Additional variant of breeding: setting pairs

This isn't my favorite solution to the current breeding problem, but I find it preferable to current system. I don't think perks would be necessary to incentivize using it. I wouldn't mind pairs being permanent, but cooldowns make sense if they are not! 

I like this a lot actually! Maybe in the case of when/if the pair splits up there could be a notification along the lines of "(Insert wolf name) and (Insert wolf name) are both heartbroken after splitting up and need time to recuperate! Neither will be able to breed for (number) of rollovers!"

There could maybe be an item too that can make this cool down shorter/cancel it out. Like a love potion or something. This would likely be single-use and quite the trouble getting as well to prevent the aforementioned issue.

No support from me...

I agree with @Sneep (quoted above also). The breedable males idea is just simpler and can allow this as well without having to complicate and restrict things for players that do not want to partake in this kind of breeding and pairing. 

Partial support from me! I do like this idea it is quite cute in all honesty, but I do prefer if males were able to just breed with whoever we want within our own packs with a cooldown. However, I'd prefer this solution over no other option outside of 1 breeding male for the games lifetime. 

Maybe there could be one perk where the pups have a very VERY slight boost in survival chance with its mother and father "watching" over them? It wouldn't be anything extreme, and if you want to guarantee a pups survival you definitely want pupsitters. Maybe if not for the whole litter just for the runt? (again nothing too op that causes the pup to have a guarantee survival.) and maybe this boost won't apply in winter? or vise versa and it could only be applied in winter? And only pups born in a bonded pair would have it. Just a thought, not necessary though by any means

Support! I would be interested in seeing what cool concepts other people decide to do with this idea; I have thought about having 'seasonal breeding pairs' (e.g. brown/orange/red breeding pairs during autumn) if a feature like this existed. I believe such a concept would inspire a lot of creativity and is in general a good idea. :)

I'd be happy with this! I think the 'pair' system being strict is the best way to not influence stud breeding and breeding males. Pair slots would have to be paid for like territory is, and splitting a couple costing a good bit of gc. 

As for consequences for splitting a couple I have a few ideas

- 50 rollover cooldown (or two female heats)

- Neither can breed again BUT

- Female can't pair again, but after sizeable cooldown they can be bred to studs and/or your breeding male

- Fertility decrease (without increase for mutations) 

- The 'slot' doesn't open up, another would have to be purchased  

- Those two wolves can't be on the same hunting team without fighting 

It would be a much more complicated than simply being able to freely breed your males, but I think it would be more accepted by those who are concerned about the stud market and/or breeding becoming too easy, while still not making males totally useless genetic dead ends. 

The way this thread is going I have to say I don't support it anymore.  Pairing wolves and the female only breeding to one male was restriction enough.  I'm not going to support shelling out more coins for additional one use slots to do so, nor halving or less them number of heats female wolves can have.

Agree with Lunar Lords. Not only do all of these penalties sound complicated to implement, they are also incredibly unfair to those who want to use a different playstyle. If you don't want breeding pairs to split, then simply don't allow it. Making both wolves or even one wolf completely sterile for splitting is about the same effect. 

Just chiming in again to say I would NOT  support this mechanic being introduced if it involved big sc/gc expenses in any form. That's too limiting to be fun to use and doesn't address the value inbalance between males and females efficiently enough.

I really do think you got a good concept going here, unfortunately since the main focus is breeding mechanics, I think this is too much and so I don't support ;v; 

I went through my reasonings in the thread about allowing males to breed within a pack, but I'm gonna rephrase myself and add points I didn't go into before: I also apologize in advance that my writing is gonna sound dry for the first few points x'D I have a hard time getting my feelings through text without flip flopping between deadpan discussion and jokes. Please take my entire response as a sincere and nice one!

• Too limiting for a breeding sim, and it directly conflicts with my own playstyle (and possibly many other player's playstyles) of breeding randomly to get fun and unpredictable results. This system strongly encourages one playstyle, which is strict breeding pairs for maximum benefits.

• It also gets in the way of people's freedom of making wolf relationships in their lore/writing. As someone mentioned before, this would limit people who want some of their wolves' relationships to not be monogamous. Sure we have nothing now in terms of male breeding, but it allows for better suspension of disbelief and freedom.

• Too punishing and ultimately will just cause people to stress too much over making their pairings. It also feels a bit redundant (for lack of a better term) to have a female wolf on a pairing and  breeding cooldown. If a female goes in heat during a pairing cooldown and we really want her bred, then we can just breed her with our breeding male or another breeding male. This seems like a loophole that can be changed by making her unbreedable during the pairing cooldown, but that's even more unnecessarily punishing and just makes her complete deadweight. I'd rather replace her entirely with a new female that can be ready to breed in half the time.

• I think pitching multiple different solutions for the same issue is wonderful! It gives us plenty of options and ideas to go off of. So please don't take this as me as saying you pitching this was a bad idea when there's "other better ideas" because ultimately, you never know when an idea is good or great until you get it out there! I just wanted say that, between this and male wolf breeding (only within the pack) cooldowns, I think the cooldown idea is much simpler and overall has almost nothing but positives to it. 

That all being said, if this game wasn't so focused on breeding, I think this could be an interesting idea for a general wolf life sim! I mean that sincerely by the way, I don't think trying to incorporate realistic/complicated mechanics is inherently a bad thing at all. But it gets harder when the focus of the game is around said realistic/complicated feature, unfortunately you'll likely end up needing to do so much simplification and stripping down that it's no longer realistic in the slightest in order to benefit players and gameplay as much as possible. Yes, the complicated route could make for more interesting and risky gameplay, but is that always a good thing in the end?

I think as long as we still got breeding males and that only breeding males can breed with other packs, I don't think a ton of limitations or punishments are necessary :>