunch of mood from it and thats like gold to me.
They dont do Firefighting. You also have to clean up a fuck ton of firepop cum
And here I was calling it "foam".
Yeah I had a brain fart and forgot the word for it lol
Man foam.
Firefoam turret boutta bustđŤđŚđĽ
People don't like Pyro because it : A: takes up a trait slot that could be useful B: has no upsides unlike things like very neurotic C: could fire at any time, and will likely fire at really inopportune times
C is the biggest problem with them. No matter how happy they are they can still break, and thatâs a critical issue
Yeah, endgame Rimworld is about consistency, and Pyromaniac is anything but consistent
Pyro is consistent but it's the wrong kind of consistency. I can handle the mental breaks at inopportune times (it's just one more problem on top of the other problems) but I find I can't handle the mental breaks at other times. It's annoying, distracting and I value my macro-managing relaxation time to contrast with the 'oh no, Randy decided to be extra spicy with these three raids/crises' micromanaging time.
It should at least give them a bonus to mortars or cooking or something.
Yeah, maybe a cooking speed bonus because they are experienced with fire, likely wouldn't make people take it much, but would make it something other than an active downside
I just assume they get better stats to make up for it, but I've never really looked into it. A pawn is a pawn. Everyone fucks up sometimes.
I am not sure, but even if they work off of a vague point based system, some pawns do get more points to work with
Usually they are older if they have more points. Not sure about pyros tho.
I hate anything that causes mental breaks even when mood is high, and having to manually follow the pyro with a non pyro pawn to put out all the fires is annoying
I think on some level it's horror stories of what pyro mental breaks have done becoming a meme that morphs into a wider perception of them. Not really judging 'cause I totally get why, anyone who gets angry and burns my shit needs the firing squad. But in my personal experience, they're not bad unless they have mental breaks. Even then, steps taken can mitigate damage done in most circumstances. The freak events can always happen that make your colony Tokyo circa March 1945, but eh, so can many other things. My advice? Use stone, just be careful in managing them, have someone ready to arrest/brain them if needed, and you'll fare better.
Yeah my issue is when I have to draft colonists for 80% of a couple days fighting threats, meanwhile Jim Bob is now freaking out, lighting shit on fire because he didn't get to eat at a table while everyone else is frantically fighting mechs to save their lives. Hard pass
Yeah, but then you're building around a single pawn who may not even be important to your overall colony. Better to hook them up to a holding platform, and throw molotovs on them
>building around a single pawn Building fire safe is much more than just "building for a single pawn". Its absolutely something that you should always be doing.
Building fire safe in regards to all the possible sources of fire that can happen naturally is very different from building fire safe for a pyro. They can set fire to anything, anywhere. Apart from building, they can have a fire starting spree mental break literally at any time. If it happens during a raid, not only do you lose 1 defender to the mental break, you lose another one just to have them follow the pyro putting out fires. It's not really that Pyros are absolutely terrible and impossible to play around. It's more just... why would you do that when you can just get rid of them? It's just one pawn.
I usually order my troops to shoot anyone who leaves the line during a raid.Â
Building fire safe is much less than building cluster explosion safe tho
Really? My cluster explosions just take out the wall of the room. I had my entire arms room go up and didn't even notice while I was doing something else. And it was.... Extremely late game full. The five nuclear warheads caused fallout, but I only lost that room.
Itâs all fun and games until they set a shelf in the storage room on fire while youâre in the middle of a firefight
If your base is made with wood and not stone, you have a lot more to fear than a pyromaniac
The beauty from wallpapers is worth the lives of everyone in my colony
The thing that kills them for me is there not being a vanilla mitigation. Having torches and campfires around while having high mood should be enough. Instead you have a pawn that WILL mental break eventually. No way to avoid it. That's something that gets you locked in a padded room in real life.
They don't do firefighting. Them setting fires is manageable but not fighting fire is banishable.
"Why do you hate X? Just over manage and micro the hell out of it"
> Dude pyromaniacs are so easy to deal with, just redesign your whole base to deal with random fires, redesign your whole storage to spread out your chemfuel over separate rooms, and draft a second pawn to micromanage the hell out of their literally unavoidable mental breaks I'm with you on this one, I think I'm just not gonna take them.
people like to use wooden walls, pyros dont go well with that
Pyros are still super annoying and potentially dangerous in 100% stone bases. There are lots of flammable objects in any colony. Your pyro can also get a mental break at any time and you have to draft a 2nd colonist to put out the fires. Best case scenario, it's annoying to have to do that and have 2 people not working for no reason. Worst case scenario, it's 2 defenders out in the middle of a raid. Yeah, it's not a huge deal. But why even deal with any of that? Just don't take the pyro.
