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[Warlord255]

So right now, children are useless little buggers. They take far, far too long to age into useful dwarves, and are generally just an FPS hit.

So here's a suggestion for making children more useful, so that the benefit of keeping them around is worth the effort.

Age 1->2: Baby. Is carried.
Age 3->6: Child, as is now. Will haul, pull levers, etc.
Age 7->10: "older" child. Can be assigned labors, but cannot be assigned crafting jobs or be recruited; this relegates them to hauling, furnaces, farming, misc. processing, fishing and gathering.
Age 11->14: "Young adult". Can do everything except be recruited into the military.
Age 15: Adult.

Thoughts?

[inaluct]

Sounds like a good idea to me. It would definitely make children less of a burden on a fortress.

[Impaler[WrG]]

I think more disease would also help to slow down reproduction rates, historically lots of children died along with a lot of adults too, it would help to make for a more appropriate rate of real growth.  The current growth rate is easily greater then 10% if everyone is married.

Their should also be some kind of [FERTILITY] tag which specifies time between pregnancies so different races can be made to reproduce faster or slower, all the dwarven mythology agrees that dwarfs reproduce slowly and goblins quickly (relative to humans).

[Foa]

Dammit Warlord, you make too much sense!

Supported.

[Neonivek]

Arn't Dwarves Adult at age 12 currently?

Anyhow besides that I think the issue is still that very little time passes in Fortress mode... not that it takes too long for dwarves to grow up. Even with that solution your looking at a good 7+ years to get any use from children that you couldn't from cheese makers.

So in conclusion it is a good idea on its own but not a solution to the problem of children as a whole.

[Cthulhu]

Better idea:  She-Dwarves have three or more dwarves at a time, who chew their way out of the mother, killing her.  The baby dwarves grow up within ten minutes.

[Pilsu]

Great idea. I'd certainly let my dwarves breed if their kids could learn hauling early

Now to combine that with baby limit per family so the same damn woman doesn't pop out every single child in the fort. The Countess spends more time on her back than the injured dwarves. Maybe pet and possession limits while at it

[Tormy]

So right now, children are useless little buggers. They take far, far too long to age into useful dwarves, and are generally just an FPS hit.

So here's a suggestion for making children more useful, so that the benefit of keeping them around is worth the effort.

Age 1->2: Baby. Is carried.
Age 3->6: Child, as is now. Will haul, pull levers, etc.
Age 7->10: "older" child. Can be assigned labors, but cannot be assigned crafting jobs or be recruited; this relegates them to hauling, furnaces, farming, misc. processing, fishing and gathering.
Age 11->14: "Young adult". Can do everything except be recruited into the military.
Age 15: Adult.

Thoughts?

Just a note: Once the max. amount of weight what a creature will be able to carry will be defined [probably it will be based on str], chilrden won't [..or least shouldn't] be able to carry heavy objects for example. So..
Age 3->6: Child, as is now.  -> The should be able to haul seeds, food and other light weighted objects.
Age 7->10: "older" child. -> Weapons, armors [max. chainmail] and other medium weighted objects.
Age 11->14: "Young adult". -> Pretty much everything.

[Footkerchief]

How about a minimum age for doing each job in the entity definition?  It already has a long list of permitted professions, so the age could easily be specified alongside.

[Granite26]

excellent... the same system could be used to force streetwalkers to retire when they hit 25...

[Dame de la Licorne]

This would also come in handy for generational forts (maybe more so than a typical fort?).  Supported!

[Tormy]

How about a minimum age for doing each job in the entity definition?  It already has a long list of permitted professions, so the age could easily be specified alongside.

Nop...just read my post above yours. The max. amount of weight what a creature can carry around must be defined sooner or later, which should be based on attributes. The max. strength of a kid should be also quite low even if it's "maxed". Thus a simple hauling - age restriction wouldn't work perfectly. Even small kids should be able to haul seeds and stuff like that, but only young adults should be able to haul full plates for example.

[Granite26]

Honestly, I think that someday morphology will allow critters to turn into other critters at a certain age, and we'll end up with any level of complexity we want here.

[Neonivek]

Hopefully one day the reason Children don't do more complex jobs is because their intelligence level doesn't allow it (and possible a few other stats)... so prodigy children with great Dex could craft!

Children capable of working who don't seems like a job for the ethics engine!

[Footkerchief]

Nop...just read my post above yours. The max. amount of weight what a creature can carry around must be defined sooner or later, which should be based on attributes. The max. strength of a kid should be also quite low even if it's "maxed". Thus a simple hauling - age restriction wouldn't work perfectly. Even small kids should be able to haul seeds and stuff like that, but only young adults should be able to haul full plates for example.

That doesn't really make sense with DF's model of encumbrance though -- anyone can haul an infinite amount of weight, it just slows you down.   If that changes later, okay, but what about tending the fields or doing lightweight crafting, which don't involve heavy hauling?  Your model doesn't really touch on that -- physical strength is not the only consideration.

The nature of child labor is that some cultures do expect children to do work they're not physically or mentally prepared to do, and typically these expectations have been based on age -- after a coming-of-age ritual, you're out of mom's lap and spending all day in the fields hauling water or whatever, although you'd probably be helping out with some kind of chores at an even younger age.  You probably wouldn't get an exception for weakness unless you were thoroughly crippled.