Yet Another Children Topic

[Doublebrain]

I know this topic has been around for a long time, that why I don't want to spam the suggestion thread and decided to post it here. It's a very detailed example how human breeding could work.
I've tried to make it a nice mix of realism and gameplay.
(*) will be kinda unnecessary stuff but could add some atmosphere.

I know its a lot of text. Don't judge me. I'm waiting for some mods to update so I have nothing to do anyway.


Pre-Pregnancy

A couple has the chance to develop wish for child. It can start develop as soon as the average age of the couple is 20, will reach its peak with an average of 30 and stop with an average of 40.
Couples with wish for a child or a child have a higher chance of getting married, married couples have a higher chance of developing wish for a child.
If the couple has wish for a child, is of mixed gender and they share a bed, they will engage in coitus and the women will have a 25% chance of getting pregnant.


Pregnancy

A pregnancy takes 1 seasons, 15 days.

0-3 day: the pregnancy will only be noticeable if detected by a doctor. An abortion will not have mood penalties.

Abortion: Player decision or depletion of child wish will have a doctor aborting the embryo. Needs a medical bed and a doctor performing the abortion. High stress in an early pregnancy state can lead to unwanted abortion.
+ Trait: Anti-abortionist: Will never perform or support an abortion. Dislikes people who had an abortion.

3-6: If not already detected by a doctor, the player will get a notification of the pregnancy. Slightly increased hunger and tiredness. Vomiting and bad mood accrue occasionally.  Abortion will lead to small mood penalties.

6-9: Increased blood pumping, slightly reducing movement and work speed.

9-12: No more occasional vomiting and bad mood. A doctor can detect the gender if wanted by the player.

12-15: Constantly increasing weight will keep reducing movement and work speed until the end of the pregnancy.


Birth

On day 15 of the pregnancy, the women will stay in
-   a medical bed if available
-   her own bed if she has one
-   her own room if she has one
-   a spot in the home area

* her partner could stay with her for the time

If the birth is imminent
-   a doctor will support the birth if one is available
-   her partner will support the birth using his medicine skill if he is able to
-   she will perform the birth on her own, risking her own and her baby's health


Childhood

Starts at age 0, ends at age 15 (due to game mechanic reasons)

1 year: The infant will sleep
-   in its own bed if it has one
-   in the parents bed if they have one
-   with one of the parents on the ground if it has parents
-   with a random colonist (high social skill preferred)

One parent will stay with the infant at a time, depending on idle/work times. No work will be done by the caring parent.
The infant will be breastfed by the mother. If it has no mother, a random women breastfeed it. If there are no women in the colony, it will be fed with milk, if there is none with meals. If they have to feed it with meals, the feeding person will get a small mood penalty. "Babies shouldn't eat this!"


1-2:
The child will move around the home area and make social contacts. Parents will look after their child sometimes, less working hours are to be expected.
The child will be fed meals.

2-4:
The child will move around the home area and make social contacts.
It can now eat meals by itself.

4-6:
The child will follow its parents on their workday, developing skills and interests.
It will gain 1 random trait of their parents at the end of this stage.

6-8:
The child will follow non-parents it has high opinions for on their workday, developing or upgrading skills and interests.
It will gain 1 random trait of the people it followed at the end of this stage.
It will do some cleaning and hauling work, excluding hauling human corpses/meat/limbs/other gross stuff.
The childhood biography of the child will be generated based on what they mostly learned/experienced/did in their life at the end of this stage.

8-10:
The child can now work, but at a lower work speed, excluding things related to human violence.
It can gain 1 random train at the end of this stage, depending on their average mood in this stage.

10-15:
The child can now do all work, excluding things related to human violence.

The adulthood biography will be generated based on what the mostly worked/learned/experienced from 8-15 years.


