Two Hearthlings can decide to have a child (or maybe a way for us to force this action?) which will join the community in time. This action is an investment in your population, but costs you in the short term.
The mother of the child experiences lower work and speed efficiency due to the child. Here is how she preforms at different pregnancy stages. Complex version:
-Conception to day 1 = 25% lowered efficiency, eats 10% more
-day 2 = 50% lowered efficiency, eats 20% more
-day 3 = 75% lowered efficiency, eats 30% more
-day 4 = 100% lowered efficiency, cannot preform duties, eats 40% more
-day 5 = baby arrives, mother is full time taking care of baby.
-day 6 = baby becomes a child and follows mother or father helping them at 25% efficiency.
-day 7 = child becomes a teen and works at 50% efficiency
-day 8 = teen becomes a young adult and works at 75% efficiency
-day 9 = young adult becomes adult and works at 100% efficiency
-day 10 = can mate with other Hearthlings
Simple version:
Conception to day 4 = mother at 50% efficiency
day 5 = baby arrives (as child), can preform at 50% efficiency, mother at 100%.
day 9 = child becomes adult, works at 100% efficiency, can mate
All days the child consumes as much as an adult. The child’s properties are based off their parent’s.
So, babies = more population, but requires the right setup lest you have too many hands not on work and too many resources going into the children themselves.
my understanding from past posts (this has been discussed since the game was first announced on Kickstarter - which is the last time I was active on the forums) is that they don’t think they’re mechanically relevant. All a baby would do is be a mouth to feed for a prolonged period of time. They wouldn’t be able to contribute to work or anything of importance.
But I disagree. I think you could have a profession like a school teacher that could give buffs to children who went to school. They also could take mere days/months to grow, not years. But most importantly, I want them to be added so there’s a challenge with population control. As of right now, you’re never concerned with how much food you’re producing because the game only allows new hearthlings if your settlement can handle them. If you had babies, you’d have to be a lot more careful about controlling your population and managing your food resources. Otherwise, why do I need to bother farming at all, if I know I’ll always have enough food. It just takes one of my hearthlings away from building, exploring, crafting, and fighting.
This is a similar reason why I really want seasons or disasters. Something that can impact crop production considering it’s so easy to produce enough food for your settlement.
I want babies (and other utility professions like you suggested) for the same reasons you do. Things like disasters would be a nice option to have too. There’s a lot you can do with a game like this. It sounds like the devs don’t have solid reasons, which is unfortunate. This kind of stuff is literally the opposite, it’s very mechanically relevant.
I believe these might be just a few of the reasons:
Right now, the longest-running cities have lasted a few months. Either babies would grow up insanely quickly in Stonehearth, or insanely slowly for players in the real world.
Kids would have to be killable, which would be not only sad but also bump up the game’s rating, or they’d have to be invincible, which breaks immersion somewhat. [Stonehearth is not the only game to avoid children entirely for this reason.]
If Stonehearth years are sped up to deal with the first issue, would old age have to be a thing?
I don’t think the issue of realistic time should be considered in the equation. crops take a day or two to plant, mature, and then harvest. You can erect and entire town in a couple of weeks, if not days. Your hearthlings can become mastercraftsmen almost overnight. Time has little, if anything, to do with it.
A neat compromise might be to allow larger groups of travelers to join your settlement. If you could get anywhere from 1-5 hearthlings at a time to join, it would make things interesting. You’d have to adapt quickly to survive. Of course, this would require a rebalancing of crop growth, as even with this system, it’s pretty easy to just add another farmer and increase your food production literally overnight.
While babies/children would be great, I’d settle (begrudgingly) for anything else that could make food production more vital and difficult.
Yeah, there are plenty of liberties taken already. Growth not being real time proportionally is fine.
As for the rating thing, just a comical pile of bones or a smoke plume would suffice. I mean I doubt we’re damaging psyches here even if our block babies die. Besides, to get a rating you need to get in touch with a rating board. There’s no law against not having a rating, so it’s a non-issue.
This could be a weird thought, but how about we make the Hearthlings more… mystified race? They somehow produce offspring, but skips the pregnancy and growth process. It could be lamer, but easy to make and rate.
My primary reason for suggesting this is a gameplay feature. So, you can make them magic if you want, the point is: What would be interesting game mechanics?
