Children

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

Children can be obtained via several different methods:

Naturally, through pregnancy or surrogacy.
Artificially, through growth vats.
Purchasing them from slavers.
Kidnapping them from other settlements.
Receiving them from quests.

Reproduction

Natural pregnancy

Pawns have a chance to get pregnant when they initiate lovin'. A pawn's chance of getting impregnated can be seen by checking their fertility stat. This stat is affected by a variety of factors, such as age and genes. For baseline humans without fertility-modifying genes, both men and women start becoming fertile after age 14; women's fertility increases until it reaches 100% through ages 20-28, then drops steadily from 100% to 0% at age 50, while men's fertility increases until it reaches 100% through ages 18-50, then starts dropping before reaching 0% at age 90.

Female Fertility

Male Fertility

You can adjust a pawn's pregnancy odds by opening the pawn's social tab and clicking the icon at the right of another pawn's listing. It will open up a dropdown, allowing you to choose to "Try for baby" (x4 chance) or "Avoid pregnancy" (x0.25 chance).

Pregnancy lasts for 18 days, broken into three 6 day trimesters. The pregnant pawn will gain penalties to movement, manipulation, and hunger rate, increasing each trimester as seen in the chart below.

Stage	Effects
First trimester	Hunger rate offset: +10%
Second trimester	Moving: −10% Manipulation: −5% Hunger rate offset: +30%
Third trimester	Moving: −50% Manipulation: −10% Hunger rate offset: +50%

Throughout their pregnancy, they will also occasionally gain mood buffs or debuffs due to hormonal induced mood swings. They may also receive the "morning sickness" condition, causing the pawn to throw up approximately every 2 hours (vomitMtbDays = 0.075) for as long as the condition persists, which lasts 4 to 8 ingame hours.

Morning sickness:

Consciousness: −20%
Moving: −10%
Manipulation: −10%

Note that Pawns in the character selection menu can begin the game already pregnant.

It is impossible for a mother that is lactating to have another child under any circumstances, even via surrogacy.

Assisted Reproductive Techniques

After Fertility Procedures has been researched, an ovum can be extracted from a fertile female pawn, be they colonist, slave, or prisoner. It may then fertilized by a fertile male colonist or slave only to produce an embryo. The resulting embryo can then be implanted in female pawns (may be prisoner, colonist, or slave) to initiate a pregnancy, placed in a growth vat, or sold.

Surrogacy

A female pawn (who does not have to be the donor of the ovum) may be implanted with a fertilized embryo, giving the pawn a chance to become pregnant. The chance of success depends on the surrogate's own fertility.

Whether or not the pregnant mother is the one who supplied the ovum, they will be considered the child's birth mother.

The pregnancy is largely the same as a natural pregnancy. ^{[Not thoroughly checked, quick devmode run to write this section]}.

Growth Vats

Growth vats are an alternative to Surrogacy, allowing an embryo to be born in 9 days, half the time of a natural pregnancy. Active vats must be supplied with nutrition and power, consuming 6 nutrition per day. If the vat lacks either, the fetus will start to suffer from biostarvation. Biostarvation increases by 50%^[Verify?] per day while the vat lacks power or nutrition, and will gradually reduce otherwise; If biostarvation reaches 100%, the fetus will be destroyed. Growth vat births always have a quality of 70%, which affects the chance of the baby being born healthy.

Post-birth, child growth can continue to be accelerated inside the growth vat up and until a pawn turns 18. However, they will not accrue progress on growth tiers whilst inside, leading to fewer passions and more limited choices for traits.

Children in grown vats age 20x as fast as normal children.

Birth

The player will receive two notifications before birth: one several days before the birth, and another when the mother enters labor. Once labor begins, the birthing procedure can be initiated by selecting the mother or a bed and cliking the "Begin birth" option. This allows the player to select the participating pawns, much like a ritual. The quality of the procedure affects the probability that the baby will be born healthy, and can be improved by the presence of a skilled doctor and a loved one of the mother. The procedure will take place at a bed or sleeping spot, chosen automatically (preferring medical beds) if the player did not choose a bed themselves by starting the procedure via one.

The progress of labor can be tracked in the mother's health tab. Each successive stage of labor results in an increasing amount of pain, usually quickly incapacitating the pawn. Once the birth is complete, the baby will appear on an adjacent tile, and the mother will be incapacitated by exhaustion for up to a full day. At this point, a pawn with the Childcare work enabled can be instructed to either move the baby to a safe space, or to deliver it to the mother for breastfeeding.

The baby has a chance of being born sick or even dying during the procedure. There is also a chance that the mother can die during childbirth. This is affected by the quality of the procedure, which is affected by the quality and cleanliness of the room, the quality of the bed, the doctor's skill (if one is present), and the presence of a loved one of the mother. The baby will begin life with the name of 'Baby' and a last name chosen from the parents' last names; The player is given 24 hours to change the baby's name.

A sick newborn will be inflicted with "Infant Illness", which must be treated within 10 days, else the baby will die.

Female pawns that successfully give birth (regardless whether the baby is/are born healthy or sick) will start to lactate, enabling them to breastfeed babies (including babies that are not their own). They'll continue to lactate until they go 10 days without breastfeeding.

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 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