Messages

If you think because statistically women are physically weaker than men, ALL women should have a physical handicap, you really need to start understanding statistics.
You are saying that EVERY women has at least some artistic, medicinal and social skills with your way of handling it. Thats not how you use statistics.
I get that you are trying to implement some evolution based sex differences, which would in fact not be a bad thing, but probably think of a way that actually makes sense.

Also I'd say its quite interesting that you see men as the basis and want to modify women only. Why are men not getting any penalties?

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.

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.

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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".
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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.

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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.

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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..

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Yea to this.

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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.

[will]

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.