Children

This article is about children of age 3 and up. For pregnancy and babies, see Reproduction.

Children are added by the Biotech DLC. They are smaller, slower, and less capable of work when compared to adult pawns, but gain skills as they age.

Acquisition

Having a baby age up, which themselves can be acquired by human reproduction.
Purchasing them from slavers.
Most quests where a colonist can join.

Note that raids will not have children, unless you enable it in the storyteller settings.

Summary

A child is a human that is from ages 3 to 13. Humans below 3 are babies. Humans above 13 are considered adult, gaining access to adult clothing and all work types, but still recieve some penalties from being undeveloped. Humans under 18 will age 400% faster, though this can be altered by using a growth vat or in the storyteller settings.

Children as young as 3 can wield weapons, but are limited to child-wearable clothing like the kid pants and kid parka, and can only do certain types of work. Younger pawns recieve penalties to Global Work Speed and move speed, scaling with age. Due to their body size, they eat less and recieve stronger effects from drugs. Finally, children are vulnerable to the Fleeing Fire mental break when seeing fire.

Children recieve growth moments at ages 7, 10, and 13. These give the pawn access to more work types, as well as the choice of traits and passions. Giving a child access Learning increases the possible choices. See below for more details.

Development

At the default setting, children naturally age four times faster than adults do, so in one year, they can go from a 4 to an 8 year-old. Once they are biologically 18, they'll become an adult. Before then, you'll probably want to give them the skills to be capable adults. Although they can perform most tasks for any skills, they start at very low skill levels, with few passions. Luckily, they have several ways to develop these over time. If children are taught well, then they will progress through growth tiers, and they will gain new traits and passions during several growth moments, which come at age 7, 10, and 13. This works through a new need for children--Learning. Viewed in the needs tab, you can see what learning-related activities a child wants to do next–the options are skydreaming, radio talking, floor drawing, nature running, work watching, and lesson taking. When children are scheduled to do Anything or Recreation, they will fulfill these needs, although they need the participation of an adult to accomplish work watching or lesson taking.

Each day, children will raise their growth score (shown at the bottom of the screen when a child is selected) proportionate to their Learning need. The growth score can pass through 8 tiers of learning, and each will grant more rewards during a child's growth moment. Tiers give you more flexibility in choosing a child's next trait and allow you to give them passions. Once a growth moment has passed, the child's growth tiers will reset to 0, and you'll need to keep them learning to gain more rewards.

A child with constantly fully-satisfied Learning need would achieve a hypothetical maximum 180 growth score in each growth stage (though 162 is the highest score that can be displayed). Adjusting the child aging rate in storyteller settings will proportionately adjust daily point gain to maintain this. Therefore, it is possible to roughly predict the final growth tier for a child based solely on average learning need, assuming the child completes the entire growth stage within the colony.

Growth Tiers and Rewards
Tier	Points	Traits	Passion	Min Av Learning
0	0	1 from 1 options	-	-
1	30	1 from 2 options	-	17%
2	55	1 from 3 options	-	31%
3	80	1 from 4 options	-	44%
4	100	1 from 4 options	1 from 1 options	56%
5	120	1 from 4 options	1 from 2 options	67%
6	135	1 from 4 options	1 from 3 options	75%
7	150	1 from 4 options	2 from 4 options	83%
8	162	1 from 6 options	3 from 6 options	90%

Growth moments

Children experience growth moments at 7, 10, and 13, allowing them to gain traits and passions. They will also develop the ability to romance other pawns and reproduce at 16, and this is the age that contraceptives and ovum-extracting surgeries can first be performed. Finally, children become full adults at 18.

When a child hits the biological age for a growth moment, a notification will pop up that allows you to choose new traits and passions, if you have been raising them well. A random assortment of choices will be presented, which you can choose from, aided by a window showing the child's Bio and Health stats. If you realize you want to choose the traits later, you can dismiss this window and choose again, within 48 hours of the birthday.

