Why was the Filthy Clothing thing a terrible idea? I actually liked it to a point but thought it needed more depth to it. Like you should have 3 tiers, Filthy, Dirty, Clean. Clean clothes provide a moral boost as getting to wear clean clothes feels amazing after wearing the same dirty shit for weeks at least in my experience.
Now dirty or the mid tier is the shit you’ve been wearing for a full day without taking off and it won’t progress to filthy barring outside forces. Lets say a boomer spews on you, boom the outermost layers have just become filthy. Or maybe you’ve decided to trudge around in the sewers and fell into some of the slop down there. Boom filthy clothes.
Now filthy clothes should give a moral penalty but be much easier to clean. You shouldn’t need clean water to do it and soap should be optional. Like you can get them from filthy to dirty with just water but to raise it up to Clean you would need the soap and water.
Just my two cents. Gives both a positive and a negative to the filthy clothes thing that was brought up a while ago. Of course there would still be a need to bring in the ability to have dirty rags and the like but I think it might work to make the system better.
I agree. Like, how come we aren’t able to just wash dirt off with soap and a gallon jug of water, making going through the whole process less big of a deal? As it stands you really need to either get lucky and spawn into the right conditions, or build a board, obtain soap and drive to the nearest river/swimming pool with all the filthy clothing you want cleaned because you refuse to make the same trip more than once. Perhaps make use of materials like bleach too, while we’re at it.
Either way, the morale penalties/benefits should be more significant I feel. Make the penalties higher - say, immediately after putting a dirty coat on have the highest penalty (around -25 morale?), then have it progressively fade to the current morale penalty state as time passes by, presumably to -12 or -7. Make it a unified thing too: if you’re wearing filthy clothing already you shouldn’t feel AS disgusted when you put more on, that way your -25 morale doesn’t magically double to -50 but rather drops to -37 or something. Make it a multiplier perhaps? Wearing filthy clothing reduces further penalties by 15% percent as long as it’s being worn. It’s crucial that different clothing has a morale penalty/benefit relative to its size/body part it’s worn on similarly to how things work currently; you can’t abuse the system by wearing filthy socks so that the penalty on your filthy backpack is lower, but also don’t cripple yourself when wearing filthy pants and adding filthy socks to the mix.
To contrast this, make the benefits high as well. Wearing a full set of clean clothes can boost you to +35 morale and more, and last for half a day if not longer. Perhaps balance it with more tiers of “cleanliness”, so that a shirt cleaned with a bar of soap and a bottle of water wouldn’t give you the satisfaction laundry out of a proper washing machine would. We’re assuming that the standard tier of clothing doesn’t give more boosts or penalties, and that it’s abundant. Maintaining clothing in top shape - fresh clean, that is - should be a chore, and should be done frequently - which is why the benefits are high in the first place.