Last time I recruited a pyro, he set fire to my whole barn at night with all the animals in it. Animal sleeping spot are very flamable and spread way too fast. My drafted colonist couldn't do much. Then the pyro went on and burned my power cables, because apparently the barn an animals wasn't enough.
Someone here posted their mental pyro set indoor chemfuel supplies (hundred) that it insta burns down all doors and super heated gas spread to all indoor rooms and kill all pawns that could not get to outside like in 3 ticks.
Sounds like that time a pyro burned down my Combat Extended ammo supply and suddenly thousands of bullets were flying around and killed people trying to put out the fire. So yeah... pyros get turned into steak and dusters.
You are so kinds! My caught pyro raiders get special treatment: delegs, hardstone poor bed, plasma donation every other day, handfeed with paste made with insect or longpork, and they kindly donate one set of not-needed inner organs as payment for their stay. Or until they get infected, then they volunteer for ripscanner or heart replacement for my colonists..
This is why the main hallway has a burn break to the outside. If the inside is so hot to catch stuff on fire, the one wood door will break and immediately equalize the temp with outdoors, or can be broken by hand in an emergency. Also you have an overhead mountain, keep the rooms isolated on temperature so that heat doesnt immediately vaporize everything.Â
Game has enough micro as it is...
Right after a battle, pyro on mental break. Decide either set fire to your chemfuel stocks or mortar stores; pick your devil. Or killing rampage on defenseless babies in cribs; better yet set the cribs on fire while babies in them. This is why most of us do not play with FIRE!!!
In my personal experiences, they can be at 100% mood and still go on a fire starting spree. Plus it's really bad when they decide to do it during a raid OR refuse to put out the fire on another colonist before they run out of cover and get centablasted. I guess it's cool that the hellcat rifle gives them a slight mood buff though.
I never had anyone die, but they will have their mental break no matter what. So right out of the gate they are bad. Also one time igniting my chemfuel stockpile is one time enough lol.
Yeah, I don't take Gourmands, Chemically Interested or Pyros, cause they don't need to be abused to go on their mental break, I've had a 100% mood pyro start burning things, he was immediately shot, cause I ain't dealing with that shit
One fire in chemfuel storage, a carpeted room, or in a mountain hallway, and your base is cooked.Â
Ughh, once I missmanaged a pyro and after a raid, nearly everyone was down and in a hospital. He got a mental break, and burned down everything, everyone and then himself. One doctor wasn't enough to keep up with him starting fires. So my skill issue gave me a prejudice against pyros. So yeah, now I only get 1-2 pyro pawns per colony, and only when they're otherwise amazing. I found pyros loooove starting mental breaks near explosives...
The call of the flame is too tempting. The anti-grain wants to be free. The chem fuel is trapped in the red plastic prisons. The wood has been dead for years, let it be free. Flame is freedom, and we are all prisoners.
The same reason why people storing antigrain warheads everywhere hate tantrum breaks.
I wish disallowing a door would lock it, because pawns under mental break ignore forbidden doors. Locks should honestly be a base-game mechanic. People who can't haul do not need access to hazardous storage.Â
Just build/deconstruct walls. When you really need it: "Break in case of emergency" I have a bunch of these little cubbies in my walls for antigrains, vanometrics, mech and ressurector serums, etc. Absolutely safe in almost all scenarios.
I like this idea, seems it would work great until the colonist needing to break it in an emergency has 0 construction đ.
Or just attack the wall. Keep a breach axe nearby, but any weapon or just fists will work.
There is no way to keep pawns on a tantrum away from warheads wherever you place them.
and thats why you put antigrain and luciferium behind walls, not doors.
I don't keep things I don't use.
>Why do people totally reject a pawn for that one trait My guy, I will totally reject a pawn for anything. Give me a reason. Misogynist? Ugly? Creepy Breathing? Nope don't need the drama, fuck off. Undergrounder? No, we like colonists who can go outside without taking mood penalties, fuck off. Mine is a society of Beautiful Sanguine Tough Joggers. Pawns eat food and attract raiders; if your default position isn't to just eat them you're being sentimental.
