Relationship culling

[Inari]

It has happened twice now in my current playthrough that relationships between pawns suddenly disappear completely. The first were a pair of half-sisters, colony born children who suddenly became acquaintances.
Now it happened to two of my starter pawns, brothers. They turned to acquaintance now. With that one of them now also has no relationship with his nephews.

Especially with Biotech and the introduction of having children this is a real bummer and an issue that has been around for some time as I found.

The pawns had relatives in other factions who are also gone now. Could this be the reason why their own relationship got culled, too?
And is there a solution?

Thanks

[schnappkatze]

This was also a regular thing in 1.3. Quite surprising to me that it still isn't fixed, especially with Biotech. Does anyone know what stops the dev from fixing this? It quite often messes with the storytelling-part of the game.

[Inari]

This is exactly why I am so upset. This ruins the storytelling of the run. And not even dev-mode can restore sibling relationships.

[schnappkatze]

Yes! I actually had with my naked brutality pawn with no family a mission that offered me to rescue my pawn's long lost brother, which I found weird but thought "alright, that's now part of the backstory" and rescued him. After rescueing, he suddenly the game decided he wasn't my pawn's brother anymore and just some dude.
Super frustrating when you like the story-generating part of the game.

I actually remember that I made a bug report in the official forum about this like a year ago, but there was no reaction. Maybe also make a bug report? I am surprised as it is rather unlike this dev to simply shrug something like this off.

[Astasia]

You can correct the relationship using the Character Editor mod.

I don't know why the bug still exists at this point. It's a confirmed bug and was verified by the devs and added to the list of things to fix back in early 1.3. Maybe it fell through the cracks, maybe fixing it caused some worse side effect and it was put on the back-burner, or maybe it was fixed and it broke again.

[Inari]

Thank you for the recommendation.

It is very strange that it still exists. I hope it will be fixed eventually. It has a rather big impact for me and Rimworld storytelling.

[Venetia]

Yeah, I really hate this bug. I reported it, too, in the official forums, but it's still present. I scour every update to see if it's mentioned as being fixed, but no luck yet. :( It sucks, esp since biotech has families as one of the selling points.

Didn't know character editor would fix it, though.

[Inari]

It was a kind of wonky fix. It only worked from selecting one brother and setting the relationship. If I chose the other brother first, some strange new relationships with other relatives occured. But since I never used the Editor before, it could be just me not knowing how to do it.
So far they are still brothers. Fingers crossed...

[boytype]

Cant wait to read what happens when one of them tries to have kids! (especially if Character Editor is still installed)

[Inari]

I uninstalled it it right after, because there was a strange skintone glitch with another colonist.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by Inari:

If I chose the other brother first, some strange new relationships with other relatives occured.

Character Editor will show hidden relations if that's what you mean. Normally the game will only show you these relations in the character tab once they appear on your map or in a quest for the first time, but often a colonist does have a whole family tree that you just have no knowledge of without peeking into something like Character Editor.

Originally posted by boytype:

Cant wait to read what happens when one of them tries to have kids! (especially if Character Editor is still installed)

There was a bug with Character Editor a couple weeks ago after a game update released and broke things where colonists were being born with the wrong bodies, but that was pretty quickly fixed. If that's what you mean.

Originally posted by Inari:

I uninstalled it it right after, because there was a strange skintone glitch with another colonist.

Ya the recent patch for the game broke the mod again and is causing that skin issue, will probably be fixed in today if I were to guess. Luckily ya, it is a mod you can install, make changes, and uninstall though.

[Inari]

I expected the hidden relatives, but starting from one brother the grandmother also became the mother. I do not need to explain what that did to all the other relations in the family...
Starting from the other brother this did not happen at all. No idea why that was an issue.

Since I do not need the mod for anything else I immediately removed it.

[G0emi]

*relevant necro*
Just happened to me to a new recruited pawn.
Had her sitting in the cell to be converted to my tribe and she had a son who was part of a friendly faction.
Once she came over to my faction that "son" completely vanished. No more relationship to her son, just up and gone, from one moment to the other.
:/

[Astasia]

Originally posted by G0emi:

*relevant necro*
Just happened to me to a new recruited pawn.
Had her sitting in the cell to be converted to my tribe and she had a son who was part of a friendly faction.
Once she came over to my faction that "son" completely vanished. No more relationship to her son, just up and gone, from one moment to the other.
:/

That one is probably not a bug. The game is supposed to protect colonist relation links, but it doesn't care about non-colonist relations. The world pawn cleanup regularly culls world pawns to keep the game running smooth, so having a prisoner lose a family member to world pawn cleanup is not unusual.

[G0emi]

Thats ... I'm at a loss for words to be honest xD
I could understand that for the sake of dead people, people with relationship to your pawns out in the world who died ...
But a son? (also in a friendly tribe, not even a bad bad "I-dont-like-you-anymore-enemy tribe)
Ahhhhh for randys sake, as a storyteller this is really bonkers if relationships are not being tracked, like, a mother suddenly "forgetting" she has a son somewher out there -_-