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[robotguy4]

If this is correct, it takes about 103.3 real world hours for 13 in game years to pass, the amount of time for a pawn to grow into a teenager.

It takes only 33.33 hours IRL for them to age up to children.

[sc4s2cg]

Posted this over at /r/rimworld, but now that this sub is half-alive I'd like to see what you all think too.

I really, really think children would give even more depth to gameplay and help players become more attached to their colonies. They are suggested pretty much weekly, if not daily, in /r/rimworld. Especially after major alpha releases.

Couple ways I propose to solve some of the problems people bring up, I think it complements /u/DemonicSquid474's thread very nicely:

Children dying will bring too much outrage from the gamer community at large

Not sure how much this is a concern, but I read something like this in the official forums.

1. Prevent children from dying, period. Instead of killing children, raiders will kidnap them. Children will be viewed as a high wealth commodity, increasing chance of raids.
2. Starving children will run away.
3. Instead of getting caught in traps, children will play with them and keep on disabling them.
4. Sick children can still die. Or instead of that, or maybe as another option, just have them "permanently unconscious" with an option to send them off to a "hospital planet" when the next "humanitarian" trade ship comes by.
2. Rimworld already has immortal acts well beyond anything people feel comfortable with: incest, organ farms, forced imprisonment, cannibalism, human skin hats. I'm not sure if adding children into the game will change it all that much.
3. Ways to prevent children: a "pregnancy in season" button, allowing colonists to try for babies. An option to "try for baby" when right clicking on the bed (ala sims mode). Birth control for mother and father that vastly decreases chance of pregnancy.

It takes too long for children to grow

Retain natural growth but:

1. Availability of futuristic "growth spurt" drugs (glitterworld med?) that move children from one stage to the next. Maybe the cheapest version will boost babies into children, next price from children to teens, and next price from teens to young adults. From here on everyone ages normally
2. Messing up the way that these drugs are given (ie, in the dark, by doctors with low skills, by non-doctors) will limit the type of skills the child will have in the next stage. Maybe severely messing them up will eliminate certain skills like 'no dumb labor' or something.
3. The environment that the child is in while giving the drug will influence their personality: giving it during a raid will make them psychopathic. During food shortage will make them ascetic (while eliminating skills, or adding on depressive trait). During a year of plenty will make them jealous. And so on.
4. Availability of those growth tanks that are part of some pawns' background. These would be more convenient than drugs, since you don't have to take care of them beyond ensuring nutrition and power supply, but result in many of the negatives that vac-grown pawns already get.

Or have children's years condensed, so maybe one year = 1 week by default. I kind of like the drug idea since it gives the option to players to keep children growing au naturale, but this option is always there.

Children will be an annoyance

In case the player chooses normal growth, ie without the drugs, or even if they do get the drugs/growth vac have new job options:

1. Midwife during pregnancy - decreases natural abortion rate
2. Community caretaker - responsible for feeding, educating, etc. all children of the community. So children could be handled by the community as a whole, not just the parents, like certain social oriented cultures
3. Babysitter - for those who rely on parents to take care of children, but need a sitter during certain times of day
4. Teacher - teaching children various skills, hauling could be taught here
5. Teacher - teaching high schoolers skills, like maybe crafting
6. Mentor - teaching young adults skills they have a passion for. If they 2heart hunting, they follow an adult hunter around to gain skills.

Children will become useless

1. Children can become creatures of joy: they can create little arts or crafts that their parents proudly display in front of the walk-in cooler. They can cuddle their parents. They can cheer up sad or depressive pawns. They also can throw fits, go on a crashing spree (harming every furniture), get lost in the woods, play pretend with other children.
2. Children can also begin hauling objects (but less than adults), grow and harvest crops, clean, etc. Maybe certain children always follow their mother/father around and try to help in the kitchen (hauling meals/ingredients to/from the stove), mines (hauling limited amounts of stone), woods (hauling small game like dead rabbits or iguanas; hauling limited amounts of wood).
3. They can help tame non-violent animals through play (like chickens, puppies, etc) and help feed them
4. Once grown, children will be more likely to have certain traits than others, depending on the care or environment you give them (as I outlined above).

