The negative opinion suffered by a colonist for killing a child raider should be toned down or removed.

[Synchrotron]

For those that may not know, we can enable children to appear as raiders in the custom difficult screen when we are preparing a new game (it's turned off by default).

In Biotech, when a colonist kills a child, he or she will suffer both from a mood debuff (-6) and a negative opinion (-20) among the other colonists, but that's a bit nonsensical when the child who was killed was some bloodthirst raider wielding a weapon and ready to kill you at any second.

Dealing with two colonists having negative opinions about the other is one thing, but when the entire colony sees a colonist in a negative way, that can lead to a lot of insults and social fights, which are bad not only to the "child killer" but also to the entire colony.

I'm totally fine with the mood debuff for killing children (even if they are raiders), but in my opinion, killing a hostile child should not be causing the colony to view the killer in a negative way.

[Shavanna]

True. It should be just for neutral or better viewed ones. An enemy is an enemy. And killing an enemy prevents deaths of our own colonists, so it should even give a little positive opinion (like 'defended our colony +5 for 1d' or so)

[Pangaron]

Honestly, unless they are a psychopath or have some psychopathic ideology, I think the debuf is fitting for both cases. I would certainly have a debuff towards anyone killing a child, even if in self defence. The person themselves should absolutely hate themselves too for the rest of their lives (unless psychopath). Then again, I would have similar debuffs for things that are not even noticed by the game.

Perhaps more ways for non-lethal approach would be fitting. Or some insane idealogy settings. In conlusion killing people is really wrong, killing children is absolutely despicable. No matter if they are little crusaders, or misled by their parents or society.

Child raiders are super hard mode and it is good that it is purely optional.

[UltimateTobi]

Originally posted by Pangaron:

Honestly, unless they are a psychopath or have some psychopathic ideology, I think the debuf is fitting for both cases. I would certainly have a debuff towards anyone killing a child, even if in self defence. The person themselves should absolutely hate themselves too for the rest of their lives (unless psychopath).

Why would you have a lower opinion of him or her if the other alternative would be death? I don't hold it against anyone if they had to defend himself or herself, no matter the target. Or would you expect for that person to lay down his or her life, just because the target is younger?

[Henry the Unfamiliar]

Plenty of people who have to take a life in a you-or-them situation feel guilt/PTSD afterwards. For a child it would be far worse. Especially cause they're kids who likely got forced to do the raid by a warlord (see Joseph Kony, remember him?)

When it comes to trauma and your reaction to it: logic doesn't matter one iota. Bet you could search for stories of soldiers who had to gun down a child soldier to survive and how badly that ♥♥♥♥♥♥ them up.

[UltimateTobi]

Originally posted by Lionel Richie:

Plenty of people who have to take a life in a you-or-them situation feel guilt/PTSD afterwards. For a child it would be far worse. Especially cause they're kids who likely got forced to do the raid by a warlord (see Joseph Kony, remember him?)

When it comes to trauma and your reaction to it: logic doesn't matter one iota. Bet you could search for stories of soldiers who had to gun down a child soldier to survive and how badly that ♥♥♥♥♥♥ them up.

That's all mood debuff, with which OP is fine.
The issue is with opinion.

[Henry the Unfamiliar]

That's what I get for skimming, my b.

I guess it depends on if the dev team want you to try to incapacitate kids rather than use lethals, or it's just an early new-DLC oversight. I'd suggest just disabling child raiders for now.

Def need to keep the opinion modifier in there for most cases though (when you're on the offensive) other than being raided by them. I guess it's optional for a reason

[Quenlin]

You can easily mod this out yourself by editing the .xml files. I'm not familiar enough with this game to make proper mods however.

Go to biotech/defs/thoughtdefs/thoughts_memory_death.xml and edit this part.

<label>killed a child</label>
<description>Killing one so young feels wrong, no matter the situation.</description>
<baseMoodEffect>-6</baseMoodEffect>

Then open thoughts_situation_social.xml and change this part.

<label>killed a child</label>
<baseOpinionOffset>-20</baseOpinionOffset>

[Pangaron]

Originally posted by UltimateTobi:

Originally posted by Pangaron:

Honestly, unless they are a psychopath or have some psychopathic ideology, I think the debuf is fitting for both cases. I would certainly have a debuff towards anyone killing a child, even if in self defence. The person themselves should absolutely hate themselves too for the rest of their lives (unless psychopath).

Why would you have a lower opinion of him or her if the other alternative would be death? I don't hold it against anyone if they had to defend himself or herself, no matter the target. Or would you expect for that person to lay down his or her life, just because the target is younger?

I would expect people to use lesser force, possibly non-lethal one against children if there is such need. Whether the game currently allows such option sufficiently, that is another another question. Most societies strongly frown upon on arming children, thus the option of children in raids being disabled by default.

[Shavanna]

Thats from a point of view of a more or less civilised society, we have today. But: the societies on the rimworlds arent known to be the most civilised kinds. They live in a kill or be killed environment. The game itself also has no moral malus for arming the children of your own colony because of that reason.

[Jaasrg]

What if the killer is also a child?

[Synchrotron]

Originally posted by RianQuenlin:

You can easily mod this out yourself by editing the .xml files. I'm not familiar enough with this game to make proper mods however.

Go to biotech/defs/thoughtdefs/thoughts_memory_death.xml and edit this part.

<label>killed a child</label>
<description>Killing one so young feels wrong, no matter the situation.</description>
<baseMoodEffect>-6</baseMoodEffect>

Then open thoughts_situation_social.xml and change this part.

<label>killed a child</label>
<baseOpinionOffset>-20</baseOpinionOffset>

Editing the xml file is easy but unfortunately it's too simplistic for me, because it makes any child killing not result in negative opinion, even if you straight up execute an innocent child in cold blood. What I was proposing is that only hostile children will not to cause the loss in opinion when they are killed, but I don't think this can be made without actual C# code built into a mod.