Parent loss
If a child loses a parent it will get big mood penalties and work restrictions, depending on the reason for their parent's death.
-   Burned to death -> Scary
-   Died in a fight -> Violent
-   Died as result of a medical problem -> Caring


Adoption
If a infant or child loses its parents, a random colonist or couple will adopt it. Preferred adoptive parents will be:
-   Relatives
-   Colonists with high average opinions of the former parents
-   Couples with wish for child (gay couples can also develop wish for child)
-   Colonists with a high social skill


Benefits
If you can provide a safe and productive home, a child can grow to a very useful member of the colony.
They have high chances not to have work restrictions.
Skills should develop faster in young age.
Their interests should be more/higher than the average colonists.
People who the child has made social contact with should have a social bonus. When it grows up, the bonus stays. "Saw him/her grow up"

Other bonuses could be added. For example, a lower mental break threshold by default or a permanent mood bonus.


Gameplay VS Realism
Infants and children can not be targeted by violence and can not burn to death. If they are about to starve or die because of medical reasons, the faction with the best relations will adopt the child and care for it.
This might be necessary to guarantee access to the game in countries like Australia where ratings are quite tough.

Infants and children can wear normal clothing, excluding military grade clothing.

Thought about contraception but would probably be too much micro-managing and not really gameplay relevant.




Congrats if anyone really read all of this. You now know how I would implement human breeding into RimWorld.

[SpaceDorf]

Really cool and well thought of .. the only addition I can think of would be if you changed
the dead parent outcome from only incapable of to a chance of
60 % incapable, 30 % passion and 10 % burning passion because of the famous backstories ..
rescue and revenge
I became a Doctor because my Parents died of Cancer
I am Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, now you are going to die !

[keylocke]

sounds feasible. can someone calculate how much real time is 15 years of rimworld at 3x speed?

what's the ideal fast forward speed to get 1 year rimworld time = 15 minutes real time? so that you can grow someone from a baby into a 15 yr old, in just around 3-4 hours real time.

[ddblue0]

I would love to see children added to the game, and this seems like a great place to start. Good work getting it all down and explained like this!

Personally though, the only part I take a little issue with is "Infants and children can not be targeted by violence and can not burn to death".

For me, part of what makes the game fun is the potential darkness and hopelessness of it all. I think children should be target-able like anybody, and should not be fireproof. This is Rimworld, it SHOULD be hard to raise children.

An acceptable middle ground could be not factoring children in when the size of raiding parties and what not is calculated.

[Ceglaaa]

I would love to see children added to the game, and this seems like a great place to start. Good work getting it all down and explained like this!

Personally though, the only part I take a little issue with is "Infants and children can not be targeted by violence and can not burn to death".

For me, part of what makes the game fun is the potential darkness and hopelessness of it all. I think children should be target-able like anybody, and should not be fireproof. This is Rimworld, it SHOULD be hard to raise children.

An acceptable middle ground could be not factoring children in when the size of raiding parties and what not is calculated.

I do totally agree with you.

[CannibarRechter]

My only comment is the various gestation periods for animals in the game are fake. There's no reason that the human children trajectory needs to match real-world game times. Most everything else doesn't. This is a case of the players "knowing too much." It might be wierd, but pregnancies and child development would probably need to be on unrealistically fast times schedules.

[SpaceDorf]

My only comment is the various gestation periods for animals in the game are fake. There's no reason that the human children trajectory needs to match real-world game times. Most everything else doesn't. This is a case of the players "knowing too much." It might be wierd, but pregnancies and child development would probably need to be on unrealistically fast times schedules.

Yes, but in this occasion it would be suspension of desbeliev breaking, because it's an ingrained truth to ourselves.  The pregnancy being about 3 seasons is close enough to reality to make it count, so is his development process. I would go the DF way and make them "adult" with 12-14
when in older societies the apprenticeship started. But since years are used in the more or less real way, I see no other possible cuts.

The real problem is, that children are a sore thumb in video games sometimes, because the heavily influence the Maturnity Rating. Skyrim made them unkillable. In the german version of fallout 2 the got cut from the game completely.

And seeing how the backgrounds of the colonists work, this may be the real hard part, developing a system that reacts to the highly personal experiences in game.

