Set Number of young Nichelings limit

[Fellstar59]

Maybe making it so you can have only one baby nicheling at a time like the pack is only capable of protecting one of their young at a time.and even later introducing like unsuccessful births into the mix if your creature is trying to give birth while sick etc.

[Snowy Owl]

i'd rather not have the chance of unsuccessful births, it is hard enough getting a breeding pair without that, having the chance of unsuccessful births and it will make the game worse.

 Because if you leave it up to luck it will come at the worst time possible, like it does with gender and immunity genes.

[Jojo]

3 hours ago, RandomWanderer said:

There have been quite some posts about unsuccessful births.... But one has to remember that this game is also marketed to children. Not to mention how traumatic it might be to people who have actually lost a child. That would be very bad for sales in the least, even if you ignore the ethical aspect.

If we follow your reasoning rogue males should also be removed because they'd traumatize rape victims and it would freak out children.

Unsuccessful births happen. Not speaking about it doesn't make them disappear or makes it any easier for people who have lost a child.

[Jojo]

2 hours ago, RandomWanderer said:

Let me ask you this, maybe you can then understand where I am coming from. 

Your sick pregnant female sits on a nest (with the common cold, no less). You pass the turn. No child, the status effect pregnant is gone.

Does that add to realism? If you want it to be realistic, we need:

A) Worse illnesses. 

B) Severe food poisoning by berry p. bushes and (maybe) meat left after passing the turn. Which makes the worth of the feature questionable, when you can avoid it that easily.

C) The feature including predator attacks. Again, status effect removed isn't very realistic. 

D) A new gene slot, or, as with twins, the issue being bound to fertility. 

Let's assume option D, as it takes the least programming effort. The feature isn't realistic by enough standards, maybe this makes it more feasable and low fertility more dangerous. Adding damage by a failed birth would be possible, or the nicheling could be stunned. 

Yeah, that's where we start to differ. As it is, I have two main issues:

A) If you choose the most tame option, it doesn't add to realism, nor is it annoying enough to make a difference in gameplay. 

B) True realism is quite explicit. With rogue males, you don't "see as much". If you want an update that makes this as realistic as possible, I'd be as big as the wings update. Seriously, why not vote for the underground biome or something? 

Showing an issue isn't enough. Talking about it is important and the game doesn't offer that. There is no closure. It's the difference between showing someone a random act of bullying and showing someone a bully that comes to regret their ways.

In other words, the feature could be replaced by something else that offers more realism and challenge, or the feature is going to be pretty shocking.

Rogue males are the tame version of rape as it can happen in nature. Unlike rogue males however, the issue to implement failed births, or as some players have demanded, abortion, is another. I might be pro-choice, but this isn't the place for that.

Seeing nichelings lose children again and again by chance is would be very upsetting to some players, myself included.

Losing them by predator attack or poison berries, why would you expose your breeding pair to those? The occation would seem so rare that the effort to implement this just seems wasteful. 

 

 

 

 

 

I never said this needed to be a 100% realistic.

I agree that more ilnesses and other occurences would add to the possibility of misscarriage but that doesn't mean that it can't happen on its own. I also like the idea of it being connected to lower fertility or having one infertile trait.

Niche is a genetics survival game. Out in the wild you survive if you are healthy and you pass your genes on if you can give birth to healthy children. Childbirth is dangerous to both the mother and the child. Being pregnant is always a gamble and a sick creature will have a much harder time having a sucessfull pregancy or giving birth

successfully, that's just a fact.

Now to your issue with status effects. Niche is bound a lot to it's status effects. Pregnancy in itself is a status effect (with a bigger belly) and getting pregnant is symbolized by hearts in the air. So just having the effect removed and maybe broken hearts go up around the mother/ Nicheling would fit in just fine within Niches world and in my opinion wouldn't harm the realism of the game, of how it is set up already.

Also I don't see why you hang yourself up so much on the true realism. Yes, I like if Niche is realistic and it achieves that in many ways but that was not what I was trying to say. Yes, Niche will never be 100% realistic but we need consistency.

I don't see how Rogue Males impregnating all off your females over and over again is any different than the possibilty of misscarriages. It is just as tame or as shocking as the rogue males. And yes it can be upsetting. Watch a nature documentary, those are upsetting as well (not saying that Niche should be as brutal as the real world can be). Personally I don't have an issue with rogue males, except maybe the fact that they actually manage to survive and don't starve to death (which is a consistency error).

So in my opinion miscarriages would add to the game in different ways: you'd be more careful with your pregnant mothers, currently you can have a pregnant mother figth a bearyena and take hits without worries, if we had this feature you would think twice. Same goes for sickness and any other issue that might come up. You'd actually start seeing your mother Nicheling as pregnant. Pregnancy would be something to consider, because as of now there is no issue with being pregnant, which could be considered quite unbalanced.

