Hereditary Echoes

Hereditary Echoes

This mod gives children born in your colony a small chance to inherit a latent echo of their parents' chronic conditions. The echo sits dormant in their health tab from birth, then may manifest as they grow up

How it works

• When a baby is born in your colony, each parent's chronic conditions are checked. Each one has a small chance (default 6%, configurable) to pass down as a latent echo.
• Latent echoes are visible in the child's health tab from birth, and you'll get a letter as soon as the baby is born with one.
• The echo manifests at one of the child's growth ages (7, 10, or 13), applying the actual condition with a notification
• Conditions apply through the game's own systems, so a cataract echo lands in an eye and asthma in the lungs, exactly as vanilla would.

What can be inherited

• Chronic conditions - asthma, bad back, cataracts, frail, and so on. Detected automatically from the game's own chronic disease system, which means modded chronic conditions are supported without patches.
• Scars (optional, off by default) - enable this in settings and a parent's permanent injuries can leave a faint mark on the same body part of their child.

Configurable

• Echo chance per parent condition (0-50%)
• Maximum echoes per child (1-3)
• Scar inheritance toggle
• Birth letter toggle

Compatibility

• Requires Biotech and Harmony.
• Only affects births in your colony. Raiders, quests, and other factions are untouched.
• Modded chronic conditions are detected and inherited automatically.
• Safe to add mid-save. If you want to remove it mid-save, use dev mode to remove any "hereditary echo" hediffs from children first, otherwise the save will complain about the missing mod.

FAQ

Q: Does this work with ? A: Almost certainly. Any chronic condition wired into the game's age-related disease system, including modded ones, is inherited automatically. Q: Can echoes stack into unplayable children? A: By default a child can carry at most one echo, and the chance is low. Both are sliders so its customizable by your choice. Q: Is this genetic? Doesn't Biotech already do inheritance? A: Biotech inherits genes. This covers the non-genetic side - conditions and (optionally) scars. Q: Growth vat babies? A: Echoes trigger on birth from pregnancy. Vat-grown children are not affected. Q: Performance? A: Extremely light. It runs one check at each birth, and latent echoes check their age once per in-game hour. If you found a bug or ran into any issues, please leave it down in the comments/discussions

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