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

Started by vampiresoap, December 24, 2016, 04:55:19 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

mumblemumble

Well on the idea of differences between sexes...

-first, men and women would have a range for all these effects... a bellcurve.
-health, and pain tolerances would be slightly higher for men
-men live slightly shorter than women on average, for natural cause of death
-men have higher strength, which effect melee, hauling, and certain tasks. Strength would be a requirement for CERTAIN tasks, things like hauling rocks require a STRONG, young man to do, or at very least, have an "absolute minimum" and "ideal" limit for strength on tasks. Absolute minimum means someone can attempt, and takes severe penalties, but CAN do it. Ideal means someone can do it at normal speed. Strength is different for different people, and men are generally stronger of course. Perhaps make strength a "use it or lose it" stat, slowly going away if you dont train it occasionally, and make the cap a multiple of someones default strength (little old ladies can never become as strong as Arnold Swartzineiger in his prime EVER, even with daily weight lifting and a diet of meat eggs and milk). Strength is of course, also effected by injuries or sickness, perhaps even having frail / bad back reworked a little bit.
-Men have slightly higher chance to social fight with men, slightly less to social fight with women.
-Add in sexual organ hitbox...ouch.. someone getting their dick shot off could lead to depression for a while. A woman getting shot could lead to infertility. Either way, injuries disable lovin COMPLETELY till they heal up...scars make lovin very difficult to do.
-Men and women when can flirt, which either repulses, does nothing, or distracts. Repulsion causes a small mood hit, and  social hit. nothing does, of course, nothing. Distraction causes a small mood buff, a temporary (half hour) hit to consciousness by a small amount, and a social buff. pawns are more likely to take repulsion worse from the sex they ARENT attracted to (straight men get more repulsed by gay men flirting, lesbian women get more repulsed by straight men flirting, ect). Repulsion rate is also slightly higher for these. Repulsion can also end with social fighting, and is effected by dislikes / hates gender, as well as sexual preference. Violent reactions to flirting are possible, and are effected by the relationship level.
-Men are more likely to be destructive with mental breaks, berserks, breaking things, as well as drug use...women are more likely to wander in a daze, hide in rooms, and more passive, shutdown things.


These are just a few fun ideas
Why to people worry about following their heart? Its lodged in your chest, you won't accidentally leave it behind.

-----

Its bad because reasons, and if you don't know the reasons, you are horrible. You cannot ask what the reasons are or else you doubt it. But the reasons are irrefutable. Logic.

Negocromn

Quote from: brcruchairman on December 24, 2016, 11:08:25 AM
I believe something that is being largely ignored is the nurture side of things. Let us disregard, for a moment, the question of whether or not there is a biological predisposition for strength or social skills or what have you for males and females. Let us examine, then, the more relevant question of whether nurture, societal norms in particular, can impact physical bearing.

The obvious example to bring up is the Chambri People.1 In their culture, the traditional roles (socially and occupationally) are reversed from what we're used to in the west, and indeed most of the world. This seems to be strong evidence for the notion that, regardless of any biological predisposition, nurture, or the societal norms, can overpower it. So biological predisposition is, by my reckoning, overshadowed by the dominant factor of societal function.

Assuming I'm not mistaken in the above, the next response is, "Okay, cool, but there's still a biological predisposition." I would argue that there is not. One of the studies most commonly cited is this one, which asserts half to two-thirds strength in women compared to men.2 Although one could argue this study is invalidated by the tiny sample size (n=16) alone, let's disregard that for a moment and focus on the core fallacy; this does not describe a biological predisposition. This describes eight typical specimens of each gender in the current social climate. That means that women already have a strong tenancy to be weaker physically than men because that's how society tells them to be; just look up pictures of "beautiful woman" and "beautiful man". The first will tend to show waifish figures, possibly a full bust and healthy rump, but generally minimal visible musculature. Contrast this with the beautiful man, which tends to be corded and well-defined muscle. If anyone would like to argue this point, I'd be happy to find some studies that confirm this difference in beauty standards. In short, current society tells women that their ideal shape is willowy and lean, while men should aim for a bulky and sculpted look. Since many aim to bring their body in line with the physical ideal, the consequence of men developing through effort stronger musculature seems forgone.