It would certainly add to the 'survival of the fittest' aspect that evolution has. It would be more realistic, if you want to bring that up again and I don't think it would be a bigger issue than low fertility already is, as in my opinion the mechanics are already quite similar or an easy to adapt to (you already quarantine sick creatures so not having anyone pregnant near them wouldn't be an issue).

[Spacestar TheThundersuncat]

3 hours ago, Jojo said:

If we follow your reasoning rogue males should also be removed because they'd traumatize rape victims and it would freak out children.

Unsuccessful births happen. Not speaking about it doesn't make them disappear or makes it any easier for people who have lost a child.

Let me ask you this, maybe you can then understand where I am coming from. 

Your sick pregnant female sits on a nest (with the common cold, no less). You pass the turn. No child, the status effect pregnant is gone.

Does that add to realism? If you want it to be realistic, we need:

A) Worse illnesses. 

B) Severe food poisoning by berry p. bushes and (maybe) meat left after passing the turn. Which makes the worth of the feature questionable, when you can avoid it that easily.

C) The feature including predator attacks. Again, status effect removed isn't very realistic. 

D) A new gene slot, or, as with twins, the issue being bound to fertility. 

Let's assume option D, as it takes the least programming effort. The feature isn't realistic by enough standards, maybe this makes it more feasable and low fertility more dangerous. Adding damage by a failed birth would be possible, or the nicheling could be stunned. 

Yeah, that's where we start to differ. As it is, I have two main issues:

A) If you choose the most tame option, it doesn't add to realism, nor is it annoying enough to make a difference in gameplay. 

B) True realism is quite explicit. With rogue males, you don't "see as much". If you want an update that makes this as realistic as possible, I'd be as big as the wings update. Seriously, why not vote for the underground biome or something? 

Showing an issue isn't enough. Talking about it is important and the game doesn't offer that. There is no closure. It's the difference between showing someone a random act of bullying and showing someone a bully that comes to regret their ways.

In other words, the feature could be replaced by something else that offers more realism and challenge, or the feature is going to be pretty shocking.

Rogue males are the tame version of rape as it can happen in nature. Unlike rogue males however, the issue to implement failed births, or as some players have demanded, abortion, is another. I might be pro-choice, but this isn't the place for that.

Seeing nichelings lose children again and again by chance is would be very upsetting to some players, myself included.

Losing them by predator attack or poison berries, why would you expose your breeding pair to those? The occation would seem so rare that the effort to implement this just seems wasteful. 

 

 

 

 

 

[Spacestar TheThundersuncat]

10 hours ago, Jojo said:

I never said this needed to be a 100% realistic.

I agree that more ilnesses and other occurences would add to the possibility of misscarriage but that doesn't mean that it can't happen on its own. I also like the idea of it being connected to lower fertility or having one infertile trait.

Niche is a genetics survival game. Out in the wild you survive if you are healthy and you pass your genes on if you can give birth to healthy children. Childbirth is dangerous to both the mother and the child. Being pregnant is always a gamble and a sick creature will have a much harder time having a sucessfull pregancy or giving birth

successfully, that's just a fact.

Now to your issue with status effects. Niche is bound a lot to it's status effects. Pregnancy in itself is a status effect (with a bigger belly) and getting pregnant is symbolized by hearts in the air. So just having the effect removed and maybe broken hearts go up around the mother/ Nicheling would fit in just fine within Niches world and in my opinion wouldn't harm the realism of the game, of how it is set up already.

Also I don't see why you hang yourself up so much on the true realism. Yes, I like if Niche is realistic and it achieves that in many ways but that was not what I was trying to say. Yes, Niche will never be 100% realistic but we need consistency.

I don't see how Rogue Males impregnating all off your females over and over again is any different than the possibilty of misscarriages. It is just as tame or as shocking as the rogue males. And yes it can be upsetting. Watch a nature documentary, those are upsetting as well (not saying that Niche should be as brutal as the real world can be). Personally I don't have an issue with rogue males, except maybe the fact that they actually manage to survive and don't starve to death (which is a consistency error).

So in my opinion miscarriages would add to the game in different ways: you'd be more careful with your pregnant mothers, currently you can have a pregnant mother figth a bearyena and take hits without worries, if we had this feature you would think twice. Same goes for sickness and any other issue that might come up. You'd actually start seeing your mother Nicheling as pregnant. Pregnancy would be something to consider, because as of now there is no issue with being pregnant, which could be considered quite unbalanced.

