Very few relationships and immediate breakups

[sadpickle]

Playing a tribal game; going into year 4 I realized there had been zero romantic relationships in a colony of 14 people. We recruited a 15th colonist and after a couple weeks he hit it off with someone. I was glad to see a double-bed actually being utilized and it freed up a room.

Their relationship lasted 24 hours and now they're "ex-lovers".

Was relationship chance heavily tweaked? 2 alphas ago and I remember quite a few pawns forming strong, lasting relationships that progress to marriage. Lately though everyone is forever alone and any romance is lucky to last a season, if that. It's not very realistic; romantic love is a very basal, powerful human motivation and there's no reason more people shouldn't be getting into relationships. And those relationships should be a lot more durable than the ones I'm seeing.

Feedback welcome.

[Snafu_RW]

How much time do your pawns have to interact? Different working times/zones work against social interaction.. gather spots such as widely-dispersed tables/campfires help to alleviate this but they're not a solution in and of themselves..

[sadpickle]

How much time do your pawns have to interact? Different working times/zones work against social interaction.. gather spots such as widely-dispersed tables/campfires help to alleviate this but they're not a solution in and of themselves..

Almost everyone is on an identical schedule (aside from one Night Owl and a couple of researchers who take the graveyard shift). There is a 4-hour block of scheduled joy time in the afternoon and the dining room is the only place with a gather spot. Not everyone goes there of course; they go to their rooms or do outside joy activities. But there's also a lot of interaction from traffic as pawns walk around and someone throws a party a few times per year.

Looking in the social tab I see a lot of "friends", some with scores in the 50s. But I don't understand romantic mechanics so it's all a bit of a mystery.

[jamaicancastle]

Ultimately, there is a strong element of chance in relationships in RW. Romance depends on a number of factors, most of them pretty obvious - pawns need to interact, they need to like each other, have compatible orientations, they should be healthy (having low Talking, Moving, or Manipulation will put a damper on romance), they shouldn't be blood relatives, etc. Age makes a big difference, especially relative age. Pretty and Beautiful pawns are one of the single strongest factors, with each over twice as likely to join in a romance, and Ugly pawns only 1/3 as likely.

Breakups on the other hand are judged solely on how much the pawns like each other. (Which creates an interesting unstable dynamic if you have pawns that hooked up because of other factors, beauty being the big one.)

If you're curious, you can activate dev mode and open up the social tab to check on the attraction and romance odds between members of your colony. However, these are just odds; nothing is ever guaranteed.

[cyberian]

Strange, I am doing tribal run too into year 3+ and had 4 couples () with 12 pawns. I made sure though I had equal number of males and females and recruited noone over 40 or with bad traits.

Maybe you just had bad luck so far?