Let's assume (however unlikely it may be) that you've agreed with me so far. The next logical argument is, "Well, then, men still put on muscle easier, so they tend to be stronger naturally." This is another oft-repeated argument, and one which holds little weight. Firstly, let us examine the muscle fibers themselves: there is no discernible difference between male and female muscle fibers.3 The chief difference is rather the quantity of muscle fibers, as one would expect. The argument has been made that males put on muscle faster. This is also false; it appears that, given identical exercise regiments, females put on muscle at a very similar rate to males over a 16 week span.4

In conclusion, I believe significant evidence for the equality of the genders, all else being equal (age, occupation, societal pressure, etc.) in melee combat or any other arena. Of course, one could argue that this culture or that culture will demand different things between men and women, but then it becomes a question of specific case and Rimworld lore, not real-world simulation.

Regarding stereotypes, regardless of whether it's "positive" or "negative", they can be quite damaging. For instance, the stereotype of "men are strong" can quickly turn into a liability for any who are not physically strong. Rather than it being a minor personal deficiency, it instead shifts to "they must be a failure as a man". Similar to the "statistically proven" assertion regarding women and social skills. (Incidentally, science and statistics can never prove anything. All it can do is provide evidence, and leave valid theories to explain them. One of the biggest tenants is that we don't truly "know" anything, we just have highly likely possibilities.)

Regarding body type, I can see a strong argument for its inclusion; the way a beanpole fights will be vastly different from the way someone built like a brick house would fight. The lean build would very conceivably have a bonus on cool down, possibly movement speed on account of the less momentum. However, against blunt force trauma (and, to a much lesser extent, slashing trauma) there would be increased vulnerability; an impact would be far more likely to hit something functional, e.g. directly impact muscle or transmit a shock through to an organ. The larger fighter in turn would have the opposite; the large frame and fat deposits would increase momentum making for a slower fighter (all else, including musculature and muscular cross-section) but conversely those fat deposits would distribute any blunt trauma over a wider area, mitigating its effect, and slashing weapons would have to cut deeper to achieve the same level of physiological disruption. (E.g., severed muscle fibers, lacerated blood vessels, cut organs, etc.)

I also agree that the bonus from body type should be small; there are plenty of accounts of people large but fast, and I'm pretty sure we all know someone skinny but slow; personal traits (e.g., lazy vs fast walker, brawler, etc.) should dominate, but the addition of a small bonus or penalty for colonist body type would not, in my opinion, be a bad thing. I'm not sure how much work it would be mechanically to differentiate between them, particularly since something like fat deposits is unlikely to change survival outcomes for a gunshot would, but the concept, at least, appears sound.

References:
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chambri_people
2: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8477683
3: http://staff.washington.edu/griffin/musclephys.txt
4: https://books.google.com/books?id=rk3SX8G5Qp0C&pg=PA152&lpg=PA152&dq=national+strength+and+conditioning+association+women+strength+gain&source=bl&ots=o6lCqfDgUP&sig=05WMzI3kuKJhRm671sNoLGPA9cE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwit27yVl43RAhVMRiYKHYFCBfMQ6AEINDAF#v=onepage&q=national%20strength%20and%20conditioning%20association%20women%20strength%20gain&f=false p.152

From what planet did you come from?

In my whole life (since I was 12 or 13) I have never personally met a female that looked like a possible physical treat to me or to any other healthy athletic male. Women are much smaller and weaker than men, anyone that lives on planet Earth should know that. And nurture over nature?? What the flying fuck are you fantasizing about, have you ever heard about testosterone and other anabolic hormones that men produce a lot more than women? They are so important that there are studies showing taking steroids while doing nothing induces more muscle growth than exercising naturally. And that's just one of the many physical biological advantages men have over women.

I started Muay Thai when I was a teen and about 2 months in they asked me to spar this girl that was a state champion. I was told to go easy on her, even tho I was still kind of a clueless noobie and just a little bit heavier than her, and I really had to during the fight, as she was really slow and weak, it felt like she had almost no explosion.
Even the professional female fighters on loads of male hormones that look more manly than most men don't seem impressive at all.

On topic, I don't think there should be physical diff between sexes in RW, the game isn't supposed to be realistic in the slightest anyway, I'm alright with movie trope womyn warriors being a thing.

Hieronymous Alloy

#152
Presumably rimworld people have been through so many generations of genetic modification that they're only nominally still human anyway.

