Free new genes for prospering zoos

[Barje]

Imo, if your zoo prospers well,i mean,your animals breed alot, you should be able to take free partnerts(or at least one with a discount from frontier store,with a simillar genetics) for them to avoid inbreeding,i mean, i had no problems with conservation points in beta,becasue inbreeding wasn't really a mechanic,siblings' babies were as healthy as their parents.But if inbreeding actually was a mechanic,breeding more endangered animals like elephants and rhinos would be useless,becasue you couldnt ever afford for buying new partner for the next generation.Species i mentioned have no sustain, they get only 1 baby per pregnancy,so you would have to be very lucky to get around 3 babies in their lifetime,to actually afford something new,and not waste the animals.

 

[MaximusSC]

I'd look at elephants as being a mid to late game animal. They certainly aren't for someone who is just starting a new franchise. This makes seeking out ways to generate the conservation credits a necessity if one wants to have the bigger and more expensive animals in their zoos.

 

[ctthomas]

I think this goes back to the issue of breeding rates. Ideally animals will have several offspring before becoming sterile. As long as you're choosing compatible animals (click compare mates and check that most stats should end up better than the parents) and you're breeding and selling more animals than you purchased, you will earn enough cc to purchase increasingly better breeding partners.

For example in the case of hippos, i had about 3-4 calfs per female. 3 females in an enclosure +1 male means I'm getting between 9-12 hippo calves for every 4 i put in. Now of course i need to replace them so suppose i sell all of the calves. I have an additional 5-8 which is profit (since i had to buy the initial 4 so that's the break even point). But assuming you're breeding compatible animals, your calves are even higher quality than their parents so that's even more profit. Use all that extra cc to buy a new set of hippos which are better than their parents. Of course in reality i don't sell them all. I keep 1 or 2 genetically superior calves for the next generation. Hippos were the gems of my zoo.

Now look at African wild dogs which I found to be extremely challenging to breed after the update. Only alphas will mate so you only have 1 reproductive female at a time. She can produce about 2 litters of 2 pups in her lifetime, so 4. Sell them all and only get a profit off 2 of them. Problem comes in when you realize that if you keep any from the first generation to breed again, you're LOSING cc since they would have to become the new alpha meaning their parents can't breed anymore. You can only sell 1 pup from the parents (since you're keeping the other), so you essentially lost cc. So you have to sell the first 2 and hope your final litter yields some good genes. If it doesn't, you're either stuck with an inferior pup for the next generation or have to sell them for a lower price and purchase 2 new animals. This risky last- litter- dependent breeding made me never want to buy African wild dogs for any decent amount of cc and also prevented my African wild dog population from ever yielding very good results. At best I can say I probably broke even on cc from african wild dogs.

Now if the breeding rates for African wild dogs were increased (say 2-4 pups per litter at random) it might be easier to have a successful long term breeding program and be able to afford - and more importantly justify spending valuable cc - on higher quality breeding partners.

 

[Cile]

I never really had issues with breeding during beta, and my primary focus was tigers, if you could just get free stuff then what purpose does the whole online community thing serve if you don't initiate with it, it is there to interact with, you are intended to take from the community and breed things and then give back by selling things, its a very graceful take and give scenario, you buy 2 tigers, u breed them, get 2 cubs, sell 1 or if they both females, sell both the parents then buy 1 new male, breed both females get 4 tiger cubs and so forth. I think the idea of free stuff is a bit much in my opinion...