Make the Prisoners Work! (Slaves.) Make Some Babies! (Breeding.)

[TrashMan]

Yes to both.

Babies can work, but at at an accelerated growth rate. Easily explained by genetic tampering all humans who went to space get.
At 7x growth rate it would take them 2 years to reach 14 years of age. You can fiddle with the numbers. Ideally, you'd have a curved growth rate (extreemly fast in the begining then slowing down to normal until it reaches 20 years)
so in 1 year a child grows 10 years
in the next year it grows 5
In the next it grows 3
from then on it's normal.
Alternatively, a growing vat that you can research. You can have babies without it, but growth will be slow.

For slaves, an explosive collar. That reduces any chance of rebellion and ensures a slave won't try to escape.

[ImNatalie]

Oh my gosh!
Thank you TrashMan!! That's a wonderful idea. I love it.
When I said adaptation in one of the post that is exactly what I meant: ACCELERATED GROWTH.
FINALLY, someone understands.

[Eleazar]

Plus the longest game I've had in RimWorld was about 4 years long, and the raids at that point are absolutely brutal on 60%/100% difficulty on pretty much any storyteller. I don't even know if you could survive for 18+ years in RimWorld...

And that's into the part of the game that hasn't been slightly balanced. And the month was recently shortened to 12 days.  The game's timescale may very well change.  Also just like crop maturation, growing up could take less time.

[Bullfrog1]

Re. Babies

I'd actually like to see children in the game, it would be a stress on resources and maybe have some sanity buffs/debuffs to the colonist: "Oh they had a baby. Congrats!" vs "This baby wont stop waking me at night"

It would be a interesting dynamic, specially on colder climate maps where food is needed more and you have another mouth to feed. That said, they should be a member of the work force at a young age... They shouldn't have to wait to turn 18 in a uncivilized colony that's striving to survive.

The only draw back for some people is that it could cause some pretty dark scenarios. That's fine with me, I fully expect the game to be dark.

Re. Labor camps

As long as it's not something for nothing. There should be some debuffs... specially to the prisoners, but to some colonist as well.

[Johnny Masters]

Babies are the kind of thing that grows on you after some time
ba dum tsss

No, but really.  I kinda want it now to have a breeding system in the game, as the game becomes less like an wave defense game.

[StorymasterQ]

Babies are the kind of thing that grows on you after some time

No, you're thinking of a yeast infection

[Johnny Masters]

Babies are the kind of thing that grows on you after some time

No, you're thinking of a yeast infection

Hey, that doesn't sound bad either

[Kaelent]

I admit. I read the topic and immediately thought of Emmie the Sex Slave. Does that make me bad?

I think colonies are a bit too hostile for children with all the attacks by raiders, mechanoids, and rabid squirrels. Staying away from them is probably for the best.

All for making prisoners do dumb labor though. Cutting wood and mining come to mind. Hauling would be a hit cumbersome as you would need some way for a single warden to track prisoners as they trek all over your based at which point the warden may as well do the hauling themselves. Actually, just look at prison architect (they have the same pawns already) and can make jobs like that. Having prisoners pump out cheap trade goods would be hilarious and productive. 

[Johnny Masters]

ignoring kids is the kind of political correctness shi* that pisses off. Fallout 1&2 had kids and no one turned into a child killer because you could kill one. They give verisimilitude to the world and, in this case, perpetuation.

There are workarounds, like making children not targetable by raiders (they simply get kidnapped).

[SuperCaffeineDude]

Yeh i'd like to see children added, that a game can't really last beyond four "years" is problem to be addressed, not necessarily a problem with the idea itself. Honestly right now we currently can hire turncoats with no negative consequences and have colonists literally falling out of the sky to meet our demands for more workers. Babies-Children would be a nice change of pace and fills in the age-old survival clich� of their being one very inconveniently pregnant lady to deal with. If you want to have them abort it or leave it out in the wilderness alongside brain-dead Val and mentally challenged Hayhouse that should be your call (though no one should like it), but in terms of usefulness children could provide a happiness boost receive a learning boost and work(slowly) from a younger age, say 7. To me Rim-World is a colony simulator not a factory/tower-defence game.

I'm defiantly in favour of prison sweat-shops, although yeh its hard to imagine them doing anything but crafting, so I've no clue what else they'd be doing and how that would be managed without either having guards escorting them, or yeh explosive-collars.

[Bullfrog1]

To me Rim-World is a colony simulator not a factory/tower-defense game.

This. So much this.

Right now the game seems to be a lot of reading prisoner resumes to only recruit the best and building tower defense kill boxes. You can pretty much control the level of inconvenience or flat out risk to the colony by doing those two things(additionally building into a mountain). It makes the game stale. Having internal issues like 'suddenly your colonist is pregnant and can't work' would be a nice way to liven things up.

[ImNatalie]

I love how all the topics I make turn in to really long debates about how unbalanced it would be or how unpractical it would be. Just lovely.

Anyways, If you had read my slavery idea thoroughly, I suggested slave collars and that they may only walk in Home Zones. Which if you don't use home zones, I'm hoping a fire destroys your whole colony.

[Noobshock]

I agree with the premise. Eventually it would be nice to be able to use prisoners for some type of controlled activity, and if not babies at least relationships with all the kinds of effects they can have on colonists.

[Johnny Masters]

I love how all the topics I make turn in to really long debates about how unbalanced it would be or how unpractical it would be. Just lovely.

Or how they could be balanced or practical (and fun)

[Sartain]

So everyone's all "no, babies are useless because the game doesn't last long enough for them to grow up and be useful, contributing members of society" and I can't help but think that's exactly why they'd be awesome

I imagine it could work something like this:
Babies need to be fed, obviously. I'm thinking Nutrient Paste for the first couple of years and then regular meals like everyone else when they go from "baby" to "child". This would be a job that either of the parents would handle automatically, much like the Warden feeds prisoners. Alternately, a Communal Creche type of area could be available to build/zone and Childcare could be a job certain colonists were assigned to (this might also be the place where you build your Growth Enhancer, which I'd think should be a rather expensive, researchable feature).
Babies would also need a source of textile available for sanitary needs until they become older and magically stop pooping like the other colonists.

Babies and older children would be beneficial in terms of them both giving a rather large mood bonus to all colonists, so long as they're alive and healthy and an even larger bonus to their parents. Because children are the future, bundles of joy, etc etc. Of course, they might also be able to spawn negative mood effects sometimes (tantrums, keeps people up at night, stuff like that).

On the other hand, sick children would give a mood penalty and children who died would give a large mood penalty to the entire colony and a permanent, large mood penalty to the parents. Maybe the mood penalty would be fixable in case stuff like Psychology or mental treatments become part of the game.

Older children might also be able to handle some simple tasks like Hauling and Cleaning and once they reach a certain age (I'd say around 10-12 or so since it's a harsh colonial life where you need to learn to carry your weight ASAP) they'd grow into regular colonist with minimal skills (possibly affected by parents/Childcare colonists) and ready to learn.

Edit: Thinking about it, "homegrown" children should probably be more skillful to make up for the large investment of time and resources in them. Children grown with the Growth Enhancer (double aging speed?) would grow up to be useful faster, but not be as skilled since they haven't had as much time to learn.