Could someone explain the birds and the bees?

Sorenzo · October 06, 2015, 05:19:03 AM

Hey

So, I'm wondering if anyone's figured out where babies come from. I've previously managed to get animals to mate, and I've previously seen animals get pregnant and have kids...

But I'm wondering how exactly the game determines whether animals get pregnant. Is it like real life where you have a certain percentage chance of pregnancy each time mating occurs? Or does mating equal pregnancy in every case? Are some animals sterile? If they are, do they mate?

I've felt it necessary to butcher a male Elk, who was paired with a female Elk... I know for a fact that they mated at least once, but after what seems like weeks or months, I've yet to discover the female is pregnant. And since my colonists ate the male, I'm left with one of three situations:

One: I butchered the male prematurely, not knowing that mating only works a percentage of the time, and my female Elk will have to wait for summer in the hope that more elks wander into my land.
Two: I was right to butcher the male because he (or the female) was obviously sterile.
Three: I was right to butcher the male because the female got pregnant long ago and is just about to show symptoms.

I'd really love it if someone could disconfirm two of these theories...

skullywag · October 06, 2015, 06:49:25 AM

males have a 5% chance to mate each day, mating will result in pregancy. Pregancy shows in the 2nd trimester on the health tab.

Sorenzo · October 06, 2015, 10:23:11 AM

So, if the elk doesn't get pregnant, I must have been mistaken about them having mated?

At least that'd put my mind at ease.

stranger080 · October 06, 2015, 10:41:10 AM

Quote from: Sorenzo on October 06, 2015, 10:23:11 AM
So, if the elk doesn't get pregnant, I must have been mistaken about them having mated?

At least that'd put my mind at ease.

I'm pretty sure there's only a chance they will get pregnant, not sure though

Sorenzo · October 06, 2015, 01:27:16 PM

Well, that would make most sense, but I feel like there are good arguments for the simpler solution...

Either way, I think I've figured out my problem: The female elk seems to have been too young when the male was still alive.
But I still would love it if it was easier to figure out whether or not you should expect bebbies.

stranger080 · October 06, 2015, 04:18:09 PM

Quote from: Sorenzo on October 06, 2015, 01:27:16 PM
Well, that would make most sense, but I feel like there are good arguments for the simpler solution...

Either way, I think I've figured out my problem: The female elk seems to have been too young when the male was still alive.
But I still would love it if it was easier to figure out whether or not you should expect bebbies.

Agreed, I think there's a topic on here about that, not sure

TLHeart · October 06, 2015, 08:43:01 PM

Yes, age affects if they can bread, make babies....

too young, no babies, to old, no babies...

water · October 06, 2015, 09:50:24 PM

pls someone tell me there are plans for colonists to develop relationships and have kids! That would be pretty cool and the children would have random stats from their parents that were unknown up until a certain age.

TLHeart · October 07, 2015, 01:35:32 AM

Quote from: water on October 06, 2015, 09:50:24 PM
pls someone tell me there are plans for colonists to develop relationships and have kids! That would be pretty cool and the children would have random stats from their parents that were unknown up until a certain age.

Cool you say, think about it, what is the longest period in rimworld years your colony has survived? At 5 years, maybe a child could carry a basket of food, or a piece of cloth, until then they are just a food eating dirt making machine. At 10 years, they are strong enough to harvest and haul crops, maybe be a tailor.... or a cook with no skill...

rexx1888 · October 07, 2015, 08:08:33 AM

yeah but that has more to do with how fucked the scale of Rimworld is design wise than the actual amount of time a player may have a colony... like, how many times is it possible for the same tribe to field 50 plus raids of people that die in a year.. because if we are talking RW tribes then those things must have populations in the thousands :\

its not necessarily an easy thing to fix, but its only brainpower an a bit of math

i think itd be rad to actually have the capacity to see whole generations come an go. just sayin

stranger080 · October 07, 2015, 10:59:32 AM

Quote from: rexx1888 on October 07, 2015, 08:08:33 AM
yeah but that has more to do with how fucked the scale of Rimworld is design wise than the actual amount of time a player may have a colony... like, how many times is it possible for the same tribe to field 50 plus raids of people that die in a year.. because if we are talking RW tribes then those things must have populations in the thousands :\

its not necessarily an easy thing to fix, but its only brainpower an a bit of math

i think itd be rad to actually have the capacity to see whole generations come an go. just sayin

