So, this might be highly unpopular among some players, but it seems like it’s gainning support after all. Now that we’ve been pondering this for a few days, added ideas and crunched some numbers, I am editing the topic to present the results we have reached more comprehensively.

Please note that the entire point is not to prevent anyone from playing their preffered way nor to dictate to anyone the “proper” ways to play the game! The point is to make this game look more like it’s advertisement – simulation of the life of a pride of wild lions – and to make the gameplay more complex, more realistic and overall, more interesting.

sections:



A) Starting premises
B) Ideas – 1 to 4



1) Do away with studding
2) Introduce cubs mortality rates (now in full detail)
3) Make pregnancy more demanding
4) Make breeding cost energy



C) Blurbs, ideas and other misc notes
D) Q&A



SPECIAL NOTE:
A lifetime supply of coffee and cookies for DragonSage [Raion] (#4453) for doing the majority of detailed number crunching, adding a ton of useful ideas and being of immense help with this overall! <3





A) Starting premises:




1)This is a lion sim game, not a domestic kitty breeding game. Therefore, realistic features simulating the (harsh) life of the lions in the wild should be at the core of the game, not spam-breeding “purdy” cats.


2) Right now, the site is being flooded with tons of unwanted cubs that can’t sell, can’t be given away, can’t be used for anything really. And yet, they keep coming and coming. These are the ways of both making the game more realistic, curbing the flood of excess cubs, making the game more interesting and challenging and, as a side bonus, perhaps stabilizing the economy as well.





B) Ideas:






1) Do away with studding!


Yes, yes, I know the chant - The studding feature was introduced because too many players got scammed out of their lionesses that way.

Well... So what?

What could (and should!) have been done instead is a simple note from the developers and the admins of the game, stating that:

"We do not support or encourage outside studding. If you send a lioness to another player for any reason, that lioness now belongs to them. We will not go 'rescuing' your lionesses from other players so don't bug us about it - You have been warned, you took the risk, now live with it and be smarter next time."

Yes, it could have been that simple. And should have been that simple, too.

Want a cub by a particular male lion? - Go buy the cub from that player, end of story.


Aside from reducing the number of cubs on the game plus reinstating some value to the cubs, especially the cubs of high-end males out there, doign away with studding will also bring about some much needed realism to the game.

In the wild (and this is supposed to be a simulation of a wild lion pride), the only way for a foreign lion to mate with the females of another pride is for said foreign lion to take over the pride. Rarely, it will happen that a foreign lion manages to sneak past the pride leader and mate with one of his females undetected, but the moment those cubs are born, the pride leader will kill them off.

It thus stands to no reason nor logic whatsoever to allow any 'outside studdings' on this game at all. In fact, it is something that should be actively discouraged instead of being made even easier. We are not on a domestic kitty breeding game, people!

1a) Trading ‘families’

At first, I was going to do away with these all together. However, DragonSage [Raion] (#4453) had a better idea, especially since, as much as I’d want it to happen, it is not very likely that studding will be removed.

Now, if a foreign lioness comes into the pride already bearing cubs by another lion, or already having them with her, the first thing the pride leader would do would be to instantly kill the foreign lion's cubs, thus forcing the new lioness into heat faster and then making sure the next litter of cubs is his and his alone.

Originally, this was going to be the reason why, if a pregnant lioness or a lioness with young cubs is traded, the pregnancy would be instantly terminated/the cubs would be instantly removed from her. However!

DragonSage suggests that higher-level lionesses would be more capable of defending their cubs from the new male then lower-level ones. Therefore, tie the lioness/lion level/stats odds to the possible mortality of the cubs bred by another lion. In other words, give a percentage chance for the 'foreigner' cubs to survive the transfer to a new pride and make that chance higher the higher their mother's level is.

