[Suggestion] Childs and Water and other major features.

Started by wbonxx, August 15, 2016, 08:41:32 AM

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wbonxx

Since the game is on steam and things are rolling, I have the feeling would be great to understand where things are going. Balance is getting tighter and if the developers are still considering introducing major changes, this would end up to force a rebalance of half the game.

--- What about child?
This was discussed many times, being the aging the major issue. What about a rough implementation with aging 5x times the one on earth for reasons related to the planet.
  Or an "Aging room"/school class, where students grow up faster and get the skill set of the teacher?
  I suppose child could be handled like really fragile animals, reaching young adult at 2y and adult (being able to reproduce) at 3y.

--- Water. I still think should be a feature to consider. Could be extracted by a container to put on the border of a pound. Let's say a filter container. Or by tubing from a pond to then filter a bit closer to the base.
  Given the psychological weight of water... would give interesting feelings to the player having to deal with it. And I think could be not this complicate to implement.

All of this without considering this could be features of Rimworld 2.
But would be more fun if we could through in more money in just to get multiplayer in a  later addon :D



Subject edited by milon for clarity

PotatoeTater

I think children should age normally, add that extra level of difficulty. I mean, in real life a child is a very big time taker and would be very hard to handle in a survival situation.
Life is Strange

wbonxx

It is not possible. Would take too many hours of playing to grow them to adult age.
Too much food and too hard to protect them, would make them not convenient over other ways of getting colonists.

5X is the minimum to make child viable I think.... with the mother getting pregnant state. May loose the baby for starvation. 3 moths with babies as eggs. 9 months with babies as small chickens roaming around without control. 1-2years (5yo-10yo) as a juvenile, takes order, can haul. 2-3 years as a young man, no giving birth no sex, but rest is nromal... after 3y (15yo).. normal adult.

Diana Winters

Babies are a very time and energy consuming endeavor, but it's a rewarding experience to the parent(s) (and a somewhat lesser rewarding experience for the small community)

Being able to raise children would be a good indicator of how stable your colony is and would potentially boost morale so long as the child remains alive. On the flip side... Losing a child would be devastating, especially to the parent(s). I doubt they'd want to stay in the place where their baby died. The mother may even leave upon getting pregnant (unless they started as such) if you're not properly established.

Zalzany

Yeah a lot of work but at same time not. I am nanny not the best job especialy pay wise, but the hardest part is when you get home and are exhausted, or night time with a newborn. You get a bed time and once they hit toddler the day to day becomes trying to keep them out of trouble, and teaching a couple things, but you put them with others they learn faster. Like first baby I took care of a lot of work now her little sister is here, she is little mimic, I keep forgeting she is just 2, and she is miles of her big sister at that age till she gets acideted and her talking turns to gibberish.

Same thing here though tons of work would need a nursery and a care giver in charge of it, hardest part would be working ot how they get their back story stuff that defines them. I mean really don't want to have to stimulate sex slave with my colonists kids to up their social skills and what not. But youngest I have seen in game was 14 a pirate I captured which sounds about right for age to start putting them to real work, will anger some that we can make child soldiers but minus a bow, its not hard to hand a teen a gun and say practice shooting that bunny over there to teach them to aim. That is how I train my adult colonists to shoot as is.

Reviire

Quote from: PotatoeTater on August 15, 2016, 10:29:55 AM
I think children should age normally, add that extra level of difficulty. I mean, in real life a child is a very big time taker and would be very hard to handle in a survival situation.
The game doesn't really play in that timeframe, though. It should be scaled with the rest of the game, and only take 4-7 years at most to reach adult-hood, or at least an age where they could become a functioning member of society.

Quote from: Gizogin on March 16, 2012, 11:59:01 PM
I think I've been sigged more times as a result of my comments in this thread than I have in most of my other activity on these forums. 

keylocke

ooh another add-kids-and-water-suggestion. i'm just popping by to say again that when adding new tasks. ie : taking care of kids long enough until they grow up, or additional tasks like drinking, peeing, pooping, etc..

the main problem that needs to get addressed is the timescale. especially the max fast forward game speed. (i think the max is currently set at around 3x normal speed). so waiting for kids to grow up at 3x normal speed is gonna take up so many hours of the player's time that a lot of people thinks it's unfeasible at that rate. but if there's an option to set the max speed to around 10x of normal speed, 1 year of game time could probably be less than an hour or so of real time (just a guess).

secondly, humans should have different life stages similar to the animal system (babies, juveniles, adult). so a human child should be functional and be able to do menial labor at the juvenile stage (but maybe they can't fight they just flee). at 10x max speed, that's probably gonna be more or less 5 hours of gameplay to reach juvenile stage. it's really not a big deal.

