Female Scarcity

[ctthomas]

So I've noticed that for many animal species, particularly ones that can only have 1 male but several females in an enclosure, there is frequently a lack of females available on the market. I see this with zebras, hippos, and even flamingos (don't understand that one really), and I'm sure it happens with many other species not in my zoo.

Last night I sat there refreshing the market for seemingly forever and only one female zebra popped up for like an hour straight! And of course the costs compared to the quality are outrageous.

Maybe some don't find this problematic? I suppose it's life like, but it honestly gets in the way of my playing because I have to stop playing and refresh the market for hours on end to find a female.

I've thought of 2 possible solutions:
1. The percentage chance of having a female baby is slightly increased for those species (nor sure if this is life like)
2. Frontier lists more females and less males

What do you think?

 

[Balwick]

I agree it's a problem. I'm sure people are just breeding the heck out of all the females they get hold of until they're dead.

 

[Kai]

Thats the problem with the inbreeding shenanigans - it's just easier to hoard all your female babies, then buy an unrelated male to breed them.

 

[Dr4gon]

No, some player with a whole lot of leaves to burn is playing the market. He buys all the cheap stuff and brings it back incredibly expensive. I was searching for american bison females, and I noticed that whenever I saw them the buy failed because someone else was just a split second faster. Now the joke is on him. I started out with one male and a female, and soon he will buy all the inbreed children and than I'll be rich

 

[Firestar97]

Same Problem with Orangutans and Bonobos today. Luckily I found a female Orangutan for 1500 CC (my Orangutan Population was for some Reason extinct except one lonely male and another male in the Storage) I waited very long to be able to buy a Female. At least I still have one female Bonobo. I think if I'm able to get a good Breeding-Group with these Animals I will try to sell some of the Offspring for less CC than the other, so other People have a better Chance to breed them too.

 

[ctthomas]

It really shouldn't have to be that we are forced to inbreed, though. I never have inbred animals because I always swap my animals out. But I do end up thinking I need to keep only the females and get rid of the males because there's never any female options. I came really close to inbreeding my pangolins, but finally found some pretty mediocre females I was willing to live with rather than inbreeding.

It just makes me sad sometimes because I breed this amazing male but feel I can't keep his lineage going because I could never find a mate for him. Instead I keep females who are worse than their brothers.

 

[Dae]

That's indeed a problem, because the general lack of females encourages players to keep their females (since they won't be able to find replacements), which only worsen the situation... If it was impossible to sell inbred animals for CC I think it would greatly change things because it would be more interesting to sell females than inbreed them, getting more females on the market.

 

[Kai]

That's indeed a problem, because the general lack of females encourages players to keep their females (since they won't be able to find replacements), which only worsen the situation... If it was impossible to sell inbred animals for CC I think it would greatly change things because it would be more interesting to sell females than inbreed them, getting more females on the market.

But you don't need to inbreed the females. With my white lions for example I keep most of my female babies in storage and just buy a new male every time the old one goes infertile.

There could be a shortage of animals being sold in general due to the severe lack of storage space (30 slots is tiny if you breed multiple animals and want to keep back some breeding stock). I certainly tend to just wild release anything that's not perfect (or being kept for my own breeding), as I don't want to be blocked from buying new animals. It just takes too much time and space to bother selling anything that isn't very rare (and therefore expensive).

I'd say it's mainly the male:female ratio in an enclosure that causes the problem. If I was selling my lions I'd be selling all the male babies while keeping the majority of female babies, hence a shortage of females (same for zebra, etc). I think frontier lists 3 females for every male (in species where you keep multiple females), it would be helpful for the newer players are least.

On the topic of inbreeding: this game almost encourages you to inbreed because of the way it lowers stats if you breed high fertility/immunity animals to other high fertility/immunity animals (If you inbreed you get mixed fertility/immunity animals while keeping the size/longevity). Not to mention, the variant skins in general are probably the prime cause of mass inbreeding in the game (and irl). There's a good reason white tigers became especially controversial when it comes to zoos.

 

[[VR] Deggial]

Related to the inbreeding:
This can also be countered by swapping males. Even more so, as only one has to be replaced.

Edit: too slow.

 

[ctthomas]

2 things though

1. The trade center is meant for trade, not hoarding animals who actually don't age

2. I shouldn't have to keep only my females and never my males because there are never any females for sale

 

[Kai]

2 things though

1. The trade center is meant for trade, not hoarding animals who actually don't age

2. I shouldn't have to keep only my females and never my males because there are never any females for sale

That it might be, but it's an issue if you're trying to breed up rare animals (it was 100/100 white Siberian tigers but they're getting more accessible now as more animals have been breed and sold). If I don't keep a couple of backup females/males in my trade center to replace my breeding pair when they die I'm going to have one hell of a time replacing them. It basically applies to any of the rarer animals as well - hell of a time getting 91+/91+ breeding stock for a lot of the species. I don't see the point in breeding up high stat animals then breeding them to low stat animals because a decent partner is not available - It's almost mandatory to keep back some extra breeding stock in storage.

I'm not sure if they want us to just make a spare storage zoo with tiny zero welfare box pens to just throw our spares in because that's what is going to happen eventually. Having a larger trade center would be more convenient, but theres's (stupid) ways around it.