Far as numbers go, I would use a modified “litter protection” table that DragonSage used for calculating cubs mortality odds. Namely, something like this:

starting chance of cubs being killed upon transfer: 100% - if we ask the lion only
starting chance of cubs being killed upon transfer: 0% - if we ask the lioness only

and so:

actual starting chance of cubs being killed upon transfer: 50%

Now, we compare the ‘home’ lion’s level to the mother lioness’.
---For every level the lioness has, the odds of the cubs being killed goes down by 2%,
---For every level the lion has, the odds of the cubs being killed goes up by 1%
---Level one entails 0% in either direction, levels above 1 are counted!
---Odds are to be rolled seperately for every cub in the litter.

Sooo… (subject to further revisions)

Lion/Lioness	1	5	15
1	50%	42%	22%
5	54%	47%	26%
15	64%	57%	36%

I’d say these are fair odds. Yes, the chance of other male’s cubs getting killed are high – They are supposed to be high! And yes, these numbers would apply to the cubs that are a result of you using the studding feature! See the last section for more about this, please.

Besides, one way to offset this is to level your pride, which is something the game already set before you as your goal, as something the game is about to begin with. Check the last square, level 15 lion vs level 15 lioness: 36% chance of a dead cub. That is not that much, and not to even mention that, by the time your lion hits level 15, your lionesses are likely to be at least level 20 or so anyway – in that case, the odds of your cub getting killed are miserly 16%.

~~~~~~~~




2) Introduce cubs mortality rates!


In the wild, only 10% of the cubs survive to their first year of life. Out of those 10%, even fewer survive to adulthood. Having cubs randomly die has been suggested before and was not recieved well. Partly, I agree - too much of a random factor to it. However, if it were to be made less random and more realistic.... that would be another thing entirely.


Carrying a pregnancy up to term is an extremely energy-costly affair. Caring for the resulting offspring afterwards for a full year or so is no less a strain on the female of the species. And there are always multiple factors at work that can make that already-tasking process even more difficult - lack of food, random predators, diseases and other calamities that threaten both the mothers and their cubs.

So, how to emulate that on the game without making it virtually impossible to actually raise some cubs?

What I will present here now is the result of DragonSage doing the major numbers crunching and than shooting it back and forth until we were both satisfied with the end results. You can see the evolution of the mortality rates on pages 4 and 5 of the comments.

And so, on to the show:

~~~~~~~~~~~

First off, we’ll set a base flat percentage chance for the cub to die on any given day during the twelve days it takes for it to mature. That base chance is 50% on the day the cub is born.

And now, we are adding in the factors that can either bring the chance down or bring it even further up.

Factors that reduce the chance of the cub duyig are fairly simple and achievable by all players... with only little tought and effort put into it. Most of theem consist of doing what the game assumes you are doing every day anyway, so really, this is more a case of attaching some additional value to the regular game play things than trying to make you go well out of your way to ensure your cubs’ survival.

~~~~~
important note:

The percentages we are discussing here are a “day forward” percentages, mostly because upon reset, everyone starts the day with 20% hunger and a reduction of mood. Therefore, what matters is not how your cub started the day but how did it end the previous day.

In other words, on the day your cub is born, it has 50% flat chance to wake up dead the following day. If, during the current day, you bring that chance down to 0%, that means that your cub has 0% chance of waking up dead tomorrow, after the restart.

Tomorrow, after the code refreshes, your cub starts the day with a newly calculated chance of dying the day after, which you can once more bring down to 0% or close to that.
~~~~~~



Starting influences on the base 50% chance of death:


The Parents

---Parents’ Levels

Emulates the fact that higher-level, aka more experianced, lions will do much better at both providing enough food for the pride, finding more suitable shelters and water supplies as well as be that much better at protecting their dens (and by extansion, the cubs) from various predators. It also emulates the fact that lions who lived long enough to get to higher levels are the lions that are overall stronger and healthier, and thus more likely to produce strong, healthy cubs with better reflexes and better immunity to various diseases.

