[1.0] Children and Pregnancy - v0.5b (2019/Feb/25)

[Rimrue]

I would be very sad if the growth rate of children was truncated that much.

I love having kids around. Sure they can be a pain at times (whaddya mean you're scared of the dark? Get out there and collect that corn! Lol), but they add so much to my colonies.

Plus raider kids are super easy to catch (just punch them a couple times! Lol) and recruit. So you can easily add colonists that way.

[O Negative]

Yeah, simulating a teenage colonist at only 3 years of age would be a huge mistake. It takes away so much immersion, it's ridiculous.

I would like to reiterate a suggestion I've made in the past, which is to accelerate the rate of aging for all living things. It's something Banished did, and it worked rather well. You would actually have the opportunity to see your original colonists be effected by age, which isn't something you normally get (which is a shame if you ask me).

I'm not sure how flexible the aging code is, so I can't say it would be an easy thing to accomplish. I just wanted to throw the idea out there.

[WalkingProblem]

I would be very sad if the growth rate of children was truncated that much.

I love having kids around. Sure they can be a pain at times (whaddya mean you're scared of the dark? Get out there and collect that corn! Lol), but they add so much to my colonies.

Plus raider kids are super easy to catch (just punch them a couple times! Lol) and recruit. So you can easily add colonists that way.

This is true too. It never fails to fascinate me how many teenagers/children go to raid with their adults~ haha

Yeah, simulating a teenage colonist at only 3 years of age would be a huge mistake. It takes away so much immersion, it's ridiculous.

I would like to reiterate a suggestion I've made in the past, which is to accelerate the rate of aging for all living things. It's something Banished did, and it worked rather well. You would actually have the opportunity to see your original colonists be effected by age, which isn't something you normally get (which is a shame if you ask me).

I'm not sure how flexible the aging code is, so I can't say it would be an easy thing to accomplish. I just wanted to throw the idea out there.

I wont say its a mistake (which is sweeping) - it depends on the games design - what is the original intention of the mod/game.

In term of aging codes, its based on the years; I not sure how can the age be accelerated in that sort of way (skipping years?) May present different sort of problems.

The thing is RimWorld isn't just meant to be a game with strict rules of game design applied to it. Like Tynan has said before, it's meant to be a story generator. Scaling the time down that far would kill off the majority of chances to have crazy things happen in regards to children- and would make children less of a neat detail that can add interest to the game to just another way to pump out free colonists. That's not really the point. There should be challenge with children- they should be a pain in the ass. The player should have to make hard decisions and it shouldn't be a simple matter of playing for a year or two before they're indistinguishable from everyone else.

On the other side of the coin, children shouldn't be a huge pain in the ass that remain like so for an entire game. Getting to childhood is the relevant part which offers reward for the player, so scaling that to three years sounds reasonable. Once they're a child they can do virtually everything an adult can.

3 in game years is a long long time and plenty of time for the child to provide a massive amount of pain in the ass.

Most colonies can't even survive that long. And this 3 years is only for the first child, minus the first year of setting up the colony and the pregnancy. Which means its 4 in game years before you can "reap" the reward of all those pain in the ass. 

But yeah, its a hard decision to make in term of hacking the age stages....

[john95x]

My baby was born with a psychite addiction even though the mother did not take any psychite drugs. She was, however, taking penoxycline to prevent malaria etc. Could be a bug in which penoxycline is recognized as a psychite drug. Also, been reading some of the earlier posts. Maybe you could allow an option for users to set the age scale. Some want immersion and have the scale be like real life and some want a truncated scale. Some may be happy with the turning into a competent child at 3 years old scale.

[Thirite]

I'm hoping I can find a happy medium between them, but if that can't be done then I'll probably add it as mod settings. As for the addiction, I think I might know what's causing that. The addiction tracker should only be looking for hediffs with specific attributes to them, but I'll see.

[lionessJess]

I like the current timescale but maybe you could add something to make toddlers less useless. Possibly let them do dumb labour from 2-3.5 or just haul like smart animals. You could call this life stage 'less shitty toddlers'.

[eadras]

I've noticed babies being born with random addictions as well, but since they are cured of it before toddler stage, it isn't really a major issue (incapacitated pawns cannot break).  The only exception would be if a baby was born with a luciferium addiction...

On another note, my doctor just gave birth to triplets.  What are the odds of that?  I know they are quite low irl without the use of fertility drugs.  It's hilarious watching her ping pong back and forth trying to breastfeed all those screaming mouths.

[Thirite]

Okay, I've fixed babies being born with unintended addictions. Just an oversight on my part. Also fixed the Job Error for breastfeeding, but I plan to rewrite that part of the code anyways, so as to better integrate it work the Humanlike thinktree. v0.2E will also be coming with a Korean translation thanks to lellel.

