Difference between revisions of "Pregnancy"

Revision as of 16:05, 26 July 2011

Pregnancy, is the state were a new life develops in the womb of a female or hermaphrodite.

Mechanics

After conception a pregnancy will proceed through several stages. These are handled in the code as a range of description changes automatically made to your character and the existance of a Haste(Pregnancy) effect on your character.

Pregnancy negatively impacts your character's ATB speed in combat. This takes the form of the previously mentioned Haste(Pregnancy) effect. As the pregnancy progresses its magnitude will drop from 0 to -1. From there it will tick off another -1 every four OOC hours until it hits -6. This is the cap to your combat speed penalty and also the final stage of the pregnancy.

At -6 Birth is very near and if you plan to RP it out you should make plans to do so when the magnitude of your Haste is at -5.

Players can get an idea of what kind of child they are having by visiting the Library and talking to the doctor on the second floor to get an ultrasound. This will only tell you the baby's gender and specific infections for the head, arms, and legs.

Description Changes & Spoof Poses

During pregnancy your characters description will change. You will also receive spoof poses at certain times.

Descriptions include (in order of trimester):

• They have a warm glow about them.
• They look a bit pudgy especially around the middle. \ They seem to be putting on weight. \ Their belly distends as if from a full meal.
• Their motions are slowed by the burden of life in their womb. \ They are massively pregnant. \ They have a large round dome for a belly.

Spoofs include (in order of trimester):

• Are you getting fatter? \ Your breasts feel tender a moment. \ Ugh, you feel dizzy for a moment, and nauseous.
• Something about your belly just feels so... wonderful. \ You feel warm and good all over. \ Your half filled belly feels warm with life. \ Your breasts are leaking in preparation for the new child. \ You pause a moment to consider your impending child. \ You're happy you can handle this whole pregnancy thing.
• You drum your fingers across your taught belly. \ Your round, full, belly protrudes before you like a dome.

Multiple Births

Characters can and do get pregnant with multiple children. This is relatively rare however. 95 out of 100 mothers will have a normal birth of just one child. The remaining 5 will have either twins or triplets. The odds of conceiving twins is "rare" and triplets are rarer still. Further, twins and triplets are always identical.

At present the pregnancy code is only capable of handling random twin and triplet pregnancies. It is unlikely that it will ever allow quadruplets or more.

Twin and triplet pregnancies are randomly generated at birth and as such cannot be detected in advance by an ultrasound. Instead, the ultrasound will treat it as a normal pregnancy with just one child.

Birth for multiples are handled the same way as any other pregnancy with the exception that you will be told that you still feel another baby starting to decend. All babies in a multiple birth have the exact same mutation sets and it is for this reason that they are considered identical twins/triplets.

After Pregnancy

Following birth, the typical character will be infertile for a period of 7 OOC days. During this time they will be unable to become pregnant. However, there are exceptions to this rule.

Fertility Modifiers

There are a few ways to shorten the infertile priod that follows after pregnancy.

These are:

• The Husky Pill will send your character back into fertility again almost immediately.
• Taking the Baby Machine perk automatically reduces the infertility period to 3.5 OOC days rather than 7.
  • The Talakai Dedication has a fertility bonus that stacks with the Baby Machine perk, thereby reducing the infertile period to just 1.75 OOC days for players with both.
• The Fertile perk increases the odds of becoming pregnant.
  • But Birth Control pills will be ineffective on anyone with this perk.
• The Parthenogenesis Enabler Mako item will make any fertile player pregnant upon use. No sexual partner required.

Notes

• Pets that are pregnant must remain out and their owners need to remain connected.
  • When your pet gives birth, the resulting child will be placed into your +gear inventory just like any child you give birth to yourself.
    • Birthing "scenes" reguarding your pets are handled by the code as if you are the one giving birth, not the pet.
      • There is an exploit where pets can be dismissed after giving birth then resummoned to be impregnated again. This has yet to be fixed.
        • By that same token, a pregnant pet can be dismissed than resummoned to "abort" the pregnancy.
• A character's child summons cannot give birth unless it is converted into a playable character with a Youth Liberation Device.
  • While they can become pregnant, child summons last a very short time and will not "survive" long enough to give birth.
• A pregnant character or pet will be pregnant for 72 OOC hours maximum provided they remain connected to the game for the entire duration.
  • Disconnecting from the game "pauses" the pregnancy timer.
    • This time frame is significantly reduced to just 24 hours if the character or pet owner actively roleplays through the entire pregnancy.
• Pregnancies can be more effectively tracked by typing "+prove Pregnant to me" without the quotes. The smaller the value, the closer you are to giving birth.
• For players that are impatient, they can use +mako/preg to advance the pregnancy by one OOC hour per point of mako spent.
  • As the shortest possible pregnancy is only 24 OOC hours long, you cannot spend more than 24 mako on any individual pregnancy.
• Birth Control pills will abort pregnancies when taken.