Two-Mode Realistic Breeding System

Hi devs!

This is an idea I've been working on for a more realistic breeding system. I believe it will work well for the game on a number of levels: it'll help to separate Lioden and Wolvden strategically and make them into distinctly different games, it'll limit the number of extraneous pups born (which we've already seen quite a bit of even just over the past month), it'll make Wolvden significantly more realistic in regards to actual wolf behavior, and it'll reduce gender dimorphism in terms of gameplay (something we've also been seeing quite a bit of). Based on the sheer number of breeding-related suggestions right now, it seems like the community would be open to seeing the breeding system change.

I've based this suggestion on real-life wolf research, specifically L. David Mech and Luigi Boitanj’s Wolves: Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation. The book was first published in 2003; the copy I’m using is the 2010 version. In Wolves, Mech and Boitani describe the general reproductive strategy of wolves as such: “The wolf population is comprised of tight, territorial social groups. To breed successfully, individual wolves must find a mate and a territory with sufficient food sources (Rothman and Mech 1979). In a saturated population, all territories are occupied, so the only local breeding possibilities will be to (1) wait until the established breeding position opens (A) in the natal pack or (B) in a neighboring pack, (2) become an extra breeder within the pack, (3) carve out a new territory from the established mosaic, or (4) usurp an established breeder” (Mech and Boitani 2010:2).

The authors then go on to describe each particular case and examples of it in scientific work. The model is, of course, not fully applicable to Wolvden. On a site like Wolvden, where new packs are created by new players rather than dispersal wolves, strategy (3) is irrelevant. Since players control the order of succession within their packs, strategies (1) and (4) are irrelevant insofar as they follow the same mechanics used on Lioden, where pack leaders/breeders will either age out of leadership to be replaced by younger packmates, or else be retired early for a gold-cone price. The key here is strategy (2).

THE IDEA
In this system, there are two different "modes" of breeding which can occur simultaneously within the same pack. The first is the head-of-the-family mode. This mode closely matches traditional ideas about wild wolf packs, with the singular mated pair aided by their older offspring, parents, siblings, and aunts and uncles, who all invest in the survival of the mated pair's litter. Players will have the ability to assign a single male and female pair as the "breeding pair" of their pack, in much the same way that stud males are currently assigned. This "breeding pair" status would be completely unrelated to lead wolf status or other pack roles; players could choose to have their breeding pair be their lead and featured wolves, or not, but there would be no particular emphasis put on doing so or not doing so by the game mechanics. The breeding pair would be only able to breed with one another, until such a time as one or both were retired from their breeding status by age or gold-cone purchase and thusly replaced. This would work much like the stud male system does now.

The second mode of breeding is the casanova mode, named after the rather infamous Wolf 302 of Yellowstone. This is a strategy we see in wild wolves who live in extremely rich territories (such as Yellowstone), where subordinate pack members (usually the children or siblings of the breeding pair) will breed outside of a pair-bond while remaining part of a pair's pack. In the wild, this can be a valuable strategy; those subordinate wolves don’t have to put in the effort of eking out a territory of their own. But the survivability of their pups is low, both because they don’t receive the same full-pack support as the breeding pair's pups, and because the breeding pair may see the additional litter as a threat to their own pups and retaliate. In terms of Wolvden mechanics -- wolves who are not assigned to the breeding pair would have the ability to breed freely, both within their own pack and to wolves of other packs. The catch, however, would be that any puppies born of these "extra breeders" would be at extreme risk in terms of survival chance. Their chances would start low (5% or even lower), rise slowly, degrade quickly, and require devoted attention and maintenance to keep up. Unless the player invests a significant amount of effort into making sure these pups survive, many of them wouldn’t.

This allows players a fascinating creativity of strategy; do they bump a beautiful favorite to the alpha spot, limiting their breeding options drastically but putting weight into the survival of the pups? Or do they leave their favorites as subordinate wolves, expanding their potential pool of partners but opening their offspring up to enormous risk?

