Baby

This article is about humans from 0 to 3. For pregenancy and birth, see Reproduction. For Older children, see Children.

Babies are the end result of human reproduction. Humans are considered babies from ages 0 to 3 - they are small, helpless creatures that cannot walk or do anything by themselves.

Acquisition

• Choosing them as a starting colonist via the scenario system.
• Natural human pregnancy, when two fertile pawns do lovin'.
• Surrogacy, by implanting an embryo from a fertilized ovum into a female human.
• Artificial birth by placing an embryo inside a growth vat.
• Purchasing them from slavers.^{[Can babies be bought?]}
• Receiving them from quests and events. Babies of any faction can be adopted instantly to the colony, without angering them.

Note that with the exception of the first point, these methods become unavailable if "Disable children" is toggled on in the storyteller settings.

Summary

Babies are small, helpless creatures that cannot walk or do anything by themselves. They only have three basic needs: food, sleep, and play (their equivalent of recreation).

Babies are born with no traits or skills: these develop during childhood Growth moments They also have no ideoligion. Unless they have temporary health effects from being born sick, they have no health conditions, with every health stat at 100%, except for Moving, which is at 0%.

If a prisoner gives birth, the baby will initially be an enemy but can be adopted with a click on the 'adopt' gizmo.

The baby life stage lasts for ages 0-2, with newborn ages tracked in days and quadrums rather than years. Once a baby turns 3, they become a child, and on their 3rd birthday you can make special choices for how they will develop further. Under the default storyteller settings, babies will age 4x faster than normal, so the biological age of the baby is not how many days/quadrums they have actually been alive. Growth vats can speed up a baby's growth by 20x that of an adult, or 5x faster than default. Depending on the growth vat precept colonists may be sad about their baby being, or not being, in a growth vat. Using a growth vat seems to have no ill effects on a baby or its development, at least until it exits the baby stage.

If a baby is left on the ground, any colonist (even those incapable of childcare or hauling) can try to bring the baby somewhere safe, like an available crib. Usually a colonist will quickly try to do this automatically. If you draft a colonist while they are carrying a baby, you'll receive a pop-up warning that your colonist is carrying a baby while drafted. If you undraft and redraft the colonist, they will drop the baby.

Artificial body parts cannot be applied to babies, but xenogerms can be. Babies cannot be ordered to apply xenogerms by selecting them and right-clicking on the xenogerm, as they cannot walk. Players must instead place an order for it on the health tab.

Food

See also: Saturation

Babies need less nutrition to become full, but their hunger rate is adjusted with it to require food twice a day. Since babies cannot eat anything by themselves, pawns assigned to childcare will help feed them. The feeding process is fairly slow when compared to adult eating.

They can only be fed in one of following ways:

• Breastfeeding from any lactating pawn, even those not their mother.
• Cooking and feeding them baby food, produced at a campfire or stove from vegetable ingredients.
• Feeding them animal milk or insect jelly.

Of these, breastfeeding is usually the easiest. Unlike other foods, which feed in bursts only once the food has been consumed, breastfeeding will gradually increase the food bar. This allows the breastfeeding pawn to pause at any point, whilst also not wasting excess food. Usually, a pawn will sit down to breastfeed, continuing until the baby is full or the pawn is out of milk.

You can control what foods the baby can eat and who will try to feed the baby in the baby's "Feeding" tab. By default, the mother will be set to Urgent, with all other pawns set to Childcare. If a pawn is set to childcare, that does not mean they will feed the baby: their childcare labor may be turned off, or they may be incapable of it.

• "Urgent" means the pawn will feed the baby day or night, even if the pawn is not assigned to childcare or capable of it.
• "Childcare" means the pawn will feed the baby as childcare work.
• "Never" means the pawn won't automatically feed the baby.

You can allow the baby to eat milk, insect jelly, and baby food in this tab, but can't control breastfeeding here.

Drugs

Although babies are limited to eating certain foods, you can administer drugs to babies under the Health>>Medical Operations tab. These have an outsized influence due to their very small body sizes (x0.20 of the size of an adult). Each drug causes a higher severity, increasing its duration. But due to the massive tolerance, any further drugs are very likely to get them addicted. The actual effects of a drug are the same between babies and adults.

Sleep

See also: Rest

Unlike adults, babies don't follow a sleep schedule, instead falling asleep mostly at random. They may be in a sleeping spot, growing steadily more sleepy and upset, while still not falling asleep.

Babies can sleep in cribs, beds, or any other type of sleep furniture. There are several benefits of cribs over beds: cribs take up only one tile, multiple can be placed in a room without turning it into a barracks, and high-quality cribs can increase the mood of the baby while it rests or sleeps.

Force-feeding, holding, or playing with the baby will wake them up, possibly keeping them unhappy from being tired.

Play

Babies need to be played with, in place of standard Recreation. An adult assigned to child care will play with the baby once the play need is almost empty. There are different activities that will fulfill the baby's play need. A toy box and baby decoration increases the quality of play. Babies that are somehow psychopaths or inhumanized will be unaffected by this need, this cannot be seen outside of developer mode and adding the trait or hediff.