It would certainly add to the 'survival of the fittest' aspect that evolution has. It would be more realistic, if you want to bring that up again and I don't think it would be a bigger issue than low fertility already is, as in my opinion the mechanics are already quite similar or an easy to adapt to (you already quarantine sick creatures so not having anyone pregnant near them wouldn't be an issue).

Still, the problem remains that one doesn't let the breeding pair(s) fight or get sick easily. The exception would be a sick child, that would make the nest unusuable then for three turns, not two.

Breeding in wanderers with low fertility might be a problem, but losing one day with that group is common enough.

I do agree that pregnancy is beyond unbalanced. I just doubt this would be enough to fix it for some playstiles. 

Some fixes sound great on paper. The biggest issues with implementing balancing features resulting in, overall, more time spend pregnant with less output, might be immunity genes.

I still lose them sometimes with 6-8 children. If there would be some control over that... they would be great. Falling into a downward spiral of immunity- sickness, resulting in more miscarriages, and even more by (most) new wanderers in addition to perennially bringing down the gene quality of the tribe...

That sounds just as bad as a certain update that spawned rogue males everywhere.

You could say now that this could all be avoided and would add challenge to the game. And you would be right.

Just don't move to new islands with creatures that aren't very young (by settling down on most islands one travels to). Don't let your tribe go down to one creature with the B immunity (even if this means starvation when starting on hard islands). Learn to live with constant sickness when playing blind genes... that doesn't seem too fun to me, though.

Just as rogue males can be avoided easily by keeping all females pregnant at all times... it's going to suck the fun out of the game for some players. If immunity genes aren't balanced. If they would balance them in addition, have my vote.

 

 

[Jojo]

4 hours ago, RandomWanderer said:

Still, the problem remains that one doesn't let the breeding pair(s) fight or get sick easily. The exception would be a sick child, that would make the nest unusuable then for three turns, not two.

Breeding in wanderers with low fertility might be a problem, but losing one day with that group is common enough.

I do agree that pregnancy is beyond unbalanced. I just doubt this would be enough to fix it for some playstiles. 

Some fixes sound great on paper. The biggest issues with implementing balancing features resulting in, overall, more time spend pregnant with less output, might be immunity genes.

I still lose them sometimes with 6-8 children. If there would be some control over that... they would be great. Falling into a downward spiral of immunity- sickness, resulting in more miscarriages, and even more by (most) new wanderers in addition to perennially bringing down the gene quality of the tribe...

That sounds just as bad as a certain update that spawned rogue males everywhere.

You could say now that this could all be avoided and would add challenge to the game. And you would be right.

Just don't move to new islands with creatures that aren't very young (by settling down on most islands one travels to). Don't let your tribe go down to one creature with the B immunity (even if this means starvation when starting on hard islands). Learn to live with constant sickness when playing blind genes... that doesn't seem too fun to me, though.

Just as rogue males can be avoided easily by keeping all females pregnant at all times... it's going to suck the fun out of the game for some players. If immunity genes aren't balanced. If they would balance them in addition, have my vote.

 

 

I agree that some things sound great on paper and are not good in games. Also I agree that the immunity genes are way to unbalanced, same goes with the gender but it is 'just' bad luck (as the devs said: it is not a bug, I made posts about immunity issues and gender issues but all is as it is supposed to be in game). I am super annoyed by having so many immunity gene problems and gender problems.

About the challenge aspect. The original suggestions about miscarriages were in the end popular if they were optional. As we are talking about customization options for sandbox mode miscarriages would be a feature that could be turned on and off. I love challenges. I would love it with an unbalanced aspect and with more balance but I can totally see that not everybody plays Niche for the challenge and that some features need to be toggleable if added at all.

[Fellstar59]

I just thought itd be fun to set the limit on young ones so you really have to look after your nichelings hahaha sorry for the caused ethical debate 😂😂

[Jojo]

13 hours ago, Fellstar59 said:

I just thought itd be fun to set the limit on young ones so you really have to look after your nichelings hahaha sorry for the caused ethical debate 😂😂

No need to be sorry. We had a good discussion about different points. I am always happy when I can discuss with people without anybody getting offended or stuff like that. It is good to share thoughts

[Spacestar TheThundersuncat]

12 minutes ago, Fellstar59 said:

Maybe making it so you can have only one baby nicheling at a time like the pack is only capable of protecting one of their young at a time.and even later introducing like unsuccessful births into the mix if your creature is trying to give birth while sick etc.

There have been quite some posts about unsuccessful births.... But one has to remember that this game is also marketed to children. Not to mention how traumatic it might be to people who have actually lost a child. That would be very bad for sales in the least, even if you ignore the ethical aspect.