PROS AND CONS
On the pro side: This system would be extremely realistic, while also providing the flexibility of breeding that is crucial to breeding strategy. It would create extremely different gameplay from Lioden. It allows for new strategies of breeding, creating different interactions between players, etc, instead of simply recreating the Lioden dynamic of “one male, many females, if you want a different male you need to go to a different player.” The more greatly the two games differ, the more likely players are to play both, rather than whichever one has the “flavor” they like best. Experienced, high-level players moving over from Lioden would need to find new routes to success, rather than simply acting out their Lioden experience all over again. The gameplay involved would encourage packs evenly balanced between male and female, but wouldn't necessarily disadvantage packs that were all female; after all, a pack with no "breeding pair" would likely have more resources to dedicate to a "casanova"-born litter, and an all-female pack would now have a lot more options in terms of mates.

This would also remove a lot of the breeding-gameplay biases based on gender. I've already seen a lot of players complaining about how male pack members are "dead ends," reproductively speaking; that they'll "never be preferable to females," or are "useless". While of course we have items in the Grove which can be used to switch gender, right now those items are being used to toggle a "worth keeping/not worth keeping" switch. This strategy would mean that male pups aren't 90% all reproductive dead ends. Any lost income in gender-switching items could be easily made up for by introducing Grove items which boost pup survival chance.

This system would also do quite a bit to stabilize the market on the site. Even only a month into the game, the market is wildly over-saturated with pups, simply because many users are breeding all of their females on every single heat, and then being left with 20-50 pups which no one wants, not even them. This system would reduce the amount of throwaway pups being bred significantly, as each pack would only have a single breeding pair whose pups would reliably survive, and any other pups would survive only through the kind of dedicated effort that would make it difficult to churn at puppies rapidly.

This system would also do quite a bit to do increase genetic diversity on the site. We've already been seeing certain high-status stud males (*cough*Mor'du*cough*) who are siring a significant portion of the site's population. I know that on Lioden, there's been significant community upset over "clean" vs. "inbred" breeding, and that there have already been some people on Wolvden who are invested in breeding one way or another. This system would give players interested in non-line-breeding more options, while not penalizing those who are interested in line-breeding for specific traits. It would also upset high-status stud monopolies by either putting high-status studs into breeding pairs, or reducing the survival rate of their pups.

Other benefits include that this system would not require the "castration" of a breeding male in order to appoint a new one; on the financial side, you-the-site-owners would be able to sell not only "mate-switching" items in the Grove to change the breeding pair, but also items which could would increase pup survival rates or slow survival rate decay.

On the con side: While this strategy doesn’t require that packs have a male wolf in order to breed, it does mean that breeding will be more difficult without an assigned “breeding pair.” As with the existing system, male-only packs would need to buy their pups from other players, and may find that slightly more difficult with fewer pups surviving to market. Most new players will probably not have the resources necessary to successfully breed outside the breeding pair, and may find that frustrating. (This actually also has the potential to be a pro; as new players continue to play and gain experience and resources, they'll find new gameplay options opening up to them naturally, and may enjoy the excitement of getting their first "casanova"-bred pup to adulthood.)

Other cons include the impact to the studding economy, which some players -- especially those who make their on-site income primarily off studding -- won't be happy about that. However, this change will alter the studding economy primarily by balancing it, both in favor of reducing monopolies by Big High-Stat High-Status Studs, and in favor of bringing balance and stability to the breeding market. Players will still be able to stud their wolves to other players -- and may in fact be more able, since all of their non-breeding-pair males are now potential studs.

The biggest con, however, is that this would require an overhaul of the existing game code.

REQUIREMENTS TO IMPLEMENT
In order to implement this idea, the biggest requirement is an overhaul of the existing game code surrounding breeding, especially concerning the appointment and retiring of breeding males, the studding system, and pup survival chances. As I'm not a mod, I don't know how significant these changes would be. Some extant code could probably be repurposed; other code might need to be removed entirely, or created from whole cloth.

• The code for the current stud male system might be able to be repurposed in part for the assignment and retiring of breeding pairs, but new code would need to be implement to ensure that the breeding pair could only breed with one another.
• The code surrounding stud males vs. non-stud males would need to be altered so that males which are not part of the breeding pair are available for breeding, though only with females who are also not part of a breeding pair.
• The breeding/studding page itself would need to be reworked; this could take the form of every male having a "stud to this male" button/page, or it could take the form of a "Breeding" tab being added on the Nesting/Pupsitting den page, or some combination therein.
• The code surrounding pup survival would need to be able to "listen" to the reproduction status of the parents (breeding pair vs. casanova), and adjust the assignment of survival chance at birth and survival increase/decay rates accordingly.
• I'm uncertain if this system will cause problems for the way lineage data is stored or not (when lineage data is stored, is it dependent in some way on the father being a stud male?), but depending on how lineage data is stored, that may need some slight reworking; I wouldn't think so, given that there don't seem to be problems with lineage after the stud male is retired from his stud position, but I could be wrong.

