Families

[Scotterius]

So let's keep it realistic but not rated-X okay?

Well, 'X-rated' is a little strong...but this is exactly why it becomes so difficult. Anymore than some lap dancing in bars, and a notification that says "Empress Scotterinia has produced the new heir of Scotteria!' would make me uncomfortable.

The way the game is now, human beings simply spawn magically in the desert. With this system human life is cheap and inexhaustible. This makes the game fast and easy, there are always people to fight and reinforcements are always in bars. This is likely the way the game will remain. It keeps the pacing fast, enconomics to a minimum, and things simple and uncomplicated. I would expect family being handled like Mount and Blade.

There is another way, where human life is finite. Spawns could subtract from pools of total members of a faction and add back to the total when they are dismissed. The pools only slowly regenerate. This changes a great deal. Factions can now run out of members. A lot of time will have to pass between military campaigns to gather troops, emigration and immigration becomes important . In this system birth, marriages, children and pregnant women have more of a place. This will have to be modded in, but what from I have seen so far it should not be very hard.

[Kamos]

I think we can find a middle ground here. How does kissing which leads to laying eggs sound?

[toaster Assassin]

Kamos, I think that you just solved the problem, Kenshi needs a platypus!

[Scotterius]

I think we can find a middle ground here. How does kissing which leads to laying eggs sound?

Sounds good, but the kissing part is a little risque. There is some implication of passion there. Now if it was "Marriage that leads to laying eggs"....

[Kamos]

Brilliant! After reciting vows the woman goes home and lays eggs! But only if she wasn't wearing gloves.

It can be an allegory for safe sex.

[Hentz]

Come on guys, when are you gonna learn that you can get anything at Crazy Vasili.
They have feet for sale over there and I'm not talking about the cheep made in china ones, nope, those they sell come from home country production. You can even trade them for your kidneys, you won't miss those anyway.

I already made a thread about family, heritage and such some time ago, but i'm not sure it's worth it now considering you'll end up with huge armies, so keeping track of who has a family and where, would be annoying.
If there's a feature where you can make one of your characters into a chief/king/dictator/... then having his family only would be interesting imo. That way you can still do the stuff you talked about, you could have a heir and it would be more realistic.

random ascii wave (believe it):
°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸,ø¤°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸,

on the heir thing, you could just make your most trusted person in your warband in kenshi, like the first person you recruit. If hes still alive, that is

[1337]

on the heir thing, you could just make your most trusted person in your warband in kenshi, like the first person you recruit. If hes still alive, that is

Yeah that works too. I remember when playing a full campaign in ROME (tw) once, I had a general that conquered north africa and gradually took out the whole south of the map and the east part. He even had an army full of veterans. It was like he had real charisma. The more I played the more I liked him, and eventually I decided to make him the heir of my empire (instead of the direct son of the emperor).

Obviously that guy, even though he became the heir, he continued to fight, not caring about losing his life for the empire.

The day he became emperor and I brought him back (from far north east) to my capital, it was like a consecration for him and his loyal veterans. One of the highlights of my total war gaming life

[BloodyNex]

At the risk of sounding twisted, I value the role playing aspect of no character being "unkillable". Whether or not to include pregnant women is up to Chris and/or modders. I think a better solution would be for one of your characters to come home and find out that he has a baby. If a character gets pregnant, maybe they disappear for a while to have the child. While your squad is out exploring the desert, it's likely that enough time will pass for children to be born and such and nothing "x-rated" needs to be shown. Another solution could be to make defenseless characters stop returning to their original position so quickly. As long as they keep running, attackers can't catch them. If they run their attackers into a city full of guards, problem solved.
But it could be a strong motivator for your characters to return home and find out that bandits killed their families. Maybe there could even be a "motivation" stat or something like that which would sky-rocket if such a thing happens. Also, I hate when I decide to play an evil character and yet I'm barred from attacking someone just because they're a child or something. The character himself wouldn't care about who he kills, unless I'm going the route of a black-knight (evil, but still honorable).
Of course, I understand that Chris may be worried about criticisms on such things. If it never makes it into Kenshi, then I guess I'll have to get around to working on my sandbox game.