SUGGESTION-Nerfing Children: Exclusions then Randomization

[Liwet]

Children are incredibly powerful due to the player's ability to choose both their passions and their traits. Their power could be dropped down a bit if those choices were a bit randomized. This also includes Vat children which I'll mention later.

I feel that instead of choosing passions, the game should randomly choose for us. However, we'd have some control over which passions are picked. For instance, when a child has a growth moment, the game will randomly pick 6 skills. For each growth tier that gave you a passion point, the game would pick an additional skill and then give you the option to exclude one of the skills. Getting the maximum 3 passions would give you 9 skills to choose from, you would exclude 3, and the game would randomly give 3 passion points out among the remaining 6 skills. You're still incentivized to max out the child's growth tiers but have less control over how passions are given out and therefore you get slightly less powerful children.

It can work the same way with traits but with 5 exclusions. The game will pick 3 random traits and then randomly pick a trait from among them during a growth moment. If you reach various growth tier, the game will pick another trait and give you an option to exclude a trait. At maximum growth tiers, the game would pick 8 traits and you would get to exclude 5 of them. The game would then randomly pick a trait from the remaining 3.

Leveling a child in a vat from 0-3 should come with more consequences than just unhappy parents. For example, the child should come with incapabilities such as the inability to do social, to haul, plant, etc for each year they spend in the vat from 0-3. Maybe with a nearby console, colonists can research/hack and exclude certain traits from being picked so that you can make sure this vat baby can always haul or can always do combat. Children being raised well by their parents should generally be better than children raised in growth vats.

[Jaasrg]

It's already random with the selections, depending on rolls you could get bad and worse (trait) choices.
Sure you didn't typo and meant buff instead of nerf?

[The Blind One]

This is actually quite a decent idea. This doesn't take away from any of the randomness and does severely reduce the number of god pawns that children become. I really like it.

I think this is a good suggestion, but I think the devs aren't willing to really change on their current design.

[Cellar_Cat]

Personally I like their current state. They are a long term investment that—if you pull it off—rewards a pawn that is, if not necessarily brilliant, at least decent to have. You can get some mediocre rolls with their passions and traits and end up with someone who is slightly good at lots of unrelated things they cannot realistically find time for, but the outcome can't quite be terrible. Well, unless you grow them to adulthood in a vat. Those ones I don't see the point in.

Which is exactly why I would not want them to be more random. To me, the outcome of raising a child is measured against what I have always done before children were an option... reject every potential colonist that isn't ideal until the game throws a good one at me by sheer attrition. No raising required, just conversion and recruiting.

If children were going to be a long term investment and still be that random, what would be the point...?

[boytype]

You are talking about massively reducing the reward for dedicating a large amount of time and work to developing children in the colony.

If it worked the way your talking about, a lot more people would just toss them in a vat or just stick to recruiting instead of having kids at all.

[Makkenhoff]

I get where you are coming from, try turning down the default 400% growth rate of children in the custom option, down to 100% and try again. That 4x time makes things a lot quicker. But, make no mistake, I don't want anything to do with this kind of change. It doesn't sound fun, it sounds more like I'd turn children off.

[Yxklyx]

My vat child ended up with no skill over 2 except for Social and several bad traits - not a single passion.

[Limdood]

hard disagree here.

it takes 4 years for a baby to hit 16 years old (yes, they're "adults" at 13, but with like a 77% global work speed)

The contribution to the colony is also pretty weak....near nothing for year #1, very little (like....cleaning...) for year #2. Most things (slowly) for year 3, and pretty much all things (slowly) for year 4.

Children are also more fragile than your 80 year old frail researcher with the bad back. If you choose to use them in a firefight and they take a moderate strength gunshot, they are quite likely to lose a limb or die outright, since their body parts have such low health.

They don't even get those skills you choose. It isn't like prisoners or starting pawns, who often have significant starting bonuses in the things they're passionate in. You simply pick the passions, and you have to build those skills up from 0 (or like 1 or 2 if they did learning for that skill as a child)

THAT much investment deserves a pawn with "good" (not ideal...you're still unlikely to be able to make your tough, nimble, brawler unless you get really lucky on picks) traits, and passions in a place where they can benefit the role you want them in.



also...

My vat child ended up with no skill over 2 except for Social and several bad traits - not a single passion.

you should probably try raising the pawn. growth vat is fine until age 3, but if you anything more than 3 random traits, no skills, and no incapabilities, then you'll need to engage with the learning system for children.

[Astasia]

A suggestion to "nerf children" sounds like a kneejerk reaction based on looking at the potential outcome, without factoring in the investment. By the time children become functioning adults you have basically already finished the game in most cases. You are introducing fresh pawns with decent passions and traits into a fully established colony filled with specialized pawns already at near 20 in their respective skills. It doesn't matter that much how good children might become at that point, you've had years to cherry pick and recruit the best raiders and beggars and build them up into much stronger colonists. If anything children still need a buff, they need some sort of advantage over normal pawns to make them really worth using, otherwise they are just a novelty and function as simple hauling/cleaning bots for the most part since that's all they can really do for most of the game.