The scale is proposed by DragonSage and after the extensive number crunching (see page 4 of the comments), it’s the one that turned out to work best:

Average level=Protection Percentage In other words we average the parents levels (rounded DOWN) and use that as the percentage to subtract from risk of death.
So for example:
• A LVL 1 male and a LVL 1 female would subtract 1% from the percentage
• A LVL 5 male and a LVL 1 female (average 3) would subtract 3% from the percentage
• A LVL 5 male and a LVL 5 female (average 5) would subtract 5% from the percentage
• A LVL 15 male and a LVL 12 female (13.5 so 13) would subtract 13% from the percentage


---Previous Parenting Experience

Emulates the fact that those lions who managed to successfuly raise a litter of cubs before will naturaly be more apt at doing that the next time around. Note that only the litters in which at least one cub succesfully made it to adolescence counts. Not only does it make sense realism-wise, but it will also prevent the players from spam-breeding the lionesses and than chasing them away immediatelly after the cubs’ boirth in order to beef up the Previous Parenting Experience percentage.

Scale proposed by me:

number of successful previous litters	effect on the cubs’ chance of death
1-3	-5%
4-6	-10%
7-9	-15%
10-12	-20%
13+	-30%

The Cubs

---Cub’s Stats at Birth

Emulates the fact that the higher-statted cubs are the cubs that are stronger, with faster reflexes, more intelligent, more resistant to diseases and are, overall, more fit to survive than their weaker counterparts. For every 10 stats above 35 (rounded down), there is an additional flat -1% chance of the cub dying. So, for example:

A cub born with 35 stats or less gets a -0% chance of death
A cub born with 45 stats gets a -1% chance of death
A cub born with 85 stats gets a -5% chance of death
A cub born with 200 stats gets a -16% chance of death

This percentage would get recalculated daily since the cubs do occasionally gain skil from playing and also, might get a random stat boost from food or toys which could up their chances of survival the following day.



---Cub’s Age – idea by DragonSage

Emulates the fact that, as the cub grows older, its skills improve and so do its chances of survival. In other words, every day the cub does not die is the day the cub got a little better at not dying. So, a newly-born cub would have -0% chance of death. 1 game month (aka, 1 real day) old cub would have -1% chance of death, 2 months old cub would have -2% chance of death… and finally, 11 months old cub would have -11% chance of waking up dead instead of waking up an adolescent.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


The groundwork now being set, I’ll now lay out the ways to bring the chance of your cubs dying either up or down:




Ways to lessen the chance of the cub duying:

---Feeding the Cub
(-10% chance of Death)
Emulates the most basic needs of the nursing mothers and developing cubs being taken care off.
*Note that during the first six days of the cub’s life, the ‘feeding’ pertains to the cub’s mother, not the cub itself.

---Playing with the Cub
(-5% chance of Death)
Emulates the cub getting needed skills and survival instincts installed into it at an early age, thus increasing its chances of survival.

---Giving the Cub a Toy
(-5% chance of Death)
Emulates the cub getting additionaly stimulated in gaining needed skill and survival instincts.
*Note that the cubs cannot be given toys until they turn 6 months old. Until that time, either a) playing with cub gives -10% to the chance of dying or b) giving the nursing mother a toy lowers the odds by 5% - I have no preferences either way, so whichever option is easier to code in would work.


---Monkey Business Items - idea by Pasha (#5512) (MIB for short from now on)

With all the complaints about there not being enough things to spend your SBs on, here is one thing that will be a worthy investment.

The items in question could be, for example, a healthy root the cub can gnaw at, a pile of dry leaves that keeps the den warmer for the night or let’s just say that the male stimulated his glands especially well that day and thus left his scent on the cub so strongly that day that it serves as an excellent detterent for the predators (more about the items and the accompanying blurbs in the final section).

One important note here – and I cannot stress this enough! – whatever the items are, they most definitelly must not be Oasis GB-only stuff! The idea is to make raising cubs a challenge, not to tie in a crucial part of the game to cash payments!

Anyway, there would be three items with varying effects: -5%, -10% and -15% chance of death respectively. And they would not be anything pricy! Raising cubs is toughest on low levels, when the players are not exactly swimming in SBs; conversly, on higher levels and with plenty of SBs, you’d hardly need even the lowest-end MIB. The point is to make these things easily accesible to all players, not just those who are already well-off and hardly need them anyway.

