Generation of children does not seem to take parent age into account

Started by zgrssd, May 01, 2020, 02:58:19 PM

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zgrssd

The game can generate a 23 biological/221 choronological year old child - for a 29 biological/29 chronological year old mother Yes, the child was born 192 years before their mother was born.

While it is quite possible for a childs biological age to be higher (thanks to the parent spending some time in cryosleep), the chronological age being higher really raises some questions.

With a male parent, I could at least picture his DNA being forzen, used for artificial fertilisation and centuries later for cloning. But in that case, there should be no effective relationship.
With adopted children, it could also work out. But the game has no status for that, AFAIK.

But ideally, the game should propably bound the childrens chronological age, to the parents chronological age - reproduction lockout.

threephi

Relativity effects from space travel at near-light speeds could explain it.

Canute

Not in this case.
Sure a mother can biological be younger than the daughter through cyrosleep.
But at his case the daughter is chronological older then the mother which shouldn't be possible execpt with some backward timetravel.

threephi

Well in a relativistic context "chronological" means "time as it is observed" since there is no such thing as an absolute clock which can be applied to everything.  I take "chronological" age to mean elapsed time as it is measured at and following the location of that person's body, and "biological" age to mean time spent outside of suspended animation (cryptosleep).

Different people could have very different relative chronologies.  For the case in point, say Mom gives birth at 22 right before she's about to depart for a long near-lightspeed trip, so she puts her infant into a cryosleep pod.  She then travels for seven years according to her personal timepiece.  Meanwhile after 198 years as measured on the local planet, someone discovers the ancient cryptopod and rescues the baby.  23 years later (planet time) mom gets back from her trip.  Both chronologies would be correct in that scenario.

When it gets down to it though this is a fantasy space game so "chronological" and "biological" age mean whatever the developers want them to mean.  Relativity could explain the mother/daughter scenario the OP described.

zgrssd

Quote from: threephi on May 02, 2020, 02:26:04 PM
Well in a relativistic context "chronological" means "time as it is observed" since there is no such thing as an absolute clock which can be applied to everything.  I take "chronological" age to mean elapsed time as it is measured at and following the location of that person's body, and "biological" age to mean time spent outside of suspended animation (cryptosleep).
Pretty sure the chronological age alreay accounts for that. It is aging as observed by someone moving at planeetary speeds, rather then fractions of lightspeed. I give the sequence with chronological dates, from the position of the child:

0 The Kid was born
0-23 The kid went on a cryosleep phase
192 The mother is now baby
198 If the kid was frozen at age 0, the kid must be thawed out now. The mother is 6.
210 The mother is now 18. Can not say for sure about the kid, as it might still be in transit
221 The mother is now 29 biologically and chronolgically, the kid now 23 biologically

Unless the mother adopted the child when it was 210 chronologically or after, this can not be resolved.

Canute

210 Mother meet some TimeLord and travel with him
212 Mother breakup with that TimeLord after she got sick by leaving her kid at the past.

threephi

It's fun bantering about geeky stuff like this, but it boils down to the semantic interpretation of "chronological age".  Your interpretation is essentially Galactic Standard Time, mine is going off the plain definition of "chronological" to mean "in order of time as it elapses", and in a space fantasy game world where people travel across the galaxy, relativity means two different observers can have very different chronologies but both are correct.

Both of our interpretations are plausible, however mine has the advantage that the devs wouldn't need to change anything ;)

zgrssd

Quote from: threephi on May 04, 2020, 01:23:32 PM
It's fun bantering about geeky stuff like this, but it boils down to the semantic interpretation of "chronological age".
A chronological age that does not account for time dilation would be useless. By your own admission, 200 cryoyears spend at 0.1 c and 200 cryoyeara spend at 0.5c are not comparable.

So why not just translate them to years at 0.0c and get a usefull figure to compare both?

Canute

It is allways the point of view, which made the difference.
Sure if you are in the spaceship and fly 200 years spaceship time at 0.1c it is a different then when you fly 200 years at 0.5c
But if you are on a planet there isn't a different if the spaceship fly with 0.1c or 0.5c beside the distance the spaceship travel.
So let us define Rimworld as fixpoint, and statement with the age of mother/child is correct.
And now we should stop the discussion and let the Dev's decide about it if they want build a blue timemashine or not ! :-)

zgrssd

Quote from: Canute on May 04, 2020, 04:52:34 PM
Sure if you are in the spaceship and fly 200 years spaceship time at 0.1c it is a different then when you fly 200 years at 0.5c
But if you are on a planet there isn't a different if the spaceship fly with 0.1c or 0.5c beside the distance the spaceship travel.
So let us define Rimworld as fixpoint, and statement with the age of mother/child is correct.
So you agree the Chronological Age should be based on that fixed point, thus accounting for time dilation?

Wich also makes the example entirely impossible, short of adoption?


threephi

Quote from: zgrssd on May 04, 2020, 03:50:41 PM
A chronological age that does not account for time dilation would be useless.

Chronological age is completely useless period as it has absolutely zero impact on game mechanics.  As such, it should be given extremely low priority for developers to spend time changing.  It's provided purely for story-telling interest, and IMO the interpretation I've been describing is consistent with the Rimworld universe.  I can see reasons why yours could be as well, but IMO mine is a better fit, and here are more words describing my thinking on it:

The way I read the Rimworld backstory, it describes the chaotic and uncoordinated spread of humanity across the edges of the galaxy, with emphasis being put on the poor communication between settlements, especially in the rimworlds.

QuoteThe lightspeed barrier separates us. Because travel times are so long, planets tend to be very disconnected from each other socially and technologically. The next star over could experience a catastrophic war, and you wouldn't even know until ten years later when the news reports arrive. If you're unlucky, you'd have already launched a journey towards that now-destroyed planet in a ship that cannot turn around.

The lightspeed barrier not only limits travel, it limits communication.  By what mechanism would a centralized, uniform time standard be regulated in the very disconnected rimworlds, among groups of people with virtually no links between them, many of them living in stone-age level societies?

People arrive on our happy little rimworlds after space journeys by crash-landing, sometimes completely naked, or emerge from cryosleep.  They then mingle with other populations that may already be established on the planet, having arrived through similar chaotic, untracked means decades/centuries/millenia before.  They have all taken wildly different, uncoordinated, and unique paths through spacetime which brought them by dumb luck onto the same tile on the same rimworld.  Each person knows their own chronological path through spacetime and keeps that with them.  The way I read it, the story behind Rimworld is more about chaos and disconnection than supporting a galaxy-wide standardized time with no clear mechanism how it would be regulated.

zgrssd

Quote from: threephi on May 06, 2020, 01:53:23 PM
Quote from: zgrssd on May 04, 2020, 03:50:41 PM
A chronological age that does not account for time dilation would be useless.

Chronological age is completely useless period as it has absolutely zero impact on game mechanics.
And that is part of this bug report.
It should have at least a impact on that one. Otherwise, we might as well not have it be tracked in the first place.

ison

Chronological age should never be higher in this case, could you upload the savefile so we can take a look?

zgrssd

Quote from: ison on May 07, 2020, 04:08:39 AM
Chronological age should never be higher in this case, could you upload the savefile so we can take a look?
No savegame around.
I can not force it during original colonsit creation, so that code at least is secure.

My guess is that it happened during raider generation. And maybe only if parent and child belonged to different Raids, or the parent was already recruited.