Sims Science: Alien + Spellcaster Genetics

[Heart Foam]

We know about the alien + spellcaster conflict.

When RoM was new and exciting, I did the obvious sim challenge of Morgyn Ember having children by abduction. Eventually it worked, and we got twins by abduction. They were non alien, and in some of their features like hair colour favoured Morgyn quite a bit. There wasn't much (any?) noticeable trace of the alien mother. As I said to @Brian_Z it might be that because of the conflict the game is ignoring the alien parent viz-a-viz genetics, but maybe that was dumb luck. And that's what's being tested here on a larger scale.

The alien chosen man for this experiment has distinctive features, and we'll see if those characteristics tend to turn up together in the alien children, but not the non-aliens. Will the non-aliens basically take after their mothers? Aliens are the common denominator in many sims genetic experiments, so that's why this is here.

The Alien.

Searching the gallery for #uglyalien gave me Glogg Mcgogg. I made sure he had a wild hair colour that none of the mothers have, and could only come from him. He has a very small mouth, distinctive nose and chin.





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Method.

Glogg took his 20k starting funds and built a 64 tile home on Potters Splay, starting in the spring. That neighborhood has an abundance of roses and strawberries, when they're in season. Two reasons. 1: rose bushes can be harvested and flowers sold for the few simoleons he'll need to eat and pay bills. 2: strawberries grow in the spring. For some partners, I'm turning well-known sims into spellcasters. Mila Munch, for example. And we don't want more boys in the Munch household. Girls can also grow up and have a child with Father Winter, and I'm a fan of collecting those traits. His tiny home would also help raise charisma faster (and all other skills) which might be useful in some circumstances.

Roses can also be given romantically to make a girl swoon, but no, this is a test and we ain't got no time for that. For Rapid Romancing, the green alien man created a Get Together club, Loving Alien, with woohoo as a club activity. For science okay? As if you've not done far worse. Eventually, he was romantic with 16 spellcaster women. In a few cases I went to the home lot and gave it the lot trait "on ley line" to hopefully increase the number of births.



The premade spellcasters:
Grace Anansi, Minerva Charm (aged down to YA), Emelia Earnest, L. Faba

The randomly generated spellcasters:
Cynthia Ali, Yang Escobar, Amiyah Torres, Crystal Hood

Premade townies converted to spellcasters:
Lana McKinnon, Meredith Roswell, Geeta Rosoya (aged down to YA, obviously), Mila Munch, Summer Holiday, Bella Goth, Judith Ward, Nina Caliente

Now we wait for nooboos. I'll age them up and take CAS pictures when they arrive. The first one has been born at time of writing, a pure green alien son, Antonio Anansi.

[Heart Foam]

Okay, so things have changed.

Meet Jennie Charm. Now that 'miscellaneous' skin tones are available to normal sims, I'm getting spellcaster kids (with no bloodline?!?!?)... with green skin. So basically, hybrids. This used to not be the case. It used to be that the only kids who got the alien parent's skin colour were pure aliens themselves.





But that's not all. Jennie, daughter of Minerva Charm, clearly has a lot of her father's looks. Elsewhere L. Faba had twins, one is pure alien, one is green-skinned non-alien. 4 kids so far, all green.

So, yes. You can you still get pure alien children from alien+spellcaster woohoo. Antonio is an alien.



By default he was obviously bald, but when I gave him hair it was blue.

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Edit to add: this is the family tree of an older save, one where I bred Sulani Mana and Father Winter's baby onto Vabbilhea. Rangi was an Elemental who learned magic, and had many children with alien women so that I'd get a male pure alien with Sulani Mana. But note that the only kids who have an alien skintone are pure aliens. Every one of his children here has an alien mother.



There were no alien coloured non-aliens from spellcaster + alien woohoo, but now in 2021 there are.

[Heart Foam]

7 children so far, all green...



4 are aliens.
 
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They've overwhelmingly green. But not all of them. So far 12 / 14 have the alien skin colour.  Baby #9, Chana Ward, and baby #13 Isabella McKinnon are human coloured.

[Trip]

I wonder if alien skintone inheritance changed with the big skintone overhaul. Thanks for this work because I'm fascinated if nothing else.