Other requirements would include a reworking of the Tala quest concerning breeding, a reworking of the Help section concerning breeding males into a section about breeding pairs vs. casanovas, and a reworking of the Breeding Male Settings pages. 

VARIATIONS AND SIMILAR SUGGESTIONS
So far, similar suggestions posted by users about the breeding system include: Allow all males to breed within the pack, Additional variant of breeding: setting pairs, a MOST dangerous fling (mating with non-stud wolves), Breeding System Changes V2

Other suggestions which are not similar to this one but which pair well with it include: Male wolves have virility levels

TL;DR

• One breeding pair per pack; can only breed to each other. Must age out or be retired with GC. Pup survival chances are decent, around current levels.
  
• All non-breeding-pair wolves can breed with each other and members of other packs. Pup survival chances are extremely low, and require concerted effort to keep alive.

Thank you for looking over my suggestion!

Huh, fascinating!  It seems a bit restrictive, but I'd be happy to give it a try - having a different pack structure than Lioden is definitely nice, and I like the realism. And you're right that we have so many pups right now, it might be good to make it a little harder...

Haha, fair enough! The goal was kind of to make it both more and less restrictive than the current system, depending on what the player chooses to do with it. Something I didn't talk about in the header posts is that nothing requires you use one mode or another; any player could decide that they only want to breed via a breeding pair for roleplay purposes or because they hate losing puppies or what have you, while others could decide that breeding pairs aren't worth the hassle and they'd rather save their resources for keeping casanova-bred pups alive, and neither group would necessarily have a huge advantage over the other -- they'd just be having different experiences of the same game. It's the impact of player strategy choice on gameplay that honestly gets me really excited.

Ya know what? I'd be so down with this. 

It would allow for everyone to breed with unique strategy tied to it, so 100% support.

If I'm reading this right, one main breeding pair then the other wolves can be bred only to wolves outside the pack...?

In theory I'd say yes but I feel like that breeding system would be too similar to another wolf breeding sim and the way their breeding system is setup...

Okay I've been looking over solutions to "the breeding male problem" and while this would be a big change, I do think two modes might be the way to go. 

Here's my suggestions:

Perhaps instead of the breeding PAIR, it is still just a breeding male. This wouldn't be quite so restricted but players wanting to RP a breeding pair without in-game detriments would be able to do so. I also think that each pack having only one studdable male would be better for the game, so this breeding male would still be the stud. However, other males, the casanovas, could breed within the pack.

Additionally, I don't know if having quite that much of a survival penalty for casanova breeder's pups is necessary, nor the additional stuff about it being harder to raise their chances and stuff... But perhaps a boost equivalent to the largest pup boost could be given to the pups of main breeding males, and a penalty equivalent to the runt penalty could be given to the pups of casanova males. So a runt pup of a casanova born in winter would have pretty poor chances, and a largest pup of a main breeder born in Spring would have a grand ol' time. However, a mix of those factors could still provide a fairly balanced chance. 

Thoughts?

Not exactly, Phantom! One main breeding pair, who can breed to only each other -- then, everyone else can breed to anyone in OR outside the pack. The catch is that the main breeding pair's pups have a decent chance of survival, while everyone's else pups have a very low chance of survival.

Which other wolf sim are you thinking of? As far as I'm aware, there aren't any others that have a pup survival rate mechanic in the same way... though I might be wrong, as I haven't really played many besides Wolvden. (Their art just isn't pretty enough to keep me X3 whereas Wolvden's is freaking gorgeous, thanks to the wonderful art devs)

This would be really interesting if the devs decide they want to implement it. I had heard that wolvden was supposed to be more difficult than lioden but I really haven't found it to be so far. I like the idea of an actual challenge.

@red, I hear you on the one studdable male thing! However... a lot of what I'm interested in is a system where males and females have pretty equivalent roles. It sounds like what you're thinking of would still be a system in which males are "the breeders."

That said, I would still prefer what you're proposing to what we have currently! I think what you're outlining would work well as a system that's a bit more intermediate between the current system and what I'm proposing :)