Joywire

The joywire brain implant grants a permanent +30 mood boost. However, the bearer suffers a permanent -20% to consciousness. After implantation, it cannot be removed.

Acquisition

In the base game, the joywires cannot be crafted. Instead they can only be obtained via trade or found in ancient shrines.

With the Royalty DLC, joywires can be crafted at a Machining table once the Brain wiring research project has been completed. They require 20 Steel, 4 Components, 15,000 ticks (4.17 mins) of work, and a Crafting skill of 5.

Summary

The joywire provides a permanent +30 mood buff at the cost of a -20% consciousness malus. This malus is an offset, so is additive not multiplicative. This consciousness penalty in turn negatively affects almost every task a pawn can perform, as it directly affects the Eating, Manipulation, Moving, Reading Speed, Talking capacities, and these in turn affect most stats. See those pages for details.

Installation

Installing the part requires 2,500 ticks (41.67 secs) of work, 2x medicine of Herbal quality or better, and a Medical skill of 5.

It cannot be removed once installed.

If the operation fails, the part is always destroyed.

Installing a joywire onto a guest is not considered a harmful operation.

Analysis

Due to its hefty conciseness debuff, the joywire is generally a bad idea to install it onto your colonists. While a substantial increase, the +30 mood buff can be achieved via many other ways and the consciousness penalty makes the pawn significantly slower and/or worse at almost every task. Even cleaning, hauling, or simply walking is performed 20% slower.

The consciousness penalty can be partially offset by putting the bearer on Luciferium but this only brings their consciousness to 95% and isn't recommended until you've got a reliable trade partner faction, ideally Outlanders, and a sustainable economy, such as manufacturing and selling Flake. Alternatively, a Neural supercharger can do the same. However, consideration must be given to the opportunity cost of this - the same improvements could be used to enhance an un-penalized pawn, resulting in similar quantitative gains over a normal pawn as they provide over to a joywired pawn over an unimproved joywired pawn. That is, the total penalty is still 20% of a pawns productivity for the same cost.

Due to the heavy debuff, its primary use is for colonists who will often go on mental breaks due to traits like Depressive and are generally not vital to the colony's survival. However, because of the penalty, in most cases it would be better to either recruit a different pawn or manage the penalty some other way. The depression of the pawn can be managed in the late game with a social drug policy, fine or lavish meals, and beautiful rooms instead of a joywire.

Normally it is only worth it to install it onto Royal quest guests, since this allows you to ignore some of the need of their title and ensures they stay happy. It has some synergy with the Psychic harmonizer , as it spreads the joywire's mood bonus to nearby pawns. This is especially useful on pawns that already have reduced consciousness as it allows a permanent, stable mood buff. See this section for details.

Trivia

The implant cannot be removed in the game, but according to the Joywire Addict and Addiction Counsel backstories and the fact the backstories appear on pawns without a joywire installed, this is not the case on other, probably more advanced, worlds.

Version history

0.12.906 - Added

Artificial body parts

Arm/Hand: Archotech arm • Bionic arm • Power claw • Prosthetic arm • Wooden hand • Drill arm • Elbow blade • Field hand • Hand talon • Venom talon • Flesh tentacle • Flesh whip
Head: Archotech eye • Bionic eye • Bionic ear • Bionic jaw • Bionic tongue • Cochlear implant • Denture • Aesthetic nose
Head implants: Joywire • Painstopper • Circadian assistant • Circadian half-cycler • Gastro-analyzer • Learning assistant • Mindscrew • Neurocalculator • Psychic harmonizer • Psychic reader • Psychic sensitizer • Venom fangs • Control sublink (Standard, High) • Mechlink • Mech gestation processor • Remote repairer • Remote shielder • Repair probe
Spine: Bionic spine • Revenant vertebrae
Stomach: Bionic stomach • Nuclear stomach • Reprocessor stomach • Sterilizing stomach • Fleshmass stomach
Heart: Bionic heart • Prosthetic heart • Heart • Adrenal heart • Corrosive heart • Metalblood heart
Lung: Lung • Detoxifier lung • Fleshmass lung
Kidney: Kidney • Detoxifier kidney
Organs: Liver
Visceral implants: Death acidifier • Aesthetic shaper • Coagulator • Healing enhancer • Armorskin gland • Stoneskin gland • Toughskin gland • Immunoenhancer • Love enhancer • Ghoul plating • Ghoul barbs
Leg/Foot: Archotech leg • Bionic leg • Prosthetic leg • Peg leg • Wooden foot • Knee spike
Related: Psylink neuroformer • Xenogerm
Deprecated: Scyther blade • Psychic silencer