Should body types and gender actually have an effect on melee and shit?

[pfhorrest]

Pfhorrest, you are correct that comparing 2 marines male and females doesn't allow other variables, and this is why its SCIENTIFIC.

See, science is done through tests which eliminate all variables EXCEPT for the one being tested. If you apply a male kickboxer, and female marine, how are you to know WHY differences are there? maybe its the gender? Maybe its the career?

This is why is bad to compare vastly different things which more variables than necessary come into play, because then things are less conclusive.  If you truly want to say WHAT the effects of gender are, you eliminate ALL other variables and test. Granted, this isn't always possible, but you do your best, and account for variables you cannot change. But you refusing to account for, and remove the career difference just tells me you do not care about the scientific method, or getting accurate data.

Basically, to get better science, find 1 thing, and base testing around examining that one thing, and eliminate other variables as much as humanly possible to test it...

If you want to test the difference between males and females, this is 1 test
Differences between marines and kickboxers is another test.
Differences between, and comparisons of performance, for males and females in kickboxing / marines is another several tests.

I also do not understand why planets would have differences...humans on other planets are the same more or less, it says it in the lore even.

On a side note, why would anyone think MRA's are hateful?.. really confused, I've seen feminists, and other groups advocate for GENOCIDE, commit violence, do death threats, and all kinds of other stuff, but frankly I've not seen such vile actions from MRA's  before.. Someone want to educate me on something I'm missing?

I'm aware that this is the scientific method. Now express where the testing for gender differences as you described applies in a game whose character generation is the polar opposite of controlling for variables. Show why this elimination of variables and proving of gender differences is relevant.

I think you don't understand how much I'm with you on this issue; that's why I said if Rimworld character generation did control for variables such as occupation, background, region of origin, age, body size, it would make sense to either have caps in place for initial starting conditions (with no upper level cap, and assuming colonists start age 18-21), or to have the character rolls subtly reflect realistic differences across gender lines.

But this is not the case, nor is it fitting with the style of the game.

[mumblemumble]

I THINK I grasp what you mean...do you mean to say, men having stats boosted in a concrete way all the time would mess with balance, or that, in some sense, women would be 100% capped with certain skills?

This isn't how I interpret it, really.

I interpret perhaps another health stat, strength, being added, and men TENDING to generate in a higher range than women. Strength would have a multiplier effect on certain tasks (melee, mining, ect) and would make it slightly more effective, even with same skill.

Something along the lines of mining having its speed multiplied by 1.15 strength, then apply the skill multiplier. So a skilled female miner might be better, but a stronger miner, if available, would be better.

I imagine certain skills would be more applicable than others, perhaps mining and plant cutting having a much higher multiplier, melee dependent on the weapon, and other tasks either very minorly effected, or ignored.

I also figure strength could have a minor multiplier on health on generation, for extremities, torso, and a few other things.

....by the way, for those saying this is extremely sexist...you realize melee brawlers and miners get the shittier treatment right? melee fighters are the pointmen, and get injured THE MOST, and are used as bait...miners are always pissed off from being dirty, in the dark, and have a significantly higher risk of raids / infestation deaths.

So just like in real life, this would make men more endangered. But this is sexist against women I guess.

[pfhorrest]

I THINK I grasp what you mean...do you mean to say, men having stats boosted in a concrete way all the time would mess with balance, or that, in some sense, women would be 100% capped with certain skills?

This isn't how I interpret it, really.

I interpret perhaps another health stat, strength, being added, and men TENDING to generate in a higher range than women. Strength would have a multiplier effect on certain tasks (melee, mining, ect) and would make it slightly more effective, even with same skill.

Something along the lines of mining having its speed multiplied by 1.15 strength, then apply the skill multiplier. So a skilled female miner might be better, but a stronger miner, if available, would be better.

I imagine certain skills would be more applicable than others, perhaps mining and plant cutting having a much higher multiplier, melee dependent on the weapon, and other tasks either very minorly effected, or ignored.

I also figure strength could have a minor multiplier on health on generation, for extremities, torso, and a few other things.

....by the way, for those saying this is extremely sexist...you realize melee brawlers and miners get the shittier treatment right? melee fighters are the pointmen, and get injured THE MOST, and are used as bait...miners are always pissed off from being dirty, in the dark, and have a significantly higher risk of raids / infestation deaths.

So just like in real life, this would make men more endangered. But this is sexist against women I guess.

The addition of a 'Strength' multiplier/modifier is an interesting idea and I think you should make your own forum thread about it as it seems like a more specific topic than the one for which this thread was made.