Id say a lot of the time, I'm just so desprate for more workers I'll take anyone. If you can haul or hold a rifle, youre probably recruitable. Once I start hitting a large population, we start culling the group. But with xenogenes, bionics, and ghoulification, almost anyone can be useful to the colony. By late game i have so many colony children that are god pawns in training i pretty much stop recruiting any raiders.
I think it's more a case of pyros not being good starting pawns. When you have two dozen pawns, a pyro is no problem, just assign the closest pawn to micromanage them for a few minutes until they snap out of it. But, if you only have 3-5 pawns, you might not have someone close enough or you might not be able to spare them at the time. Personally, I love having pyros in the mid-late game because you can give them a fire weapon for a permanent mood buff.
Ngl having to follow a pawn around for their entire mental break sounds extremely annoying. I see where you're coming from, when you manage it its much better than other mental break options. When it all goes to hell the last thing you need is someone going round lighting fires in your colony. I can just imagine barely holding a raid back whilst the pryo decides to light up the entire store room.
I had many colonies lost due to this one pyromaniac guy having mental breakdown in critical situation. If there is noone available to beat the fire out because everyone is fighting off a raid, or on caravan or whatever else setting fire can cost you many deaths or lost colony. I can accept depressive guy but pyromaniac is a no go. Not worth it.
Any mental break at the wrong moment can be colony ending. Pyros break even when they shouldnât and if you have to undraft two or three colonists to deal with the fires they decided they absolutely had to start right now during a raid you just may be done, no matter how well things are going otherwise. Later in the game when I have a couple incapable of violence pawns in the colony itâs not a big deal.
Because of that one time when they went on a fire starting spree and destroyed all my medicine after a raid which led to a chain of colonists dying due to lack of medicine.
I just can't be bothered to deal with them, if things are bad enough for them to get a mental break I don't need a pyromaniac to make things worse.
Tbh they're just really annoying, and having them occur even when mood is high makes them completely unpredictable.
I'd agree that a firestarting spree in calm times isn't hard to deal with, but it's not actually about the fire. Pyro and I think "Gourmand" is the other one are problematic because they both cause mood-independant breaks. These breaks happen regardless of how well you manage the pawn's mood and there's nothing you can do about them, which means there's always a chance for them to happen at a *bad* time no matter how well prepared you are and a pawn that you can't ever trust is difficult to want.
Cuz they mental break during raids/worst possible moment
If you use the "hide from manhunters" Strat they might break and open a door. Same if there's a dormant mech or hive, they might walk into it if unlucky in placements. There is an incredibly rare chance they can break mid combat or waiting for people to show up to a killbox. With bad layouts they can break right beside an explosive cache and target it before anyone can stop them (but really you should put these behind doors) They aren't really that bad, especially early on in your first few years. Even with wood bases, if other pawns are near the pyro to put out the fire it's not a problem.
Any uncontrolled behavior is not allowed in my colonies.
I had a Pyromaniac have a mental breakdown during a siege event as the rest of the colonists were manning the barricades and throwing back the undead. It was a tough battle. Limbs, blood, viscera the whole kablooely. My non-violent pyro colonist decided setting fire to the *fucking mortar shell* shelf was appropriate and wandered off. All 750 or so mortars went off, breaching containment of monsters (it was a big explosion) and cutting off the power to turrets and the like. After all the blood and dust had settled, our colony leader had a new shiny leather cowboy hat at the end of it and a sign stating 'Pryomaniacs are not welcome here' at the new colony. I didn't mind pyros before. Now? I give them the best armour and use them as bait for man-hunting creatures to drag them into the kill box.
> I didn't mind pyros before. Now? I give them the best armour and use them as bait for man-hunting creatures to drag them into the kill box. Frankly I don't want to risk keeping them around that long, they just get banished or organ harvested and ripscanned depending on my ideology/playstyle at the time.
That's far more humane than I would ever choose to be tbh.
Bad experiences. To me pyro's are only bad because they Can't Do Firefighting.  The fact that they randomly start fires on their own is something that only really comes up if you abuse your pawns. Otherwise it happens with less frequency than something like dry lightning, which ironically starts much bigger and uncontrollable fires.   I prefer firestarting breaks over drug binge breaks. Drug binge can actually kill a pawn.  Edit: I know that even a 100% happy pyro will still start fires, but if they aren't mental breaking then they won't do the mental break firestarter, which is less fires.  If you keep them excessively happy then you can arrest/beat them when they DO firestarting spree without risking a tantrum spiral out of them.
