Children as a win condition

[praguepride]

I know the idea of baby making has been suggested before and the counter-argument was usually along the lines that the timescale of Rimworld is measured in days, not months or years (like in DF) so having a kid means you have a waste of space for your playthrough as even long games would probably only last a couple of years due to the scale involved.

HOWEVER just as you can now "win" by constructing the spaceship, what if you could "win" by creating a safe enough colony that supports childbearing.

So the idea is that when you start building royal beds the colonists might start cohabitating (marriage/relationships would be nice but optional). A female colonist of child-bearing years might develop the "illness" of pregnancy.

This would increasingly make that colonist less and less productive, would increase their appetite, and most importantly you would have to manage their stress levels.

Imagine as a win condition that you have to keep a single random colonist happy and healthy for 9 straight months. That would be quite the challenge while also fending off raiders and random events etc.

Sure on easy mode or with a strong enough colony you could create your perfect "maternity ward" full of beauitful sculptures etc. but to avoid cabin fever she would HAVE to go outside and if there is an area available outside then you can drop raiders right on her

But on the flipside if your colony is strong enough that this is no hassle then you've already won the game, just not by pop-up.

So...yeah. If you can keep a random colonist happy and healthy for 9 months then a popup box saying something along the lines of "the colony has proven to be self-sufficient enough to bring forth the next generation of colonists. Everyone is emboldened by this miracle blah blah blah..."

As for the kid itself it doesn't have to be like the sims but it could just be very basic. The kid is an object that the mom carries around until its say 4. From 4 it has a sprite that can walk around and slowly but surely, say every year another job unlocks. In the beginning it can't do anything but eventually it can clean or flip switches or bring meals to patients and other odd jobs. Say full adulthood and "hauling" unlocked at 16 but again who's actually going to make it that far?

Unless you also implement my chornomographier idea...

[thenightgaunt]

I've got 2 thoughts on this.

1. It wouldn't just be "reach X number of kids" for the win conditions. You'd need both a set population level and a healthy level of births to deaths. That way the colony's actually growing and sustaining itself. The game would need to record the number of colonists lost in a certain period as well as the number added, then use those to find the growth rate.

2. One solution to the time issue might be cloning pods. Put the cost of the cloning pod on par with ship parts (like the cryosleep pods). The pod acts as a workstation, and converts food (nutrient paste?) and maybe some other resources into a new colonist. If the game can be set up to add new random colonists on command then it'd be possible. What might be tricky would be making it so that the player can select a colonist that the "offspring" will be based on, keeping his/her last name. I got the idea after recently watching the episode of Dr. Who "the doctor's daughter" with the clone armies fighting each other.

[Vagabond]

praguepride,

I think that it would be incredibly tedious to have to manage a single colonist's mood for nine month at the current time scale. Having two children myself, I know how. . . interesting, for the sake of neutrality, women are when they are pregnant.

I would much rather relationships, pregnancy, and children be meaningful. In order for this to happen, I think the timescale would have to be altered. In other threads I have proposed that the time scale be altered so that each game day represented three months.

Not only would it make children viable for our colonists and the (possible) simulation of npc factions populations, but it would also mesh well with the length of time mining and construction projects would take without the arsenal of heavy machinery that we have in real life.

In my experience with other games, The Guild series chief among them, it doesn't detract from immersive play one bit. It simply serves to allow all facets of gameplay to meld together in a realistic way; the day night cycle contributing to events and actions that can only take place during certain times, while allowing players to witness the full range of experiences in a character's lifespan.

Another thing I've mentioned elsewhere is that the current ever increasing raid sizes will most likely cease when things like faction diplomacy are fleshed out, as well as when other challenging events are implemented; more things that challenge our communities than perpetual raids by infinite antagonists.

For a more detailed version of my suggestion see here: https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=8122.msg105183#msg105183

I've got 2 thoughts on this.

1. It wouldn't just be "reach X number of kids" for the win conditions. You'd need both a set population level and a healthy level of births to deaths. That way the colony's actually growing and sustaining itself. The game would need to record the number of colonists lost in a certain period as well as the number added, then use those to find the growth rate.

