Game randomly adding relatives/relationships to my pawns?

[schnappkatze]

Please forgive me if that has been talked about already: Is it intended game behaviour that the game randomly adds relatives or lovers to my pawns?

I started a new crashlanded scenario, and after a few months in there is a transport pod crash and I get the message that the crashed person is the lover of one of my pawns (which they 100% weren't before), which kinda throws a wrench in the story I made up for these 3 colonists. If it were established from the pawn's backstory or social tab that the pawn had a lost lover then it would be something else, but this feels just random and stupid. "This pawn did not know, but they were in a relationship the whole time! Bit weird that they tried to woo the other colonists, but whatever."

If I remember correctly that also has happened to my pawns before, like "you gotta rescue your brother. Oh yeah, you have a brother from now on." Maybe it is interesting sometimes, but for me in most cases it just invalidates the story my pawns had until then.

Is that intended behaviour (and if so, can it be switched off?) or is that a bug? I am using a bunch of standard mods, Harmony, Realistic Rooms, Where is my weapon, Tech advancing and such, nothing drastic.

If a mod can prevent that from happening in the first place, I would gladly install it (I don't want to use character editor to fix it afterwards, a) that ruins immersion for me and b) I can't resist using it all the time once it is installed)

[schnappkatze]

Alrighty, I found a mod that is supposed to fix this:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2583377522

Would still be interested in opinions on this, do you enjoy the randomly added relations and I'm the weird one here, or is this a longstanding issue?

[Vermillion Cardinal]

I'm fine with it. It does throw a wrench into things like when I intend for two pawns to get engaged and suddenly one gains a husband, but I just roll with it.

Sometimes the game even helpfully deletes the relationship for you thanks to its zealous pruning; I once did all I could to rescue a colonist's sister only for her to revert to being a neutral NPC after the rescue, which was fortunate since she later died of an infection anyway.

The fact that the relationships mean next to nothing most of the time is probably RimWorld's worst weakness.

[marcusaddamsson]

IMHO, it's generally regarded as an oddity, rather than a negative per se. Recall that the first scenario (crashlanded) is kinda where the game started, so the idea is a intersolar colony ship breaks up in orbit and you're just making the best of the situation, along with all the rest of your shipmates. And then the tribal start also has a similar vibe, in that your village was attacked and everyone scattered. So in both of those scenarios, you'd very likely have relations floating about this hostile planet.

But it can be rather jarring/random when it happens. I recall once when I had two of my colonists' wives die on my map to two different timberwolf events, all in the span of a week. Bizarre. Remember that RW is a storytelling engine more than anything else... so gotta keep that storyline peppy, eh?

[Astasia]

Originally posted by schnappkatze:

Is it intended game behaviour that the game randomly adds relatives or lovers to my pawns?

Yes, it is intended. I think the important thing to note is RimWorld is trying to create a story to tell you, not the other way around. For the most part you are supposed to go with the flow and fill in the blanks, rather than trying to plan a story out ahead of time. Starting with a pair of lovers you think are going to get married and start a family, only for a spouse to show up randomly, is an interesting plot twist and leaves a lot of room for your imagination to figure out why they weren't together before and why one of them found a new lover, there's a lot of story to be told there.

That said, I don't always play that way myself, I do sometimes have characters I create with a fixed background and story and the game can occasionally try to mess that up. I just use the Character Editor mod to drop problematic relationships if they interfere with what I'm doing. I think a mod like No Random Relations would make the game very dull though, as those relationships for other characters can be really interesting and change how you approach recruitment or combat. Somebody's mother shows up as a raider, do you try to down them with fists, do you use a shock lance, do you recruit them after, or do you just let them die and deal with the mood penalty? Having to make those decisions is interesting gameplay.

[schnappkatze]

Originally posted by Astasia:

Originally posted by schnappkatze:

Is it intended game behaviour that the game randomly adds relatives or lovers to my pawns?

Yes, it is intended. I think the important thing to note is RimWorld is trying to create a story to tell you, not the other way around. For the most part you are supposed to go with the flow and fill in the blanks, rather than trying to plan a story out ahead of time. Starting with a pair of lovers you think are going to get married and start a family, only for a spouse to show up randomly, is an interesting plot twist and leaves a lot of room for your imagination to figure out why they weren't together before and why one of them found a new lover, there's a lot of story to be told there.

That said, I don't always play that way myself, I do sometimes have characters I create with a fixed background and story and the game can occasionally try to mess that up. I just use the Character Editor mod to drop problematic relationships if they interfere with what I'm doing. I think a mod like No Random Relations would make the game very dull though, as those relationships for other characters can be really interesting and change how you approach recruitment or combat. Somebody's mother shows up as a raider, do you try to down them with fists, do you use a shock lance, do you recruit them after, or do you just let them die and deal with the mood penalty? Having to make those decisions is interesting gameplay.

Those are pretty good points (as always) and now I understand why that system is put into the game. Also well put with "Rimworld tells YOU a story".
I personally think it would be better to bar the "lover" thing from this and only allow relatives or ex-lovers, as it can be rather realistic that a pawn has some never mentioned "ex" somewhere, but a having a lover somewhere in the world would, to my feeling, be something that so important to that pawn that it should be noted in the social tab from the start and just feels weird when the game randomly decides that the pawn was in a relationship this whole time. Everyone has parents somewhere, no need to fill the social tab with them, but being in a relationship?