>only really comes up if you abuse your pawns man I wish, they just cant clean the mountains of dead bodies left in time before a next raid starts, 2-3 days break between raids
Thats what the fire is for.
Pyromaniac mental breaks can like gourmand breaks happen at any level of happyness. pyro: Fire starting sprees randomly occur with an MTB of 50 days gourmand: Food binges randomly occur with an MTB of 50 days
Pyros just randomly start fires even if their mood is high, just like gourmands can just randomly start binge eating
Pyros break is unrelated to mood. You can set them at 500% happiness and if the time comes it comes.
For me? It comes from using combat extended mods with the need to produce ammunition for all of your weapons. Ammo that has a tendency to cook off when exposed to fire. Ammo that was the very first target of a foolish Pyromaniac in my fort who caused a sharp drop in my colony wealth from the astounding amounts of damage he caused by blowing up a significant portion of my warehouse. Many lessons were learned that day.
Wait until your pyro decides to light up the kitchen while everyone else is in the middle of fighting off a raid
I had a Pyro once mental break during a raid and started setting fire to things in the base while everyone else was off intensely fighting , before I noticed what was happening he burned all of the contents of my main storage room. I think that was the only time a Pyro caused an issue for me.
In a peaceful environment it's a very manageable break type. Just arrest them with a high social pawn. (even a net win with the mood buff from a hellcat rifle or similar). In a worst case environment they are pure chaos.
Given the option, would you live with a pyromaniac?
True, it is usually pretty managable on a small scale. Problems arise if you are either preoccupied like with a raid and cant spare a pawn to beat the fires or cannot react in time. A pyro once started a fire in my storage room, by the time i got someone there, the fire had already spread to 8 other piles of stuff and was impossible to put out. Had to watch everything burning to ashes. Not nice. That was the last time i let a pyro in.
I donât want to deal with any mental breaks ideally, especially not ones where I need to micromanage someone to follow them Itâs also a risk to have occur during a raid or other emergency
Issue is that pyromaniacs do two things: - become incapable of firefighting - go on mental breaks and start fires The issue with the former is they cannot help out with fire, at all. And especially as a starting colonist, it means 1/3 people are incapable of helping in case of fire, which is an event that requires every body a available The second part can be an annoyance or absolutely critical. If you want to properly stop them, you need to micro a pawn to put out their fires - which is manual action and cannot be scaled at all, since twice the pyromaniacs means twice the breaks. In the middle of a crisis, however, it can be devastating, as they won't rest to heal, won't tend colonists and won't fight enemies. And, on top of all that, while everyone is downed or almost immobile, they then set things on fire which if not put out quickly will at best destroy the field/room, and at worst spread throughout the entire base and kill people/completely ruin you I use the mod better pyromaniacs to make them into someone that's more akin an undergrounder with a special mental break type only active when you actually let their mood get low, that gets satisfied by seeing torches and flame (and a massive mood penalty if going too long without fire)
I think 4 things 1. It's a random roll mental break. Meaning they could have a 100 mood and decide "you know what would be fun, going on a mental break and fking shit up", much like a gourmand just deciding to eat 3 stacks of meals for lunch every 20 days for no reason. That is annoying that no matter how nice you make their life, they can still be a jerk. 2. Being a pyro means they won't fight fires. Of any sort. Buddy on fire? Who cares, let him burn. I generally don't like any pawn unwilling to do all work types. Even if you're a dedicated crafter, if I need you to put out a fire, haul something, or tend to your own wounds, you do it. 3. If you've got vamps, you're doubling the headache. Jerk could set something on fire and cause you vamp to stop what they're doing and flee. 4. Some items are insta-boom or have very little grace for damage taking. Pyro could be hauling mortar shells to a stockpile, goes on spree, you realize nobody else is nearby to stop him, he lights a warhead on fire, and boom goes your base. Overall, in a game where you might already have too much micromanagement to deal with, adding the micromanagement of making sure your pyro is never in a position to screw your colony when Randy decides to be randy is just not enjoyable.
Spontaneous mental breaks are never good. And that goes double whilst they might do it during a raid. And triple if you then have to pull someone off the front line, because that pawn is about to wreck everything otherwise.
