Genetic Castes

This mod adds a caste-system like in insect-hives for Rimworld, based on genes and pre-defined xenotypes. You can either use the Halamyr as provided, or define your own castes using XML.

This is originally extracted from my (NSFW) Mod RJW-Genes v1.3.3.

Features

Castes

There are four types of pawns:

• Queens (=any Pawn with a Queen-Gene)
• Drones (=any Pawn with a Drone-Gene)
• Workers (=any Pawn with a Worker-Gene)
• Others (Non-Caste-Pawns)

Caste Inheritance

The castes are determined at birth, either from Biotech Pregnancy or from RJW-Egg pregnancy.

The following steps are considered when a baby is born:

if (baby has queen parent):
    if (baby has a drone parent):
        Maybe Queen (always same as queen parent)
        Maybe Drone (always same as drone parent)
        Maybe Worker 
    else:
        Baby is always worker
else:
    normal rimworld or rjw birth

Only queens can initiate an caste-birth. Children born from workers / drones that have no queen as a parent might inherit the xenotype or parts of it, but that follows normal Rimworld / RJW logic. The mechanisms added by this mod only apply for babys with 1 queen parent.

Workers are not "Xenotypes like the others, and the worker genes are added to a born baby later. They do not replace anything, they are just on top*. This means that e.g. if you have Imps as your partners you can have a imp-worker as result.

Queens can also be male. I just picked the name for fitting into the theme.

Configuration / Definition

There are 2 files that are necessary for a hive:

HiveOffspringChanceDef looking like this

    <GeneticCastes.HiveOffspringChanceDef>
        <defName>genetic_castes_test_queen_offspring_chances</defName>
        <queenXenotype>genetic_castes_test_queen_xenotype</queenXenotype>

        <queenChance>0.02</queenChance>
        <droneChance>0.28</droneChance>
        <workerChance>0.7</workerChance>

    </GeneticCastes.HiveOffspringChanceDef>

Which specifies for one queen-xenotype the chances of a baby-queen, baby-drone or baby-worker.

The second XML is QueenWorkerMappingDefs which looks like this:

    <GeneticCastes.QueenWorkerMappingDef>
        <defName>genetic_castes_halamyr_queen_worker_mapping</defName>
        <queenXenotype>genetic_castes_halamyr_queen_xenotype</queenXenotype>
        <workerGenes>
            <li MayRequire="sarg.alphagenes" >AG_SmallerBodySize</li>
            <li>StrongStomach</li>
            <li MayRequire="sarg.alphagenes" >AG_EfficientMandibles</li>
            <li MayRequire="sarg.alphagenes" >AG_FasterAging</li>
            <li>PsychicAbility_Dull</li>
            <li>FireTerror</li>
            <li>Sterile</li>
            <li MayRequire="sarg.alphagenes" >AG_FormicAntennas</li>
            <li>Skin_DeepRed</li>
            <li>AptitudeTerrible_Intellectual</li>
            <li MayRequire="vegapnk.rjw-genes">rjw_genes_featureless_chest</li>
            <li>genetic_castes_worker</li>
            <li>genetic_castes_zealous_loyalty</li>
        </workerGenes>
    </GeneticCastes.QueenWorkerMappingDef>

It has a unique defname, refers to the queen-xenotype (must match exactly!) and then a list of all genes that should be added to a worker. You also see that I have MayRequires there to account for different mod-sources of genes.

Planned / Thoughts

I'd actually love for other people to use this more as a framework. I think if I add too many xenotypes or stuff like that it will suck a bit for people to add, there are enough mods that add bloat. So for now this is 1 scenario with 3 1/2 xenotypes.

Maybe I want to have a second set of genes that has non-gendered names, i.E. not queen but "leader" or something like this. But it seems a bit like bloat, lets first see how people like things.

One thing I'd like to add is to pick up some other genes that have a form of pregnancy, e.g. the Vanilla Expanded Phytokin or Alpha Genes insect-genes. But for now this is early stage and I'd mostly like you peeps to test.

Troubleshooting

I put eggs into a breeder and they are not fertilized!!!

Yes, this can happen due to Base-RJW logic and is a common mistake. If the eggs are too old they can still be transplanted, but not fertilized anymore. As of 26-07-2024, eggs can only be fertilized before half of their gestation.

This is also affected by your egg-pregnancy settings. The slower your egg pregnancy is, the easier eggs are to fertilize.