Could there potentially be post-cataclysm children? like maybe if you leave an NPC of opposite genders in a room after they get to know each other, and you have to feed and protect the child for in game years, maybe there should be a way of speeding up time such as needing a certain amount of kcal in ur basecamp, and then u speed up by like 20 days
3 Likes
I like the idea of rebuilding civilization by starting a family, and all the things that come with that, but there’s probably really good reasons that children aren’t in the game already. Reminds me of Rimworld, a game where you can harvest organs and sell characters into slavery. Of course, people have modded children into that game.
2 Likes
Human reproduction may fall into this category. However since you can find cloning vats in labs and you can also get human samples, this may actually be an accepted way to reproduce.
3 Likes
There was some debate a while ago in regards to children NPCs in game and how it would work because morality and all that stuff - ie “killing children” and all those things that may or may not be morally dubious in the game’s setting.
Imo, we could assume most of them were just wiped out because everyone went mad, and due to their inherent fragility and reliance on their “parents”, they were probably all killed off by the crazed civilians or cops (hence why we have a stupid amount of zombie children that was actually never justified under “The Blob Retcon” lore. The only justification to children zombies’ existences is just “they all simultaneously died one day.”). (and btw, we still feel “guilty” for killing a thing that actively wants to kill us… huh).
Personally I think we don’t need NPC children, not until at least NPCs can become somewhat more self suficient and less of a burden than they currently are.
4 Likes
They are planning to implement children in the refugee center so they probably will allow you to have children yourself or start out with them (gotta make NPC´s more human and less stupid first though)
3 Likes
Hypothetically we could add something like this for well-established factions and have most of it happen off-screen, but there is a ton of stuff that would need to happen first.
5 Likes
Couldn´t we have a scenario that starts with a child or a family to take care off. Would be good for roleplay and give your another primary objective in a playthrough besides grinding and becoming a superhuman/monster.
7 Likes
I’m somewhat surprised there weren’t already children NPC in the game. Unless we are just talking about the means of new children being borne.
ok first of all i agree its stupid that we still feel guilty for killing zombie children, but also since when has a game stopped something from happening because its “morally dubious”
3 Likes
Maybe there should be better reasons to illustrate why you are feeling guilt.
E.g “You swear you saw this kid once when it was still human” or “The anguished moaning still sounds eerily similar to the cries of a human child”.
And similar stuff if there was a possibility to kill young human NPCs. But you can already see how this is morally dubious because in real life it has always been a heinous crime to kill children and deaths of children not caused by murder are especially tragic due to the perceived innocence of children.
For very good reasons almost any society worldwide has accepted that and anything not following this “rule” is likely to face harsh criticism since this is a topic best untouched.
7 Likes
i think that u should feel guilt for a percentage of zombie childrne who have this description of “you swear u saw this when it was a human” and the other percentage u shouldnt feel guilt or atleast reduced guilt at the beginning, also i feel like as the in-game time progresses u should feel less and less guilty over time for actions
1 Like
I’m only somewhat surprised by there being no children NPC’s. Mostly due to having come across a couple corpses that were of children, with a cougar nearby. But the implementation of them as NPC’s would require some finagling for sure, so I’m only partly surprised by them not already being implemented.
I do like this idea. Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead? More like Cataclysm Kings 3.
How would mutants get children? Does a fish mutant just lay a few thousand egg´s or and a slime players slimesprings also children?
1 Like
It’s unclear if mutants can bear children but they’d probably be mostly human if they did, I guess. I’d be surprised no end if their reproductive organs weren’t a total hash though.
I do plan on adding existing children to the game though. the current plan is to add them as a default-on mod and ensure they are not plot critical if turned off. We’re less concerned about morality and more about a constant flood of extremely tasteless edgelord posts.
Problem with that is that we see many of the mutant animals reproducing and have mutants as offspring as well. We see this in the gaint bugs but the blob seems to work slightly different in bugs than mammals. But even in mammals we have spideer fawn which seems to imply that some mutations might be hireditary and mutants can reproduce. If mutant animals can reproduce than I doubt it would be any different for humans.
Maybe it is about degree? So if you aren´t post-threshold your genes are still completely human but when you go post-threshold your genes actually mutate which is why you can´t undo all your mutations completely. Maybe things only become hereditary or you become infertile if you go post-threshold and some of your changes are irreversible.
Well, most creatures engage in sexual reproduction, so all of those would presumably require a partner of the same mutation line (or possibly even more precise alignment for some of the chaotic ones). Slime might possibly use asexual reproduction, though, and there may be other oddballs, although you might want to consider slimelings to be asexual reproduction results of slimes.
The CDDA animals currently reproduce via spores (old version Dwarf Fortress reference), i.e. some nebulous thing that can cause isolated animals to be impregnated, and all animals are female. However, that’s really a limit of the simulation rather than something that’s desired, as far as I understand.
I’d probably go for a male and a female of the same post threshold line, or both being pre threshold. This would be for “humans”, with no need to do a makeover of animals at the same time.
A pregnant woman chugging mutagens might get rather random results, though, ranging from spontaneous aborting to mutations on the baby to an Alien style premature “birth”.
Some mutation lines might be more family oriented than others, though, so in some cases you’d encounter only the mother and child mutant, while for other types you might be likely to encounter a family that includes the father.
The mutant animal babies may be babies before they’re mutated. If not, the lore should be considered more carefully… But also, mutant animals come by their mutations through an entirely different mechanism, and seem to travel in groups with similarly mutated creatures.
About morality, I think the greatness of a game like this, open source, free and with a big community, is that is not tied to any moral.
Apocalypse is cruel and so must be some choices the characters still living there make.
Far less concerned about morality than I am about people annoying me incessantly.
3 Likes