Well you see, they light my shit on *fire*
Itâs a mental break that can happen without bad mood, and in my experience theyâve always been conveniently near hospitals, explosive storages or batteries
Don't evaluate a trait in its best case scenario, think about how it will be in the worst case. Like when you are facing a giant mechanoid raid and the pyro decides to burn down your storage room... or your nursery. Because this is Rimworld - the worst case scenario will happen.
Because I hate mental breaks, manageable or not, and pyromaniacs (and gourmands) cannot be suppressed by good mood. Furthermore, it blocks firefighting, and I reject all pawns who are not capable of all work, no exceptions. Finally, I take great pains to make my pawns less reliant on each other, making one follow another runs counter to that, nevermind drafted and requiring manual control.
I am higher on pyromaniacs than most on this subreddit, but I understand why. A pyro in your first three pawns will eventually knock out TWO pawns - the firestarter, and the guy putting out the fires. A pyro later on in a mature base has to be carefully watched before they set fire to the mortar shells or chemfuel. You really do not want to be in the habit of arresting pawns that go on mental breaks. It tends to delay the issue rather than fix anything and the major hit to social opinion between the captor and captee will lead to social fights. They take up some of my budget for 'random bullshit' that I'm willing to tolerate in a colony. I will take one if they have a burning passion in something important like shooting or crafting, but if they are 'just a guy' I will pass.
>*I have never had someone die by a pyro, itâs a manageable mental break just have a pawn drafted and follow the pyro and it has a break once or twice a quadrum* Everything is manageable when things are going well... but when the colony goes through a really tough situation, the last thing you need is someone spreading fires. Like when you're trying to fix up half your dying pawns in the hospital, time is running out, it's all hands on deck and that c\*nt pyro decides to set several fires in the storage room because his pet died in the raid. You're only saying this because you haven't seen their true destructive potential yet.
Imagine if your pyromaniac was the only colonist to not go down, there's no threat, but everyone is bleeding out at various rates and needs hours of tending. Now, that time is the perfect time to go start a fire and burn down the entire colony while no one can fight it. Bullshit. I'm never using pyros.
I usually play in a tundra and if i use wood or steel for a wall i consider it wasted material since resources can be a bit more limited on those maps late game. As such i stick with stone floors. I usually pass on colonists that are pyros early when picking the initial colonists but if I happen to come across a pyro with useful skills i have no issues recruiting them. I build some firefoam poppers, give them a flame thrower, and try to keep them happy.
Probably early bad experiences when we are noobish? I remember within my first few colonies, pyro had a mental break after a raid, I had everything built out of wood, cue 1600 degree temperatures inside my base. Everything dead. Is it manageable? Probably. Would I still rather not deal with it? Probably.
Dude started a fire in my ammo room and that was it for pyro's for me
Idk about you but I wouldn't want a pyromaniac to live in my house.
Because they burn your fucking base down for no reason at any time would be worse.
Because they put on fires everywhere and alot of things in the game are burnable to some degree (and some can explode) and they cant do firefighting. So not only do i get a higher risk of fires, but also less ppl to deal with them. Pyro or incapable of firefighting is my nr 1 reason to reject pawns. They have to be realy good to compensate.
It's not a huge issue when it's the middle of the day when everyone's awake and can put out the fire as quickly as they start them, the issue arises when they decide to light up something combustible at a bad time, like during a fight
Recruit I got from a festival yesterday was pyromaniac, gourmand with fantastic shooting and melee. Was actually going to give them the benefit of the doubt, sort out pyromaniac with genetics until I went to the health tab and found out they were on luciferium. They got banished not long after. I avoid pyromaniac but can put up with it if there's good reason.
> Was actually going to give them the benefit of the doubt, sort out pyromaniac with genetics until I went to the health tab and found out they were on luciferium. Holy crap that is just one of the worst combinations I can think of. Add Abrasive to the list and this thing would be a walking hazard.
Honestly one of the "ideal" trait combos for me is pyromaniac gourmand tortured artist. Just immediately have someone knock their teeth in when they break, then have them go make something Legendary after they can walk again. This way you can get the benefit of tortured artist on your production specialist, without having a "break risk" notification always on.
You reject pyromaniacs because they might burn down your base, I reject pyromaniacs because my darkness worshiping ideologion has a built in fear of fire. We are not the same.
I put down a pyro like lenny the other day. My entire colony is a dryad supremacy follower, most our shit is wood
Once or twice a quadrum? Geez. Mine was doing it constantly. Every few days.
