Currently in most (if not all) cases there is no difference between a pregnancy where the PC is the mother or the NPC is. For example, take a human PC and Illaria and remember:
Human pregnancy generally lasts nine months and usually bears only one child at a time, though instances of multiple births are not uncommon, especially among the more fertile.
However the minimum and maximum number of children used for both pregnancies (PC or NPC) is 2 to 6 and totally ignores the general human characteristics in case the PC would be the mother.
I'd like to see the characteristics of the PC have more impact on the pregnancy results. Maybe it's a bit too early to ask, but I'd like some input from others to see if they think it would be a worthwhile endeavour.
I'd say use the gestation stats (duration for sure) for the primary race of the mother. If the PC is primarily human (or oddball "races" sans hard medical data like Demon-morph), the base gestation period is 9 months.
For number of young carried to term per pregnancy, use the mean average of both the paternal and maternal races. Again, if the PC is modded, go by the new, primary race.
Sometimes pregnancies are just copy/paste mechanic wise from another, other times they have their own mechanics but what I'm trying to say is they're not all the same.
If we look at Sera, Riya and male Sydians, they all have similar mechanics for human pregnancies (example: with a fertility of around 1000% all said pregnancies will always result in their max number at 9 per womb).
Personally, I think having the same base pregnancy duration for the same combination of parent races, regardless of which parent is the mother, is more realistic. The base duration should depend on how fast the children grow, which in turn depends upon their biology and thus their genes. The only way possible gene combinations could change by switching which parent is the mother would be in the case that sex-specific chromosomes differ between the two parent's species: even then, given the relative lack of sexual dimorphism in almost all TiTS species, I don't think that would result in a large enough difference in biology to have different growth rates.
Of course, as null_blank can attest to, it's not always the case that base pregnancy duration = actual pregnancy duration. There are two pregnancy incubation speed stats, one each for mother and father, so if one differs from the other, then the actual duration would depend on which parent is the mother; however, the base duration remains unchanged. Currently, only Steele's incubation speed multiplier (mother) can be increased; the text that accompanies those increases imply that the transformatives are changing their womb(s) to support faster development of their offspring, justifying the reduction in duration.
I do, however, think it's reasonable that pregnancy quantities should be affected by the mother more than the father. After all, there are millions of sperm cells in even the smallest ejaculations but only a handful of ova per ovulation*, making the latter the limiting factor in how many fertilised embryos can be made from a single conception. Of course, how many children a pregnancy will produce can differ from that number due to embryos splitting into identical twins/triplets/etc. and/or merging to form chimaeras, but the chances of those things happening should, like base pregnancy duration, depend only on the children's biology and thus be mostly independent of which parent is the mother.
*Which can quite reasonably differ between species without being unrealistic. Presumably, this number also increases with the mother's fertility regardless of race, so more fertile = more kids per pregnancy.
I'd say use the gestation stats (duration for sure) for the primary race of the mother. If the PC is primarily human (or oddball "races" sans hard medical data like Demon-morph), the base gestation period is 9 months.
For number of young carried to term per pregnancy, use the mean average of both the paternal and maternal races. Again, if the PC is modded, go by the new, primary race.
Duration is already being averaged based on both parents, so I don't really think there is a problem there.
On the second point the idea was indeed to take the primary race of the PC to influence the number of children.
Sometimes pregnancies are just copy/paste mechanic wise from another, other times they have their own mechanics but what I'm trying to say is they're not all the same.
If we look at Sera, Riya and male Sydians, they all have similar mechanics for human pregnancies (example: with a fertility of around 1000% all said pregnancies will always result in their max number at 9 per womb).
it's not really the copy/paste that is the issue I'm trying to discuss, the point is there is one pregnancy handler based on the NPC which in this case is used for both PC and Illaria.
I also get that it would be difficult to make a PC pregnancy handler, since the PC can have a large variety of races, but to start small using the PC race to influence the number of children might be doable.