However, what continues to bug me is that the Rimworld characters are not only generated, but there is a limited number of possible characters to generate. I probably should have been clearer about this earlier in the discussion, but this fact means there's the lack of assurance that the characters are representative/should be representative of population averages and trends. I.E. if character generation in Rimworld involved the truly random selection of background, resulting in a unique character on every roll, then it makes much more sense to tend towards larger men and smaller women. But as it is, characters in Rimworld have preset backgrounds complete with preset names, so to modify the trends of statistics for these pre existing characters would be a touchy issue given that you have much less basis to do so.

[shigimoru]

Like with literally everything else in reality, skill is the most important aspect of an activity. Especially when it comes to fighting.

A guy that is big and strong, yet not very good at fighting, will get their ass beaten by a 80lbs-soaking-wet girl who knows martial arts.

Stop reinforcing negative stereotypes.

Except that this has never happened
Training matters, but not more than a 100 pound weight disadvantage

[Bozobub]

Except that this has never happened
Training matters, but not more than a 100 pound weight disadvantage

Except I've watched this happen.  The girl also happened to be on crutches at the time!  But they were the old-school wooden type, and she beat the piss out of the guy; she didn't use a crutch, mind you, but her arms were RIPPED from using 'em for months.

That person was my mother (I was 6, she was 24).  At the time, she weighed no more than 110 lbs.  Her opponent was at least 250 lbs, if not 300.  She was, however:
- Very strong, both from using crutches for months (knee surgery) and being a cabinetmaker.  I watched her and another lady from her work easily pick up and haul off 300-400 lb. stacks of laminate together, for example, just before her surgery.
- Trained in martial arts (no idea at all what rank, but not terribly high).

Sorry, but overgeneralized BS assertion is the main problem with this silly discussion.  Insistence simply does not generate existence, no matter how fervent or recursive.

[psionicmushroom]

Also I'm sorry if it offends your equivocating "meninist" sensibilities but the reason men have more capacity for muscle building is that not too long ago in history they were literally disposable. For much of humanity's evolutionary history, up until the agricultural revolution even, women were more valuable than men for their ability to give birth and thus prolong a community's existence. This meant that the communities which survived were those which prioritized women's safety over men's. Men on the whole gained a slight propensity for better muscle building and survivability from this but keep in mind, this was evolution over the course of tens of thousands of years, not hundreds of thousands. In general, human evolution hasn't left us with much sexual dimorphism, and in today's world where human communities tend to need women for their brains and bodies than their uterus and men's safety is valued equally to women's by rational people and competent systems, the current evolutionary trend for earthbound humans is towards less noticeable sexual dimorphism. Maybe its scary to think that in the future your precious "physical strength" argument will will be even less relevant than it is now (I mean even now the effort a person puts into fitness has more of an effect on their strength and endurance than gender ever would, look at a woman who does cross-fit vs a man who works a desk job etc.) but that's the way evolution is moving, like it or not. Regardless, 2000 years makes little difference in an evolutionary scale, so what's more relevant to a conversation about Rimworld is the fact that effort and experience are more relevant to strength and combat prowess than gender, and while height and weight are relevant factors, one can assume that a woman in Rimworld with a exceedingly high melee skill, say 14 (strong master) or 15 (planet-class master) would be in the 90th percentile of people who have good height and body composition for melee combat. If she didn't have those things she just wouldn't have gotten that far. All this to say, the current system might as well include realistic sexual dimorphism for all the difference it would make. To add rules that explicitly enforce sexual dimorphism would be either irrelevant to play or explicitly sexist depending on how they were implemented.

[Bozobub]

Um...  Yeah.

If you absolutely must rant, learn what paragraphs are.  My EYES !

I'm not saying you have nothing to say.  Rather, I'm saying my eyes won't let me find out what it is; have mercy!

[raonull]

The sexism card is overplayed.

Nature made men and women different. It is modern cynicism that assumes that different = less valuable. Sexual dimorphism is strongly present throughout much of the natural world, serving social purposes as well as physical, so shrugging it away as if we've suddenly transcended it, when we don't even understand it is silly.

However the cynical sensitivity people have about it is probably why most games ignore it. Stronger =/= better, so males being stronger isn't a value statement.

[psionicmushroom]

But in the context of game mechanics, it is. Whether or not you find it more interesting to have characters with limitations and deficiencies, a higher melee skill in the context of Rimworld's rules makes a character more valuable.

The game even explicitly tells you how valuable a pawn is in the context of its rules in the form of the monetary value on the extra information sheet. A pawn with higher skills and work speeds is more valuable to the game, if not necessarily to the player.