Pregnancy will be a sob to handle

Should be handled very similarly to how animal pregnancy is handled right now.

1. Pregnancy can be restricted to one or two seasons (which about encompasses the normal 9 months anyways), just like it is for various animals already.
2. Again, just like for animals already, the mother will be slower, will have morning sickness, and will eat more.
3. For family-oriented pawns, or ones that have "want kids" personality, they will have a permanent buff of something like +15. The colony can be neutral or have a +5 for "bringing new life into the world"
4. Midwives can help with labor and help limit any debuffs the mother will have during pregnancy, like "feeling sick" or "bad night".
5. Doctors would ensure a higher chance the labor won't fail and the baby is healthy, while midwives make sure the mother stays comfortable. Without a midwife the mother would have maybe a -10 debuff for pain, discomfort, etc. Without a doctor the baby is more likely to be born with certain flaws: maybe a leg gets caught in the umbilical cord and needs to be cut off, the mother bleeds to death, the adult slaps the baby's bottom too hard, etc.

All of this would give great stories I think, and deepen the game and storymaking.

[DariusWolfe]

If this is correct, it takes about 103.3 real world hours for 13 in game years to pass, the amount of time for a pawn to grow into a teenager.

It takes only 33.33 hours IRL for them to age up to children.

Those numbers sound about right.

But how often do people really play on 1x speed? Maybe a lot, but I certainly don't. I'm on 3x speed whenever possible, though I pause a lot to do things. I couldn't tell you what that averages out to, but for arguments sake, let's say it averages out to about 2x speed.

So, 16.5 (roughly) hours to age up to a child. I play in about 4 hour stints (often longer, but with extended pauses to take care of things IRL, I'd guess that's roughly correct) so it'd take me 4 sessions of play for a baby to become a child. At the same rate, we're talking 51.5 hours to age up to 13, the minimum age for a full Colonist. That'd be about 13 sessions before a baby became a full Colonist.

I have to say, I doubt I'd ever see a child grow up, at that rate. Some sort of acceleration would need to be necessary for that to work for me. That's not to say that the ideas for children simply as children aren't bad. I like some of the ideas suggested by sc4s2cg, above.

[LordMunchkin]

Children should be in the game as a realistic burden. You'll also have a lot more motivation to risk your pawns when their children are starving (Bob dies but through his sacrifice the children of the colony survived). Or when you have a pawn you really like die but their "lineage" lives on through their children. If you have children, you could also add an educator role job depends on social or research. That would make a lot near useless pawns somewhat useful.

I honestly don't know why people think children can't die in video games. My Crusader Kings 2 children die all the time (get maimed too). Obviously we should not want to depict graphic deaths but having children starve to death or die of disease would add some poignancy to this game.

[Angry]

Children dying will bring too much outrage from the gamer community at large

Not sure how much this is a concern, but I read something like this in the official forums.

Whoever is outraged at the idea of having children dying in a video game must be right, because everybody knows children can`t die in real life.

[DariusWolfe]

Whoever is outraged at the idea of having children dying in a video game must be right, because everybody knows children can`t die in real life.

-OR- People draw lines at what sort of "realistic" fucked up shit they want to see in their entertainment media. My wife, for example, cannot watch any show that involves child abuse or abandonment. It's a BIG button for her. She'll break into tears at the suggestion, and if the situation continues, she'll disengage entirely. Adults horribly maimed, gore, blood everywhere, she eats that stuff up, but children is where she draws the line. She's similarly disturbed by abuse to animals; When I told her that my cougar had miscarried three times due to injuries, she said she wasn't sure she wanted to check the game out.

Rape is another similar button. Others may draw the line at cannibalism, or incest, or child molestation.

Aside from the investment:reward ratio of adding children to the game (how much Fun is added compared to the coding time it takes to do it) Tynan does have to decide where he wants to draw the line. Obviously killing, dismemberment, cannibalism and incest are fine with him (in a fictional setting, presumably......) and he's obviously not too worried about the segment of his potential audience that may dislike these things. Killing children may or may not cross his line, though, and it's obviously something that may turn off some of his audience.