While trying to describe the situation, the following was posted, which is mostly in line with what I was thinking:
I do, however, think it's reasonable that pregnancy quantities should be affected by the mother more than the father. After all, there are millions of sperm cells in even the smallest ejaculations but only a handful of ova per ovulation*, making the latter the limiting factor in how many fertilised embryos can be made from a single conception. Of course, how many children a pregnancy will produce can differ from that number due to embryos splitting into identical twins/triplets/etc. and/or merging to form chimaeras, but the chances of those things happening should, like base pregnancy duration, depend only on the children's biology and thus be mostly independent of which parent is the mother.
*Which can quite reasonably differ between species without being unrealistic. Presumably, this number also increases with the mother's fertility regardless of race, so more fertile = more kids per pregnancy.
To add to it, currently fertility is used both for pregnancy chance and quantity, but I think it should be perfectly fine to have a situation were you have high fertility, and thus have a high chance to get pregnant but still only get one child if that is normal for your race.
Of course in really/unnaturally high fertility a mother could produce more eggs even if that is not usual for the race.
Anyway, back to my initial example I think the mother being human, kaithrit or ausar should have an impact on number of children.
I thought about how to let fertitlity influence the number of children a bit more, I had a couple of solutions but I'm not quite happy about them yet.
For pregnancy the number of children of the following races is:
Ausar: 1-6
Kaithrit: 1-3
Human: 1+
(The human maximum isn't really defined and I feel like it could be something like 1+rand(2)+rand(2)+rand(2) )
Scenario 1:
The first solution I thought about was multiplying the maximum (and maybe minimum) with the fertility number, but this results in very big numbers. The fertility for a person in "Heat" is 5 (500%) and in "Deep Heat" it is 10 (1000%), which could result in a maximum of 60 children for Ausar without even including other fertility TFs
Scenario 2:
For the second solution I thought to add to the maximum for every point of fertility above 1 (100%), e.g. a Kaithric with a fertility of 3 (300%) would have a base maximum of 3 and the fertility bonus would increase it by 2 to a maximum of 5. However this still results in quite a large number since "Deep Heat" alone woud increase the maximum with 10.
Scenario 3:
Finally I came to the third solution of adding one for each multiple of 2 (200%) fertilty, so for a person in "Deep Heat" it would increase the maximum by 5 which I think might still be too large as that is still without fertility increase from TFs. Though maybe for a person in "Deep Heat" it is to be expected.
I also thought about increasing the minimum for each multiple of 5 (500%) or something similar, however it might be better to just leave the minimum at 1 as that already increases the minumum by 2 for a person in "Deep Heat". Again maybe for a person in "Deep Heat" it is to be expected to have at least three children.
Note:
One last thing I do want to mention, increasing the numbers of 2 (200%) for the maximum or 5 (500%) for the minumum too much will reduce the impact of those numbers, even though "Deep Heat" might add 10 (1000%) to fertility most TFs are capped way before reaching a base fertility of 10 (1000%).
Since this would be quite a large project I decided to start relatively small and see what the codex entries said about the reproduction of the different races and try to establish a base line, however in doing so I think it only made it clear that it's way more difficult to do then I first thought.
For some races it is quite clearly defined, for example the previously mentioned Ausar, Kaithrit and Humans, however for other races I ran into some problems and inconsistencies.
The main problem is the races that would technically be laying eggs, as an example the Gryvain, the codex entry says the following:
... a pregnant gryvain will have her belly quickly swell with a growing egg ...
However Ula's pregnancy handler will give her 2 to 4 babies, not that it is a major issue, but it's inconsistent nonetheless and makes establishing a base line a bit more troubliing.
Since Steele starts as a (half-)human and is injected with microsurgeons at that point, the reason Steele is mostly producing live young could be explained by the microsurgeons keeping this "superior" function active and integrating it in whatever race Steele decides to become.
Implementation: Influence of race
Secondly I thought about the implementation and I have an example I want to share.
The codex entry on humans says the following:
Human pregnancy (...) usually bears only one child at a time, though instances of multiple births are not uncommon, especially among the more fertile.
