[Mod Suggestion] The Life of a Child

[Queen Mauve]

The inspiration for this is a pawn born into my Stone Age colony – with a prosthetic leg, and a whopping 10+ in a few skills on top. Kind of bugging me as well is the fact that animals have Young and Juvenile stages, but humans have not. I suppose this was decided on behalf of not adding more complexity of texture needs etc. I'd adore to have even more children in my Rimworlds – but I'd also want them to be the (joyful) liabilities they are in life, requiring care and attention. Not instant grownups. On the other hand, their presence shouldn't imbalance the game and keep it smoothly unbloated.

I'm aware there are several Pregnancy, Baby, Children mods out there (with most of them very outdated), they all add mechanics that I'd consider detrimental for the gameplay. Such as adding as postpartum depression, school textbooks etc. I'd love a mod to take a more abstract, simplified  approach. And yes, I'm partial to the ideas of "Age Matters" and "Children, school and learning" but somehow the benefits and negative don't quite equilibrate (in my opinion).

Hence the idea for this mod, which – should my severely limited xml and c# knowledge not fail me – should be feasible to be written without requiring any new graphical assets or disturbing other mods. While I have past background in the games industry, I was more on the art design end of things and feel more than a little stupid when looking at code. Maybe one of you magnificent modders is able and inclined to create magic from this suggestion.

The Life of a Child

Children require Child Care interactions, including feeding (for infants) and teaching (for both infants and children). The Child Care social is dependent on the Wardening skill. This could probably be implemented like the Prisoner interaction currently is in Core.

On Birth:

• Set chance of implants and bionics, addictions, old gunshot, scar to 0%

Infant (0-4 years):

• Shrinks pawn graphics by 75% (beards disabled)
• Move Speed: -50%
• Mass, Attack, Meat Yield, Carrying Capacity, Leather Yield: -75%
• Blocked skills: Shooting, Mining, Cooking, Plants, Crafting, Medical, Intellectual
• Middle clothing layer disabled, Headgear disabled, Accessory disabled.
• Needs to be fed
• Has four 'snuggle' interactions daily (similar to animal muzzling), preferring parents as target. Gives the target a stacking +12 'Loved' mood buff.
• Receives a stacking -8 'Unloved' mood penalty if not taught twice a day
• Nullifies Thoughts in categories: Death, Eating, Gatherings, Misc (except Nuzzled, soaking wet), Room Stats, Situation General (except In Darkness and everything temperature-related), Situation Needs (except hunger-related, sleep-related), Situation RoomStats, Situation Social, Situation Special (except pain-related), Situation Traits, Social (except Insulted, Kind words)
• Romance disabled
• Organ harvesting disabled

Child (5-13 years):

• Shrinks pawn graphics by 50% (beards disabled)
• Move Speed: +10%
• Attack, Carrying Capacity: -30%
• Mass, Meat Yield, Leather Yield: -50%
• Blocked skills: Shooting, Cooking, Medical, Intellectual
• Middle clothing layer disabled, Accessory disabled.
• Has two  'snuggle' interactions daily (similar to animal muzzling), preferring parents as target. Gives the target a stacking +12 'Loved' mood buff.
• Receives a stacking -12 'Unloved' mood penalty if not taught once a day
• Nullifies Thoughts: Death (except family-related, bonded animal died), Eating, Gatherings, Misc (except Nuzzled, Bonded animal abandoned, observed corpse, soaking wet), Room Stats, Situation General (except In Darkness, Stuck indoors, Trapped indoors, Cabin fever, Trapped underground, Entombed underground, Ratty apparel, Tattered apparel and everything temperature-related), Situation Needs (except hunger-related, sleep-related, recreation-related), Situation Traits, Social (except Insulted, Kind words)
• Romance disabled
• Organ harvesting disabled

Notes / Well of further ideas:

Blocked skills: Blocked skill values should be hidden from the player until the pawn reaches the age in which they are revealed (surprise!). But, if possible, they should still gain value in the background from interacting with pawns performing Child Care. Also ties into ...

Schooling: Schooling could be made available for pawns of all ages, performed by a pawn with higher value/s in the respective skill/s. However, in my opinion this shouldn't be in the scope of a possible 'Life of a Child' mod. I consider schooling a cultural achievement, not a biological one.

Food: I couldn't find any information if different types of creatures and sizes require different Nutrition value levels. If so, I'd encourage to cut down the nutrient intake required for an infant down by 65% and for child by 35%; in regards to an adult pawn.

Organ harvesting: Not disabled for reasons of morality. a) Harvesting infant or child organs should only fit infants or children. b) This however would clutter the already very expansive prosthetics system and might create conflicts down the line once the pawns become 14 and/or with other mods.

Inheriting from parents: Other mods covers this already, thus I wouldn't touch it. But if an inheritance system is in place, pawns might be enabled to inherit addictions active on their parents on birth.


To conclude:
I'm SO excited to hear if you'd enjoy such an addition as well - or your own thoughts and ideas on it!
Also: If you're an able modder and would like to jump into the endeavour of creating this mod, I'd be more than ready to provide my art skills to a project of yours in exchange.

Best,
Mauve

[Prologue]

Are you aware of this mod?

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1541438230