Therefore, the prices should be set thusly:
-5% = 3 SB (Healthy Root) --- use on the cub?
-10% = 6 SB (Dry Leaves Pile) --- use on the mother?
-15% = 10 SB (Male Scent Enhancer) --- use on the male?

If you are doing any fighting or exploring at all, you can easily find enough SBs to more than cover for even the highest item daily. If you have only one cub to take care of and decide to use the highest protection item every day, you would end up spending 120 SBs over the course of 12 days. Which is really, really not much at all.


special protection

---Assigning a Brood Mother to the Cubs

Emulates the fact that, while the bulk of the pride is out hunting or patroling the territory, any number of things can happen to the cublets – from them being too bored and, unsupervised, wandering away too far to a hungry predator sneaking in and making a quick snack of lion-like little furballs. And this is where the Brood Mother comes in.

She is there to watch over the cubs while their mothers are away, to put up with their mischieves, play with them, make sure they don’t wander away and finally, to protect them from any danger that might threaten them.


~brood mother concept explained~

It could be lioness – a random one from the pride, or the one with the most litters behind her or the oldest lioness of the pride or… whatever. Or! It could be the job of the adolescents to look after the cubs. Personally, I preffer the adolescents for this role, for several reasons. For one, it would give the adolescents something to do aside from sitting around and eating your food. It would also be a learning experience for them – they would gain random stat boosts from taking care of the next generation.

DragonSage proposes the following:

For each cub under her care, each day the broodmother has a chance at gaining a stat or stats. Perhaps 10-20% per cub; if the total exceeds 100%, she gets a stat and the extra percentage goes towards another stat. For example if the percentage was 120% she'd get one stat and a 20% chance at a second stat.

--If this were the case, than I’d say there should be a maximum number of cubs a single brood mother can concievably keep an eye on. I’d say around 6 should be the norm. For every cublet over 6, you’d ned to assign a second brood mother. Of course, this would also mean some coding be added to the adolescent’s pages, namely, the assigned cubs section.

I am adding another idea:

Every Brood Mother assignment a lioness (or an adolescent male for that matter) had during her (his) adolescence counts towards the “Previous Parenting Experience” . Thus, if a lioness is about to have her first litter but she had been a brood mother for 1-3 litters while she was young, she would automatically give the -5% base chance of dying to her first litter insead of the -0% she would have without previous brood mothering experience behind her.


~brood mother role~

What a Brood Mother would actually be is the ‘last line of defense’ for your cubs. If you did everythign in your power to keep the cublet alive – bred it to have good stats, fed it, played with it, gave it a toy and used a MIB on it and still your cublet wakes up dead the following day, if a Brood Mother is assigned to that particular cub, the cub gets one ‘saving throw’ added to it: 50% chance that a ‘dead’ cub did not end up dead after all.

The blurbs for this could be varied and amusing:

“A hungry hyaena snuck into your den and ~almost~ made away with [cub’s name]. However, [brood mother’s name] intervened and chased the hyaena away at the last moment, thus saving [cub’s name]”

“[cub’s name] wandered far from your den while chasing a butterfly. However, [brood mother’s name] found it and brought it back before it got ~too~ far away.”


