It's 2 AM so this will probably be incoherent, but as much for myself as the public: a lot of the joy of watching little computer people live their lives in our facilities comes from watching them put in the effort.
Whether it's The Sims or DF, they work hard both professionally and in their private life. We see the seams of their existence, the things they struggle with- internal and external.
We judge our successes by the lives they live within our worlds, how much effort, how much payoff.
Obviously they struggle with the endless swarms of bandits that pretend to be a meaningful challenge, but I don't find that a particularly interesting story.
Instead consider other challenges we can present via the lens of 'does it make this little computer person TRY HARD'
Rather than a trait affecting their performance directly, it makes more sense if it causes them to put in effort.
All the chaos and randomness of the world is grist for 'what are these people up to today?'
And we selected these people to have a population that reacts in specific ways to specific challenges, so even though there's randomness, the story is tightly vectored.
They specialize in these skills, so that's what they usually put effort into unless an emergency requires something else.
In their private life they have a girlfriend, and they put effort into that relationship-
Not all effort is positive, but it's important not to make a character Just A Burden.
For example, if you have a drunkard, the tone of their effort changes. Obviously they put effort into getting drunk, but more importantly, the other things they put effort into, they are putting in drunken effort.
So we can change the nature of the effort. Rather than making the effort simply a negative. We want to 'yes, but-' not 'no'.
Thinking a lot more about this.
I think the reason I focused so much on characters working hard is because, as a player, your resources come from their hard work. So watching them slack off is actively annoying.
You become an awful middle manager: "If you've got time to lean, you've got time to clean!"
But the story of human life should not simply be how well they can serve industry.
Let's explore some #GameDesign alternatives-
An obvious alternative is if enemies and guests are shown slacking off. This is a net positive to the player, since their hard work is probably bad.
But enemies and guests can't be your centered pawns, since they are temporary.
Your main pawns - can we show them doing things besides working without the player yelling at them to get back to work?
Well, yes, but it requires making that downtime useful, and making it use things the player built in effective ways.
For example, if we say that you get 8 hours of work out of someone regardless of how many actual hours they spend working, then obviously the player is now interested in harvesting from the other hours where working would be a literal waste of time.
Another option is to have things limited so that more work is literally useless anyway, like a hunter-gatherer tribe that will actively suffer if they hunt more than they can eat.
One of the things I wanted to accomplish with my trait-focused "time bomb tech" is to make it so that how the player structures the facility is more important than how many hours people spend actually working.
I think this is also true of cultural/social traits. For example, if your people want to wear specific clothes as a cultural trait, how hard they work has nothing to do with that.
But on the other hand, something like a holiday - how hard do they work setting up a holiday celebration?
Fundamentally, I think people's stories revolving around the things they try hard at works well. It's clearly something they care about, so you should care too.
But I don't think that means every story needs to be about industry. As long as what they try hard at has some relevance to the player and doesn't actively cost resources without the player's permission-
Nor does it have to involve EVERYONE trying hard. There's loads of meaningful stories where A works hard and B slacks off.
One key constraint is simply that the personal story must involve the player's constructions or choices in some way, so it is meaninful feedback on their play so far.
Another key constraint is that the player should not feel like it's an unavoidable waste of time. While being annoyed at people wasting time is a core tenet of games like Rimworld, I think if we want the player to actually be interested in someone, they have to not be furious with them.
But wasting time with permission? S'good.
As a simple example: you have a short-tempered inhabitant.
In Rimworld or DF, that would be an annoying pure-negative trait. The inhabitant would eventually waste time and resources and perhaps lives. There's not much of a way around it, aside from treating them with kid gloves as a form of preventative maintenance.
But if we think in terms of our new constraints, what lifestyle stories could this help to tell?
First, she's selected as a priority storyteller in mildly annoying situations.
IE, she's an early warning sign: if things are getting a little annoying, she is the one that immediately pipes up. If food is a little short, she pipes up. If things are a little too dirty, she pipes up - long before anyone else notices, making her a valuable step in a staggered setup.
Another easy suggestion: she can be the foil that someone else works hard against. You can show people coming together, growing, and polishing their skills because otherwise she'll annoy them with her complaints
Imagine this: she gets annoyed that the base is too dirty, so she WORKS HARD at cleaning the base. With an angry expression, complaining the whole time.
This becomes valuable lifestyle commentary. You understand her, you understand her short temper is not a pure negative trait, you respect her efforts, and she is making life a little better for everyone as long as they don't mind her complaining.
And it's an easy in for the other characters to give feedback and bond with her!
Now these are all quite separate from you constructing things that are specific outlets for her anger issues, like a boxing gym or a meditation hall.
Those also have value, and her use of them would tell a story of your design prowess, creating things people actually use and getting rewards from their use of it.
You can begin to see how this structure is assembled, how these mechanics can string together.
And THEN you can discuss more extreme expressions, like getting in drunken fights or abusing people.
One of your colonists being that sort of person would be difficult, because you'd quickly start to think of them as just a burden that needs to be handled with kid gloves, rather than an asset to be promoted.
But if it was a secondary character like a visitor, distant family member, politician-
You can now work to defeat them, or at least their issues, without feeling super annoyed.
Obviously some players like their base inhabitants to be scumbags. That's a major draw in Rimworld, it seems - it's often the story of awful people on a crime spree.
But the issue there is that base construction is not a highlight of that awfulness. It's orthogonal: the awfulness has nothing to do with your construction.
So IMO, if you want awful people, you need to build a base that USES or OPPOSES their awfulness. Otherwise it's not proper commentary on your play.
Mmm, it's also fun to consider the different types of effort people put in and how they can contrast with each other or with non-effort.
IE, if you have a front-line fighter that needs to defend the base every few months with frantic effort but spends the rest of their time slacking off, that's a statement.
Or if the galactic police force is a bunch of corrupt slackers, it allows for people to put in effort to evade their notice as they do crimes-
Short-term vs long-term, here vs there, voluntary or forced, conscious or automatic, facilitated or in spite of lacking facilities, privileged or oppressed-
And, of course, potentially in contrast to the same question at a different target...
There's a lot of potential, if you can winnow things down to something playable.
Your people care about shit, and therefore you care about it. Whether that's getting enough to eat, obsessively manufacturing better and better mecha, praying, their lover, or just keeping the base clean.
It's a combination of you working to help them with those things, revectoring their cares, or watching the struggle: it always needs to comment on your play.
Craig P