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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
you know, i was thinking about it, what will breeders do with animals they don't want. I think it could be fun if they were able to release them in the world, so the area around a breeders freehold would be filled with weird animals:)))
If movies and books have taught me anything, absolutely nothing can go wrong with having experimental genetic freaks running free in an area.
I still think butchering would fit perfectly.
Fur for tailoring,
Claws, Horns and teeth for weapons
Meat for Cooking.
Trophies, Accessoirs and Furniture.
Would also give more depth to breeding if they were able to breed towards better butchered materials rather than just mount attributes
Three easy ways to address this as a problem are quite simple, and can even be used in combination:
1. Limited slots in your freehold to hold breeding animals and their children, preventing you from having a massive number of them.
2. Time limits on producing new babies. Gotta bring a child to term/lay the egg, and then get healthy enough to produce another child before doing it again. Especially if the animal in question has a breeding season.
3. The new babies require resources to make them grow strong and skilled, perhaps in terms of both time and consumable resources such as food.
If this is done, I can't imagine you'd need a breeding limit, as due to the fact that you can only have one Freehold per account and the limitations of that freehold will be present, there'll be a severe practical limit to how many babies you can sell.
I think a castration option might be a bit far for Intrepid to take, though I'm not personally opposed to it, this kind of thing happens all the time irl. Mainly I think the traits that someone can impart on their animals from the training phase can be used to mitigate this, assuming another husbander of comparable skill can't just get the complete compendium entry from simply purchasing the animal.
I think the desired effect here would be a mix of limited numbers of breeding, traits that can induce sterility, and not immediately being able to purchase an animal and getting "their recipe".
Professional Skeptic, Entertainer, and Animal Enthusiast
I agree that having castration would be a little... graphic.
I never thought about natural sterility from cross breeds, that’s a very good point! And it does make sense that rarer animals are rare for the primary reason that they don’t breed as many offspring per lifecycle. So there’s a natural move in the right direction as well.
I think it also needs to be said that realistically, just because you have two parents with phenomenal genes doesn’t mean they’ll always carry those genes perfectly into their offspring. So just because someone gets their hands on two perfect specimens of a rare creature (either very expensive or very time consuming) they won’t ever have a perfect chance of reproducing more just like their parents, and it’ll take quite a while between each gestation period to keep trying.
🤢
If we're going to get that complex, one also needs to consider the behavioral changes this procedure can produce in various species due to loss of regular hormone production. And that, to me, seems to be taking it too far. "My battle-snorse is far more aggressive in combat than yours, because he didn't get the snip-snip" isn't a conversation I imagine taking much joy in.
Well, I wasn't exactly insinuating it needed to have an effect, though perhaps it came off that way. I'm more so just trying to convey that when you make things more realistic in some areas, other questions in regards to realism open up. But it's a fantasy game, so fair enough. I am in favor of this control by some method, just a matter of how.
Perhaps there could be some sort of potion created by alchemists that could be added to an animal's food or water that produces the effect? I feel like there should be some initial cost to doing this, not just a button toggle. You should have to make some initial investment in order to protect your long term revenue. Cost in balance with reward. It would also create another long-term interactive exchange between practitioners of two professions. Perhaps with one semi-rare component that keeps it from flooding the market. Nothing too crazy, just enough to make it a conscious buying decision rather than a no-brainer you buy a whole stack of and forget about.
Potion of Infertility
Can be added to a tamed creature's food or water supply to prevent them from producing offspring. This effect cannot be reversed.
Also, i don't think or do i want to make it in any way graphic or realistic. This whole post is regarding the mechanics and economy of the Animal Husbandry profession, not the biology of it.
I honestly imagine it as part of the in-game pop-up that appears when inspecting an animal, as an action to perform. One click, done. No need to go beyond that into the game.
I also like Sengarden's option, the "Potion of Infertility". Adds another thing to get resources for and it doesn't bring any parallels with IRL stuff, because it is a potion. If they did it this way, i would be 100% on board.
Also, considering its a bit of a weird question, I would ask you all go and like it on the thread (its on the second page, about halfway down), so it has a higher chance of actually getting an answer.
Not sure how "random" their question selection methods are, but if it doesn't get asked, I'll toss it into the next round phrased around the potion concept.
Yeah, it seems to be the only profession where selling one of your products means you've lost that customer forever cos they can then do it themselves. And then you've lost any customers that the first customer sells to, and then the customers that they sell to, etc.....
True, but we did get the answer that the number of breeds will be limited. So you can finish breeding the animal, then sell it. I still hope we can sterilize them though.
Also opens the door to trading still breedable animals among breeders. You wouldn't want to give someone else an animal that can be breed infinity because that would destroy your own market. If it can only be breed once and the offspring will be infertile as a result you may want to try it with another breeder for something else you need.
Only issue with this solution is that unless you’re breeding a mount that can only be bred once, you’ll eventually run out of space to keep breeding them before selling.
Sure, if they don't sell. In that case, off to the glue factory with them.
Animals will have a cap on how many times they can breed and that will be determined by animal type, quality and for what purposes it's being used.
If you don't want other players to breed your animal, wait until that cap on breeding has been reached before you give that animal to someone else.
Appears to be part of the risk v reward pillar.
You have some control over whether others can breed your animals - you don't have total control. As in, you can't just literally neuter your animals whenever you want.
To be clear, a limit is fine, otherwise, the taming profession wont have longevity.
But let me give an example.
I have a fantastic pair, and they could make....let's say 5 offsprings. The offsprings are the ones i want to sell. Now, i need to breed the offsprings 5 times each before i sell them, which is 25 animals i dont actually want and have nothing to do with.
We already know there will be a limit to how many animals you will be able to have at any one point in the stables.So the fact that I have to fill my stables with 25 random animals is gonna suck.
So, have a limit, for sure. But also have a way to neuter animals so we dont have to create dozens of unwanted animals.
I still am in favour of the Potion of Infertility, as it isn't free to do, it removes any questions about the biology of neutering and it ties the Alchemy and Animal Husbandry professions together in quite an elegant way