Why no genetic heritability in this game? Shouldn't two parents with super high Charisma have a child with super high Charisma? Why aren't the SPECIAL skills inherited? Shouldn't each child receive a random mix of the Skill levels of the two parents, rather than a purely random assignment they seem to receive now?


Please institute this change, Bethesda, so that I can institute my massive training/breeding program to repopulate the earth with my perfect progeny.

Because skills need to be honed? Skills are not something one genetically passes on. Not in real life anyway. Talent is a different story but again, a talent needs to be exploited by training.

Children might start with a slightly higher-than-normal SPECIAL stat based on parents' aptitudes. Beyond that, inheritability seems limited to skin tone and hair color.

I think there IS some genetic influence in the game, and I'm not calling it a coincidence because of the sample size. Essentially, I had good ole Three Dog knock up every woman in my vault (eight), and all the children seem to have a natural disposition towards Charisma (It is 3 when they are born). Now, pardon me, but who let the dogs out?

Who who who who ?

Loooool! I bet all the other males were out hunting, eh?

I feel like there are too many people born with high Charisma or no stand out trait at all. I have started to get a few with different traits but there's an imbalance of dwellers with high Charisma. Which is probably the most useless trait after endurance. i guess it's not completely useless since my radio station is booming. But still... The vault needs more than just Charisma to function.

Seeing as how you get babies faster with more charismatic characters, this does follow the path of natural selection...

i've done a lot of breeding. and i can't be 100% sure but it looks like the babies usually do inherit the stats of the parents.

the thing is, all common dwellers can only start out with up to 3 on a stat.

my babies usually seem to be born with 3 on the stat that the parents had as their highest stat.

i have a perfect charisma guy, and he preggered 10 females. 6 of them were from my power rooms, 4 were from my food rooms.

5 of the babies were born with C3, 3 had S3 and 2 were born with A3.

it could just be RNG but it looks like the babies inherited the parents stats...like an almost exact 50/50 chance of inheriting one of the parents' highest stat and that stat will start out at 3.


breeding in general does seem to produce dwellers with slighly higher stats than the ones the radio room brings in.

if this is the case then the radio room is practically useless, because you can create superior offspring more quickly just by breeding, and you don't really need the happiness boost, all your guys can be raised to 100% other ways. the only reason you might need the radio room is to bring in more genetic diversity and prevent inbreeding, that's why i say it's not "totally" useless.

this supports my theory, because i suspect you are using high charisma dwellers for breeding, so most of your babies are inheriting the charisma.

if you want ot inherit a different stat, use low charisma people to breed with high levels on the desired stat and have them wear the nightwear, ..like maybe an extra minute for them to get down to business.


i suspect that if both parents have 6 or more on the same stat your baby might be guaranteed to be born with 3 on that stat.


keep in mind this is speculation on my part

i wish the kids could inherit hair color and hairstyles. i have like only 3 women in my vault of 100 with hair like my own, and i wish i could have picked those to breed and have the babies inherit the hair. like have the males inherit the dads hair and girls inherit the moms hair. in this sense you could create a vault full of super clones.

Skin tone and hair color do seem to inherit. Only not the hairstyles...

I waiting for triplets... So i can name them Larry, Moe, Curly. Or do some working in the science lab so my vault will be the new John and Kate plus 8.

Err... hair color does inherit. I had no redheads in my vault before Moira Brown... er... contributed. Four boys, two with red hair, and a girl with red hair from her. Red hair has a nonzero chance of happening with any pairings involving at least her redheaded offspring.

I did have one of the redhead males inherit the hairstyle from his father, but that may have been a fluke. Like real-life, hairstyle is not a genetically inheritable trait.