…well, you get the idea.

~~~
edit
Idea by:Idania (#14667)

Have it set so that the more cubs a brood mother is assigned to, less percentage is taken off the cubs' mortality rates.
And, since adolescents are younger and more experienced, the risk would be greater leaving them with the cubs than an adult female or sub male.

So, say leaving one cub with a sub male, adult female, or adolescent gives that cub -15% off their mortality rate for the day. As a brood mother takes on more cubs, the way that lessens is different depending on her being an adult or adolescent.

So, let's say the cap is at 6 cubs per day per brood mother.
For an adult lioness or sub male the percentages would be affected thus

1 cub -15% off cub mortality rate
2 cubs -14%
3 cubs -13%
4 cubs -12%
5 cubs -11%
6 cubs -10%

But for an adolescent, it would be affected as so

1 cub -15% off cub mortality rate
2 cubs -13%
3 cubs -11%
4 cubs -9%
5 cubs -7%
6 cubs -5%

And, to keep everyone from simply giving every lioness in the pride a cub to watch, have it set that females with a cub assigned to them cannot go hunting. Nor can sub males with a cub assigned to them go patrolling.
-----------------------------------------

On another note, there could be an addition to the "Explore" section for sub males watching cubs. Maybe have an option for the sub male to take cubs (only those 6months or older) out on a patrol with him.
It would be a chance for cubs to gain stats, as they would be learning about protecting the pride as well as getting to know their territory boundaries.

You could have it set that a sub male can only take a certain amount of cubs at a time based on his level, too (which would involve including a feature to level up sub males).

Level 1-5 -> can only take 1 cub patrolling at a time
Level 6-10 -> can take out 2 cubs at a time
Level 11-15 -> can take out 3 cubs at a time

And so on. You could have 3 cubs be the cap, seeing as most people are more concerned with leveling up their lionesses and main male. However, it does give the sub males another use, which I feel they could really use.

Could have it set that adolescents can be taken out on these patrols as well, provided they aren't assigned any cubs at the time.

~~~

Of course, just as there would be (easy) ways for you to prevent your precious cubs from meeting an untimely end, carelessness on your part could just as easily help them along their way to the eternal hunting grounds.


Ways to highten the chance of the cub duying:


---Not feeding the mothers (and later on the cubs) every day
(+15% dying chance)
Emulates the most basic needs of the nursng mothers and developing cubs not being taken care off. Since it's the most basic needs, not fulfilling those adds a significantly higher chance to the cubs' mortality chances.

---Not playing with the cubs daily
(+10% dying chance)
Emulates the cubs not getting needed skills and survival instincts installed into them at an early age, thus increasing their chances of survival.

~~~~~~~~~~

So now, let us look at the end results of all this math! For the following examples, I am assuming that both parents are of the same level and that the cub born has average 35-ish stats. This is a likely scenario on the lower levels and an unlikely one on higher levels because with higher level aprents, the cubs also gain the reduction of the chance of death from their stats as well. I will also assume that, if the MIB is used, it is the lowest-end one, the one that gives only -5% death chance.


Level 1 Parents, 1 Previous Litter

50% base chance of Death
---------------------
-1% Parent Level
-5% Previous Litter Experience
--------------------
*44% actual chance of Death
--------------------
-10% Feeding Cub
-5% Playing with Cub
--------------------
**29% chance of Death
--------------------
-5% Using a Toy
--------------------
***24% chance of Death
--------------------
-5% MIB
--------------------
****19% chance of Death



Level 5 Parents, 1 Previous Litter

50% base chance of Death
---------------------
-5% Parent Level
-5% Previous Litter Experience
--------------------
*40% actual chance of Death
--------------------
-10% Feeding Cub
-5% Playing with Cub
--------------------
**25% chance of Death
--------------------
-5% Using a Toy
--------------------
***20% chance of Death
--------------------
-5% MIB
--------------------
****15% chance of Death



Level 15 Parents, 1 Previous Litter

50% base chance of Death
---------------------
-13% Parent Level
-5% Previous Litter Experience
--------------------
*32% actual chance of Death
--------------------
-10% Feeding Cub
-5% Playing with Cub
--------------------
**17% chance of Death
--------------------
-5% Using a Toy
--------------------
***12% chance of Death
--------------------
-5% MIB
--------------------
****7% chance of Death




As you can see, it is very easy to bring the odds down with only little time devoted to taking care of your cus which, by the way, is something you are supposed to be doing anyway. Again, when looking at these examples, keep in mind that it’s very unlikely that level 15 or even level 5 parents will have only 1 litter behind them so the odds would go down even further. Also, that higher-statted cublets get the stat protection as well, that every day the cub lives the odds go down by 1% and that, overall, lionesses are of much higher levels than the lions so the actual parent level will offer even more protection.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


3) Make the pregnancy more demanding on the lionesses


We already have the base groundwork laid out for us - if the lioness' hunger falls below 50%, there is a chance the cubs will be stillborn. Well, this is not really being enforced at all from what I've seen so far. What I am suggesting is that not only does this rule get enforced far more strictly but to make it even more demanding!

Carrying babies is the most energy costly physiological process in nature. And in wild animals, if the conditions are harsh, pregnant females routinely reabsorb the foetuses to lessen the energy strain on their bodies.

Following that, if we allow the female's hunger to go below 50%, it should not be a 'chance' but a 'certain thing' that the cubs will be stillborn! So roughly:

50% hunger = 100% chance of stillborn cubs
40% hunger = 80% chance of stillborn cubs
30% hunger = 60% chance of stillborn cubs
20% hunger = 40% chance of stillborn cubs
10% hunger = 20% chance of stillborn cubs
0% hunger = 0% chance of stillborn cubs

And just to up the stakes even more, during the three days period of pregnancy, the females should consume twice the amount of food they would normally. In laymen terms - "they're eating for two now", and in their case, for even more than just two.