Mood

Babies' moods are influenced by their needs for food, sleep, and play. These are affected at the same rates as for adults:

Hunger	Ravenously Hungry	Hungry	Normal
Mood effect	-12	-6	0

Sleep	Tired	Drowsy	Normal
Mood effect	-12	-6	0

Play	Really wants to play	Wants to Play	Normal	Entertained	Very Entertained
Mood effect	-10	-5	0	5	10

Babies share some moodlets with adults but aren't affected by as many thoughts. Babies can gain the −4 Slept in the Cold moodlet, but aren't affected by temperature while awake. Babies have the same expectations for colony life as other pawns do, influencing their moods at the same rate. They can be influenced by psychic drones, soothes, and psycasts just as much as other pawns, because they have a psychic sensitivity of 100% by default. However, babies don't consider furniture comfort or quality, except while resting or sleeping in a crib, with various crib qualities providing higher mood boosts.

Uniquely, babies get a mood bonus when their parents are very happy: "Parent is happy" +6, or "Parents are happy" +12.

Being held or breastfed does not affect the baby or caretaking adult's mood in any direct way. However, babies will temporarily forget any ill mood effects from lack of Sleep while being held, although these needs will still decrease as usual.

A baby's mood affects the moods of all other colonists, much like children's moods can. Parents of a baby who is very happy will receive a +6 mood boost for "My child <baby> is happy". If the baby is about 1/3 of its happiness or less, parents have a −6 mood penalty, thinking "My child <baby> is unhappy". Babies also factor into the colonists' thoughts on the overall happiness of the colony's children, which range from a positive +2 "Happy youngsters" mood boost to a −2 "Sad youngsters", to worse negative mood penalties, all based on the average of the moods of colonists aged 0-17.

Giggling and crying

Instead of mental inspirations or mental breaks, babies will have giggling or crying fits which give a mood boost or penalty to other pawns who hear them. The ratio between giggling and crying is directly related with the baby's mood.

Mood boosts from giggling babies go from +4 up to +10, while crying babies can cause mood maluses from −8 down to −20. Parents are only half as bothered by their baby crying, and twice as happy when their baby is giggling.

Each fit lasts 1,200 ticks (20 secs), and every 151 ticks (2.52 secs) the baby emits a sound that can be heard by nearby pawns. Only the initial sound of the series can actually be heard in the game by the player. Each specific fit only affects pawns once; it happens when they first hear it. Pawns with 0% Hearing don't hear the sounds and aren't affected by them. The maximum distance of hearing the baby is 9.9 tiles, with the pawn's Hearing as a multiplier capped at 100%.

Sounds can only travel to other rooms through open doors (fence gates and animal flaps count as doors) and multiple doors can be traversed sequentially. For this matter, an opening door is considered open, and a closing door is considered closed.^[Bug?] Counter-intuitively, hearing distance is not measured along the sound path through the doors, but in a straight line.

In caravans moving across the world map, all caravan members hear the baby's fits, even those who are deaf.^[Bug?]

Giggling occurance

Crying occurance

Giggling to crying ratio (higher is better)

Social

Babies get the same social opinion boosts from familial relationships that other pawns do. They are born aware of their entire family tree, going back to the great-grandparent generation and including dead relatives. In addition, their social relationships are impacted by who feeds them and who hears them crying. They will not know all of your colonists when born, only beginning to remember them after they've interacted a few times (and the colonist will likewise not remember the baby)!

Feeding changes the social opinions between a baby and their caretaker. A baby will gain about +16 social opinion for another pawn each time they are fed, with the "Fed me" opinion, which wears off over time. Breastfeeding provides a similar^[Same?] benefit. An adult who feeds a baby will gain about +4 social opinion for them from this act, and remember the feeding for longer than the baby does. This bonus only stacks up to 5 times, for a maximum of +16 opinion of the baby. Adults who breastfeed a baby gain about +7 opinion for the baby from the interaction. These feeding opinion changes are the same whether the caretaker is the baby's parent or not.

Adults who hear a baby cry or giggle will change their opinions of the baby temporarily. A crying baby will gain the Cried −12 opinion penalty, while a giggling baby will gain the Giggled +12 opinion boost. An adult can remember a baby's crying and giggling at the same time, cancelling each effect out. It is unclear if these modifiers stack.^{[Detail Needed]}

Analysis

The baby stage lasts for 45 days (3/4ths of a year) by default. It requires a notably high amount of colonist labor, as the baby must both be fed and played with by adults.

Feeding babies takes a surprisingly long time, especially if breastfed. The base duration of feeding a baby from empty is 5,000 ticks (2 in-game hours), and babies need to be fed roughly twice a day. Between this and caring for her own needs, a mother tasked with caring for her baby can spend over half her waking hours, every day, for those 45 days.

Growth vats can be used to speed up the baby stage. This does not harm or hinder the baby's growth at all, although it comes at the cost of nutrition, a slight mood penalty to the parents, and the loss of mood buffs/penalities from baby interactions.

Version history

• Biotech DLC Release - Introduced. Humans have a gestation cycle defined without Biotech, but they can not get pregnant.
• 1.4.3529 - Fix: Babies can carry items in caravans.
• 1.4.3580 - Fix: Babies being assigned child body type on load.
• 1.5.4062 - Fix: Error placing hostile baby in bed. Fix: Error in DoPaneContentsFor when trying to change allowed area on a baby that's being held. Fix: Error when a pawn is playing with a baby in some circumstances. Fix: Babies are not dropped after breastfeeding completion if the breastfeeder is downed. Fix: BabyTalk not generated correctly for text with non-ASCII characters. Fix: Exception feeding a baby which died during feeding.
• 1.6.4566 - Fix: Error when baby being breastfed dies.

---

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 • Starjack)
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