[Dragoon]

There is an easier fix then just changing the growth period for the children or the of scaling the age up for everything.

I would like to reiterate a suggestion I've made in the past, which is to accelerate the rate of aging for all living things.

I disagree with this statement, just because it then makes the mod effect and cause more compatibility issues with other mods. Not to mention it makes the game go farther away from the original feel of rimworld. Which is not what any of us want. We want the same feeling but with the realism of children in it.

however I do agree with this statement.

Yeah, simulating a teenage colonist at only 3 years of age would be a huge mistake. It takes away so much immersion, it's ridiculous.

The easier fix is to make a drug ( a non addicting one) the players can create that would cause the ageing of user by a set number of years that way it would not just make the the child age up to adult instantly as it would take a bit of time a (few days for it to work.) And they would need to take it more than once in order to age up. If you made it so one does is 3 or 4 years it remains balanced, as they don't get all the backstory bonuses with just one backstory.

This way everyone gets what they want. If they want them to age normally than they get it if they want them to age faster they make the drug. The downside could be a simple straight forward one. During the process it takes to work, they could suffer from temporary work and combat penalties. Nothing permanent to dissuade wade them from using it other than the cost of it. And again if they don't want fast aging they simply don't use the drug.

Isn't that a better way than changing the mechanics?

[PixelBitZombie]

Okay, I've fixed babies being born with unintended addictions. Just an oversight on my part. Also fixed the Job Error for breastfeeding, but I plan to rewrite that part of the code anyways, so as to better integrate it work the Humanlike thinktree. v0.2E will also be coming with a Korean translation thanks to lellel.

Could have been worse, the dogs could have started breastfeeding, which honestly would have been hilarious. Excited about the new update!

[O Negative]

~snip~

Yeah, you make a good point about mod incompatability potential. Also, a lot people who played Banished (myself included) weren't the biggest fans of one chronological year aging people by 3/5/7 biological years. The reason I think it "worked" for Banished, still, is because that game relied on simulating a growing population susceptible to death by old age. RimWorld is, admittedly, a completely different experience than Banished was.

I agree with your points on giving people an option, but I think a question of balance comes into play. Why wouldn't somebody want to quickly age up their colonists, given the opportunity? If there's a drug that increases the rate of growth/maturity for a born human being, I think there should be an increased chance of age-related disease associated with it.

For instance, the accidental formation of cancer (carcinoma) comes to mind. Accelerated cell-growth of this magnitude has huge potential to cause this, I would think. Plus, as a gameplay mechanic, it's punishing without being debilitating (assuming you have a decent doctor). I also think I read something about vat-grown colonists once? But, I think they would need to be born incapable of some of the basic human capabilities a normal child would have (social/caring/etc.) or even just a lack of any sort of passion would be good.

But, at the end of the day, I'm not the one who decides what should and shouldn't be part of this mod. I'm grateful for whatever I can get for my extremely long playthroughs

[Dragoon]

Well the thing is if you play just to win and are one to give everyone bionics. Then you would abuse it but if your not and your like me where you only give to those who are wounded. of course there are those who don't wanna take away a kids childhood.

That said I agree with your idea for the downside of the drug. Since it is curable after some time, and it does seem like something that could happen.

[Rimrue]

Unless I'm mistaking how the growth vat works, I'm pretty sure that will solve all these issues. Have a baby? Pop it in the growth vat. Need new colonists, but nobody's getting pregnant? Clone some colonists and pop them into the growth vat. Lol

[Dragoon]

Unless I'm mistaking how the growth vat works, I'm pretty sure that will solve all these issues. Have a baby? Pop it in the growth vat. Need new colonists, but nobody's getting pregnant? Clone some colonists and pop them into the growth vat. Lol

Um you actually are mistaking how that works. You don't put a baby in a growth vat. Growth vats are artificial wombs, used to grow the created life. You can't put something that is already out of the womb back into another womb. You can put a fertilized egg(real or artificial doesn't matter) in a growth vat however. So your second point makes sense. That is why there are growth accelerants. The only reason why we want them is growth vats help for future children not current ones.

[Rimrue]

Why couldn't you put a baby in a growth vat and age it up? It's science fiction. You can make the rules whatever you want them to be.

And I'm sure I've seen movies and books and games that use growth vats to age up people to adulthood. That's always how I pictured the "vatgrown soldier" backstory that's already in the game to have worked.

At any rate, I'm not against using other forms of growth accelerants on kids. I just thought the growth vat could be the simplest and easiest means of implementing accelerated growth into the game/mod.

Anyway, it's up to Thirite. It's his mod.