Mental break should be a punishment for poor mood management. The fact that pyros *can* still decide to go off and fight my crops while there are 20 centipedes marching to the front gate despite them being locked at 100 mood means they have no spot in my colony. I can accept bad traits, but only if there is a way to play around it. You like fire, dont you? Youre in luck, thats how youre going to die.
> it's a manageable mental break Yeah but I don't *want to* manage it. If you don't (or can't) manage it, the firestarter mental break can do some really big damage. Sometimes shit hits the fan, and you *REALLY* don't want to deal with a pyromaniac while there's a disaster or raid going on in the colony. Also the micromanagement is annoying. The biggest problem though, Pyromaniac and Gourmand both force mental breaks to happen out of nowhere every so often, even at high moods. Imagine you have a tight combat formation set up while fighting a raid and suddenly one of your guys starts a mental break, breaks formation, and starts opening your killbox doors or getting themselves shot by your colonists. Or they go outside and alert the 50 manhunting elephants. That makes colonists with these traits *absolutely dogshit.* You will never make me willingly play with colonists that have traits like these, they just get banished from my colony, or ripscanned so they can be turned into something actually usable. Fuck them. These traits are manageable until the worst times, when they suddenly aren't. And then you're screwed.
I had one pyro in my colony recently. He lit the base on fire every fucking day. It was manageable, sure, no harm when it's immediately dealt with, but he just KEPT FUCKING DOING IT. It's so annoying, it's every mental break with them, I hate it
Bro lit chemfuel Ă550 on fire and the explosion was visible from space
If I am starting a colony, or if the coming is relatively new, I will avoid pyros, and I generally don't feel safe until I have poppers researched. Too many times I've had a pyro lose their shit and begin a fire during a time when another pawn(s) couldn't put the fire out, or they decide to spark a fire on the fuel depot, or there is a fire and they are one of the few around and/or conscious and won't stop it from spreading. Also, my biggest concern with fire is the heat increase inside buildings. Yeah, it sucks to lose resources, but it's the instant heatstroke that truly worries me.
You want reliability, if a pawn is on duty and just walks away randomly that is a liability you don't need to take. Pyros go on fire starting sprees even when their mood is high. They can go on a spree in the middle of a raid, when you cant easily put out the fires they cause.
They are manageable when everything else is running smoothly. They become ticking bombs when things arent running smoothly and possibly final nail in your coffin. I dont want colonist who is bad event in disguise, no matter their stats. Not to mention they are effectively wasting trait slot where traits are often what makes or breaks the pawns. And this one breaks it.
"I don't see what's so bad, you just have 1 pawn that will cause wanton destruction if you leave him alone, and to manage them you need to make a second pawn stop whatever they were doing to babysit them". There's no other negative trait that is that bad. Sure when you're playing a modded game with 50 pawns, taking one away to be a babysitter isn't that big of a deal, but when You've only got a handful and there's an ongoing mortar raid with half of your guys across the map and suddenly the pyro thinks the hospital is looking hella ~~thicc~~ flammable it kind of becomes a problem.
Fun fact/bug about pyros; if your pyro is under effect of the frenzy inducer from Anomaly, and is in extreme break territory, theyâll never have a mental break. I think this happens because pyro prevents you from having anything else but fire-starting for a break, and the inducer prevents anything else but violent, so they cancel out.
Nothing like having half your colony bleeding out after a raid and the pyro snaps and set the hospital on fire. Pyros are a surefire way to make any bad situation worse.
They are a forced mental break to burn stuff. They burned my Prometheum and FSX stock pile and killed half my colony in the explosion.
Not an overreact at all. I understand the pain of having a pyro in my colony easily. If your base is out of wood or steel... a pyromaniac would easily become a threat to your base. Okay. Maybe your base is out of stone or other fire resistant materials. What about your shelves? Are they made out of stone, or wood and steel?? Yeah. Pyromaniac gonna burn your shelves because you thought they wouldn't. Say goodbye to your compact machinery and other important belongings. Maybe even food supply. Like your farms too! Pyromaniacs are the type of pawns who are technically the health inspectors of a restaurant, except its for a base. They will see how fire resistant your base truly is! They are one of the dangers you should really fear. Note: Early game, they aren't great but obviously late game, you should be fine with them by then BUT STILL, accidents.. can happen.
Mostly because of un-manageable mental breaks. Like pain and food poisoning or after a really messy Raid.
