Genetic Research

Let's be honest. The genetics system in game is confusing at best, it's always seemed a random mess of guesswork, it's incredibly hard to try and understand what they mean and how they effect animal color and genes when you have no base line. What is the point of the genetics? The genes in-game are meaningless; we have absolutely no idea what they mean and a grey animal from the market has a completely different genome then the grey animal you bred.

So.... Why not give us a baseline? Why not lump genetic and animal research onto the vet where we can research base genomes (A, B, C, whatever) and just for a random example, find that A (let's say agouti) is dominant over B (black). This gives us a baseline and now lets us know that our Aa BB wolves will only ever be agouti unless we pick up an aa mate. If you're going to have a genetic system in your game, why make it virtually impossible to figure it out? Give us a baseline to work with so we can plan our breeding projects around colors we want in our zoos.

On that note, the genetics don't really make any sense. Mixing letters (AB, DC, etc) is extremely uncommon compared to single letter genomes (aa, cc) or subscript genomes (XoXO). I am not sure what the subscript genomes are actually called, just that it's incredibly rare to actually see straight up mixed letters in genome to repressent a single genome, they're usually combined in some way like the inhibitor gene in cats.
 
I'd also like to know how they're using the genetics. I study genetics as a hobby in birds and horses, and I although I understand the basics they're using, I can't figure out how exactly they're calculating them in game. Even if we knew how the letter combos worked it would make it a lot easier to figure out the rest.
 
Yeah, I don't care if they use mixed letter combos really. It's just a nitpick of mine that it should be way more uncommon and not every single gene. I'd just love a baseline of what A means (and therefor by knowing what A does, we can deduce how it effects its different gene combinations), people could plan their breedings projects so much better if the genome research was just lumped into the vet's research tab (they already research diseases so why not) instead of literally just guessing until you get an offspring that you want

I'm not the best with words haha. I also study cat genetics as a hobby, I'm glad I'm not the only one doing it just for fun
 
Someone had a theory that its how many times each letter is duplicated in each genome. The first half (3 sets of letters) is from the mother, the second half is from the father. So if you have AA BD CD and BE DE AC for example, it doesn't care that the As aren't in the same order, it just counts 3 As. Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/PlanetZoo/comments/e30gx7/data_how_genes_and_breeding_works_in_planet_zoo/
I have no idea if this theory is accurate, and the comments delve deeper into theories. It would be an extremely simplified version of COI % though (duplication of genes, in case someone doesn't know what a Coefficient of Inbreeding is.)

In some animals like rabbits and horses they use double letters to signify health and form genes (AA Bb, etc, etc) and mixed letters for genes related to colors and patterns. Ag for Agouti for example. I'd like to know if the genes we have in PZ actually carry color or if it's just stats. I assumed the colors would just be one of the parents, but they did say in the release there's a chance they'll look like an ancestor instead... So it would be nice to know if that's random or if it actually is tracking the family tree and drawing from that pool.

And yeah, all my friends and family think I'm crazy. :D
 
So the the genetics actual shown in game, as far as I can tell, only affect the fertility and immunity genes (I'm guessing their is some hidden genetics for the other genes as well as colour variants). For each pair of letters in the genes, one comes from the mother and the other from the father (used to be first 3 were one parent, last three the other parent but they fixed that). The letters themselves are meaningless (also to your point of genes being noted as the same letter or sub scripts, those apply to entire genes, but some forms or genetics use single base pair variants, single nucleotide polymorphisms, that are represented by A, C, G, or T, happy to go into more detail if needed). The stats for each gene are simply the proportion of unequal (or more diverse pairs) over the total number of pairs (eg. 3 mismatched pairs out of 6 total means a 50% stat for that gene).

I'm guessing we will get a more comprehensive genetic overview eventually, they just havent implemented it for whatever reason (maybe there is a random element that they are unsure how to display, but I'm only speculating).
 
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