~~~~~~~~~~~~



4) Make breeding cost energy!


In the wild, a male lion and the female in heat will distance themselves from the pride and idulge in three to four days of active breeding, several times a day. During that time, sex is the only thing on their minds - they won't hunt and they'll only take small breaks for an occasional snack and a bit of a shuteye. While the practice does ensure the female ends up definitelly pregnant, the whole mating business takes it's toll on the lions involved.

And thus, every breeding should come at an energy cost to the lion: 10% energy lost per breeding, if not 15% or more.

As for the females, since they don't have an energy bar, the day they get bred (at least) is the day during which they cannot hunt.

*Thalassa (#7869) suggests an alternative to this – that the female gets a cooldown period instead so she cannot be sent to hunt 2-4 hours after she was bred.

This would emulate the actual way lions go about it and also, would make the players think and plan their breeding much more carefully: Do I want to put this huntress out of commision for today? Do I want to lose what energy I have on this breeding or do I want to explore or attack another lion instead?

If the studding feature remains in place (and I very much hope that it won't!), at least this, coupled with the "accept/decline" option would help reduce the overall number of bredings done and cublets born.

Because, people, what are we going to do with so many and so many thoroughly devalued ones otherwise?!


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~





C) Blurbs ideas and other misc notes




I won’t write much in this section actually. This is more of a placeholder to gather the possible blurbs (some of which I suggested up there already), additional ideas from you guys and so on.


Aaand, we have our first batch of blurbs already. DragonSage put the creative hat on :D

Foreign Born Cub Blurbs
[Male Lion] was about to pounce on [Cub Name] however his nose meets with the very sharp claws of [Dam's Name].

While [Dam's Name] attention was elsewhere, [Male Lion] quickly disposed of [Cub's Name].

[Dam's Name] crouched protectively over [Cub Name], staring down [Male Lion] snarling viciously at him until he decides its not worth the risk of injury.


Brood Mother Blurbs
[Cub Name] was almost swooped up by a Martial Eagle; however [Brood Mother] was able to intercept the eagle saving her charge. {{It would be neat if this blurb gave an eagle feather toy}}

[Cub Name] ventured a bit too far into the waterhole, fortunately [Brood Mother] thought this was an excellent time for a swimming lesson.

[Cub Name] saw a snake and went to request a quest; fortunately [Brood Mother] was quicker and soon put an end to that idea.


Cub Death Blurbs
It was a bitterly cold night last night, and [Cub Name] had rolled away from the warm of its mother. Fortunately {Cub Name] won't have to fear the cold in the great den in the sky.

A Martial Eagle snatched [Cub Name] who found out, to its dismay that cubs can't fly.