Honestly, given all of that? I don't think we're going to see children in the game, regardless of whether or not Tynan is personally bothered by it.

[Angry]

Whoever is outraged at the idea of having children dying in a video game must be right, because everybody knows children can`t die in real life.

-OR- People draw lines at what sort of "realistic" fucked up shit they want to see in their entertainment media. My wife, for example, cannot watch any show that involves child abuse or abandonment. It's a BIG button for her. She'll break into tears at the suggestion, and if the situation continues, she'll disengage entirely. Adults horribly maimed, gore, blood everywhere, she eats that stuff up, but children is where she draws the line. She's similarly disturbed by abuse to animals; When I told her that my cougar had miscarried three times due to injuries, she said she wasn't sure she wanted to check the game out.

Rape is another similar button. Others may draw the line at cannibalism, or incest, or child molestation.

Aside from the investment:reward ratio of adding children to the game (how much Fun is added compared to the coding time it takes to do it) Tynan does have to decide where he wants to draw the line. Obviously killing, dismemberment, cannibalism and incest are fine with him (in a fictional setting, presumably......) and he's obviously not too worried about the segment of his potential audience that may dislike these things. Killing children may or may not cross his line, though, and it's obviously something that may turn off some of his audience.

Honestly, given all of that? I don't think we're going to see children in the game, regardless of whether or not Tynan is personally bothered by it.

So because someone else is offended by the thought of wargs devouring children corpses then no one else can have children being devoured in the game either? And why the double standard? Who is arbitrarily deciding what can and cannot be in a video game? It is like someone comes up to you and say "slavery and organ traffic is cool, but having children dying is immoral!" What would tell that person? I would tell her to fuck off and let me play with children (that doesn`t sound right) and tell her to fuck off again. And who is this person drawing lines? Is there an entity who can speak for the whole community and tell Tynan and the modders that children getting eaten by wargs is wrong? I don`t think so.

At the end of the day however, I too think this will hardly ever be added, either in the official game or by mods, because it is easier to avoid these topics than it is to deal with them, and that is a fucking shame, I wanted to have a little freezer full of dead children for my wargs, who wouldn`t?

[DariusWolfe]

Since we're not talking about all video games everywhere, we're were talking Rimworld, the answer to your question is simple, and obvious: Tynan gets to decide what goes into his game.

Other games exist that have child abuse, rape, etc, so your points about some mythical universal set of restrictions are ridiculous and not pertinent.

[RemingtonRyder]

Technically, breeding would be an action, not a thing. /nerdjoke

[Kolljak]

All i have to say is i agree to many of the above points. children die all the time in real life. just look at Africa. many of the idea's above by sc4s2cg are awesome. maybe add a contraceptive drug to prevent it from happening. Rim-world is about the stories of the colonists... lives... and apparently as it stands they are all sterile. i do see them maybe being added it later but they are not top priority. i know tynan thought about possibly vat grown clones/babies. but not much else was said on that.

[AngleWyrm]

What are children?
The injured prospects that fall out of the sky and become available as contributing members of society after a brief healing period.

Breeding would have to be competitive with that rate of development in order to be a viable alternative to the bio-rain. And it would have to offer something in the way of improvement in order for players to spend effort on it over the free crash pods.

The main characteristics of a colonist are their skill set; is that an inheritable trait that makes parental selection an interesting and worthwhile pursuit? Would advances in gene manipulation contribute to the selection process?

[grinch]

Children and Pregnancy - v0.1j (2017/Feb/14)

https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=28747.0

better play and see that make hypothetical assumtions. This mod is not at Steam

[sefer]

How about the "Rimworld Child Plantomatic"

Which would look for relationships of people eligible for make loving. Then you can send one of them to use it. After half a day they finish and the "machine" starts producing a human cloned from their dna. It needs to be fueled with various things like meat, vegetables, wood.... and after 2-3 seasons it creates a 15 yr old human. Make it take a lot of fuel needing large amounts. The human could have a background of cloned human, and have specific stats half that of a parent or random stats.