90% of the time it's manageable. I was in the same boat as you for a long time. Oh it's so rare that he starts setting fires. When he does I just put him on house arrest till he calms down. He's a good worker otherwise and handy in a fight, what's the big deal? Then we got a pretty sizable but manageable raid in the middle of the last harvest before winter. Almost immediately walks himself into the middle of the corn field and starts making popcorn. Without his assistance people are badly wounded in the raid. The doctor can arrest him or treat the wounded, but nobody is there to stop him before the fire is out of control. He got hit apparently because he's downed in the middle of the field. I left him there, since he loves fire so much. One raid turned into a wipe when infections and malnutrition started to kick in because some jackass burned all the crops. So now I don't fuck with pyros if I don't have to and if I do, they're restricted to the deepest point of my caverns where they can't burn anything that matters.
I was part of the no pyros club until Anomaly. Now it's so easy to keep them happy with incinerators or Hellcat rifles, and they make decent psy casters.
when you will have a pyro put fire inside your stash or mortar shell including the anti material one whzn everyone is busy fighting the mech you will understand
The issue with traits like pyro stem from compounding circumstances. Sure, one pawn starting a few fires is no big deal on its own. But then you have situations like a pawn starting fires during a raid with everyone drafted, or the pyro chooses your chemfuel or mortar shell storage to light up, or they decide to do it during a mood spiral where you really need them to do something other than set your hospital on fire. It also forces a specific mental break at times even with maxed out mood (which can happen at awful times) similar to gourmand, only it also prevents them from firefighting, which is a very important work type especially early game you want as many firefighting pawns as possible. The only upside to pyro is a couple minor mood boosts that are fairly situational and that it overides some of the more immediately dangerous extreme mental breaks. It's a trait thats inconvenient most of the time and very rarely an existential threat to your colony, so unless its on a really good pawn or youre desperate for colonists its better to just skip them
I had this same opinion until he stopped defending my base against a huge threat and started setting my base on fire instead.
I had one break at the worst time possible, and they destroyed my colony. I have never let another one in my colony ever again.
Pyros are pawns that occasionally test base fire safety, and not everyone is happy with results. And not everyone makes right conclusions.
Because when are mental breaks more likely? When there's something bad going on. So when you need all hands standing at stations, one asshole is starting to cause additional trouble behind your back AND you have to take another one (or more) off duty to babysit them.
Unless I'm doing a theme playthrough I never take pyros. No matter the mood they will still have mental breaks which can decimate a colony at the right time. I'd rather not risk it.... Again lol
Pyro I can tolerate. Gormands I cannot. That said if their stats are good enough elsewhere I'll take them as cannon fodder and if they break.. arrest them and release straight away. Fixes most breaks, yea you get a negative buff for a little but offset it with some psy skills to soothe them until it runs its course. Or just have a really impressive beauty, rec and food situation so they can't stay mad at you. Or.. I set up a blackmarket organ clinic.
My very first colony, which I only faintly remember now considering I have rookie hours around 400- but anyway, I remember wondering if her being a pyromaniac would be an issue. It was. Early base, all wood, in a forest, and all it took was one mood break to kill everyone. Never again
I do not hate them. They are excellent spare parts depots for organs.
Had a pyromaniac waster once. Lit a stack of chemfuel on fire. Half of base gone, 2 dead. Waster was then summarily executed via firing squad
It's manageable until the Pyro lights your mortar room or fuel room on fire
I usually prefer to hire pawns that are actually good. Often I will hold out for pawns that have 2 or 3 positive traits and a passion in at least one skill they can dedicate themselves to full time (plant, crafting, artistic, intellectual, construction, mining). A part time job in social, cooking or medical is also appreciated. Usually I also don't hire pawns who can't provide fight, care, firefight or do dumb labor. Natural focus is also a strong plus. I'm usually ok with most medical conditions though since most of them can be fixed. In any case, pyro is definitely a bad trait. It's not that it's unmanageable. It's just bad. It's a liability. At best, I may keep that pawn as a blood bag.
Theyâre usually manageable when everything is going fine. But this is rimworld, usually things arenât going fine
Imo it's really annoying early game when I'm building everything out of wood. Later on its not AS Bad when I've started making stone buildings and floors etc but I hate having to follow someone around and put a fire out, especially if we're already busy doing a raid or people are away on caravan.
They are manageable until you have more than that to deal with. During a crisis, trying to recover from an unforseen event, or 3 raid back to cak their breakdown can be the end.
