Too Many Male Births

forman · 2023-07-12 20:39:52

I don't know what the odds value is but it probably needs to be cut in half.
To be honest, either males should give birth or be removed it's only a obstacle at this point.

May as well SID until female.

mikeyreza · 2023-07-13 00:49:15

The whole point of being male is that you don't have to worry about having babies, so you can be the iron miner or the trapper (or etc.) of your town

if you want to /die until you're born a female, that's fine, Jason added /die for many reasons. But I'm sure a lot of people do like playing as males.

I think male birth rates are already lower than females anyway, so reducing it more is unnecessary. If a town dies as a result of too many males being born, that's pure unluck. The only way to fix that situation would be either to forbid fertiles from splitting off from pre-established towns (this is a bad solution, imo, Jason shouldn't restrict alternative play styles no matter how unintentionally destructive they could be), or he could just start adding content updates again so the game gains traction and more players are flowing into the server(s) consistently.

forman · 2023-07-13 15:15:46

mikeyreza wrote:

I think male birth rates are already lower than females anyway, so reducing it more is unnecessary. If a town dies as a result of too many males being born, that's pure unluck.

No, it's not just unluck. It's a poorly tuned variable.

Players splitting off to start new towns is annoying but insignificant.

Towns should die sometimes and that's perfectly fine.

But I've repeatedly -- as in dozens of times -- witnessed lively towns, with dedicated players and ample resources, suddenly die because there were no girls.

That is significant.

This is an example of a mechanic that is an obstacle to gameplay.

People will be playing the game normally and then suddenly just afk until death or suicide because the game/instantiation is no longer playable.

A similar issue was eve towns with no iron. Pretty sure this has been fixed now probably with just a couple tweaks to existing code.

Sure, it would be great if Jason could add more content but the game already has a lot of content.

Right now he appears to be fixing bugs and tuning variables which requires less time while having significant improvement on gameplay.

bpskotch · 2023-07-16 12:02:47

I think I have to agree with forman here - There are definitely many situations where a sudden overtake of male births leads to the demise of a town. I have seen this plenty of times myself. I think the issue might be less so the ratio of male:female births, but rather the criteria that leads to such a wave of male births.

From my experience, males tend to start popping up when there is a sufficient quantity of fertile females available. However, what I believe might be an unaccounted factor (just based on my experience) is how close said fertiles are to becoming infertile at 40 years old. So for example, take into account the twins/triplets/quads system. Suppose a town has a quad birth, and all four are female. This would make a "ticking time bomb" of infertility, where up until the group gets old, the game might think there are still plenty of fertile females, and continue to push boys into the family. Then, when the quads turn 40, all of a sudden we transition from plenty of fertiles to little to none.

What I can suggest is something like this - a system that not only takes into account the quantity of fertiles in a town, but also takes into account the average amount of time left before all current members of the family are infertile. So for example, say we have an average town of 10 people. We have 4 males, and 6 females. Most of the females are in their 30's, and one maybe in their 20's or younger. There might be a lot of "fertile females", however the average remaining time left of fertility would be skewed to be low, therefore serving as another potential trigger for more females to be forced into the family.

I am of course open to critique on this idea. This is just a rough draft of a potential change that could be made to improve the chances of families outliving the "male curse" as I like to call it.

forman · 2023-07-16 14:58:41

bpskotch wrote:

This is just a rough draft of a potential change that could be made to improve the chances of families outliving the "male curse" as I like to call it.

I'm just calling out the issues as I see them. I don' t really care /how/ things are fixed as long as the issue stops occurring.

The problem is simply that towns are dying because there are no fertile females, at inappropriate times.

The inappropriateness being that there is plenty of water and iron and the generation is still low (often less than 5 even).

I actually have no problem with more male births once situation has changed (no more water, running on diesel or there's no rubber).

Specifically, when generations get pretty deep, say 20, I think there should be MORE male births because towns last far too long imo.

I have no problem with families dying out but that should NEVER happen before the town at least hits the rubber well.

Marquis · 2023-07-16 18:38:03

Hey, I’d like to jump in and brainstorm with y’all, but I can’t find what the actual algorithm is. Does anyone know?

One Hour One Life Forums

#1 2023-07-12 20:39:52

Too Many Male Births

#2 2023-07-13 00:49:15

Re: Too Many Male Births

#3 2023-07-13 15:15:46

Re: Too Many Male Births

#4 2023-07-16 12:02:47

Re: Too Many Male Births

#5 2023-07-16 14:58:41

Re: Too Many Male Births

#6 2023-07-16 18:38:03

Re: Too Many Male Births

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