My counter-suggestion is to keep the mechanics as they are, but add special traits that only children can get that act as stronger versions of base game traits. Something to make the years of dealing with fragile pawns incapable of combat worthwhile in an endgame colony when they finally grow up. Maybe even make it a generational thing, so gen 1 get moderately strong traits, and if you play long enough for them to have kids have gen 2 get even stronger versions, something to incentivize really long playthroughs.

[The Blind One]

Originally posted by Astasia:

A suggestion to "nerf children" sounds like a kneejerk reaction based on looking at the potential outcome, without factoring in the investment.

I strongly disagree with a lot of your points. You're forgetting that the game also has the archonexus ending where you have to restart your colony 2 times. Bringing children into this game makes them incredibly overpowered as they currently are in the game.

OP's suggestion is actually brilliant. It still rewards you plenty for raising children while not taking away the story telling and random elements that rimworld is known for.

In its current implementation children are somewhat contradictory to the design philosophy of the game as well. If you think prepared carefully shouldn't be in the base game because it would take away the RNG element of rimworld, then I cannot fathom why you'd think that the current implementation of children is anyway near objectively good. It's a clear contradiction in game mechanics where you can hand pick and choose traits and passions for a pawn. OP's suggestion actually makes it much more in line with the core mechanics of rimworld with RNG elements.

What I think should be done too children, especially less 'developed' children, is that they are far far too weak if you don't let them run wild like feral children until the age of 13. Growth tiers 1 to 3 are basically useless and 4 to 6 extremely mediocre while also the hardest to overcome. While growth tiers 7 is good growth tier 8 is godlike with 3 passions.

The child raising rewards are all disproportionally stacked at the very end punishing players from using kids in any meaningful way or suffer the complete retardation of their child pawns. There is barely if any colony investment requiremed for raising a child aside from food & shelter. They don't even require instruction from their adult pawns to mature and learn properly. Just let them run wild (in their designated area) until they are 13.

A more sensible solution would be to give more (random) passions and traits in the early tiers and more (player selected) traits at the end. Right now it's just not balanced and personally I find children to be quite awkwardly implemented. If you're anyway near smart you just set them up with a safety zone and you will NEVER need to worry about them unless all your base defenses are destroyed at which point it's GG anyway.

[boytype]

Originally posted by The Blind One:

There is barely if any colony investment requiremed for raising a child aside from food & shelter. They don't even require instruction from their adult pawns to mature and learn properly. Just let them run wild (in their designated area) until they are 13.

I havent found that to be true at all.
To get to level 6ish, maybe to 7 if you are very lucky and the kid never gets ill or injured at all and has to spend time recovering, then you do not need to spend a ton of colonist time on them.

But if you want to consistently get to 7+, I have found that they require lessons (which require a blackboard or 3 attached to desks) from a colonist with high social up to every other day, which takes that colonist away from other work for multiple hours of the day. And if you have multiple children, that means multiple pawns spending a chunk of their day doing not much else except teaching.

There is also the crafting and resource requirement for clothing and the management that is required to specifically keep them out of harms way during raids and events.

Thats my experience at least.

[The Blind One]

Originally posted by boytype:

Thats my experience at least.

I have found that they require lessons (which require a blackboard or 3 attached to desks) from a colonist with high social up to every other day, which takes that colonist away from other work for multiple hours of the day.

They do not need lessons from an adult to gain learning at a schooldesk. The blackboards in fact reduce the amount of XP they gain from learning with an adult. While it does increase the learning speed and how fast it fills up the learning bar, it actually decreases the total XP gained for skills from study activities. The pro meta is to NOT use blackboards because of this quirk (ironically).

To get to level 6ish, maybe to 7 if you are very lucky and the kid never gets ill or injured at all and has to spend time recovering, then you do not need to spend a ton of colonist time on them.

Why are your kids getting injured? If you properly zone them into an area and leave them be they should (practically) never get injured. The occasional illness can still occur and you do have to babysit them to make sure they get out of bed and do some learning in the mean time to keep the rate up but that one can be pretty rare depending on story teller and biome.

Getting to level 7 should be easy and obtainable nearly every single time even with an illness, getting to level 8 is the tricky part since that one requires a near flawless average learning rate of 90% or higher. That's still easily obtainable if you simply zone them into a safe area and leave them be but the occasional mishap can happen or an out of sync learning with sleeping schedule can cause them to fall behind by a single digit percent due to how badly the children's learning mechanic is implemented.

And if you have multiple children, that means multiple pawns spending a chunk of their day doing not much else except teaching.

You literally don't need to do this. I'm not even kidding. You can literally let them just run wild and it will NOT have any impact on your child's growth tier development. It will only impact the occasional skill gain they get from being taught a lesson at a school desk by an adult but you can absolutely 100% ignore this without any impact on their growth tiers.

There is also the crafting and resource requirement for clothing and the management that is required to specifically keep them out of harms way during raids and events.

You mean that one children's garment you make? That's your 'investment'? And how hard is it for you to simply switch out their zones during a raid? As I said, just zone them into a safe area from the start. The only thing you'll need to worry about then is the occasional drop pod raid and then you'll just micro them away from any invaders. How hard is that?