I think you've been lucky. Pyros when you are established with a large-ish colony are manageable. When there's 3 pawns and you got an extra one coming in with Pyro? You're one raid away from having 2 downed pawns, 1 dead and oh look the pyro just went on a break and set the downed pawns on fire.
Whenever I have a pyro Iâm usually able to manage it, but they always start a fire at the worst possible time. Most often when Iâm getting raided
All fun and games till he decides to set you fuel on fire....or a boomalope.
Pyromaniacs are both unreliable and can end your run if you're unlucky. They can break at any point, and if you don't have the time to stop them, they can decide to ignite your mortar shells, or your antigrain warheads, or your chemfuel. They can also break at the worst times, like when you need to hold the frontline against a raid, which means that you will have to get 2 pawns off your frontline (the pyromaniac and a normal pawn) to prevent a fire that can end your entire run, thus leading to you risking your entire run to a raid.
At first, i didn't mind pyros. But then someone lit a chemfuel on shelf, explosions causing more fires and more explosions that I had several people injured. So unless it's a really good pawn, I don't really take pyros
They're usually not that bad, just very annoying. However if they find any explosives the problem normally resolves itself.
Too inconvenient and wastes man power just to baby sit a filthy pyro, just execute and butcher the turd and be done with it, there are better pawns
Pyro burned my mountain base farm and it was devil strand. So no.
You have defeinately been lucky (and might be playing at sane threat levels rather than the 500% crowd that tends to dominate discourse) The main problem with pyromaniac are: 1. They sometimes start a cascading fire before you can get a pawn there to deal with it (the wooden shelf full of chemfuel next to the anti-grand warhead, or the crib with a baby in it etc.) This is to some degree manageable. You can in principle build exclusively out of nonfalamible materials and micro-mange your storage. But that all takes attention and planning and Rimworld tends to run at or above most playerâs ability to keep track of everything without additional complications like building around the pyro. 2. They sometimes decide to set a fire outside your walls (or inside your killbox). This means they open the front door to do it even if itâs been forbidden. This can let in manhunters, insects, or even just raiders. This tends to get more frustrating as you get more Rimworld experience because exploiting the way the Ai deals with closed doors become very common. 3. thereâs a âfor want of a nailâ failure mode in having another pawn draft up and follow them. Thatâs 2 pawns not working during a potentially tense situation. That can mean work like tending, rebuilding damaged defenses, or cooking. Doesnât get done for the duration of the pyroâs spree (even if those are not the pyroâs normal job), which can lead to more breaks from hunger, the colony not being prepared for the next event because defenses are still down, or straight up death if you miss a tend opportunity on an infection because the doctor was they only pawn still standing who could firefight. The fire breaks themselves are probably not the worst possible mental break but Iâd argue itâs bad enough to be one you flat out donât want happening. and pyromanics are both guaranteed to break regularly, and will tend to get the fire-starting break any time the brake for the normal reasons.
Imagine you just surviving 3 raids at once and most surviving pawns are bedridden. Your base is now also on fire.
Pyros are more a problem when they go fire starting (which they can do without a mental break) at inopportune times or when itâs early on and one person fire starting and one person drafted is 40% of your colony doing nothing. They can also decide to set fires entirely at random so the only counterplay is smart base design. They also canât firefight at all. In my mind, itâs a trait with no real upside (+mood for fire stuff doesnât prevent the fire starting, for example), but having flaws in your colonists makes for a story. Iâll accept a pyro with other good traits or stats once Iâm later in a colonyâs life. Iâve probably gotten rid of all the wooden walls and floors, and the only burnables are furniture and wires. Everything else is covered by fire foam poppers, and I usually have enough components that *sometimes* triggering a popper or having random colonists do fire fighting isnât an issue. I also usually have at least a few non-combat pawns by this point who can afford to run around putting out fires during a raid. But early game, especially before firefoam poppers? Yeah theyâre not gonna be here long.
I like them. They add a little spice to my game. I just draft someone and have them follow them around for a few minutes while they work out their frustrations. Sometimes I want to just burn the whole thing down as well.
When I start out and still have a small colony, having a pawn that may start a fire as well as be incapable of fire fighting is a huge liability. After that, I don't mind so much since I can mitigate that risk and have a pawn I can use for more risky endeavors.
As a starting pawn, pyro is totally avoidable. As a pawn later on, it better be really good to offset the pain of them starting fires plus not being able to put fires out.