I guess there is some rules and restrictictions from instances and lawmakers that is the reason for this descission…
One thing that could be done, is that the children can not be harmed… And that every enemy have some sort of compasion even for their enemies?
So a goblinraid wipes out the settlement… here are two options: A. The goblins kills everyone and adopt the children with some kind of story about compasion? B. The “goblins” will always leave one adult heartling alive to take care of the children and let them flee the setlement?
I dont really care if there are children or not in SH, but there is always a solution if you have the sparetime to sit down and find one… Basicly the developers have stated that they dont want to find that time (they have an enormous amount of work to be done already) and the answer with the laws and regulations was succesfull in shutting the conversation on the topic down…or was it?
I remember a city builder game from 2008 with Children and Grandparents and i loved it. Sooo much more realistic. You don’t have seen the procreation but you’ve seen the Children go to school, and the old ones only going around the city.
The game was Imperium Romanum (2008)
But i really can’t say how they handle the “death”.
In Fallout 1 there acutally are kids. Just not in the german version: they’re there but invisible. One of the worst cuts ever since the invisible kids still can steal your stuff. If you didn’t know about it it just seemed like a bug. Sorry for the OT.
I agree 100%. Making children that cannot be harmed seems like a common-sense solution to the problem to me.
-I’ll conclude with a short note. In the Maxis/EA Game called Spore, which some of you might be familiar with,
(Which is rated E 10+)
It has the same amount of “acceptable violence” as Stonehearth.
In the Tribal Stage, you can go into a village with your tribe, and completely wipe them out, children included. So yes, EA sold a game where you can kill children. Maybe that’s acceptable in your eyes because it’s aliens, I don’t know.
I’m not agreeing with seeing this in a game, don’t get me wrong. I would much rather seeing children unable to be harmed. Just wanted to put it out there that people might not be as sensitive as some people here might believe.
Fallout has lots of kids. Fallout 3 even had an entire area dedicated to them, Little Lamplight. Fallout 4 has a couple mini-quests with kids when you first get to Vault 81, and another to even do the Vault 81 story. The completion of Fallout 4 also has you taking a kid back to your settlement, which you can choose to leave him to die if you want.
This is actually the solution Fallout and Skyrim both take, is making them unkillable.
Children would be a great addition to SH… BUT
The big factor of Children in SH is not how to avoid controversy it is to make ‘children and ageing’ (only makes sense to implement both, it would just feel out of place to me if children never grew up or older Hearthlings never grow old) meaningful inside the game or it will feel slapped onto the game and out of place.
All I have read was just talk about ‘kids and marriage’ would be a great addition but there is no agreement of how to handle it.
So I am going to take a look the problems I found with the topic and offer some solutions.
So first up the problems:
Kids can die -> really bad for a happy game like SH
Kids are invincible -> breaks immersion (can function as dmg sponge if enemies can attack children)
getting the children in the first place -> well no explanation needed
handling of generations
town cap
Bought up solutions and their problems:
Kids just run faster -> every hearthling has a different move speed (just a small difference) so how fast should the kid be able to run and why should the move speed be lowerd when reaching adulthood?
Kids just shouldn’t be able to die -> immersion braking
Kids are just ignored by attackers -> in my opinion the best one but what if there are no adults near the child? All the enemies in SH are like wildlife or have some primal instinct -> they don’t care what they kill
Kids just ‘run away’ -> I still would hate to see the children of the town to run away it would imply that they just die scared and alone in the wildness of hunger or thirst (talking about controversial)
My solutions:
Town Cap and aging:
Ageing could be handled like that:
– 0.2 * x = childhood
– 0.6 * x + y * stamina = adulthood (required for being able to get children)
– 0.2 * x + y * stamina = elder
x is the lifespan of an heathling in days and y a simple modifier -> let’s say x is 30 that would make 6 days childhood 18+ days adulthood and 6+ days until they die of old age
Elders get a speed debuff but a mood buff (long life) to show the player that they are about to die of old age and they can feel proud of themselves -> frees up space for new children (can give mood buffs or debuffs for family and friends)
Town Cap could be handled like this:
If the game can handle x Hearthlings -> up until 90% of the cap can be reached with the daily quest the last 10% would be reserved for Children (more detail later)
Kids are able to do simple task -> like hauling, moving stuff around and placing furniture but only if an adult is close by (kids don’t do work on their own + a kid running aounrd dangures places alone not a good idea)
Getting children:
Only if the Hearthlings on a certain lvl of happiness can get children -> only happy people are going to have children + as mentioned above if 10% of the Town cap a reserved for Children the game would reward players (let’s say 25 is the cap so 22 would be the cap for the daily quest and the last 3 are only obtainable throw good management of the town)
Parents can only get 3 children max -> prevents over population and spam + houses would get to large with families over 5 Hearthlings (also children are going to want a own home after they reach adulthood)
New double bed (like someone mentioned) is needed for families + maybe the option to declare houses for families like placing the empty sign on a house lets you pick who is owner of the house or who is living there
Getting the kid is like:
Both heartlings are in bed at the same time, have the happiness lvl required for the children and an empty bed in the house they are assigned to. The next morning you get the message of a Heartling getting pregnant or getting a children and then spawn in the child next to the parents no extra animations are needed (you probably miss the animation in game 90% of the time anyway)
Handling ‘death of/hurting’ children: (now to the controversial stuff)
As soon as the massage of invaders or enemies approaching shows up all children in town seek shelter in the nearest house and hide under the bed or inside a crate (kids are creative with their hiding spots) and Children are able to climb trees in case enemies are to close -> is like invincibility but you wouldn’t recognize it
Adults are always with children so as soon as enemies are close enough to attack children ALL adults near the children will go and protect it. This way the attacker switches to the adults and the children can continue getting into the houses or climb trees to be save. This way children get hurt a bit but should never die or fall uncounces for the exeption that you town wasn’t well enought deffended in the first place.
