Opinion(s) About Breeding

This is not a suggestion thread, this thread is for the current opinions about the breeding system as it exists now.

I personally feel it's currently too close to Lioden's breeding system and should be mixed up or tweeked in some way to keep Wolvden feeling like it's own game. As stated by some in the now locked and hidden "Problem With Breeding Males", the game's breeding feels like Lioden: Wolf Edition.

Many fear the system will lead to a similar playstyle as Lioden, keeping a harem of females and a singular male. Though the pack leader is not exclusively male, and you can have leaders who are females, people are still likely to use their best male as their leader and breeder (even I am guilty of this). This inevitably leads to the "unless sons" problem. In Lioden, sons, unless they're worth a sexchange or being an heir, are quite literally useless. You can only have so many sub-males in a pride, and the rest that aren't going to be an heir, a sub, or be a good female, are used for karma fodder or the gorillas.

In Wolvden this is somewhat fixed with males and females being able to do all jobs and fill out pack slots equally. However, unless any of these males are a breeding male, their genetics are unless. You can't breed your best hunter so you can have more good hunters because he's a male, and can only use his genetics if you shell out to retire your current breeder (or give him a sexchange). So to avoid this, it's easier for people to keep only the male they plan to breed and then fill out the rest of their pack with females. So this leads to people chasing their male pups (or sexchanging them if they can) and ignoring males in explore. There is no karma in this game, yet, but male pups will likely also be largely karma fodder if it's added in a similar way to Lioden.

This system essentially makes half the population of wolves pay-to-breed and limits a player's options in playstyle. 

Edit: Also learned recently from this that you can't breed up to higher ranking bases?? You have to breed to a higher rank (like a rank I to a rank II) for a chance at getting a puppy with that higher rank. That makes absolutely no sense.

I encourage others in this thread to simply air their own opinions but keep real suggestions for the eventual suggestion board. The last thread was locked and hidden because it got too suggestion-heavy.

I feel like the pack roles system actually encourages people to use males for more than just fodder and heirs. I have male exclusive hunting parties for instance and my most experienced scout is male. My pupsitter is female of course, but my Herbalist is also male. Of course, I don't really have enough females to consider making a female exclusive hunting party, but you get what I'm saying, males are not totally useless.

@I2Wolves

I did state that males in Lioden are useless, but in Wolvden this is largely fixed. The "useless sons" problem in Wolvden is less "my non-breeder males are literally useless" and more "unless I pay my non-breeder male's genetics are useless"

"In Lioden, sons, unless they're worth a sexchange or being an heir, are quite literally useless. You can only have so many sub-males in a pride, and the rest that aren't going to be an heir, a sub, or be a good female, are used for karma fodder or the gorillas.

In Wolvden this is somewhat fixed with males and females being able to do all jobs and fill out pack slots equally. However, unless any of these males are a breeding male, their genetics are unless. You can't breed your best hunter so you can have more good hunters because he's a male, and can only use his genetics if you shell out to retire your current breeder..."

Still, I don't think it's an issue at all, because it is mostly one male that breeds within the pack with the few exceptions where a non-alpha male breeds with and brings back a female. Outside of those exceptions, it is mostly one male that breeds and the other males are usually hunters. Genetic variety does occur, but so does inbreeding. Same goes for lion prides, except that the number of males is very variable in RL lion prides and isn't on Lioden. Main varying factor as to the number of males breeding in a pride? Did the lioness have more than 1 male or not? If so, they often form coalitions, thus leading to the common 2-3 brother coalitions(and the very occasional 5 or 6 brother coalition as well). If not, they are lone nomads. And pride behavior differs between 1-3 males and 4-6 males. In 1-3 male prides which are the vast majority, the territory is relatively small and shared between all the males. In 4-6 male prides, the territory is relatively big and the males form sub-prides if you will, with 2-4 males per sub-pride and patrolling that sub-pride's territory and lionesses seamlessly migrating between sub-prides.

That isn't really true for wolf packs though to my understanding. To my understanding, the only 2 exceptions to the rule that only the alphas breed are:

1) The beta female convinces the alpha male to breed with her instead of the alpha female -> I've used this in stories involving lone pregnant wolves as an explanation for why they are alone.