Age 3

 Baby <BABY NAME> has grown up and become a child! (S)He is now old enough to do the following work: <LIMITED WORK> Children do various type of work. As they get older, they become able to do more work types. They also do various child-specific recreational activities. Children need to wear specific child-size apparel.

 <BABY NAME> has decided to become a follower of the ideoligion <MAJOR COLONY IDEOLIGION>. By tradition <BABY NAME>, born to <MOTHER NAME> of <COLONY> (and) <FATHER NAME> of <COLONY> / unknown parents, is a colonist/tribesman, but exceptions can be made... Should <BABY NAME> remain a colonist/tribesman?

At this age, now your baby is a child! They can now walk and talk, and do activities for skills like melee, shooting, or social. Their Play need is also replaced with a new Learning need.

With Ideology, they will follow the major ideoligion your colony currently believes in (assuming your colony has one). By default, they will remain as a colony child, but you can make an exception and enslave him/her instead. This can be postponed for up to 12 hours.

Capable work types
Firefight	Patient	Doctor	Bed Rest	Childcare	Basic	Warden	Handle	Cook	Hunt	Construct	Grow	Mine	Plant Cut	Smith	Tailor	Art	Craft	Haul	Clean	Research
-	✓	-	✓	✓	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	✓	✓	-

Learnable skills
Shooting	Melee	Construction	Mining	Cooking	Plants	Animals	Crafting	Artistic	Medical	Social	Intellectual
✓	✓	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	✓	-

Age 7

Capable work types
Firefight	Patient	Doctor	Bed Rest	Childcare	Basic	Warden	Handle	Cook	Hunt	Construct	Grow	Mine	Plant Cut	Smith	Tailor	Art	Craft	Haul	Clean	Research
✓	✓	-	✓	✓	✓	-	✓	✓	✓	-	✓	✓	✓	-	✓	-	✓	✓	✓	-

Learnable skills
Shooting	Melee	Construction	Mining	Cooking	Plants	Animals	Crafting	Artistic	Medical	Social	Intellectual
✓	✓	-	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	-	-	✓	-

Age 10

Capable work types
Firefight	Patient	Doctor	Bed Rest	Childcare	Basic	Warden	Handle	Cook	Hunt	Construct	Grow	Mine	Plant Cut	Smith	Tailor	Art	Craft	Haul	Clean	Research
✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	-	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	-

Learnable skills
Shooting	Melee	Construction	Mining	Cooking	Plants	Animals	Crafting	Artistic	Medical	Social	Intellectual
✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	-

Age 13

When a child turns 13, you will receive the notification: "Child" became an adult. They are not full adults yet, but are now variously called adults or teenagers within the game. The first change you'll notice is that they now wear adult clothing, dropping their too-small child's clothes if wearing any. Their body size is 0.80 the size of an adult's, and they walk x95% as fast as they otherwise would, since they are in the "Teenager" life stage. They will also gain the ability to smith and research. Finally, their Learning need is replaced with the Recreation need. This means they instantly lose mood effects from their Learning need, but gain mood effects from a Recreation need filled to the same level. They also lose their Childlike confidence mood boost.

Some kids get special changes upon turning 13. Your child may randomly receive a new nickname, changing their name from John Doe to John 'Johnny' Doe. If this happens, then a line in the Growth Moment message will state that John Doe has gained the nickname Johnny. If you don't like it, you can always change their nickname from their bio.

Unfortunately, this is also when some pre-existing health conditions take effect. This includes drug dependency genes: the timer for bad effects from not ingesting these drugs will start at this birthday, as if this day was the last day they'd taken the drug.

Capable work types
Firefight	Patient	Doctor	Bed Rest	Childcare	Basic	Warden	Handle	Cook	Hunt	Construct	Grow	Mine	Plant Cut	Smith	Tailor	Art	Craft	Haul	Clean	Research
✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓

Learnable skills
Shooting	Melee	Construction	Mining	Cooking	Plants	Animals	Crafting	Artistic	Medical	Social	Intellectual
✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓

Learning

There are many ways to fulfill the Learning need, and children will attempt to do these actions automatically. This is what happens for each action:

Floor drawing

Children draw pictures on the floor in various places. This does not require any additional supplies and can occur on anywhere within or near home area. The drawings can be cleaned up the same way as any other dirt.