I tend to agree this would make the game too complex but if it must be done, the interesting way to do it would be to give men a bonus to manipulation and women a bonus to sight and consciousness, and maybe pain tolerance.

Note that that would make women better soldiers overall. What matters for rimworld soldiers is shooting accuracy more than anything else, and eight contributes to that.

There's actually some studies that show women are better at target shooting than men are, too, so that's not an unrealistic result.
My Rimworld guide on steam (updated for A16!): http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=813720217

mumblemumble

Quote from: Hieronymous Alloy on January 05, 2017, 02:57:35 PM
Presumably rimworld people have been through so many generations of genetic modification that they're only nominally still human anyway.
Lore explicitly says humans have not been evolutionary changed. they have not been changed be evolutionary pressure, nor been modified.
Why to people worry about following their heart? Its lodged in your chest, you won't accidentally leave it behind.

-----

Its bad because reasons, and if you don't know the reasons, you are horrible. You cannot ask what the reasons are or else you doubt it. But the reasons are irrefutable. Logic.

Hieronymous Alloy

#154
Quote from: mumblemumble on January 05, 2017, 04:40:36 PM
Quote from: Hieronymous Alloy on January 05, 2017, 02:57:35 PM
Presumably rimworld people have been through so many generations of genetic modification that they're only nominally still human anyway.
Lore explicitly says humans have not been evolutionary changed. they have not been changed be evolutionary pressure, nor been modified.

Some of the character backstories explicitly contradict that, though?
e.g.,
Quote

Glitterworld kid   The son/daughter of a genetically-engineered perfect mate on a glitterworld, NAME was much more shy, withdrawn and nervous than his/her parents. He/She kept mostly to him/herself, studying science and medicine and taking on gardening as a hobby.
In his/her teens, he/she ran away from home, seeking a quieter life.

So if a character has a glitterworld kid background, they've been engineered. I mean sure maybe nobody is half-dolphin or anything but it doesn't seem outside the lore to have the female equivalent of Captain America in your colony.
My Rimworld guide on steam (updated for A16!): http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=813720217

mumblemumble

this is less of invalidating the idea, and more just inconsistent flavor text.
Why to people worry about following their heart? Its lodged in your chest, you won't accidentally leave it behind.

-----

Its bad because reasons, and if you don't know the reasons, you are horrible. You cannot ask what the reasons are or else you doubt it. But the reasons are irrefutable. Logic.

Thyme

I'd rather say the RimWorld equivalent of Cpt. Murica is fully bionic. His stunts are a blatant disregard of High School physics.
I'm from Austria. If I offend you, it's usually inadvertently.
Snowmen army, Chemfuel Generator, Electric Stonecutting, Smelting Tweak

Hieronymous Alloy

#157
Quote from: Thyme on January 06, 2017, 01:55:29 AM
I'd rather say the RimWorld equivalent of Cpt. Murica is fully bionic. His stunts are a blatant disregard of High School physics.

Well, yeah. Theoretically though he's supposed to be, like, right at the very top upper limit of the theoretical best possible human performance -- if you look him up on Marvelpedia, it says "Rogers is as intelligent, strong, fast, agile, and durable as possible for a human being to be without being considered superhuman."

Still human, but idealized and perfected.

Point being, it's not all that far outside the lore for a female "vat grown assassin" " bio-engineered by scientists, and trained as a killer" to be, effectively, the Black Widow of RimWorld. Or even for half your colony to be Black Widow equivalents -- those vat grown assassins seem pretty common.
My Rimworld guide on steam (updated for A16!): http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=813720217

ActuallyTrain

Quote from: Boston on December 24, 2016, 08:45:17 AM
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.

Are you insane? I'm a purple belt in BJJ and i've seen loads of athletic strong men come in and overpower blue-blackbelt females.
Martial arts aren't arcane magic. Yes they give you an advantage but a 100lb differential in humans is extremely hard to overcome unless you are a legitimate master.

Some office worker la-la land description of the world doesn't belong.

Razzoriel

Quote from: ActuallyTrain on January 06, 2017, 10:53:01 AM
Quote from: Boston on December 24, 2016, 08:45:17 AM
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.

Are you insane? I'm a purple belt in BJJ and i've seen loads of athletic strong men come in and overpower blue-blackbelt females.
Martial arts aren't arcane magic. Yes they give you an advantage but a 100lb differential in humans is extremely hard to overcome unless you are a legitimate master.

