I have an idea for an object that can be used for creating babies, toddlers, and children for adoption. I did post about how it would work in Hacks + cc you'd like to see, but I might need to revise how the menu tree works.

I've made a mindmap to show how it would in theory work. Would it be possible?

Character generators exist and you can look at how they work, then add the adoption flavor on top of it. My experience with new characters is the following.

You can make a genetic baby from two persons. If you want a more advanced age, you have to age him up. I don't know a way to do this invisibly. It is likely possible. You need to fill in some fields during aging, and satisfy wants related to becoming this age, which are used as a root for other wants. There is a CAS history call that gives some essentials. You control nothing in the genetic baby. If you want to produce twins, you can use the first baby as the source of both parents. But this will flip its gender. Perhaps you can avoid this by creating one extra baby and delete him in the end, so that the gender flips back. But that leaves an unlinked name record behind.

Townie/NPC is what I would call an archetypical character. The face will be randomly chosen from one of the supplied ethnicities. You cannot choose. You control the skin tone, and can directly choose the age. As far as I know, you can't set hair or eyes. If you want to force an archetype, you can bring up the Modify Facial Structure dialog, which seems kinda clunky, and leaves the original face in stealth behind.

Archetypical characters are boring. Maybe doing a genetic mixing is more fun. But then you can end up with clashing parts. I wouldn't use the term "genetic engineered" if you can't set most parameters.

Maybe bring up a three choice message box: archetypical, choose parents, random parents (default after a short timeout depending on the amount of text in the dialog box).

To find plantman's NID as source you can use Set to Next "neighbor of type". Don't spawn him on the lot, or the object's package will be modified. You can use him as a source for an Elven face without infecting the new character with plantmanism. Are there child plantmen? I don't recall there being one.

I didn't know I couldn't control the face Template. Might modify the tree. You're right about the child plantsims. In a vanilla game, plantsims skip ages for some weird reason. There's at least one mod enabling plantsimism for other age groups. So I'll modify that one.

But I want to make randomized genetic toddlers and children with NPCs for adoption. If a mod like that is possible, I'd like to see how to make it work.

You can take a peek in my ToLD inside "Interaction - Age" what I found was needed to skip ages. It is probably not a complete list, and some of that could be entrusted to some built-in CT. I've not tried to do it without an animation. Maybe he can be set to invisible, or he can be "refreshed" instantly.

Maybe more talented modders who work at a lower level like Lazy Duchess can control the genetics, or something new was discovered.

Skip ages? Why do I need to skip ages?

If you make a character with parents, you always get a baby. If you want a child instead, you have to transform him "skipping" his normal growth.