Relationships, kids and going over the 20 citizen cap

This is something I’ve been thinking a bout for a long while. As of right now we cap out our town at 20 hearthlings (via daily updates) but we have a town full of men/women and something always strikes me as odd… how come there are no kids? How come there is never a romance in town? Friendship? Rivalries? Nothing?

So this is a 2 part suggestion.

Part 1) I’d love to see relationships in our towns. Two characters can become friends, lovers or rivals. Rivals will occasionally “argue” when standing near each other in town. Arguments will give both hearthlings a small stat reduction for a few hours. Something like "Had an argument - ". Putting their beds further apart would reduce the chance of this happening. Friends works the same but as an opposite. Hearthlings get a small stat boost for a few hours when talking with a friend. Something like “Talked with my friend! +”. Putting beds closer to each other will increase the chance of this happening more often. And lastly, Hearthlings should be able to fall in love. 2 hearthlings can randomly fall in love and receive a significant stat boost when seeing each other. Something like “Talked with my lover! + + +”. When 2 hearthlings are in love you can build a double wide bed that both can be assigned to (only hearthlings in love can be assigned to a double bed). This guarantees they wake up with the lover bonus.

Part 2) So this is the fun part. Although I don’t think it necessary to include sex in any way, It would be great to see (after the 20 citizen milestone is achieved). SOMETIMES couples who share a double bed to sometimes have a child. Like other games, children are immortal and would be ignored by enemies, although they will still run away scared from them. Over a fairly long period they transform into a new citizen your town. This would be the only way to grow your town over 20 citizens. But, while a child they eat a lot of food, run around doing essentially nothing but playing and would still require you to build a bed for them. If you skip building them a bed, the child takes the double bed and it’s parents sleep on the ground.

This is a fairly unintrusive way to slowly grow out your town over time and gives some more incentive to build a town a specific way to obtain optimal happiness/stat results. However, the stat boost or drain would be small so you could ignore all of this until end game. Sure your hearthling will be not as happy if they are always seeing their rival all the time, but like in real life it isn’t going to be a major game changer. hearthlings will still do their job to the best of their ability as always.

Anyhow… just something I had been thinking about for a while now. Not sure if anyone else would be into something like this but i thought I’d finally take a minute on my lunch break to share it with you all. :grin:

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I like your ideas, and second them, however if you go into the settings tab in the main menu of the game, and go in the tab Game, you will find that you can increase the cap up to 50

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Good to know! Maybe the whole kids thing can happen after you pass the cap, even if you choose 50.

Welcome to the Discourse @perfectpencil!

The team has said in the past that chidren will not be added to the core game. This is for numerous reasons, among them ESRB issues.

Glad to see @LordGovernorGeneral sharing that you can raise the cap here in settings.

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My Pleasure. Just lending a hand to a friend :slight_smile:

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I’m all for friendships/rivalries, though, myself.

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Maybe it could be like this:

"Oi, that guy copied me and made a iron sword!“
or
"That guy really helps us out! He’s the best!”

To an extent, the latter is in the game, the former, not that I know of. [In the game, the concept I refer to is the morale system which comes from goo stuff happening and the good stuff happens by the work of each individual and this is seen in how they talk to each other, show their achievements and be proud of each other]

Really and truly, in my opinion and from research and experience [irl] it is rare that in such small groups (10-15), rivalries do not really occur, even at around 20, as everyone depends on each other. At 50 though, the situation may changes as multiple people share the same job.

This may lead to friendly competition between them, on who makes the best tool or item, etc.

Also, if I may add, sociologically, close relations of the nature you implied will almost never occur with populations beset by so many hostile elements, namely the monsters, struggle to survive, climate, need to work hard, etc. The reason for this, primarily is that there won’t be any time.

When the America was being settled, only a couple of ‘born in America’ people existed, even after some 10 years, when the population had exceeded a thousand. This is because of the ever present threat of a native assault that may indeed burn down everything. No one would want their kids to be in danger and have to struggle to survive.

Hmm… Can something like this be modded? Sorry, I haven’t kept up with production or what can/can’t happen with the release. I would be interested in making a mod if it is possible.

Depends on what “something like this” is - there’s been a number of ideas discussed in this topic. But most likely, yes, almost anything you can think of can be modded.

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I guess my next question is… are there mod tools available? :slight_smile:

Yep. I’d suggest a quick search in the #modding category. Lot’s of previous discussions on getting started with modding.

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Awesome, thank you. :slight_smile:

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