Also, funny: I nursed the crashed pawn back to health and instead of joining my colony he just left the map without taking notice of his lover. I am always a bit disappointed about the underdeveloped relationship system in Rimworld, and I would gladly spend money on a DLC that improves on that.

[marcusaddamsson]

Heh. Actually, Ideo dlc could've helped you with the rescuee... assuming you'd been able to take advantage of it. He left your colony because whatever personality he had didn't jive with whatever set up you have in your colony. With Ideo, theoretically you could've flipped his Ideo to your colony's.. and he'd very likely want to stay.

Just a tip: if you really want a pawn, you'll need to capture it and process it. Once I had a wildwoman I really wanted to tame... but when an active defoliator cluster killed a few 'visitors', the visitors dropped a few meals. It was winter and she was hungry... so she was gonna cross the map to eat... and die. I ended up downing her and capturing her for her own good. Made great art that one.

[schnappkatze]

Originally posted by marcusaddamsson:

Heh. Actually, Ideo dlc could've helped you with the rescuee... assuming you'd been able to take advantage of it. He left your colony because whatever personality he had didn't jive with whatever set up you have in your colony. With Ideo, theoretically you could've flipped his Ideo to your colony's.. and he'd very likely want to stay.

Just a tip: if you really want a pawn, you'll need to capture it and process it. Once I had a wildwoman I really wanted to tame... but when an active defoliator cluster killed a few 'visitors', the visitors dropped a few meals. It was winter and she was hungry... so she was gonna cross the map to eat... and die. I ended up downing her and capturing her for her own good. Made great art that one.

Huh, I use ideo but have the belief system switched off currently to focus on the biotech stuff.

Thanks for the capture tip - it comes with disadvantages though, this pawn for example belonged to the Empire and I didn't really wanted to throw the Empire's opinion of my colony away.

[marcusaddamsson]

Yea, I get that. It's not without downsides. FYI, if you draft your best social pawn... you can 'arrest' friendly pawns. Like one of your colonists, if you needed to 'convert' him or whatever. Plus, a drafted doctor can actually 'tend' pawns in the field. This carries additional risk, as infection rates are higher when tending outside. But sometimes on those drop pod events, if you don't do a little field medic'ing... that pawn will bleed out on the trip. One last thing, if you tend a pawn that isn't hurt really badly... he might just limp off the map immediately.

[Steelfleece]

After the 'colonist suddenly had a fat cannibal husband-father she totally forgot about' incident I'm much more open to deleting relations in Character Editor.

[martindirt]

All of you know, you don't need mod (Character Editor) to remove unwanted relationship, don't you?
Open dev tools, Remove relationship tool. Click on the pawn, choose the unwanted relationship. Job done.
Same way you can force add relationships...

[Bathory]

Originally posted by Steelfleece:

After the 'colonist suddenly had a fat cannibal husband-father she totally forgot about' incident I'm much more open to deleting relations in Character Editor.

Dude what, that happened to you too? I thought it was a bug when my engaged pawn's father-♥♥♥-husband showed up. Later on her brother/ex-lover showed up too, and she killed him.

[boytype]

I am not a fan of the random social relationship generation for starting pawns at all. For the colonists that join, I am fine with it, but for the starting colonists it is no good

They could have a origin trait associated with the starting conditions that determines what your character was doing when they crash landed at the start (or whatnot), such as The Long Sleep, Lost In Space, Unexpected Detour, or Native Life, that could help mesh the story or something, but it's probably too much trouble to bother with.

But to have 2 kids and an ex-husband pop up out of nowhere (All of who are 50 or younger) on the specific Rimworld I happened to crash on, for my coreworld escapee who has been in cryptosleep for 2000 years is immersion breaking af.

[Wasted]

relationships/relatives generation is definitely a bit wonky for the many reasons already mentioned. I anticipate/am hopeful they will rework that system in the future to be more believable. It can be a bit immersion breaking for sure when you see a new relationship and its completely absurd/improbable/impossible.

seems like they need to make the generation a bit more restrictive

that said i still prefer the current system to nothing

[Wasted]

Originally posted by marcusaddamsson:

Yea, I get that. It's not without downsides. FYI, if you draft your best social pawn... you can 'arrest' friendly pawns. Like one of your colonists, if you needed to 'convert' him or whatever. Plus, a drafted doctor can actually 'tend' pawns in the field. This carries additional risk, as infection rates are higher when tending outside. But sometimes on those drop pod events, if you don't do a little field medic'ing... that pawn will bleed out on the trip. One last thing, if you tend a pawn that isn't hurt really badly... he might just limp off the map immediately.

speaking of drafting doctors and field medics. i usually assign all my colonists 3 regular medicines. then i can always "tend with medicine" when they are drafted. infection is much less of a concern than bleeding out is especially after mid game. Also when you are capturing/healing pawns when doing a caravans its much easier and faster.I also set all my colonists to self tend enabled. you can still order them to lay in a medical bed if you want.

in your hospital you can always put a patient with an infection into the highest quality bed to help immunity gain faster as needed.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by Wasted:

It can be a bit immersion breaking for sure when you see a new relationship and its completely absurd/improbable/impossible.

They are never "impossible," or all that "improbable" even since there is a lot of room for interpretation at the start. You don't know how long your casket has been in orbit before being swallowed by the atmosphere, or how large the ship originally was, or what the landing plan was. The game has some pretty strict rules in place on relationship generation so it always "makes sense." It's only when you create your own headcanon for a character ahead of time that things get wonky.