Based on that I made a scale for the chance for a certain amount of children, resulting in a scale of 0-64: 1 child (65%), 65-84: 2 children (20%), 85-94: 3 children (10%) and 95+: 4 children (5%).
Now based on the fertility I don't change the minimum but I change the scale, the first limit gets decreased by (fertility-1), the second limit gets decreased by (fertility-1)/2 the third by (fertility-1)/3 etc.
The -1 is because fertilty 1 (100%) is the baseline and this should also mean that a fertility lower than 1 should actually increase the scale and have a higher chance (albeit a very small one at a maximum of 1% increase) at less children.
So for a normal person in "Deep Heat" the fertility would be 11 (100% + 1000%) resulting in a scale where 0-54: 1 child (55%), 55-79: 2 children (25%), 80-91,66: 3 children (12,66%) and 91,67+: 4 children (8,33%).
To give an example for a different race, Kaitrit, their codex entry states:
Kaithrit pregnancy (...) results in one to three kittens, though incidents of multiple births are quite low — most pregnancies result in a single healthy child.
Scenario 3:
Finally I came to the third solution of adding one for each multiple of 2 (200%) fertilty, so for a person in "Deep Heat" it would increase the maximum by 5 which I think might still be too large as that is still without fertility increase from TFs. Though maybe for a person in "Deep Heat" it is to be expected.
To address this previously stated issue I had I added a chance for the number of kids to increase based on the fertility as well, every multiple of 2 has a 50% chance to increase the number of kids by one. This way it gives a person in "Deep Heat" a chance at a maximum increase of 5 (and the exact same chance of no increase at all), but would average around 2 or 3.
Taking all of the above into account I have a small (in theory working, but incomplete) way to implement this:
Bonus: Description functon
Lastly I thought there would have to be a simple way to get a description for the children in Steele's womb, so you could use something like: "You feel your " + getUnbornDesc() + " squirming around inside you." in the pregnancy notifications.
This could be implemented like the following example:
Code:
public function getUnbornDesc(pRace:String):String
{
switch(pRace)
{
// ...
case "ausar"
return "pups"; // or possibly "litter"
case "kaithrit":
return "kittens";
case "human":
default:
return "children";
}
}
It is a cool idea and if someone had thought of it from the beginning I think it should have seriously been considered.
However, although varying the number of kids range in Steele's pregnancy would be nice, there is unfortunately reasons it is not done in Tits. First writers would have to write more variations in the birthing scenes to deal with a wider range of kids. It is hard enough to find anyone to write preg. There is only a few writers that do. However the main reason is complexity. Tits Steele preg code is already complicated. Probably the most complex code in the game. Most coders don't want to deal with it. I love doing it because it is my kink, well actually npc preg is, but I want to support preg in general and I can make sure it gets done right. However adding variable kid ranges would make it even more complex since it wasn't designed to do it from the beginning. I have actually done it once, taurs for shock hopper I believe. Max kids go way up in that case. It was a big pain and not something I would want to do again. Trying to add it now would mean going back and modifying the code for all existing preg and all the birth scenes to deal with a large range of kids.
If it was ever done, since steele can be such a wide variety of races, I would rather see it as vaginal qualities that could be modified as part of tfs instead of tied directly to race. Perhaps a kid min and max value for the vagina class. That way, for example, a steele that was half-ausar might have a womb like an ausar or a womb like a human. It could also be modified independently of race with other tfs. That way if more races are added, you don't need to go back and redo anything. Then each preg handler could take those values and modify them based on what is appropriate for the father's race.
Hmm, actually let me think on this. There might be a way to make it work without too much trouble.
I actually think the preg code is way to complicated for what it does currently, I'd love to see a redesign, build it from the ground up, ah well one can dream, in a perfect world maybe..
While I agree writers would have to write some variations I'm not entirely sure I'd have to be too complicated, just some minor variations and the fact that your race actually has an impact should have plenty value I think?
Don't you think I would be possible to just update the suggested functions? I would think that it should in theory make it work with any future race unless there is something really weird.