Thus, while to say that men are in general stronger than women in real life is not necessarily sexist (though that argument has been frequently used to justify sexism irl), it is sexist to elevate the average value of male pawns over that of female pawns by adding rules which, on average, generate male pawns with greater in game value than female pawns.

I've seen some people in this thread suggest giving female pawns buffs to other skills, which might not be an entirely bad way of making the proposed sexual dimorphism mechanic work. I will point out though that one of Tynan's most convincing arguments against that misguided rock paper shotgun article was that men and women are not mechanically or practically different from each other in the game. This change would make that argument void, with the only benefit being that characters now conform slightly better to players expectations for what men and women are good at, founded or not.

I might not be against this sort of thing if Tynan were the one to plan it. He has already dynamically adapted many aspects of the real world experience of living in a human community into a fun and thought-provoking simulation, so I don't doubt that if he were to implement some form of sexual dimorphism, he would do it in a tasteful and realistic way. I take issue with the monolithic, heavy handed, and quite honestly unrealistic systems suggested in this thread, and the subtly sexist assumptions which they arise from.

EDIT: PS: It is sillier to attempt to directly model a system which you do not fully understand than to leave it to the player's imagination.

[Bozobub]

Exactly.  There's simply no reason to go there, unless you want to mod it in.

[raonull]

I've seen some people in this thread suggest giving female pawns buffs to other skills, which might not be an entirely bad way of making the proposed sexual dimorphism mechanic work. I will point out though that one of Tynan's most convincing arguments against that misguided rock paper shotgun article was that men and women are not mechanically or practically different from each other in the game.

Agreed on giving females buffs or some other sort of advantage that aligns with natural dimorphism. It's worth noting that one of the main features of that dimorphism is the ability to create a child, which doesn't exist in game. But there are other ways to represent the value of a female in a survival situation.

I hadn't heard of the rock-paper-shotgun article, so I looked it up along with Tynan's response. I was reminded why I don't read games journalism. I don't think Tynan needs a convincing argument against that, because it's ideologically driven by crazy and crazy can't be reasoned with. I do understand not wanting to provoke that craziness into making the game -about- itself. But the article represents a nightmare that people will have to fight to wake up from at some point in their life, wherever that battleground ends up being. A fun game isn't too concerned with making political statements but it shouldn't be afraid of how cynical idealogues will paint it, either.

[Catastrophy]

No, but I can see this might be a mod for those who care about this.

[PieroSgri]

Well everyone started talking about stereotypes and other garbage like that...
I will stick to the game itself to give an opinion, and I say... No.
Generalizing the fact that add complexity actually improve the game is NOT always true.

Sometimes add too much complexity will make the game only more tedious and unpleasant, whit unpleasant I mean something like a man who come back home at 9 p.m. after a full day of work and he wants to relax a bit having both fun while stimulating his mind (Strategy game do that to me, ye.)
and I think what rimworld accomplish where other game fails is THIS.
I mean, I can play dwarf fortress, but I don't, because yes there's a lot of strategy but its insane complexity make it less a game and more a task gave to me by my boss! (Im talking about my personal feel OFC!! ).

So what I thank Tynan for is this wonderful balance between complexity and fun.

My last answer to that addition, accordingly to what I said above is: No, I don't think is a nice/necessary addition.

[Headshotkill]

^^

I was more into this discussion for the political side of it, rather than the actuall feature which I'm not THAT interested in.
I only decided to jump in once I read several posts trying to shut it down in the name of "Muh bad stereotypes no like", threads such as this one shouldn't cause such uproar.
OP is requesting simple sexual dimorphism, not ISIS beheadings and reducing women to tradeable objects.

[Bozobub]

You're drastically oversimplifying.

The REAL reason this is a terrible idea is that it proposes an unnecessary change (yes, it IS unnecessary; the game works fine without it) to satisfy "realism", but without any consideration of the likely downsides.

• There's no guarantee this will alter gameplay in any positive way.
  
• It would require significant coding, as well as debugging and its own set of emergent issues.
  
• It's a sociopolitical bomb, waiting to explode, after that has already happened in a rather unpleasant manner.  I really doubt Tynan enjoyed the "Rock, Paper, Shotgun" mess all that much, although it likely increased sales in the end from the exposure.  The reaction you are seeing here is NOT going to somehow magically vanish.
  
• The game only needs to be (and can be) so fine-grained a simulation.  There will ALWAYS be aspects of reality it does not model.  Get over it.
  

Ditch the bullshit "MRA"/"SJW" idiocy and start thinking about it from the viewpoint of the developer, people.  This change would be a guaranteed no-win situation for Tynan.