Pregnancy as another way to boost numbers

[Rokdog]

A check-box in the Options menu to turn human reproduction on/off could provide a compromise.

This, very much so, please. I didn't look here first to see how active of a topic there was, but I posted this in a thread on the sub-reddit as a few of my concerns:

Hmm...RimWorld likes to make things kind of realistic and gritty. Pregnancy, despite its overtures for being a "beautiful miracle", is in reality quite messy. Menstrual cycles, birth control, abortions, miscarriages, still-borns, fetal alcohol syndrome, separation anxiety, infanticide, placentas...

Naaaaaaah, I'm good.

To address points brought up by BadBoyFTW and others: I'm well aware that these things are all just opportunities for new game mechanics. But did it ever occur to you that maybe some of us don't want to deal with these topics as game mechanics? Some of us may or may not have had horrific, traumatic experiences involving these issues, and would prefer not to have them shoved in our face while trying to enjoy our escapism.

I think this type of thing is niche enough and hopefully Tynan understands it's controversial enough, that it's left to the mod community.

Finally, of course, he could simply implement a version of pregnancy without all that unpleasant realism, but then it might seem like a "tacked on" mechanic that doesn't get as deep or gritty as the others. My 2 silver, /shrug

and...

Somewhat at odds, I am actually pro-children in-game, just not sure if pregnancy is the best way to go about it.

What about artificial insemination or genetic engineering, using a machine that takes DNA from the parents and also incubates and grows the child? (speaking of tacked on ideas)

I think in the end, Tynan will do the right thing. I remember a time when you used to be able to beat prisoners, which could be a serious trigger for military veterans or ex-prisoners of any kind.

I'm not trying to SJW the shit out of a video game, just want to make sure we're all asking: "How realistic do we want our fantasy?"

[Thundercraft]

This [check-box in the Options menu], very much so, please.

Speaking for myself, as an advocate of RimWorld eventually simulating some form of reproduction, I'm fine with it being left as an option in the Options menu.

I think this type of thing is niche enough and hopefully Tynan understands it's controversial enough, that it's left to the mod community.

A potential problem with leaving something to the mod community is that certain types of game mechanics and behavior are very complex to do as a mod. Some types of things are more easily implemented by the game developer. Indeed, some things are impossible for modders. A game dev does not have the same restrictions. Even if a mod could do this, it may not turn out as well or be as feature-rich as if the dev implemented it.

Aside from that, I think there is ample evidence to suggest there is enough community interest to warrant making this a part of the base game.

...he could simply implement a version of pregnancy without all that unpleasant realism, but then it might seem like a "tacked on" mechanic that doesn't get as deep or gritty as the others.

Wouldn't you leave such an option turned off, anyway? As such, it's not like it would impact your game play, either way. Anyway, I think most of us would be happy if it was simulated at all. Then again, RimWorld does seem to be a rather gritty game.

[buttflexspireling]

  An issue with pregnancy is that colonists
wouldn't know where it comes from exactly.
Before long lingering pregnancy rejection
sickness would stay with colonists that aren't
even involved in the pregnancy. Then there
would be the raiders who would take a colonist's
pregnancy as a declaration of war.

[Thirite]

...
Some of us may or may not have had horrific, traumatic experiences involving these issues, and would prefer not to have them shoved in our face while trying to enjoy our escapism.
...
I'm not trying to SJW the shit out of a video game, just want to make sure we're all asking: "How realistic do we want our fantasy?"

If you get offended by the vague humanoid pawns doing bad things I have bad news for you about the real world. If babies are too much for your sensibilities, why not remove drugs, kidnapping, cancer, and other triggering content? There are people out there who have experienced such horrible things and don't want it intruding in their fantasy. People with self harm issues might get offended by knives so let's get rid of them. I knew someone whose brother died to a gun accident as a kid so even water guns triggered them, so let's go ahead and remove firearms too while we're at it. You know what, in for a penny in for a pound, let's remove all diseases, violence, and anything that could be construed as "bad" to someone's frail sensibilities and make the whole game a nice calming safespace with ample trigger warnings.

[keylocke]

the "can i has munchkin meatbag babies" topic is practically one of the most discussed topic on these forums.

i'm just dropping by to say, i'm with monkfish on this one, since i'm a fan of the idea of multi-generation colonies.

i like the idea of being able to mix-match traits of parents to produce kids who share similar traits.

plus, the narrative story of generations of families surviving in the rimworld would be a powerful storytelling device.

-----

edit :

as for background traits : i believe in one of the old threads, i gave an opinion on how it could be resolved by introducing colony based backgrounds and experiences.

ie :

childhood background : based on the status of the colony, the parents, etc.. during childbirth (is the colony wealthy? is it dirty? do they have lots of pets? do they have heavy casualties from attacks? etc..)

adult background : is based on the kid's personal experiences growing up (did they get injured a lot? did they grow hungry a lot? did they get sick a lot? etc..)

^those things add to the ongoing story of your colony.

--------

those things can be supplemented with training facilities : such as shooting range, training dummies, etc..

so kids can train as crafters, gunners, brawlers, haulers, miners, etc.. and this will affect their adult background traits once they shift from teen to adult.

[The-MathMog]

Personally I think the best way to go around this, concerning the issues with time and age, is to imagine that in this future, technology has made pregnancies unnecessary and then instead have "incubator/growing pods", like the cryptosleep caskets, but for "growing" humans. It would either need a lot of power, or a constant stream of nutrients, and then after "X" time, a "fully grown" pawn could emerge from it, with Age 0, or something like that. With quite a lack of skills of course.