Zone them into a child safe area,
Make sure there is plenty of food accessible to them and give them a bed.
Make them 1 garment to wear till they are 13
Ignore them till they are 13
God Pawn. Every. Single. Time

You don't need to invest any adult pawn time into them if you don't want too and it will not impact their growth tier development.

The only time they need anything from the player is when they get sick or injured which as I stated should be extremely rare and if they do just a tiny bit of micro from the player can save their growth tiers to ensure a tier 8 pawn.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by The Blind One:

Bringing children into this game makes them incredibly overpowered as they currently are in the game.

How can pawns with fewer random passions than normal pawns and a mix of hopefully not negative traits if you are lucky possibly be considered overpowered? At absolute best if you are lucky enough you can fill in a gap, introducing a low skill pawn with a passion in a skill you need, several years into the game. Objectively children are currently worse than normally generated pawns, with lower starting skills and fewer potential passions, and a few extra chances to not have negative traits.

Children are highly random, there's no guarantee you will get passions you want on them and no guarantee they will have good traits.

I think you are confusing gene-modding with children.

Originally posted by The Blind One:

If you think prepared carefully shouldn't be in the base game because it would take away the RNG element of rimworld

I absolutely don't think this and I'm not sure why you would mention something like that. I love the extra customization of gene-modding, and the ability to avoid a select few blacklisted traits on children if you invest enough in them.

[The Blind One]

random pawns 'can' have more passions than 9 that is true, but good luck trying to find those. Those are quite rare if not just exotic tier rare. Now try finding them with passions AND traits that are good without annoying backstories that handicap them.

For child traits, you do realize you can choose the option for 'none' in trait selection (since one of the newer patches) on a growth moment right? That means that any semi-decent growth tier child (something like tier 3+) will NEVER have a pure negative trait unless you purposefully put one on them. That is OP af.

Objectively children are currently worse than normally generated pawns, with lower starting skills and fewer potential passions

Objectively you are incorrect. Generate 100 random pawns and jot down how many passions they have on average. Your children will not have restricted work types, no bad traits (unless you purposefully choose them) and 7 to 9 passions which you can spread out evenly or concentrate to your desire.

How often do you see a random pawn with 3 good traits, no restricted worktypes and 9 passions spread out or concentrated into every skill you could possibly want? You don't, because they are statistically near impossible to find due to RNG.

So children are objectively amazing since you can hand tailor them and I don't know why you'd say anything else.

Yes they do require 3 years of food/shelter/security investment but you don't even need to educate them with your adult pawns, in that sense they take even less adult pawn work time than an animal handler spends to keep an animal trained. Just let them hang out in the back like livestock until the 3 years are up and you have a god tier pawn join the colony.

[Astasia]

It's not "9 passions" since burning passion counts as two. It is extremely common to find pawns in the game with 2-3 burning passions and 2-3 normal passions, finding one without negative traits is not hard, and they usually start with like 10-12 in the burning passion skills. How often do I see recruits with good traits and passions I need? Every single time I have recruited a colonist in the past 2000 hours of playing. It's not that hard, especially if you use shock lances and check live raiders. One raid of 30-50 pawns is likely going to have a better potential recruit than a child will grow up to be.

You definitely don't always get "3 good traits" with children. Often you are picking the least terrible trait offered. The system is more random than you make it out to be.

[The Blind One]

I was counting burning passions as 2 passions jfyi. Getting more than 6 passions on a RNG pawn is already a good deal that isn't as common as you make it sound out to be.

You're talking about farming a specific pawn from a raid of 30 to 50+ pawns. There ya go, you just proved my point. They aren't as common as you claim they are. You have to dig through dozens and dozens of raiders to get a single good one. And now you also mention you have to use a shock lances to get them. That's 700 silver and a lucky trader that has to have a shocklance for you to get a raider you want. Assuming your lucky and he doesn't blow himself up or gets killed in action that is. This maybe easy for you with god knows how many hours played but for an average player this isn't likely to occur especially if their desired pawn insta-dies from getting downed.

Just to test this out: I just spawned a raid with 54 pawns. A total of 2 had 7 passions, and 1 lucky RNG boy had 10 passions. The average of the rest was about ~5ish

Another pirate raid: 45 pawns. total of 5 had 7 passions, 1 had 8 passions and another pawn had 9 passions.

So out of a ~99 pawns in this sample size, only 2 pawns had 8 or higher passions with only 1 pawn exceeding the child raised pawns.

Only 2 out of 100 had anything close to what children brought to the table and only 1 in a 100 'can' have more passions than a child pawn but has random traits.

I understand your argument that you 'can' and likely 'will' farm raids for excellent pawns if you put your mind to it, using shocklances and other methods and all, that is absolutely true. There were some good pawns up for grabs in the raids, but that doesn't invalidate the fact that child pawns are just as good if not better than the best raider you can snatch up. If it takes you 100 raiders to get even close to the same result as 1 child pawn, I don't think you can realistically say they are bad. They are amazing.