Design ideas: kerbal breeding

[undercoveryankee]

Fans of Extraplanetary Launchpads and its insatiable appetite for engineers have been asking for anything that adds more sources of cheap kerbals. I've seen suggestions for a "kuddle shack" or cloning facility to add new kerbals in the field.

A dedicated part for breeding doesn't quite have the feel I'd like to play, so here are a few design ideas I've had.

Once an in-game day, look at every manned shop with at least one empty seat whose time since launch is at least 15 days. (Time cutoff should be configurable; I picked 15 based on the default maximum time out of supply in USI Life Support.)

Each eligible ship has a chance to spawn a new kerbal in an empty seat. Probability proportional to the total number of kerbals on the ship and the male/female ratio. The geometric man of the numbers of male and female kerbals has the right kind of properties.

If a kerbal is born, randomly select one male and one female as parents. Probabilities for courage, stupidity, BadS, and tourist based on the parents' attributes. Class can't be inherited directly because it's a function of the name, but kerbals of the new addition's class could be given a bonus to being selected as parents.

To keep the light-hearted "don't think about it too closely" attitude of the base game, I'd rather not worry about childhood. Any crew member kerbal created would be able to function immediately. If you're playing without a mod to give kerbals experience in the field, award a fraction of the stars the parents have, especially same-class parents.

By not requiring a dedicated part, we allow a chance that any interplanetary ship could arrive with fewer empty seats than it took off with. That's a kind of spontaneity I think would be fun.

[Wesreidau]

Yeah, I dunno. A Homestead module that only works out of Kerbin SOI is one thing, but do we really want Val giving birth in a Mk2 Lander Can while we assemble a space station? Besides, I like to imagine there's at least some level of professionalism among the Kerbonauts. I mean if you want to ship Jeb and Val and ship them to Laythe to found a colony then that's your thing, but I'm sure the two of them would rather get to the honeymoon destination first.

[undercoveryankee]

Yeah, I dunno. A Homestead module that only works out of Kerbin SOI is one thing, but do we really want Val giving birth in a Mk2 Lander Can while we assemble a space station? Besides, I like to imagine there's at least some level of professionalism among the Kerbonauts. I mean if you want to ship Jeb and Val and ship them to Laythe to found a colony then that's your thing, but I'm sure the two of them would rather get to the honeymoon destination first.

I would tune the overall growth rate to where new kerbals anywhere would be rare unless you intentionally deploy a module with a big crew like the EPL workshop.

But you're right that it could use some level of control beyond the overall rate.

Now I'm thinking fertility multipliers for different SoIs and landed vs. orbital, so the mod can blacklist or reduce places that shouldn't be treated as colony sites.

Another knob you could use is a ramp of fertility from zero at the initial eligibility MET to reach full only after a longer time like the length of a Duna Hohmann.

[Minwaabi]

Wouldn't fixing the hiring cost of Kerbal's be a simpler/more logical solution? You don't have to worry about male/female ratios, time in flight, room, skipping childhood, genetics or anything else. Simply making it so the hiring cost makes sense would be ideal for most applications. Maybe make the price inversely proportional to rep (plus some base constant) and make it so you have serious hits to your rep if a Kerbal dies. The current cost formula only makes sense if the Kerbal population is very very small or your killing Kerbals left and right.

[TheMoonRover]

The geometric man of the numbers of male and female kerbals has the right kind of properties.

That's a rather ironic typo.

A few more ideas:

> Perhaps the baby kerbal could be temporarily flagged as a tourist, allowing them to mature over time?

> Only allow kerbals to breed in parts without command authority or any other purpose (e.g. Hitchhiker Storage Container, Mk2 Crew Cabin, Mk3 Passenger Module) because there's more space in there (and you wouldn't want to contaminate any of the experiments in the science lab now would you?)

> If possible, have the child use parts of their parent's names, for example Gregrod (Male) and Valelle (Female) might have a child called Valrod (M) or Gregelle (F)

[Kibble]

This thread again.

[KerbMav]

This thread again.

Got a link?

Honestly, I do not think this would work out reasonably for kerbonauts, but introducing colonists alongside tourists might work - but without a complimenting life support and stuff ...

[Janos1986]

We shall call it... the FANFICTION MOD!

[hab136]

Civilian Population lets you breed new Kerbals in a non-cheaty way.

Kolonists lets you push button, get Kerbal.

[PB666]

Will the baby kerbals eat all your mined resources?

Geeze Kathy what happened to all or LfOx?

Oh, I thing junior broke into the storage, my has he grown.

We don't have a biological resource flow yet in the stock game, all the resources flow is for non-biologicals.

Before you can have an effective breeding colony given

Kerbals have mass

E = Mc^2 (Yes I know this is crudely applied here, but chemical energy must be stored in biologicals in terms of C-H bond energies (100kcal per mole).

Therefore increasing the mass of kerbals requires energetics and