Motives

This page is under construction. The following information may be incomplete. missing info on some motives, mostly social, fun, sanity

Motives are various statistics that stimulate a character's needs. Players are encouraged to keep them high, because if they get too low, they often incur penalties, such as less stamina or lower health. There are many different motives. People playing on the Roleplay servers have to deal with Hunger and Thirst. Players on both Classic and Roleplay can opt in to a Hygiene motive. There are also various The Sims-inspired motives that can only appear through admin foolery.

Roleplay Motives

Players on the Roleplay servers must deal with Hunger and Thirst motives, described below.

Hunger

Hunger is filled by eating food. The more complex the dish, the more hunger restored. For example, a cheeseburger will feed you more than a slice of bread. Some chemicals can also restore the hunger meter, such as chocolate. When hunger is below 50%, you start getting messages about being hungry. When below 25%, you start getting messages about being extremely hungry and get a Hungry debuff that lowers your health by 25 points. The debuff stays until you're above 25% hungry. Unlike many other games with hunger systems, you do not die or lose health if you reach 0% hunger.

Thirst

Thirst can be gained by drinking anything. Different drinks give varying stat gain. non-alcoholic drinks raises the motive by a good amount, while Non-alcoholic drinks and coffee don't raise it as much. Some drinks can also lower your thirst! Like the hunger motive, having it below 50% shows you messages about being thirsty and below 25% messages about being dry. While below 25%, you get a Thirsty debuff that lowers your stamina regeneration by 2.5. It stays until you get above 25%. It is impossible to die of Thirst.

Ravenous Hunger

Werewolves normally do not appear on Roleplay, but the ones that somehow do get their own, exclusive motive, Ravenous Hunger. Ravenous Hunger replaces the Hunger motive, and it persists both in human and werewolf form. It depletes slower than the normal Hunger motive, but it can only be restored by using Maul victim on people. This essentially forces you to eat crew to satisfy your hunger.

If you are on the Roleplay servers, and you become a werewolf as a result of the lycanthropy, you do not get this motive.

If werewolves normally cannot appear on the Roleplay servers, then why do they have a special motive? It's an artifact of a time when they could. On June 18, 2023, werewolves were added to Intrigue (then called "Mixed (Mild)"), as part of an experiment. The admins wanted the crew to treat werewolves as ferocious predators instead of precious puppies who just happen to be bipedal, so they gave werewolves this motive. It didn't work out as expected, so, after another series of changes, werewolves were removed from RP on August 31, 2023.

Hygiene

Hygiene is a strange beast as it's the only motive tied to a trait. You can opt in to this motive by giving your character the Stinky trait in your profile. This applies whether you're playing Classic or Roleplay. Hygiene used to be part of the Roleplay Server motives, but was taken out due to it lacking RP opportunities.

Hygiene affects not only you, but also others around you! It slowly depletes by itself and drops drastically when you stand in gross or messy things. For example, wading through puddles of blood, walking in a flood of sewage, and bleeding all lower hygiene; most of them can even instantly set it to 0%! If hygiene gets too low, you get the Stinky debuff, which sends people around you messages about your smell and lowers your maximum Stamina by 5. If you don't fix it within 3 minutes, Stinky gets replaced by the Rancid debuff. It has the same effects as Stinky, but now you have a -35 max Stamina penalty, and there are smell lines around your sprite, so it's even more clear that you smell!

You can raise hygiene by simply washing your hands. To do this, simply click on a sink, and make sure you 1) have no gloves on AND 2) aren't holding anything in your hands. If you have Kitchen Training or Medical Training, you gain 3 hygiene instead of just 2.

You can also restore hygiene by taking a shower or bath. To take a shower, stand under a showerhead, take off your clothes, and click on the showerhead to turn it on. (Protip: go into walk mode, so you don't slip on wet floors.) To take a bath, click on a bathtub to fill it with water, click-drag your character's sprite onto the tub's to climb in, and then press your movement keys (i.e. WASD or arrows keys) to get out. (For courtesy, click on the bathtub again to drain it.) The way hygiene works, you can also just roll in any puddle of water to restore hygiene, but it's kinda weird to do that in front of people.

Technically, you don't need to be naked when you shower/bathe, but you basically have to in order to get the maximum benefits. That's because your clothes' chemical resistance makes showering/bathing less effective. Every point of chemical resistance reduces the maximum hygiene level you reach via showering/bathing by four. For example, if you have just your shoes and job jumpsuit on, you have 15% chemical resistance in total; that means showering/bathing can only take you up to 40 hygiene (4 * 15 = 60, 100 - 60 = 40). Put on a space suit, and its extra 30% chemical resistance will completely stop you from being clean (30 + 15 = 45, 45 * 4 = 180, 100 - 180 = -80).

Sims Motives

If an admin decides to Toggle Sims Mode on a Classic/non-RP server, it not only enables the Hunger, Thirst, and Hygiene motives described elsewhere, but it also enables the Social, Comfort, Fun, Room, and Energy motives, just like in The Sims. These five extra motives are described below.

Social

This motive can change if you are a traitor or not. It lowers overtime and can be raised by talking to people, if you don't talk people for too much time, other than having messages about not being social, you get Space Madness, that gives you hallucinations.

Comfort

The comfort motive sees if you are on a bed or chair, it depletes with time like every other motive, the comfort is one of the fastest depleting motives, matching with the Fun motive. If you are in a chair and laying on a bed the motive starts raising up. You also get messages about being uncomfortable and needing to sit down if it's below 50% and 25%.

Fun

The reason we're all here! This motive, like most, depletes over time, this is one of the fastest depleting motives! Below 50% and 25% you get warnings about being bored, be sure to hear them! Once it reaches 0%, you get a massive message saying "You can't take being so bored anymore!" and die out of boredom!

Room

Unlike other motives, this motive does not deplete by default, it depletes depending on that room you are. Clean rooms have high room motives, messy rooms get low room motives, when inside a messy room, you get messages about the room you are being messy.

Energy

Like real life, you can get tired! The energy motive slowly depletes overtime, you can raise it by drinking certain chemicals, sleeping in a bed by right-clicking and selecting Sleep In, being knocked out, unconscious or having the Resting status. Once you're sleeping you cannot wake up until you've restored enough energy. If your energy reaches 0, you pass out and get the message "You cannot stay awake anymore!".

Sanity

Sanity is unused. While the code for a Sanity motive exists, it is not used in the Roleplay motive set or the Sims Mode set. Sanity slowly increases on its own. Certain chemicals can help the process.

Admins and Motives

Admins can toggle motives on and off using the Toggle Sims Mode command. This is a very strange beast. On Roleplay, it just enables and disables two motives, Hunger and Thirst. On Classic, it enables and disables eight: Comfort, Energy, Fun, Hunger, Hygiene, Room, Social, and Thirst. In either case, it's all or nothing. It cannot toggle between different sets of motives or turn specific ones on and off.

In addition, admins can open up a "Motives Control" panel that lets them tweak how quickly motives deplete or refill themselves. This panel also lets them put floating green crystals called "plumbobs" above people's heads (or remove them if they hate plumbobs), in case one of them feels like turning Goonstation into The Sims. However, they still cannot add or remove motives.