That could implement some vile human-trading aspects, where you could grow humans and then sell them as slaves.. Jeezz..

[Thundercraft]

Personally I think the best way to go around this, concerning the issues with time and age, is to imagine that in this future, technology has made pregnancies unnecessary and then instead have "incubator/growing pods", like the cryptosleep caskets, but for "growing" humans...

Well, you're not alone in that opinion/suggestion. I've seen others suggest something similar. However, personally, I think the idea of pregnancies "becoming unnecessary" and simply not done anymore because "we have the technology" begins to fall apart when one considers how technology levels are not consistent throughout the RimWorlds. There are factions who are at "tribal" (neolithic?), "medieval", and "industrial" tech levels.

Are you saying that none of them practice reproduction the old fashioned way? What about Lost Tribe scenarios? 

[Thirite]

The description for humans states "mostly unmodified by gene engineering" which implies some genetic modifications are common to humans. If you look at pretty much any other animal in reality you'll notice their babies typically develop to a 'functional' state far faster than humans do. Fawns and calves are walking within hours of birth, and are sexually mature in a year or less. Baby turtles are running for the ocean as soon as they hatch. It's not absurd that the period of "I can do nothing by myself except shit my pants and scream" for humans could be shortened by a reasonable degree.

[Boston]

The description for humans states "mostly unmodified by gene engineering" which implies some genetic modifications are common to humans. If you look at pretty much any other animal in reality you'll notice their babies typically develop to a 'functional' state far faster than humans do. Fawns and calves are walking within hours of birth, and are sexually mature in a year or less. Baby turtles are running for the ocean as soon as they hatch. It's not absurd that the period of "I can do nothing by myself except shit my pants and scream" for humans could be shortened by a reasonable degree.

It actually can't. It is necessary for our development.

Humans having such a long developmental cycle (childhood, basically) is one of the reasons we took over the planet 200,000 years ago. It lets us have an actual society (over and above that of our closest relatives, who just have bands), which lets us protect our young in an organized fashion, and a long childhood lets us pass on the multitude of skills needed to survive.

[Thirite]

Just because a baby develops slowly or is born relatively helpless does not imply "for better development later on". Songbirds after all are born with little more than the ability to lift their heads and swallow. This is due to a songbird's relative size to its eggs- it simply has to lay small eggs that cannot gestate the baby for a long period of time (as opposed to say, a chicken or duck whose babies are fully capable of running and feeding themselves upon hatching) because it does not have the size needed to lay larger eggs like a chicken or duck can.

According to scientific studies this is largely the reason why babies are particularly helpless at birth- the baby's metabolic needs and size in utero become too much for the mother and so the baby is born. Evidence does imply that humans' long adolescent stage is for increased cognitive development, but the delayed motor skills / muscle growth at infancy has little, if anything, to do with that.

Edit: If you're interested in reading
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091215160851.htm

[vyn-halcyon]

Being female is as pointless as being male in most games these days.
At least with pregnancy, having a gender at all actually has a sense of agency.
And it's very conducive to gripping stories when a baby dies to miscarriage, because the mother got shot.
Or who knows, even get's birthed because of a battle wound.  Think Conan.. and actually call that baby Conan. 

Isn't stories what Rimworld is all about?

[dv]

Being female is as pointless as being male in most games these days.
At least with pregnancy, having a gender at all actually has a sense of agency.
And it's very conducive to gripping stories when a baby dies to miscarriage, because the mother got shot.
Or who knows, even get's birthed because of a battle wound.  Think Conan.. and actually call that baby Conan. 

Isn't stories what Rimworld is all about?

At no point in any frontier civilization were pregnant women getting shot every 2-3 days.

[Cheeseguy]

Ahh, that's the topic I was looking for!

Anyway, I quite frankly couldn't give a shit if a child growing up in 4yrs or whatever feels ridiculous to some when we consider that colonists can land on a planet having survived a catastrophic deconstruction of their space ship and immediately be able to magic up complicated structures and machines out of some scraps of metal on the ground. If we're going a pull an "aah, but x" argument card for an idea, it's only fair and reasonable to apply that card to the game as a whole and see if the argument still stands on its own merits. Something being seemingly ridiculous on its own suddenly isn't so ridiculous when compared to the context of the entire game.

Anyway, it's not like 4yrs game time is a short period that would be missed if you blinked or scratched your arse. 4yrs game time at 1x speed is 64hrs (2.66 days) in real time. That's a lot of time when it comes to gameplay and I've sunk less time into £50 AAA title games that I've completed, so 4yrs gametime really is a fairly reasonable representation of new-born to adulthood without making the player wait 18yrs (that's 288hrs or 12 days realtime). Even running at triple speed, you're still looking at almost an entire day of gametime to bring a newborn to adulthood.

EDIT: As for skills and traits, the obvious solution is to have the child's skills be the aggregate of their parents' traits and skills, with some random variance thrown in for shiggles.

HeY I like the way you put in perspective! and yeah that would be a good time for that. and not only that, but you could get random events where a kid is looking for a house to stay so there's that too!.

[Mad Muffalo]

What about incubator tanks, where they are grown fast to adulthood. Or growth hormone similar to Jango Fett clones.

[A Friend]

That's already been discussed numerous times in the previous pages.