2) Young male nomads coming back with a bred female

And thus, the amount of inbreeding is low not because the male breeds with more than 1 female and not because the wolves aren't genetically related, but because it is with very few exceptions only 1 breeding pair. Lion prides are more prone to inbreeding because all lionesses are bred with the pride males. The lower survival rate of inbreeding is somewhat counteracted by 2 things, cross-nursing and pride takeovers. The pride takeover thing is obvious. The cross-nursing helps too because if 1 lioness has more cubs than teats, other lionesses can nurse the cubs as well(thus the broodmother thing on lioden actually makes sense).

But like I said, with wolf packs, you don't have multiple females breeding to multiple males in the vast majority of cases, so the "Useless Sons" issue isn't really an issue at all on Wolvden when you think about it. It's more of an issue on Lioden than Wolvden because more than 1 male breeds to lionesses in the vast majority of prides(most are 2 or 3 brother coalitions where all the males breed), but I don't see it being fixed on Lioden for multiple reasons.

The problem is the that males are inferior if they aren't the breeding male. All of those roles you use males for you could also use females. Females have the added bonus of being breedable. They can be nested the last day to minimize impact to their roles. You can skip breeding them if you want but the option is available. No point in using a male when there is no real downside to using a female when there is a downside to using a male.

But using a female for roles like Hunter and especially Herbalist has it's own set of issues, namely pregnancy and nesting. If you're somebody like me who wishes to nest every female ASAP to keep the pups safe, then having a female hunter would mean less success for the party and having a female herbalist would mean illnesses spreading like the plague until the pups are born(unless you had like tons of medicine, but let's face it, most players are not in that situation at all). Males don't have this issue, regardless of whether or not they are breeding males. Female scouts don't really have this issue either, especially when you also have a male scout like I do.

Therefore at least for my pack, these roles are occupied by males for that exact reason:

• Hunter
• Scout
• Herbalist

And females have these roles if any:

• Scout
• Pupsitter

This is less about how realistic the mechanic is and more about how it's handled, how it effects gameplay, and what kind of playstyle it encourages.

Realism completely aside, the system as it stands feels too much like Lioden's system and should be changed up.

Also the way you play is not how everyone would like to play, the way you play it may not be an issue, but for others it could be.

I've already said my piece on the other thread, so I won't repeat myself much here. I find males wholly pointless to keep around - yeah, sure, they aren't actually useless. I guess maybe we should have been using a different word, because they can help out perfectly fine. But what's the point in something that is, genetically, a dead end? Stats matter, so I'll want to pass them on. If my males can't do that, well. Giving them the boot. I've already gotten rid of every male in my pack (except for lore wolves who don't have roles) because I'm not going to deal with them when I need replacements. It's like investing in something you know is going to fail in the end.

And just had a male pup born today too. I sighed internally when I saw those decent stats and marks on a male. What a waste.

Oh, and some people have said males are actually better because they don't have to deal with pregnancy? I've finally had a pregnant female, the slower energy regen isn't bad at all and she kept up with the others just fine. People were acting like it's 10 energy every 2 hours or something lmao, not a good argument in the least..

I have to disagree with the whole needing males for when females get pregnant. So far, I haven't missed out on a single hunt with my 2 females who are pregnant. It takes  tiny  bit longer to get all the hunts but the energy regen is not bad at all. And then when I get all 10 hunts on that final day of pregnancy, I nest them. I didn't miss out on anything except the pups I could have gotten if I didn't have 3 males on my hunting party for lore reasons.
Even if I nested my wolves right away, I'm still not missing out on much? I currently only have 4 in my hunting party, down from the usual 5, and I've still been doing just fine with hunts

@Saeginko

It isn't the slower energy regen that made me say that it's better in my opinion to have male hunters than female hunters, but rather the fact that I tend to nest my females ASAP, whether they have a role or not and nesting means no hunting or herbalism or scouting from that female and the things that would occur from that, particularly for hunting and herbalism. For hunting it would mean fewer hunters and thus less success. For herbalism it would mean that unless your hoard was full of medicine, illness would spread like the plague.