[Brian_Z]

Interesting!  I knew that, when the alien-spellcaster conflict isn't part of the equation, children usually favor the father.  It looks like your kids are favoring the father even when they're born spellcasters.  I wonder if you'll have any random goofy features pop up in the spellcaster kids?  I've noticed that happening.
I had a female spellcaster who had 7 girls with all different fathers-- this was mostly to file away new original girls, without the "same-face" that happens when the same player makes multiple sims.  6 of them looked like their father, but Clement Frost's daughter had a randomly distorted, awful looking face- she looked more like one of the Charms.  I ended up giving her premade face #1 rather than try to fix her.  Mortimer Goth's daughter looked like him, after I shrank her enormous pumpkin head to normal proportions and fixed her ridiculous dumbo ears.  The others just all seemed to get bad teeth.  Marcus Flex's daughter obviously resembled him even as a toddler, in spite of having her mother's skin tone.

[Brian_Z]

Also something very interesting about that save where I bred a bunch of girls for later use:  Caleb Vatore's daughter was born a vampire.  Now, these girls were being bred for later use like I said, and I don't have much interest in playing vampires.  She had blonde hair.  I used MCCC to remove the Vampire trait... and her appearance changed!  She had black dreadlocks after that, and the game kept that look, giving her dreadlocks again as she aged up to child and again to teen.  Her mother also had no problem giving her Rite of Ascention when she reached teen, I know that's been an issue for cured vampires.

[Heart Foam]

Results.

The final child count is 21. 9 Aliens. I think it is a 50/50 chance. If this was done 10,000 times, it would break evenly.

So there are 12 non-aliens. The last baby, Harley Goth, is the 3rd non-green sim. It might not be worth showing CAS pictures of all sims, but the 12 non-aliens are the ones I'm most interested to age up and check out.

The results are not what I expected. I thought the alien kids would be green, I thought all others wouldn't be. I did expect the dad's distinctive features would probably show up even on the non-aliens, and that's clearly the case. It was my experience with other saves that there was zero chance of children inheriting alien skintones from such woohooing until the skintone overhaul. Green or blue skin wasn't in the pool available because that was locked specifically to aliens and hybrids. But now it is available, and the overwhelming chance to get that skin seems to be the same as for the normal alien + human children.

So can you have a spellcaster female have a child with an alien, and have it looks basically like her with no trace of the alien father? No.

Anywho. I'm keen to see the human skinned kids.

Chana Ward
Spellcaster, Weak Magical Bloodline







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Isabella McKinnon
Spellcaster, Weak Magical Bloodline







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Harley Goth
Spellcaster, Weak Magical Bloodline







All 3 of these sims have a bloodline trait. The only green spellcaster I've looked at so far, Jennie Charm daughter of Minerva, doesn't.

[Brian_Z]

Thanks for researching all this! 
I see the "random redheads" are still very much a thing.  Looks like Chana Ward almost got lucky, except for the chin.

[Heart Foam]

Two random readheads there! Jennie Charm too, for that matter. I wonder if there are a few blue haired aliens. The first one was, which was cool.

Jennie Charm looks like an outlier. All other green spellcasters have a weak bloodline trait, where the mothers were just newly minted spellcasters with no bloodline of their own. The difference in Jennie's case is her mother has "strong bloodline", and I've previously noticed a conflict those traits in abductions. So I think that's the problem. The only other premade spellcaster woman with a bloodline trait is Gemma Charm who starts the game as a teen, and she wasn't part of the test. I don't think Grace Anansi or Emilia Earnest have a bloodline trait. I'll double check Emilia, but her baby was an alien anyway.

[30 seconds later] And... no. Wiki says Emilia doesn't have a bloodline.

So Minvera's kid is the exception because there's still a conflict with those traits, and it's why we can't force a bloodline trait on an alien by regular woohooing or abduction. To look at her simology, Jennie Charm isn't special at all. But her story is different and rare: a spellcaster had a spellcaster child, yet no bloodline trait. A more story oriented player might invent a reason for that, or plot Jennie's Revenge.

Bella Goth has never had a more underwhelming child.

[Brian_Z]

I did have a sim have blue kids with an alien, ages ago, before spellcasters were even a thing.  They're human, just blue.
I wish there was a way to make the game STOP allowing regular humans with special color skin tones.  I'm sick of all the random generated humans with bizarre skin colors.