[DariusWolfe]

According to this page, 1 in-game year is equal to 16 hours, 40 minutes. At 3x speed, that's 5 hours, 34 minutes. For a 15-year old to age up from birth, you're looking at 3 days, 11 hours and 20 minutes of constant, 3x speed play.

As I mentioned in another thread about children, I play in approximately 4 hour blocks, which involves a lot of time paused, and the frequent 1x bits during fights and emergencies. That means it'd take me about a month of daily play to age up a child, charitably. I've never played a single colony that long before launching a ship, or simply deleting it and starting again.

I like the idea of children, but to make them viable, you'd have to suspend a lot of reality in their development cycle. Even if children add a lot to play by themselves, I think the feature would end up pissing people off more than not, because they'd want to be able to see a child grow up, and potentially play generational games.

I have to ask a general question... What's your longest running game, in-game time? I think I got to 3 years once. I really can't imagine playing a single game for 30 in-game years, which would be the minimum time to see grandchildren grown up.

Also, I wouldn't worry overly much about maturity ratings; This is an indie game, and doesn't have to have the mass appeal of Skyrim and Fallout to be financially viable. Other games exist wherein children can be killed, so if it were to happen in Rimworld, it would only cause a batted eye among those already interested. So long as child molestation isn't a thing, I'm not going to have a problem (though I know those who wouldn't play the game even with killable children... but they'd probably be turned off by the cannibalism and dismemberment of raiders, too)

[keylocke]

@darius : thanks for the link.

i agree that at 3x speed, waiting for "3 days, 11 hours and 20 minutes of constant, 3x speed play." to get a babe to adult is kinda ridiculous.

which is why i mentioned before that there needs to be faster fastforward speeds to get 15 years in around 3-4 hours of real time..

i mean, i mostly play at fastforward speed anyways, then pause to give commands, and only play at normal speed during combat. so playing at around 10x or 20x speed would actually spare me from the boredom of waiting for colonists to wake up from sleep or me from waiting a long time for something interesting to actually occur.

adjusting fastforward speeds is also a non-intrusive change in gameplay, since it doesn't break other core mechanics. it just makes waiting for stuff to happen more bearable. but most importantly, it could allow centuries of gameplay (ie : if 15 years game time = 3 hours real time, then a century game time is around 18 hours in real time.. which ain't that bad)

[ddblue0]

Finding the balance between something that allows us to suspend disbelief and making it viable (and fun) in game would be tricky, but not impossible.

If fun is the top priority, then we might be best served by starting with the question, "How long feels right?", or "How long do I feel I should have to play in real time to raise a pawn from a baby dot into a contributing member of the colony?"

That answer is gonna vary from person to person (take a survey?), but for me it's something like 15 real-life hours (3 hours of gameplay a day for about a week).

You could achieve this by tweaking the amount of time it takes to age/mature, and instead of 15 maybe make adult age 12 or something so that they become contributing members of the colony sooner.

[keylocke]

well i think the reasoning behind why i thought 3 hours in real time at fastforward speed (maybe at 10x or 20x speed. there can be multiple ultra-fastforward speed options) should be equal to 15 yrs game time is coz a four hour per day playthrough seems like a norm to most people. (yea a survey might be good to actually get the right stats)

but the other thing that needs to be considered is the comparison between recruitment and growing a babe to adult. (there needs to be incentives that makes growing babe to adult worth it)

-in other related threads i said things like the child should inherit the traits of the parents (50-50 what they inherit).
-there also needs to be new childhood background traits that is based on the parents, colony wealth, length of time passed, etc.. (ie : if the traits and skills of parents are careful shooter and high shooting skills, then childhood background could be : born from parents talented at gunplay. or whatever, etc..) but the main gist is that kids would inherit traits and incapable stuff from their parents.
-there also needs to be new adult background traits which is gonna be based on the upbringing and experience of the child age 1-15 (ie : if colony is poor and child often goes hungry or injured, they could get a background that says : you are so poverty, as if you grew up in a colony of hobos. lel)

stuff like that adds to the story and makes more sense. instead of just force-recruiting random people you kidnapped.

