Mood & Mental Breaks — Realistic Overhaul
A gentle, long-term mental health layer that sits alongside vanilla Mood and breaks — easy to tune, fair, and immersive.
Personal note
I poured a lot of love into this and took my time because I wanted it to feel right. It’s a big mod code-wise; if you find a bug, please post it in the Bug Reports discussion — I’m committed to fixing things quickly.
This is also a small reminder: mental health can shape energy, learning, movement, and resilience for anyone. If you’re having a tough time, be kind to yourself and reach out to someone you trust. Your well-being matters more than any colony.
— With love, Toxic Yui
What it does
- Mood influences Mental Health (MH).
Below 50% mood → MH wears down (≈ -15%/day by default).
Above 80% mood → MH recovers (≈ +12%/day by default).
Between 50–80% → stable.
Optional: at the pawn’s Minor Break threshold, decay is slightly faster. - Visible, believable band effects. A small, invisible hediff applies subtle changes to Moving and Work speed — what you see in Overview matches what you get.
- “Drafted exception”. When drafted, the Moving debuff is skipped (buffs still apply).
- When MH hits 0% (collapse), pick your style.
[list] - No reset: stays at 0%.
- Soft reset to X%: jumps to X% and the pawn develops one disorder.
- Spiral reset (recommended): existing disorders gain severity, every odd collapse (1st, 3rd, 5th…) adds a new disorder, then Neurotrauma increases.
[/list]
Mental disorders (grounded, non-lethal, gentle trade-offs)
Each disorder starts at 50% severity and only progresses while MH is genuinely low (0–20%). There’s a friendly “safety lock” that prevents stacking too fast; it unlocks after spending sustained time in that low range. Remission slowly happens at high MH.
Goal: real-life-inspired traits with soft costs and small perks — enough to notice, never to ruin a pawn.
Integration: Adrenal Override — Danger Sense
- Optional setting: “Adrenal Override: Danger Sense also affect Mental Health”.
- While a pawn has Danger Sense at 100% severity, their MH declines at the normal low-mood rate. It doesn’t stack; it simply prevents MH from climbing during a hyper-adrenal state.
- The checkbox only enables if Adrenal Override is detected; otherwise you’ll get a friendly message.
Why you might like this
- Playable, not punitive. Challenges feel meaningful, not mean.
- Performance-friendly. Updates once per second; no heavy allocations. Big colonies welcome.
- Compatibility-first. No vanilla XML replacements; Harmony patches are surgical. Safe to add mid-save.
- Fully configurable. Thresholds, rates, collapse style, spiral gains, neurotrauma, remission, and band effects — all with clear sliders and tooltips.
Default tuning (quick glance)
- Mood < 50% → MH −15%/day
- Mood > 80% → MH +12%/day
- Disorder progression only while MH ≤ 20%
- Spiral reset: +15% severity to existing disorders per collapse; new disorder on odd collapses; Neurotrauma increases afterward
- Neurotrauma (“neural fatigue”): begins on the first collapse; progresses slowly at very low MH; remits slowly at high MH
Notes & tips
- Safe to add mid-save (as with most logic mods). Removing mid-run is not recommended.
- Overview shows a clean Mental Health capacity so you can track MH at a glance.
- Prefer “Spiral reset” for a nuanced long-game that escalates gently.
Buttons under Debug actions → MMB let you set MH to 1%/20%/35%/50%/65%/95% and add a random disorder — handy to verify Overview effects and progression.
Credits
- Code & idea: ToxicYui
License
- Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0
- https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
[ko-fi.com]