The sound of pounding hooves was the last thing [Cub Name] heard before it began to play among the stars.

~~~~~~~~~

Waiting for further submissions! :P





D) Q&A




And this would be where I get spiky and very tongue-in-cheek addressing various possible complaints. To those of you who may recognize some of your complaints complied here – No, I am not making fun of you personally nor am I quoting you verbatim. I am merely using what you pointed out as a rough guideline for the ‘questions’ parts. And yes, I am giving myself full freedom to be cheeky about it.

1) Well, what about the new players? They cannot afford the good/pretty cubs from older players early on!

--Yes, and? You were a new player once. Top players were new players once. They had to work their way up and they did – Why do you think new players shouldn’t?


2) If you do away with studding, new players would have to wait ages for their first custom cub!

--No they wouldn’t. There are several ways one can get custom lions early on. The way game devs love the most is to simply pay for customization. Aside from that, there are always older players on here who give the newcomers a starting lion pack and sometimes even donate custom or half-custom lions. But even that aside, new players should wait longer for their first ‘quality’ cubs, whatever they may consider to be ‘quality’ for themselves. What makes you think that handing everyone everything ona silver platter right away is the right thing to do?


3) It’s not fair! I pay for the studding and then all my lovely cublets end up dead!

-- Yes, so? It was your choice to take a risk that is outside studding! Use the feature and be prepared to have some cubs killed as a result. If you want to have succesfull studdings all the time – tough! Lions don’t suffer other lions’ cubs in their pride. And you happen to be playing a lion sim game.

4) So, if my lioness is high-leveled, her ‘outside’ cubs might survive, but I want to breed purdy NCLs/Oasis customs to other lions!

---*shrug* Then that’s the risk you’ll be taking, sorry. Again I’ll point out, you are on a lion sim game, not domestic kitty breeding game.

5) Hang on, you want to make it imposible for me to raise any cubs on here!

--Not really, no. I want to make it more challenging, that’s all. I want you to have to do soemthing other than click the ‘bred’ button once and have everything else served on a platter to you.

6) Now that won’t do! I don’t have the time to lay this game dialy and when I do, I want it to be soemthing relaxing, not stressfull!

---Well, log on, feed the pride, play with them, send the girls to hunt, log off. That’s pretty much all it takes to keep the cubs alive for the most part. It’s also you playing the game. A lion simulation game, therefore a game where the next generation is not a given thing but something to work for.

7) No! Just no! I should be able to play the way I like it and have all my cubs live without me having to worry about them!

---Lion cubs don’t come equiped with a warm cozy den with a regulated temperature, few bags of kitten food, vitamin supplements, shots and regular vet checks. So yes, you do, in fact, have to take care of them if you want to give them a chance at life. If you want to play a game where you don’t have to care for your litters, try a domestic pet breeeding game instead of a wild lions’ life simulation game.

8) You are dumping way too much math on me! How do you expect me to keep up with all the odds and percentges and stuff for every single cub!?

---I do not expect you to keep track of it all, nor do you have to. Most of that are just the percentages that would go into the game code, not something you’ll be worrying about. The cub’s chance of waking up dead will be displayed on their page so you’ll know where you stand without having to worry about any math.

9) What if I don’t have enough SBs or enough food to support my pride and all the cubs?

---Reduce the number of lionesses and cubs in your pride to the number that yo can support.

10) So on top of it all, you want to make me feed my girls twice as much and to make my cublets die before they’re even born?!

---Yes, yes I do want you to feed the females twice as much during the three days that they’re pregnant. Ever seen a pregnant girl before? Do you know what amounts of energy it takes to carry to term successfully? Well… why would your lionesses be any different?

11) And now I’m supposed to also take care of my male’s energy?! But I love breeding my male like crazy – If it starts costing him energy, I won’t be able to do that any more!

---Well, yes and no. No, you won’t be able to cover 100+ females a day with him, no. You can still choose to expand all his available energy on just the breedings though; your choice.




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Long term goals

Or in other words, what do I think these suggestions will ultimatelly achieve:

1) They will first and foremost add some much-needed realism to the game, making it tad more difficult but more challenging and rewarding to play. Raising cubs should be a feat, an achievement, not a regular fare.

2) With studding done away with and raising the cubs made more difficult, the value of the cubs themselves would first rise and than stabilize on a reasonable level. Which, in turn, would help improve and stabilize the economy of the game as well.