[Doublebrain]

Really cool and well thought of .. the only addition I can think of would be if you changed
the dead parent outcome from only incapable of to a chance of
60 % incapable, 30 % passion and 10 % burning passion because of the famous backstories ..
rescue and revenge
I became a Doctor because my Parents died of Cancer
I am Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, now you are going to die !

Thought about this too, but I wanted to reward only good gameplay.

snip
Personally though, the only part I take a little issue with is "Infants and children can not be targeted by violence and can not burn to death".
snip

Well they had to alter the names of drugs in the last update so it wont be banned in places like Australia, therefore Im pretty sure they will have to keep children from dying. Making them targetable but not killable would probably lead to children-distraction-warfare tactics. I know its ridiculous because kids get killed in movies and noone really cares but well.. thats how video games have to work I guess.

My only comment is the various gestation periods for animals in the game are fake. There's no reason that the human children trajectory needs to match real-world game times. Most everything else doesn't. This is a case of the players "knowing too much." It might be wierd, but pregnancies and child development would probably need to be on unrealistically fast times schedules.

I used the games current possible age for colonists as the 'adult age'. If they consider changing this, it could be 'fully developed' at 12 or even 10 probably. But as said before, this could get them into trouble in some places. I dont really see a way to make it faster, other than the babies plopping out at the age of 5. Which would be kinda weird. Or really weird maybe.

snip
And seeing how the backgrounds of the colonists work, this may be the real hard part, developing a system that reacts to the highly personal experiences in game.

They already have kind of an 'art system' where they keep track of and use things that happened in the past to create descriptions. Im sure they will be able to use this to filter main events and stuff that happened often in the colony, with their parents and with themselves to create backgrounds based on their life and experience.

snip
I like the idea of children, but to make them viable, you'd have to suspend a lot of reality in their development cycle. Even if children add a lot to play by themselves, I think the feature would end up pissing people off more than not, because they'd want to be able to see a child grow up, and potentially play generational games.

I have to ask a general question... What's your longest running game, in-game time? I think I got to 3 years once. I really can't imagine playing a single game for 30 in-game years, which would be the minimum time to see grandchildren grown up.

Also, I wouldn't worry overly much about maturity ratings; This is an indie game, and doesn't have to have the mass appeal of Skyrim and Fallout to be financially viable. Other games exist wherein children can be killed, so if it were to happen in Rimworld, it would only cause a batted eye among those already interested. So long as child molestation isn't a thing, I'm not going to have a problem (though I know those who wouldn't play the game even with killable children... but they'd probably be turned off by the cannibalism and dismemberment of raiders, too)

I do think the game will have more late-game features and possibilities in later stages of development, probably making it more likely for people to see grown up children. It could also be a huge milestone for some of the hardcore players to actually get the colony some biological offspring with comparable low coding effort.

After abandoning my 2.5 year run because of out of date mods I now got about 2 year again. I got 2 marries couples so I would have to wait about 10 more ingame years to get a kid going which would do some work.
But I have a lot of time right now and probably playing up to or more than 6h/day.

As said before, drugs had to be 'censored', so I dont think they want to risk getting banned in places like Australia.

@darius : thanks for the link.

i agree that at 3x speed, waiting for "3 days, 11 hours and 20 minutes of constant, 3x speed play." to get a babe to adult is kinda ridiculous.

which is why i mentioned before that there needs to be faster fastforward speeds to get 15 years in around 3-4 hours of real time..

snip

Yea to this.

snip
You could achieve this by tweaking the amount of time it takes to age/mature, and instead of 15 maybe make adult age 12 or something so that they become contributing members of the colony sooner.

They actually serve as fully useful biological working machines at the age of 11 in my example (besides combat for legal reasons) so its kind of not 15 but 11 years to really get some use out of the food absorbents.