Some office worker la-la land description of the world doesn't belong.
The only ones against the sex dimorphism are those who have absolutely no clue what they're talking about.

A Friend

Way to generalize everyone who disagrees with you as dumb.

This thread is two brick walls endlessly arguing with each other. I think what we have is fine and isn't really as jarring as people here make it out to be. I mean that's how its always been in other games. And they work out alright.

What's suggested is also fine but I believe melee combat should be fleshed out more before adding in extra complexities otherwise we're just going to end up with some kind of rock paper scissors kind of deal. Potentially screwing over players who's unlucky enough to only get older colonists or women, combat wise.

So till then, dont fix what's not broken.

Edit: Actually, what he have is also sort of broken with 0 skill pawns beating up 20 skill masters. But the idea remains and whats suggested won't really fix that and may potentially make it worse.
"For you, the day Randy graced your colony with a game-ending raid was the most memorable part of your game. But for Cassandra, it was Tuesday"

Squiggly lines you call drawings aka "My Deviantart page"

b0rsuk

Physical attributes aside, the sexes approach relationships differently. Men have a natural tendency to be polygamous, women - monohypergamous. Men are happy to have many (sexual) partners, while women "trade up" men in relationships, and are even happy to share a man with other women as long as they feel they got a genuine alpha male. Women view a man with multiple partners as successful and valuable, at least until they try to claim him. Non-alpha men are still good to pay the bills, and support someone else's children. And women initiate vast majority of divorces, must be a coincidence and not alimony money.

It would be fairly easy to represent in Rimworld. Men would be less picky about women (but they definitely prefer young women), and more spread out. Women would chase the men with highest social status, most alpha etc, and would rather share one or fight over an alpha man instead of settling for someone beneath their dignity.

As for hard-as-brick stance vs relaxed stance - Bruce Lee made a few comments praising a more relaxed stance of Kung Fu in contrast to the more tense of Karate. Bruce Lee is dead*. We'll never know how much of his success should be attributed to his unique approach, and how much to his inherent abilities he was born with.
The extreme example of relaxed stance is Wing Chun technique, which Bruce Lee trained for just a year. There's a good documentary about it called "Wing Chun", and a movie "Prodigal Son" with Biao Yuen (one of most acrobatic actors ever, starred with Jackie Chan movies etc). The stance is more like a triangle, with feet pretty close and perpendicular to the opponent instead of one foot closer. Hands lowered more less at breast height. The technique was supposedly invented by a woman, for women, and optimized for close range combat. Supposedly it works because you control the center line, use both hands at the same time, and can push away incoming punches to a side. Supposedly, because I found no evidence that it actually works! Search youtube for sparring videos between Wing Chun fighters vs any other style, and check out how Wing Chun fighters do in MMA. No one fights that way and has success against skilled opponents ! The movies "Ip Man" are all hype. I would be genuinely happy if you could link some grrreat Wing Chun sparring / fight videos to disprove my claim.

Feminists like to point out there are more men who have problems with law, more men are in jail, there more mentally retarded men, and so on. Yet they insist that average intelligence of man and woman is the same. Well you can't have it both ways. If there are more retarded men than women, there must be someone else who makes up for that and raises the average. This makes sense from biology point of view - women have two XX chromosomes, so they have a backup, there are fewer genetic mutations among women and "they're playing it safe". Men have a X and a Y chromosome, no backup, so there are more retards and more geniuses among men. It evens up.

It's not a perfect comparison, but the average of a 20-sided die is 10.5 points. When you throw 3 6-sided die, the average is also 10.5 points, but the distribution is different. You can compare 1d20 and 3d6 here: http://anydice.com/

The reason there are so many female assassins and agile fighters in fiction is not because they are *more* agile or whatever, but because it's the only way they can compete physically. Female archers are a dumb idea though. Longbowmen were picked among the tallest and strongest men. A longbow is the brute force weapon compared to the more sophisticated crossbow, and guess what - we still use crossbows today - rifles a crossbow trigger, crossbow grip and so on (I don't know the proper name). A crossbow/rifle grip even works great for a camera (very stable), except people are very nervous when they see someone "pointing a rifle" at them. Out of question for warzone reporters and areas with jumpy police. Okay, but back for making up. I don't see why women should have a disadvantage with guns. They are smaller targets, and physical strength hardly matters when firing. Men can carry a bit larger guns and might suffer less knockback, but I'm not convinced it matters.