When no adults are alive the game ends like a ‘Game Over’
Children shouldn’t be able to fall into the fleeing or cowering animation so they never stop seeking shelter or trying to reach the next tree to climb
This isn’t a complete list of what to do with children but it should take care of some of the controversial stuff and give ‘some’ meaning to children but more mechanics are needed in the game to justify children in the game like a meaningful childhood like a balance between helping with hauling/placing furniture/moving stuff around and doing other stuff. Just having the children play all day long or letting the child tag along with one of the parent isn’t an option (what if both parent are in the military -> not the best spot for the child to be ).
The best solution would be to add a new class like the teacher, but then you need to make the class meaningful too (and NO just having the Teacher teach all day long is not meaningful). I thought more of a school like structure you have to build and mark with a sign. Then the Teacher and all the children in town visit this building between 8am and 2pm the Children are going to sit on at special school desk and the teacher is stationed on a teacher’s desk. Every child gets a bonus on specific stats while attending school. After school they seek to help in tasks for the adult or play inside the Towns boundary. This structure makes the teacher kind of limited so he needs something to do in the afternoon or can be used to just haul stuff for the rest of the day but thats kind of well not interesting. Maybe crafting schoolbooks for the kids or look after the kids after school.
Children also need to grow meaningful. Not every child is interested in the things the parents are doing. It would be stupid to just give every child the trait that favors the parent’s job. I would give the child a random trait at ‘birth’ a trait like ‘social’. After reaching adulthood they have a 50% chance to get 2nd trait something that buffs a job (the chance that the child get the trait that benefits one of the jobs of the parents is a bit higher). Maybe conversations can influence the traits they get. Experiences like getting hurt during a raid gives higher chances of developing specific traits.
Thx for reading through this wall of text but I just had to contribute to the Topic because I really would like to see this feature in SH it would add so much dynamic to the game.
Maybe the developers haven’t thought of some of my ideas and give the whole ‘children and aging’ concept a try or some mod-creator is inspired by the concept.
Interestingly, something no one’s mentioned is Stonehearth’s time scale. I’ve never played longer than a few months, and it’s my impression that even getting to another game year is fairly rare - much less many - partially due to lack of content, partially due to later game slowdown and bugs piling up, but also because it just takes so long.
Stonehearth has 30 days in each of 12 months, making years 360 days long. And I’ll go with very low estimates from here, but it’ll still take forever for kids to grow up:
I’ll go with CK2’s coming of age at 16 years, making it take 360 * 16 = 5,760 days for a Hearthling to grow up. Now, I’m pretty sure a day takes more than 5 minutes of real time even at maximum speed, but that alone would amount to 28,800 minutes, or 480 hours, in one save, for one kid to grow up.
Interestingly, something no one’s mentioned is Stonehearth’s time scale
I actually did earlier in this post. An Hearthling should have a lifespan I estimated of about 6 real-time hours. Yes it is short. But Hearthlings are not humans, remember. Just like 10 humans can’t build an entire castle in an hour.
Forget the seasonal holidays and festivals, then; a Hearthling who celebrated Candledark in their childhood isn’t going to live to see Frostfeast, at that rate. And shortening the year too much would mean seasons wouldn’t feel special.
I just don’t think aging is where Stonehearth’s headed. Because of the work the team’s doing to make Hearthlings more individualized, I think they’re probably aiming for each one to be a long-term investment.