Im gonna do some tweaking to make it more gameplay comfortable.

[paperclip]

To those that are "against" this idea:

Argument: It is immoral to kill children. Or unethical. Or just bad taste/taboo
Answer1: So is harvesting organs from prisoners. Selling said organs. Executing prisoners. Selling prisoners. Buying slaves. Growing/selling/using drugs. Not giving medical care to prisoners. Not feeding them. Killing bonded animals. Killing in general.
Answer2: I am in favor for this game aspect. Then again, I would never like to kill/hurt/harm children in any way. This is a non-real (fictional/fake/pseudo) environment. Go away thought-police! If I want to remove the eyes of a newly born in a game, let me. How come doing this in a game is taboo/bad, but writing it in a book suddenly makes sense because, "fiction"?
Answer3: And if you don't like it, how about making a simple check-option: allow pawns below 15 yes/no. This enables/disables childbirth at your command. Both parties should be happy since for you your experience remains identical. Just like you shouldn't dictate what I must like, same applies to me.

Argument: for realism sake, this can never happen because - 15 in game years too long/children are annoying/ pregnant woman ruin the game/this would never happen IRL.
Answer1: The problem here is basically; your brain not comprehending the importance of sex. Maybe in some years you will learn that any lifeform is nothing more than a vehicle used by DNA to replicate. Reproduction is the number one goal of life, sex is the used method in humans, and bodies are the engaging structures. Food is simply a fuel to power this whole process. Walking, thinking and talking are physical actions needed in the end to get this done. If it didn't need fuel, food would not exist. If our bodies could replicate better without air, we wouldn't use air. Therefor, reproduction is the one pivot on which gameplay should turn (you do want to make it realistic, right?).
Answer2: Clothes disintegrating to dust within days of outside exposure? Potatoes maturing not in 4 months, but 1 week? Trees growing full-size within the lifespan of a chicken? Come on! This can't be an actual argument! Just because you find the childbirth idea unwanted, you have to try to find reasoning in time/realism related properties - which are by the way already completely offset in the actual game itself! Download yourself a new OS, reboot, and try again please.

Argument: Taking care of them is just a drag. Loosing woman in childbirth is a pain. The game won't be fun if I have some inactive creatures eating all my food.
Answer1: Really? How can this be an argument? The core gameplay is getting hit with random events that throw your just found balance out the window! Random events? check. Random deaths due to sickness/socialfights/raids/mad animal/etc/etc/etc tripple check. Seems to fit the main theme very well.
Answer2: Have I mentioned that you should never try to over-realism anything in a game? Like, where do all the bullets come from? My pawns seem to master magic by default.
Also, I never had any potatoes to start with, when I ordered them to plant them. Magic returns!
You are all by yourself, have medical skills of 0, suddenly you realize you developed asthma in both lungs. Magic.
No rocks or wood collected? Lets magic away that mountain. Cutting multiple cubic meters of solid granite is quite easy if you magic!
Hey lets construct 20 solar panels and 40 batteries by ourselves using magic. Good thing we didn't need 3 cubic kilometer of factory to produce them. That would have been a pain indeed.


If you guys have any additional reasons to be against, I am more than willing to burn them down for you.
A crude implementation of the option to have them would be enough. It is not necessary that it is actually enabled for everyone by default.

If it would be implemented so that it is "hidden" and be only unlock-able with a simple mod, then that works just as well.
No bad stuff for the game as it wouldn't officially feature that function.

[Doublebrain]

Its not really immoral to us, but to some rating agencies. I'm pretty sure there would be a mod the second they implement this to make child death and violence possible anyway.

[Sanaart]

It's an unpopular option with many people, and adding options that have extreme potential for abuse and don't add enough to the game to justify what players will do with the option is generally a bad idea. And like Doublebrain said, if it's the straw that pushes Rimworld to get an AO rating, that would be very bad (steam and most retailers will not sell AO rated games).

Personally I'm not for children because I don't think they fit the tone of the game.