* Bruce Lee died because he used together medicine that should never be used together. They interacted. The medicine he used was known to have potentially lethal side effects.

Thebest41

I thought he died because he was shot by accident or am I wrong?

b0rsuk

That was Bruce's son, Brandon Lee. He died during the filming of The Crow, he was shot by an accident (although I have no idea why would anyone have live ammunition on stage).

Here's a proposal:

1, (reserved for future use - children etc) - -
2, small woman, -
3, average woman, small man
4, big woman, average man
5 -, big man

Women would be body sizes 2-4, men - 3-5.

Small body size:
+ bonus to hand dexterity, crafting, art, lower gun warmup(before shooting), slightly better shooting accuracy
+ smaller target
+ eats less
- lower strength, carrying capacity etc
- more trouble walking through deep snow, water, tall grass
- worse in melee

Big body size:
+ bonus to strength, carrying capacity, lower gun cooldown(after shooting), especially heavy guns, lower speed penalty for walking with heavy guns
+ less trouble going through snow, water, tall grass
+ better in melee
- bigger target
- eats more
- comparatively lower hand dexterity (tailoring, crafting, art).

Problem: Manipulation stat of Rimworld is dexterity and strength lumped together. They would have to be split to accurately represent this. There is anectodal evidence that smaller people have more sensitive hands / better dexterity, but no evidence that gender plays a role (neuroscience couldn't prove it). https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091215173017.htm (People who have smaller fingers have more sensitive hands). It makes sense because they have the same number of nerve endings, but on a smaller skin area.

"Crafting" in Rimworld contains both low dexterity high strength like stonecutting, and the opposite, tailoring which requires hand dexterity but little strength. "Growing" skill influences both high strength activities like tree cutting, and lower strength ones like planting strawberries.

More generally I think skills could be split based on whether they need more dexterity or more strength.
Strength: hauling, mining, tree cutting, stonecutting, smithing, construction (walls, doors, furniture), shooting heavy weapons, melee (swords, maces)
Dexterity: tailoring, medicine (esp. operations), art, construction (electronics, devices, switches, conduits; anything that requires components), billards table, shooting non-heavy weapons, melee (spears, knives, shortswords)

Also, possibly the greatest sniper ever, Simo Hayha from Finland, was a small man. Over 500 documented Soviet soldiers killed. His advice was: "Practice". But he was also smart, for example he would put snow in his mouth so his breath wasn't visible, he didn't use a scope (he'd have to be careful not to breath on it, and the glare could give him away), he often hid in mounds of snow...

mumblemumble

Eh, I'm honestly unsure about how you equate gun usage. Sure smaller hands are better at precision with smaller things, but I doubt a little girl could be a better shot with a minigun than Hercules.

I agree with better ability for tailoring, art, maybe even crafting, but anywhere where strength is needed, it would have an impact.

For instance, for crafting, one would need say, at least a body size of 3 to do, bug a body size of 3 gets a bonus to quality while bigger ones get bonus to speed, for certain tasks, like crafting stone blocks.

So you could have a faster, big brawny dude whos less precise, or a smaller person whom can do it much more precisely, with less skill, but take longer.

Shooting is the same, it should scale on the gun. I expect a girl could be a decent shot with a pistol, or rifle, but might struggle with an automatic, or bigger gun. The smaller body does indeed provide more precise movements, but the strength needed to lift, turn, absorb recoil, ect, must be present for effective firing, and without, a bigger, less skilled guy would be better, and this is the important part. And inherently, combat is always "heavy" work, to some extent.

Problem is, EVERY task takes x strength, and y dexterity, and more of either scales how effective you are, by z.

Sure, electrical work and wiring is a dexterity job, but it also takes strength. And melee with a sword takes strength, but benefits from dexterity.

Its all very complex.  But im happy people are presenting ideas finally.

Also at alloy, you realize that the backgrounds are specifics, and the lore on "humans", says MOST humans aren't right?

this means that while some might say otherwise, if they do not, they are the same as current humans.
Why to people worry about following their heart? Its lodged in your chest, you won't accidentally leave it behind.

-----

Its bad because reasons, and if you don't know the reasons, you are horrible. You cannot ask what the reasons are or else you doubt it. But the reasons are irrefutable. Logic.