2. One solution to the time issue might be cloning pods. Put the cost of the cloning pod on par with ship parts (like the cryosleep pods). The pod acts as a workstation, and converts food (nutrient paste?) and maybe some other resources into a new colonist. If the game can be set up to add new random colonists on command then it'd be possible. What might be tricky would be making it so that the player can select a colonist that the "offspring" will be based on, keeping his/her last name. I got the idea after recently watching the episode of Dr. Who "the doctor's daughter" with the clone armies fighting each other.

thenightgaunt,

I think what Ive written covers my thoughts on your first point, but I'd like to chime in on your second point. I think cloning should be less personal than that.  The "Vatgrown" backgrounds give a good feel for it, I think. If you invest in cloning, it should produce, in the end, a character with a "Vatgrown X" background. This would simply determine what skills have experience boosts, and which skills are disabled (if any).

I think it is important to note that while I imagine at some point you could clone someone perfectly, so the clone has all the knowledge of the original person, It is somewhat of a stretch. Especially since anything you do where you rely on your senses or physical abilities would still require the same level of dedication and practice as the original person had in life. You could clone a master swordsman but his clone wouldn't have the muscle memory, physical fitness, or action-sense response of the original because they are all trained qualities.

I think the way that vatgrown should work is that they are simply genetically "perfect". They are engineered to not have the flaws that are associated with people born naturally. Ie: people who get alzheimer's and cancer from genetics. They are immune to most of the small things. What differentiates a Vatgrown Soldier  from a Vatgrown Sexslave would be what they are indoctrinated to be. In most circumstances, I imagine they were be made for a purpose and would only serve that purpose. Our colonist would, however, allow vatgrown people to develop more or less naturally.

Though in regards to passions, for increased experience gain, I would imagine the genes could be manipulated to make them developmentally predisposed towards certain tasks and behaviors.

Cheers,
Michael

[Gennadios]

I am 100% behind the argument. All the backstory of the game strongly implies that the rest of the universe isn't exactly a utopia. By the time the colony has the infrastructure to get off the planet, what's the point?  The spaceship building just feels like a quickie alpha endgame feature.

I don't agree with the managing stress levels. The challenge shouldn't be any more complicated than having the offspring survive to maturity. Running a colony in which 25% of it's members can't take care of themselves is enough for this game.

[Wolfen Waffle]

I'm completely fine with the game not having a win condition, I kind of ignore the space ship thing anyway

[b0rsuk]

Minimum viable population
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_population

is a lower bound on the population of a species, such that it can survive in the wild. This term is used in the fields of biology, ecology, and conservation biology. More specifically, MVP is the smallest possible size at which a biological population can exist without facing extinction from natural disasters or demographic, environmental, or genetic stochasticity.
(...)
Minimum viable population is usually estimated as the population size necessary to ensure between 90 and 95 percent probability of survival between 100 to 1,000 years into the future. The MVP can be estimated using computer simulations for population viability analyses (PVA). PVA models populations using demographic and environmental information to project future population dynamics. The probability assigned to a PVA is arrived at after repeating the environmental simulation thousands of times.

For example, for a theoretical simulation of a population of fifty giant pandas in which the simulated population goes completely extinct, thirty out of one hundred stochastic simulations projected one hundred years into the future are not viable. Causes of extinction in the simulation may include inbreeding depression, natural disaster, or climate change. Extinction occurring in thirty out of one hundred runs would give a survival probability of seventy percent. In the same simulation with a starting population of sixty pandas, the panda population may only become extinct in four of the hundred runs, resulting in a survival probability of 96 percent. In this case the minimum viable population that satisfies the 90 to 95 percent probability for survival is between 50 and 60 pandas. (These figures have been invented for the purpose of this example.)

What's the minimum viable population for humans ? I've seen various numbers thrown around, but they were between 300 and 1000.

[Gennadios]

What's the minimum viable population for humans ? I've seen various numbers thrown around, but they were between 300 and 1000.

I don't have a reference, but I studied Anthropology ages ago, and the standard viable population for all primates is 35 - 300 per troup.

Above 300 individuals can no longer maintain social ties and the troupes tend to split off.

35 is just enough individuals to ensure genetic diversity and avoid problems with inbreeding, although in a game where fresh genergenetic stock can literally fall from the sky, a lower limit isn't an issue.

[Kegereneku]

Data from SF story suggest you need 500 for short term survival, and 10 000 for long therm.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_colonization#Population_size
Wikipedia say 150 for 80 generation/2000 years, or 2 persons with huge stock of embryo (hick!).

Anyway, the Rimworlds aren't exactly desert considering the infinite wave of tribal and pirate you would think they inhabit Megalopolis.

But nevermind, amongst the possible "win condition" I really don't like this "children" suggestion for the same reason that make animals husbandry absurd : Games never last long enough for a child to grow up (pregnancy at all would take 40% of my typical game duration)
Not only the "child win condition" would barely be the announcement that ONE kid is born, but this is hardly the sort of thing you should have control of. It's one thing to plan toward building a spaceship, it's another to coerce/have random colonist into starting a family.

