Novel

Novels are items that colonists can read for recreation.

Acquisition

Novels, like all books, can be purchased from trade caravans, orbital traders and faction bases, or earned through quests.

When starting a new game, there is a chance for your starting colonists to carry books as possessions based on their traits or backstory.

Summary

Novels can be read by colonists as a recreation activity.

Novels in particular are focused around maximizing the amount of recreation gained when read. All novels receive a bonus to recreation based on their quality.

Effect of Quality on Recreation
Quality	Factor
Awful	120%
Poor	140%
Normal	160%
Good	180%
Excellent	200%
Masterwork	225%
Legendary	250%

Note: Template the following?

All books can be efficiently stored in bookcases, allowing them to provide a bonus to any reading and research activities taking place within the same room. Each book stored in a nearby bookcase will increase the rate at which XP is gained from reading textbooks.

When reading for recreational purposes, colonists will choose which books to read at random. You can use the assign tab to specify which types of book a colonist is allowed to read, but you cannot assign a colonist to read any one specific book automatically.

You can manually force a colonist to read a specific book by selecting the colonist, right-clicking either the book itself or the bookcase containing it, then issuing the "read" command. The colonist will then read the target book for an hour before putting it away.

Analysis

Novels in particular are a decent option if your sole concern is efficiently entertaining colonists, despite lacking the additional utility of textbooks and schematics.

For less-developed colonies, textbooks and schematics are more useful. In these colonies, colonists tend to be more easily entertained, while skills and research projects pose more pressing matters. For this reason, novels will usually just get in the way of more important reading.

However, as research is completed and your colonists become more skilled, novels will become more useful by comparison.

The high recreation rate of high-quality novels means that colonists can fill their recreation need much more quickly. This should result in less downtime, making your pawns colonists more productive.