Lessons

The child(ren) and an adult sit together at a desk and the adult instructs the child in a random, currently usable (e.g., when age 4 this can be shooting, melee, or social) skill. The child's skill level goes up. The speed at which the child learns can be increased by up to 60% by adding up to 3 blackboards near the school desks at which the lesson takes place. Additionally, it also trains the adult's social skill.

Nature running

Children run around outside, similar to the adult "Going for a walk" activity. Care must be taken as nearby predator hunt and potential raid can occur near them as they tend to run outside the safe zone near the edge.

Radio Talking

Chat with people over the radio. Requires a powered Comms console. This can interfere with the usage if required to contact another faction or a nearby Trader Ship orbiting above the colony.

Sky dreaming

Children lay on the ground and watch the sky much like adults that are cloud watching.

Work watching

Children that are work watching follow an adult who is working while the adult does standard work. If the children is at a suitable age for the skill the adult is doing work on (i.e: Treating injury with medicine or attempting to recruit/convert prisoners), said skill will slowly be gained.

Stats Development

Every pawn has stats that decide their speed and effectiveness at certain tasks, viewed in a pawn's information panel. Many stats change slowly over time for children and teens as they grow older. A multiplier for their age decreases their effectiveness at stats related to size and development.

Some traits that are affected this way are: Move speed, Aiming time, Arrest success chance, DPS, Market value, and Global work speed. Each trait is affected differently by age: Move speed changes in jolts by life stage, whereas Global work speed rises steadily until adulthood.

Global Work Speed Multiplier by Age

Other traits are affected indirectly by a child's age, because of a child or teen's smaller body size. These include Carrying capacity, Meat amount and Leather amount.

Body Size
0-2	3-13	13-18
?	?	0.8

Stats that don't differ for teenagers include Food consumption, Maximum/Minimum comfortable temperatures, and Filth rate.

Biotech (DLC)

Families: Relationships (Reproduction • Children)
Life stages (Babies • Children • Adults)
Furniture (Crib • Baby sleeping spot • Growth vat • Toy box • Baby decoration • School desk • Blackboard)
Mechanoids: Laborers (Agrihand • Cleansweeper • Constructoid • Fabricor • Lifter • Paramedic • Tunneler)
Combatants (Centurion • Legionary • Militor • Scorcher • Tesseron)
Commanders (Apocriton • Diabolus • War queen • War urchin)
Mechanitors: Control (Mechlink • Band node • Mech boosters • Mech signallers • Control pack • Airwire headset)
Mechanoid creation (Basic subcore • Standard subcore • High subcore • Subcore encoder • Subcore softscanner • Subcore ripscanner • Mech gestator)
Maintenance (Mech recharger)
Genetics: Xenohumans (Dirtmoles • Genies • Highmates • Hussars • Impids • Neanderthals • Pigskins • Sanguophages • Wasters • Yttakin)
Genes Germline • Xenogene • Metabolic efficiency
Genetic Modification Genepack • Gene extractor • Gene bank • Gene assembler • Gene processor • Xenogerm • Archite capsules
Deathrest (Deathrest accelerator • Deathrest capacity serum • Deathrest casket • Glucosoid pump • Hemogen amplifier • Hemopump • Psychofluid pump)
Pollution: Nature (Toxalope • Toxipotato plant • Waste rat • Gray pine tree • Pebble cactus • Rat palm tree • Witchwood tree • Stasis cocoon)
Mitigation (Wastepacks • Atomizers • Pollution pumps • Polux trees)
Adaptation Face mask • Gas mask • Tox grenades • Tox pack • Tox shell • Toxic needle gun • Toxbomb launcher • Detoxifier kidney • Detoxifier lung
Nonchalance Toxifier generator