A more logical idea to convey the idea of the start of a new civilization would be a "Diplomatic Victory".
In short : Pacify and unite all tribes/village (then build in common an huge mothership to find your homeworl... wait, wrong game)

[Gennadios]

But nevermind, amongst the possible "win condition" I really don't like this "children" suggestion for the same reason that make animals husbandry absurd : Games never last long enough for a child to grow up (pregnancy at all would take 40% of my typical game duration)

But it's still alpha and the framework is there for a more long-term game. The only reason games don't last long is because the RNG has nothing better to do than spam ever growing waves of enemies at the colony. This is the perfect time to bring something like this up before some design aspect gets set in stone that makes a long term colony impossible.

I like the idea of Rimworld more than other sandboxes like Stonehearth or Banished because the individual pawns are way more fleshed out and have more personality than faceless character models or townies that only exist as classes that only fill one role, it would be a shame if a game that's better at having the audience connect to their citizens also ends up with a smaller overall scope.

[Kegereneku]

That do not make it less absurd. I shouldn't even be arguing so much against it to not make it sound even plausible.
ALPHA or not, we are talking of changing the game to another one, not expanding it.

Example : The key module of the game is the Narrator and Tales system. Even a 10 year long game wouldn't be enough for -say- a cloned-child to not look out of place. I also know some player aim for 100 colonist but the game is not suited for that.
Hence why I suggested a "Diplomacy Win" would make more sense in our Faction-rich context to convey the beginning of a real civilization.

Now, even limiting ourself to the concept of "child", we have to take the full scope of all it imply (cloning/neurotrainer or not) to see if that's even bring anything good to the game : VERY long game, training device and a hell lot of SIMS-like management, micro-managing what the colonist "want", child getting killed by bandit raid...

I think we should either abandon the idea of go for something completely abstract. (like say, having spaceship traveler willingly coming to live in our "colony")


About Banished:
You forget that it is far simpler, faster spaced and it CHEAT with character age.
- Town size start at 20 and go up to more than 100
- Building = House/Job/storage
- Characters jobs are 100% interchangeable
- No attack wave, barely any event
- Realistically you should also be having incest problem if you don't bring new blood soon enough

I know it can look easy from outside because a few mechanic look like the same but Banished have been created for that. Rimworld don't have the layout to make the concept really "good".

[thenightgaunt]

I think what Ive written covers my thoughts on your first point, but I'd like to chime in on your second point. I think cloning should be less personal than that.  The "Vatgrown" backgrounds give a good feel for it, I think. If you invest in cloning, it should produce, in the end, a character with a "Vatgrown X" background. This would simply determine what skills have experience boosts, and which skills are disabled (if any).

I think it is important to note that while I imagine at some point you could clone someone perfectly, so the clone has all the knowledge of the original person, It is somewhat of a stretch. Especially since anything you do where you rely on your senses or physical abilities would still require the same level of dedication and practice as the original person had in life. You could clone a master swordsman but his clone wouldn't have the muscle memory, physical fitness, or action-sense response of the original because they are all trained qualities.

I think the way that vatgrown should work is that they are simply genetically "perfect". They are engineered to not have the flaws that are associated with people born naturally. Ie: people who get alzheimer's and cancer from genetics. They are immune to most of the small things. What differentiates a Vatgrown Soldier  from a Vatgrown Sexslave would be what they are indoctrinated to be. In most circumstances, I imagine they were be made for a purpose and would only serve that purpose. Our colonist would, however, allow vatgrown people to develop more or less naturally.

Though in regards to passions, for increased experience gain, I would imagine the genes could be manipulated to make them developmentally predisposed towards certain tasks and behaviors.

Cheers,
Michael

You make some interesting points here. I like the idea of a "vatgrown" trait assigned to any colonists born from the cloning tanks. And a randomizing aspect to it would be interesting as well. I mean these are supposed to be colonists heading to a nicer world right? Maybe 2 research items: cloning vats and genetic library? The colonists' ship had an extensive genetic library that got jettisoned into orbit as they crashed so research is needed to connect remotely to the library. That way any clones are based on the library's collection of human samples.
And that's the reason why any clones are randomized and not offspring or copies of existing colonists.

The trick would be the C# coding to create a random NPC that's allied with the colonists, and to add that "vatborn" trait to both the game and the NPC. I'm not the best at C# though.