I’m fine with there never being children in Stonehearth. Relationships and family have already been mentioned by the devs, so grown offspring would be the limit, I’d think.
So I just tested this and running at >> (Speed 2) non-stop, it takes almost (like damn near exact) 7 min to go 24h (I used a stopwatch). That being said:
One Year = 42 hours IRL
Coming of age (16 years) = 28 days IRL
Now remember, this is at speed 2 NON-STOP, as in no breaks to building, no breaks for battles, nothing. Just full speed. If one of the devs know the difference in time passage, I could do the math and figure out the other two speeds as well.
After looking at these numbers, I’m actually still for children, but not in the way you’d think. In The Sims (the first one) and Fallout 4, there are children, and they never grow up. That being said, they still have responsibilies such as school, and can still help in VERY miner ways around where they live.
Transitioning that to Stonehearth, there’s another voxel based game that EXTREMELY simular to Stonehearth that actually had children. I just can’t find the damn thing now. A carpenter would build a crib, then two people would come next to the crib and a stork would come flying in, delivering a baby to the crib. This could work with the raiting system too, as there was a whole kids movie done about this.
As for them growing up, 3 SH years would be roughly a week of non-stop playing, so we’ll say 2 weeks IRL for a heavy gamer. During this time they’d be nothing more than decoration (for lack of a better term), but at the end of those 3 years, they become a kid (as they did in Sims 1). As a kid, we could make schools for them, or use them for light labor, such as hauling things. Maybe a little farming if you feel like it, but nothing like any of the major classes. If for whatever reason someone plays the full 16 years, then they become an adult, but with all their learning, should be able to immediantly become a high level of whatever class they studied. The transition between the ages could be the same animation that’s used to change classes that we have now.
So make them always run away no matter their courage, as well as make them untargatable by the enemy. Even if the whole town is slaughtered, we can at least assume that Ogo has a hearth enough to just orphin the kids and not kill them.
This is a great idea! This would solve the dying aspect completely.
I would really like the family aspect of children because then you could make family houses and it would just give StoneHearth so much more feeling to it.
The ageing prosses is also very interesting. You would have to build a grave yard. It would be cool if there was a burying ceremony and when it is Halloween or something the spirits of the dead people fly to heaven or something like that. The life and death cycle would be a great possibility for religion and make the world feel more natural.
A family tree would be amazing. And the passing down of stories would be cool too. If someone’s father died by the hands of a Goblin then the children will have a natural fear of Goblins.
And if the father or mother is a craftsman the heartling will have more XP at the start of his or her job. So you can have a whole family of craftsman passing the craft down through the generations.
To sum up:
Adding children and a family three would make the game feel more like a story. And you would care more about your heartlings. It would be a great addition to the overall feeling of the game.
As for the timescales, that is an aspect of a thing I discussed here. That years in stonehearth take so long IRL that IRL processes that take years only take days in stonehearth, because it would otherwise be unplayable. I believe that making years shorter is a good step to an answer there. I would expect a hearthlings lifetime to be longer than a year, festivals and such don’t really make sense to me when you only get to experience one instance over the course of your life time, is it even a tradition then?
I like the idea of children fleeing during combat. Maybe to prevent all adults being murdered and leaving the children to die, maybe the adults go on parent-duty. A bit like a designated (adult) survivor. When it looks like all adults are going to die, the adult on duty that day will seek shelter with the kids. If that doesn’t work (adults just have less hiding options) and the hearthling is attacked, he/she will fall unconscious prematurely. What the enemy doesn’t know, but the player does (red hearth above the ‘unconscious’ hearthling) is that this hearthling is faking it. The adult wakes up when the danger is over and wanders off with the children.
Maybe in the citizens menu the player can then determine who can go on parent-duty, and it will cycle every day.
The best idea I’ve seen here is the kid being brought miraculously by an NPC like a stork or a goblin, because I think adding the pregnancy element for female Hearthlings would hit the balance significantly and could feel awkward for some people due to quasi-political reasons. I think a chain:
marriage
some randomised time span
a child brought by an NPC
parents taking care of a newborn
grown child assisting parents at work
would be great. And it would be nice if there was an option to choose a job for a teen Hearthling so they can learn from adult Hearthings and start at level two or three when they grow up. Possibly with a speed up factor if a job performed by one of their parents is chosen, so the secrets of art and craft remain in the family. I like the ‘cuteness overload’ potential the option has (I can easily imagine a little baby girl following her mother move after move but failing to plant that crop in line with the other plants or a little boy practising his battle moves with his father).
(talking about controversial)
+ a kid running aounrd dangures places alone not a good idea)
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