Mood
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A colonist's mood ranges from 0 to 100%. Low moods cause mental breaks, while high moods may trigger inspirations. Mood is affected by thoughts and traits, which add or subtract from a base mood determined by the difficulty level. A colonist's "Needs" tab shows the Mood bar graph and all active mood modifiers.
| Difficulty | Base Mood |
|---|---|
| Peaceful | 42 |
| Community builder | 42 |
| Adventure story | 37 |
| Strive to survive | 32 |
| Blood and dust | 27 |
The difficulty can be changed at any time during gameplay.
With a sufficiently high mood (>90%?), colonists can sometimes get inspired to work harder, run faster or gain other interesting positive benefits. Mood management is a large part of the game, as a happy colony is a productive colony. An unhappy colony generally doesn't get a whole lot done as colonists in a mental break are too busy digging up corpses, wandering around aimlessly or beating up their loved ones.
Prisoners with high mood are easier to recruit and less likely to break out or go berserk.
Mechanics
Mood updates gradually, rather than instantly, in response to new mood modifiers. There is a "mood target", indicated by a white triangle below the blue Mood bar, which does update instantly; and then the actual mood level slowly moves toward the target. For example, when a Hungry colonist (-6 mood) eats a meal, you'll see the white triangle immediately jump to the right as the Hungry effect disappears, but the blue bar takes 20 or so seconds (real time at 1x speed) to inch its way toward the triangle.
Furthermore, when a colonist is sleeping or otherwise unconscious, the mood bar stays in place. This can lead to large discrepancies that may confuse the naive player. Imagine a Tired (-12 mood) colonist, who is "Soaking wet" (-3) in "Darkness" (-5) and had "Observed rotting corpse x2" (-9) ten hours ago, and is also "Ravenously hungry" (-12); let's say his net mood is 10, which is in the "Major break risk" range. Imagine this colonist comes inside, eats a fine meal (+5), and immediately goes to sleep; the mood bar has risen to 15 by this time. A few hours into his sleep, all the negative modifiers are gone and his mood target is 56, well out of the danger zone; however, the mood bar will stay where it is at 15 until he wakes up, and so will the "Major break risk" warning (though mental breaks do not trigger while asleep).
Mood management
There are various ways of increasing mood, which generally fall into two self-explanatory categories: Remove the bad things and add more good things. There are a lot of mood-influencing Thoughts. The key to happiness is, in subjective order of importance:
Avoid bad things
Keep an eye on your colonist's needs tab and see which of their negative thoughts can be alleviated.
Environment
A colonist in a clean, beautiful and spacious interior is a happy colonist. Conversely, a colonist in a hideous environment can quickly go berserk. The difference between the best and worst of environments can be as much as 60 mood.
Recreation
A few hours of mandatory recreation time per day on a variety of recreation objects will prevent tantrum spirals and will lead to long-lasting mental stability. Spread out the recreation time over the day to keep colonists' recreation need topped up.
Possessions
Although most communes share all their possessions, some traits can benefit from certain types of apparel or weaponry. Not wearing tattered apparel is also something pawns can enjoy, so assigning their outfit to have at least 50% durability is an option. Lastly, a very impressive bedroom leads to long-term happiness.
The most cost-effective methods of mood management the player has direct influence over are reducing negative thoughts such as organ-harvesting and observing or butchering corpses, so if mood is a problem maybe it's time to stop. Relatively cheap and effective in both short- and long-term is making sure your colonists have a pleasant, clean and comfortable environment. A comfortable chair at a workstation can provide an up to +10 mood boost for the low cost of some resources, and a good quality bed to sleep in will ensure colonists wake up with a smile. Some art in their surroundings can further push up their mood.
Investing in a large, comfortable and impressive combined recreation and dining room pays off dividends. For a relatively low investment, the entire colony can get a substantial mood boost from simply eating a fine meal at a table and playing some horseshoes. An impressive bedroom only benefits one or two people, but the mood effects are permanent.
Lavish meals, drugs or artifacts can greatly increase mood in the short term, which helps keeping things running during stressful times. They are generally a challenge to keep up in the long-term.
Extreme measures
Sometimes, an unlucky pawn has enough combined negative modifiers (scar pain, drug withdrawal, deaths of family members, psychic drone) that they'll still be in the extreme break risk zone even if you give them the best food and bedroom and all-day recreation. If you don't want to deal with constant mental breaks, you have a few options.
To have a mental break, a pawn must be awake and able to move. This yields these strategies: assigning the pawn to go to sleep (works for some hours until the rest bar fills up), anesthetizing the pawn (decent for short periods, but costs medicine every time), putting them in a cryptosleep casket (drug withdrawal probably won't progress during stasis but most effects probably will), and the famous/infamous "cut their legs off" approach (install peg legs, then remove them).
The Joywire implant gives +30 mood—at the significant cost of -20% consciousness, and it cannot be removed. Thus, it should be used as a permanent solution to permanent problems.
Mood is a stat: How happy or stressed someone is. Its default value is 100%.