So what would be the effect of the "vatgrown" trait, and should that then count towards any sort of "children as win condition" as mentioned in the original post? Perhaps a more accurate definition might be population size or sustainability as a win condition?

Though Children would be interesting as well. From the op, the idea could work in either case. "Children" would be useless colonists, only eating and with zero skills (given how slow the game's time scale is).

[Vagabond]

Hello,

Reading all the posts since I last replied here has me itching my head. I suppose I should stop writing walls of text and maybe my posts will get read and digested; either that, or my ideas are so revolting that they do not warrent further discussion...

I say this because, well... Almost every argument against children has been "not enough time". . . So here is my suggestion to remedy that is as few words as possible:

abstract time scale

Now to define in as few words as possible: 1 game day = 1 or 3 months

Why one or three? The answer in as few words as possible:

1 mo. best for increased season exp. 3 mo. Best 4 quicker life span.

Why?

1 mo. = 9d pregnancy; 216d = time 4 child 2 turn 18; Each month w/ associated weather playable 4 a day

What about the three month option?

3 mo. = 3d pregnancy; 72d = time 4 child 2 turn 18; 4 location w/ all 4 seasons, you can play each season for 1d.

Wait! Theres more!

A slider can be implemented that allows the user to adjust, for themselves, the ratio of game days to abstract time.

E.g: 1:1 would make 24 game hours equal one game day. 1:2 would make 24 game hours equal two game days, ect.

Now. . . If the user chooses to use this responsibly, it wouldn't detract from immersion, it would enhance it. My reasoning for this is that in game, things happen really fast. The time to make an item. The time to mine out a cave complex. The time to erect a building with roof, the latter happening instantly for gameplay purposes (which I agree with. It'd be annoying trying to hunt down each tile keeping me from designating a building as enclosed). Which is why I suggest 1 or three months as the golden points between maintaining immersion and allowing children to be meaningful.

My stance on children has not change in the least bit. I don't understand why it's so controversial. Making relationships between colonists meaningful and both beneficial and detrimental for story purposes has to be something that entices people whom are as facinated by the idea of an AI gamemaster nudging the story along.

Not only will we have children, but we could possible strike up a jealousy between the guy whom wanted to be with that female colonist, but she developed a relationship with another guy. There are just so many possibilities. I'd like as many options as possible to make this the coolest colony sim out there, with options for other people to play the game as they want.

If you don't want kids to be part of your game and want to play out each day hour by hour, then so be it. You can have the colonist-relationship stuff; hell, you can still have couples. But instead of building a double bed when the colonist moodlet pops up saying they want to move in together, you can build two seperate beds in the same living space to make them just as happy. Call it safe sex measures.

Suppose it still turned out a wall... Crap. Well, at least the points are highlighted, don't judge me! >.>;

Cheers,
Michael

[thenightgaunt]

Regarding the controversy issue. I think that for some there are some who want a game that is more realistic (so to speak) and want the in-game timescale to represent that. Then there may be others who like the idea of it being a short lived colony aimed at getting off-world. And then there might be others who just don't like games that introduce mechanics for having offspring for whatever reasons. So there are a lot of places to approach the issue from.

For me, I like the idea of expanding on concepts of community and colony growth. I'd rather go for some sort of conquest/sustainability/etc victory than just a "get off planet" victory. Maybe I'm playing the wrong game for that desire, but I like Rimworld either way. So it's not going to kill me if it went one way or the other.

One story-oriented solution for the time jumping (per Vagabond's fast grow model there) could be the colonists research some sort of sci-fi fast growth mcguffin. It worked for movies like Pandorum (among many many others) and it could work here as an excuse for fast gestation and fast development.

[absentminded]

 I don't really see the need for fast growth. Rimworld is about struggle.

What's more fun, a quick, no hassle way to get new colonists?
Or
Months of one your colonists being sick and impaired at their job then going through a really dangerous 'operation' of giving birth with a high chance of dying, followed by now having a baby who can't contribute to the colony but needs feeding and needs looking after so eats your food and takes up your wardens valuable time.

Fastgrowth or vat clones would take all the fun out of it, real length pregnancy would add more fun, and real-aging babies even more.

[Gennadios]

Why set 18 as the magical adulthood point? 14 should be more than old enough to handle all colony tasks, even medicine with the caveat that they'll be starting at 0 skill points. I'd go so far as to argue being able to draft them that young.

Harvesting and cleaning can probably be done as young as 8, maybe with efficiency or time penalties.