if there's another option to go 20x max speed, things would get easier to switch between pause, normal speed, and to whatever fast forward speed the player wants (ie : being able to chose from 2x, 3x, 10x, 20x, whatever speed)

---

for additional tasks like taking care of kids, or drinking water, peeing, etc.. the main thing to tackle with that is to re-balance the amount of time it takes to do a task or to move between point A to B.

in real life. a normal human being is capable of taking care of kids, working, sleeping, eating, playing, workout, take care of pets, etc.. all within 24 hours. and the reason they can do all that is because the amount of time it takes to do those tasks are more realistic compared to rimworld.

in rimworld, the time it takes to do a task is a bit too.. "gamified". it seems to be balanced in such a way not to necessarily reflect real life as a simulation, but rather it is balanced in a way that the devs probably think would be "enjoyable" or "challenging" to the player.

so there's this disconnect between what some people expect from a simulation of a real life, compared to the gamified version of that simulation.

i for one think that a more realistic depiction of time is both enjoyable and challenging at the same time. there's really no need to "gamify" it's balance especially if there are more versatile options in the fast forward speeds.

Mendel

With regards to 10x and 20x speeds. Pardon me but did you think this through?
I don´t know what kind of computer you have but my 4 core ancient 2600k is struggling to keep pace with 3x speed already in late game. (the game has to stop for split second here and there during fast forward to catch up with processing before it can continue.)

I´m sure 10x would work fine very early game but I think for 20x we need processors from glitterworld.

FullMetalPant

I think water system should be implement in the next alpha release (A16). Way more critical than children I think, as aging is a problem and doesn't make much sense as the game doesn't span long enough time to see the children grow old enough.

Though, children could be like pet (sorry lol, I know the comparison is not great). But they could add joy, and turn someone crazy if they die. If your game last long enough, then they could become member of the colony, but that wouldnt happen very often, maybe at 8 they'd be old enough to start hauling, at 12 be apprentice to a specific job. Anyway, it's a lot of thing to consider while implementing children. On the other hand I think water is much more important, and I don't think it would require as much work than children to implement (stop me if I am wrong, I am not a coder).

I read the other post on water to be a semi rare resource. I don't agree. Plumbing system should be, like it is in real life, similar to electricity system. In fact, it could almost be a copy/paste of the electricity system, at the core. Maybe harder to produce than electricity.

Here some example on how water should work in my opinion and how it compare to electricity system.

Cable = Pipes
Battery = Water tank
Turbine/solar panel = Water pump
Sunlight = Sprinkler
Rain = Wind and sun for electric system

Then you can add drinking point, and bathroom, that would satisfy 2 new needs : thirst and hygiene. It could work similar to joy system, the pawn go there so they can fulfill those need.

Plants would need water to grow. Either you rely on rain, or you build a sprinkler system, or assuming you have a well close, the pawn can water the crop field.

At the first day of the colony, priority would be to find water. Either they build a manual well, or a condensation system, or they build the base close to a water spot.

Water is just critical need. It makes total common sense that it is the most important resource to build a colony.

No water = no life.

But hey, I really love that game, keep up the good work!


chaotix14

So just to bring you up to speed FullMetalPant, water(and children for that matter) has been suggested enough to get a spot on the frequently suggested list pinned to the top of the page, It's been brought up and discussed so many times that it generates reactions like this:
Quote from: keylocke on August 17, 2016, 06:10:21 AM
ooh another add-kids-and-water-suggestion.
Merely 2 posts before yours.

Also, unless I've missed some statement from Tynan since, the current official statement on water as a need basically is: "We already have food, no need to double up on that."

PS: the comparison of a child with a pet isn't that far off, as pets are also regarded as children that never grow up(you basically always have to look after them).

FullMetalPant

Chaotix, I know, I have read that post but it seems to be dead, so seeing this new discussion, I thought I would share my opinion on this. This is just an opinion, as well as a suggestion.

Maybe hygiene is too much as a need. But drinking water, watering crop field and managing a water system sound like lot of realistic dimension fun to me.

Pax_Empyrean

Quote from: FullMetalPant on August 20, 2016, 03:56:47 PMChaotix, I know, I have read that post but it seems to be dead
It's freaking stickied. You know what's dead? The horse you are beating. The stickied post is there to tell people to leave it alone.

chaotix14

Quote from: Pax_Empyrean on August 21, 2016, 02:15:20 AM
Quote from: FullMetalPant on August 20, 2016, 03:56:47 PMChaotix, I know, I have read that post but it seems to be dead
It's freaking stickied. You know what's dead? The horse you are beating. The stickied post is there to tell people to leave it alone.

I tried to be somewhat subtle on the don't beat dead horses subject(because that horse especially gets revived to be beaten with a new thread about once a week), but yeah that's the gist of it. Like the thread clearly states in it's opening paragraph, we don't need new discussions on the subject. It has already been discussed to death many times.