I very emphatically am not interested in adding a gender/sex differentiation, as I'd like to keep this mod as simple as possible. Simple Trans does almost exactly what you describe and works with Non-Binary Gender. Gender: Dysphoria also has gender/sex mechanics.

Regarding Way Better Romance, the main issue is time. It requires a complete overhaul of the attraction system and I'm supposed to be cutting back on modding. (I'm not doing a great job of that. >_>) This rework will move away from traits and instead each pawn will keep track of which genders they're attracted to, sexually and romantically. There's a mod setting for the chance that they will be different, but there has to be a certain amount of overlap or else relationships get very messy. I was having some problems figuring out how to resolve the overlap rules but I had an idea recently that will hopefully work.

I'm also having some issues with the orientation logic. Orientation labels are highly subjective and individualized, but to put it in a game I need concrete rules. If a non-binary person rolls gay, what does that mean as far as the genders they're attracted to? If a binary person rolls straight, can they also be attracted to non-binary? What kind of settings do I need to include so people can get the experience they want? I don't have firm answers to these questions yet.

Heyo! Came from the other post and wanted to say that it's awesome that Simple Trans has mechanics that work with NB Gender. I was wondering the same thing too for that so it's neat to note that we can still have em reproduce :)

As for orientation logic, I have an idea for how you can set this up. Considering the fact that you are moving away from traits, I'm gonna suggest a new sort of configuration system that can be used to affect current created sexualities (and even make new or modify sexualities if possible!). What if users could edit the identities a sexuality is attracted to? For example, users could override the identities that the straight sexuality is attracted to by selecting their own. The straight sexuality would still of course include a general rule where that person is attracted to opposite identities, but for the case of something like non-binary, the user could pick identities that the sexuality will allow regardless of its built-in rule. If coded right, I imagine this could even work for identities created in the future by other modders assuming you aren't just adding in the non-binary identity in a really intrusive way. (If Simple Trans mod ever added trans genders as their own identities, I could see this working really well!)

Just to give a visual of what I was talking about, the whole idea could look like this:

User A:
Straight Sexuality: Default hardcoded rule - Different gender (This means non-binary people would be included too!)
Overrides: Non-binary not allowed (In this case, we could say that User A wanted to specifically make it so straight people would not be attracted to non-binary people even though the hardcoded rule allowed it)

Gay Sexuality: Default hardcoded rule - Same gender (If pawn is male, then pawn is attracted to male. If pawn is female, then attracted to female)
Overrides: Non-binary allowed (User A overrides the hardcoded rule to allow pawns with the gay sexuality to be attracted to non-binary)


Now let's swap it over to User B.
User B:
Straight Sexuality: Default hardcoded rule - Different gender
(There are no overrides for the straight sexuality from User B, so that means all identities that are not the same as the straight sexuality would be allowed assuming the default rule is coded this way)

Gay Sexuality: Default hardcoded rule - Same gender
(There are no overrides for the gay sexuality so that means only gay people would like the same identity as them!)


With this system, if possible, you could allow people to make their own sexualities with the ability to add any of the coded rules & other identities into them! So if someone really wanted, they could make a pansexual sexuality which includes all the hardcoded rules (different & same gender combined) and any additional identities the user adds that are not covered by those rules (which wouldn't be the case anyways because the "Different gender" rule would cover all other identities)

Now we could take this a step further and even add the idea of fluidity into the mix. Depending on how you make this, this could go many ways. You could set it up the way you have it set up in WBR currently where gay/straight colonists could still date an identity that doesn't match their sexuality's rule/allowed identities, OR you could make it so an individual pawn first gets a random sexuality, and then have the mod randomly alter change that sexuality to be slightly different specifically for that one pawn. So, for example, a pawn could say get the GAY sexuality. Say the user's set rules for the gay sexuality is simply just to be the same gender. As such, non-binary or the "different genders" rule would USUALLY not be an attraction for the pawn in this case. However, if the configuration in the mod settings for allowing sexuality to be fluid was on, the mod could randomly make it so that for this one pawn in particular, upon generation, they could also be attracted to non-binary identities as well and not just their same identity!

Hopefully that made sense. That was a bit of a doozy to write and I could see what I said getting complicated fast, so I do hope you were able to at least somewhat understand parts of what I was saying lol.

Unfortunately, since I don't mod this game, I don't know how ambitious I'm getting with all this and I also don't know your skill-set so it's not like I expect you to be able to do anything I'm suggesting. But these are just some of my suggestions on how you could handle the new systems for WBR, and I hope they gave you some inspiration of your own (if I didn't sell you on this idea). Regardless of what you do, I'll be super excited to see you make the mods compatible with each other. (I also just found out not too long ago that you made both mods, so that's sick! And thank you creator for making them. It feels really nice to have some representation around here :D )

If I stick with the mod settings being chances for each orientation, I am considering a setting for 'straight can include non-binary' and 'gay can include non-binary'. That would probably have a separate % chance.

For reference, the new attraction system isn't orientation based at all. The data saved is just whether they're attracted to each gender, which includes non-binary. Then I turn that data into a label/description to display on a new trait. Everyone has the same 'dynamic' trait, but the info displayed depends on their attraction data. I like the idea of letting the user name orientations, I actually had something like that in my original planning notes but moved away from it. Now I'm thinking I could make it work. That way I could set the rules to use in the code, but the user facing information can be more fluid. It would probably be along the lines of, "Women attracted to men and non-binary are called x." So per gender and attraction combination.

Other than the information displayed on the trait, there's not really going to be any, 'Is this person gay?' in the code. It will just be, 'Is this person attracted to this gender?' With the exception of some mod compatibility stuff, where the other mod is expecting a specific trait, it only matters when assigning attraction because the code I use has 'hetero, ♥♥♥♥, bi, none'.

The problem with this approach is that I'm still not sure what the orientations will mean when assigning attraction for a non-binary person. Currently I have gay being defined as only attracted to non-binary, and straight is only attracted to one of the binary genders. Bi is just attracted to men and women, and pan is all three. But since pan isn't one of the 'official' orientations used in the settings, and there's two possibilities for straight, there's still some stuff to figure out. I think I'd need to have a separate 'attracted to non-binary' % setting at the very least.

Another option, which is what I'm working on now, is to change the settings to be per gender. So instead of setting a percentage for each orientation, it's 'x% chance that women will be attracted to men', 'x% chance women will be attracted to women', etc. So I'd just roll each gender and assign attraction accordingly. This seems easier code wise but might be too confusing for the user. Once I have it working I'll post a link in my discord for people to test.

I'm currently debating whether to keep the possibility of 'wrong gender' matches. Since I'm separating romantic and sexual attraction, that might be enough complexity. If I do keep it, I'll probably add a setting to adjust the chance of it happening.

I think what you have planned right now seems good to me. Making the settings per gender I feel like shouldn't be too hard to understand. I also think the idea of separating romantic and sexual attraction is complex enough to not have 'wrong gender' matches, but I do also think there should still be that sense of sexual/romantic fluidity randomization in the game, so I do think it would be best to add a setting for adjusting the chances of it happening.