Agreed, I heard that there is plans of making relationships in alpha 13, but I'm not sure if it's true or not, but having an actual colony that lasts for generations would be awesome

TLHeart · October 07, 2015, 03:15:55 PM

Quote from: rexx1888 on October 07, 2015, 08:08:33 AM
yeah but that has more to do with how fucked the scale of Rimworld is design wise than the actual amount of time a player may have a colony... like, how many times is it possible for the same tribe to field 50 plus raids of people that die in a year.. because if we are talking RW tribes then those things must have populations in the thousands :\

its not necessarily an easy thing to fix, but its only brainpower an a bit of math

i think itd be rad to actually have the capacity to see whole generations come an go. just sayin

how is it bad? the time scale is already shortened, 120 days equal one year. To raise children is a long term process, which most colonies in rimworld never reach.

And yes the tribal have been inhabitants of the planet for centuries, so yes they have 100,000's of people.

rexx1888 · October 08, 2015, 04:52:12 AM

eugh, to be clear i dont actually think the scale is "bad" per se. im just hyperbolic. Nothing in RW is badly designed. Some things are lacking ambition, likely to keep down scope creep, an other things dont add as much to the experience as they could, but none of it is "bad".

Having said that, i say the scale is fucked because it isnt really scaled in any easily identifiable way. Thats the problem. I mean, i can understand if the day length is all weird because of the "planet" you are on. I get it if the month length is also weird because of that, and thereby the seasons are all over the place. The scale though, doesnt seem to relate to that. It doesnt even really relate well to distance and cells and all sorts of stuff. An all that stuff needs to scale right, so then you can have raids that actually exist in the meta map that wander about in real time.

An when i say scale right, i mean scaling like maps use, where 1 cm = 1 kilometre or what have you. Therefore, 1 second in our time = 5 seconds in theirs. An that stuff shouldnt be abstracted in any kind of obscure way. Its not ok for a player(in this case me an likely others) to be utterly lost on how their time is relating to the games time. Is time in RW moving in 15 minute increments, because if it is then pawns are SLOWWWWW as. An we can tell that because they move a distance in that time. Thats why i also say it isnt a hard thing to fix in code, but its a very difficult thing to fix in the design, because all of the scaling is really important, whether it be travel times or work times or the actual time or the seasons or the months etc etc etc.

An that relates to children because of a dozen different factors. Firstly, at the moment, many colonies just outright die in a year. Fair enough, though they seem to die to the kind of events that shouldnt necessarily happen within months of each other, like multiple large raids from tribes that are positioned as being small. This happens though because the storytellers are keeping the game interesting. They're like hyperactive children an they cant stand nothing happening for too long. So that, right their, causes weird scaling, because all this stuff just keeps happening in what is actually a pretty compressed amount of time. An if that stuff stopped happening, that time wouldnt be interesting. So instead, if the scaling was fixed, that period of time wouldnt be a single year, but say 5 years. Or ten. An that would fix your generation thing. Except, at the moment, at max speed seeing that amount of time pass just isnt sensibly feasible, even with all the weird compression of certain things, and decompression of other things(ever noticed how long it takes a colonist to eat a meal, or how their meditation time may be multiple hours, for all of the them).

An while i agree some tribes could be massive, its actually neither here nor there to the discussion. By your logic, every single hostile settlement in RW numbers in the hundreds of thousands. Every. Single. One. How are you on a Rimworld when there are that many people there. How is that still a tribe. How does that militant foe not have guns by now, when there are other settlements with guns they could sack. Basically, the scaling is all over the place, an long form stories like a family just arent feasible until its fixed.

This is not a narrative problem, this is a design problem. It may even be intentional for the moment. Its a hard thing to fix, an fixing it would make the game harder to test which makes iteration take longer an its very clear that Ludeon prides itself on the way it is regularly updating its Alpha. So yaknow, its just a thing. Not worth a hullaballoo about