Adoption, and other forms of family beyond blood relation.

[Call me Arty]

 In a game about making communities, it's lacking a crucial aspect of them: Families.

Of course, you can't expect to crash-land on the same planet as your entire extended family in a populated expanse of around a thousand or so light years. At the same time, is "friends" really enough to describe some colonists? Would you call the people who took you in during a harsh winter on an even harsher planet, killed the armed maniacs following you, cleaned your wounds, fed you, and gave you a bed "friends?" Whether you would call it that or not, you have found yourself in a family.

   Adoption
The thought that led to this post was how I liked the idea of children in the game, but neither I or the developers want to deal with the repercussions of that. In addition, raising a resource drain for several years longer than the average player's colony or patience lasts just wouldn't seem to work-out. So, what's the solution?

Well, we currently have some pretty young pawns in the game. Below age 20, they won't generate an "adulthood" backstory, and the pawns can be as young as fifteen. In addition, we also have couples on the Rimworld. They truly care about each other, so they get married. They know better than to raise a child on a planet that could care less about how many limbs they have, but they want to start a family. The solution? Adopt! The child likely has no parents, no siblings, not even cousins anywhere near the place. They want a place to belong. The parents want a child, but don't want to bring another soul into the cruel Rimworld. This way, both could be happy.
Of course, parents probably wouldn't adopt a child they thought was a brat, and a kid capable of surviving alone if they really needed to wouldn't want or need to be adopted by parents they didn't like. So, it should (as weird as it sounds) occur like a relationship would, where the child could be adopted after reaching a certain opinion level with their potential parents. Just like that, family!
Overall, I think that the conditions for this to happen are rare enough (Married couple ~25-40 in a colony with a pawn under 20) to prevent an entire colony from becoming a massive family, and it would help add a layer to the relations of the game. The Mother/Father/Child relations are already in the game and just need to be applied, so it's not as if it's the second coming of a 3D world map or caravans. If the relation bonuses and penalties (positive opinion boost for family and mood de-buff for their deaths) are too great, then it surely wouldn't be too hard to add "Adopted parent/child" as a new relation to the game.


As a closing note, I thought that "The _____ I never had" would also be an interesting one. I'm not sure if it justifies it's own place over "friend", but those who know what I'm talking about as far as "The brother I never had" know that it's something different than a friend. I'm just not sure how it would be balanced, as there's only a -2 point difference in "My brother/sister died" and "My friend died."

[sick puppy]

sounds neat. but are there even any upsides in the game already if you have family members in your town aside from husband and wife?
i had many moms and daughters reunite in my long lasting savegames and it didnt seem to do much. heck i even started off with an adult guy and his due to cryptosleep younger mom who then married a guy that was even a teenie

[Call me Arty]

sounds neat. but are there even any upsides in the game already if you have family members in your town aside from husband and wife?
i had many moms and daughters reunite in my long lasting savegames and it didnt seem to do much. heck i even started off with an adult guy and his due to cryptosleep younger mom who then married a guy that was even a teenie

I don't really think I'm going for "upsides" as much as I am "storytelling". Same reason there's not much of an upside to backstories having explanations or art depicting certain events from the colony's history.

[VincentJ]

That's a really good idea.

The children are very unbearable, between their birth and... their death ?

Hum, between their birth and the moment they are useful.