Interbirth period bugged for animals with a high age of maturity

[Adarra]

I'm going to bump this thread because this issue annoys me to no end. It's really strange to feel forced to have more than one herd of buffalos to provide yourself with suitable breeding stock. As I said in one of my other posts (the one about the scarcity), there are quite a few possible solutions to this issue (and of course the same goes for other species that suffer from this weird breeding cycle):

1.) Increase the lifespan of buffalos and make them go infertile at a later age.
2.) Do not let them go infertile at all (I have no idea whether or not buffalos actually get infertile or not at an advanced age).
3.) Make them reach breeding age earlier in their life.
4.) Change the way buffalos and certain other species breed, for instance by making it possible for a mother to get pregnant even though their offspring hasn't matured yet (as has been suggested a few times already).
5.) Buffalos (female!) that Frontier puts on the Auction House (Trading Center) should be younger than 8 or 9 years old so they can produce more offspring during their fertile years.

It seems to me this issue could be (easily?) resolved in any of these ways.

 

[Aotearoa]

1.) Increase the lifespan of buffalos and make them go infertile at a later age.

I think the main problem here is not a short lifespan but a long one compared to their age of sterility. Making the lifespan longer will make the animals sold by Frontier proportionally older and thus cause them to have a shorter window to breed. Instead, age of sterility could be increased to say 20 years, or animals sold in the market made younger.

 

[Cool Cats and Kittens]

It was already reported to the issue tracker. The report expired, because it didn't get enough upvotes / can confirms / whatever before the following patch.

https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/15465

 

[Villa11]

2.) Do not let them go infertile at all (I have no idea whether or not buffalos actually get infertile or not at an advanced age).

I have been looking around for scientific studies on African buffalo and menopause, I did not find any. I did find one that showed there is no menopause in African buffalo, they did have fewer pregnancies at higher ages but they were not sterile. Another paper i found classified 10 years and older males as mature adults and reproductive active.
Since most studies i found didn't even mention age related sterility or did not split the adults in age classes, I conclude that there is no such thing as age related sterility in this species.
Thus I have no clue where Frontier got that idea from.

1.) Increase the lifespan of buffalos
3.) Make them reach breeding age earlier in their life.

These ages are in line with what is known from the species in real life, so i do not see why these should be changed.

On the topic on interbirth period,it theoretically refers to the time in between births, not in between birth and conception of the next young. Mammals are definitely able to become pregnant before their previous young has reached sexual maturity, they can even get pregnant before their previous young is even weaned.

I did a similar test as Valinor several months back, albeit one a smaller scale. I looked at what the females were doing, and no point in the time period between the 'interbirth period' and the maturation of their young, did the females even try to mate.

It do not thing this is a bug, as it worked in beta, i think Frontier just turned this feature off in a response to people complaining about the breeding rates. I wholeheartedly agree that it should be brought back.

 

[sympatrick]

I have been looking around for scientific studies on African buffalo and menopause, I did not find any. I did find one that showed there is no menopause in African buffalo, they did have fewer pregnancies at higher ages but they were not sterile. Another paper i found classified 10 years and older males as mature adults and reproductive active.
Since most studies i found didn't even mention age related sterility or did not split the adults in age classes, I conclude that there is no such thing as age related sterility in this species.
Thus I have no clue where Frontier got that idea from.



These ages are in line with what is known from the species in real life, so i do not see why these should be changed.

On the topic on interbirth period,it theoretically refers to the time in between births, not in between birth and conception of the next young. Mammals are definitely able to become pregnant before their previous young has reached sexual maturity, they can even get pregnant before their previous young is even weaned.

I did a similar test as Valinor several months back, albeit one a smaller scale. I looked at what the females were doing, and no point in the time period between the 'interbirth period' and the maturation of their young, did the females even try to mate.

It do not thing this is a bug, as it worked in beta, i think Frontier just turned this feature off in a response to people complaining about the breeding rates. I wholeheartedly agree that it should be brought back.

It is indeed not a bug, but there are other design choices in the game that do not reflect actual scientific data, like litter size. So I think this one could also be stretched to 20 years, for the sake of gameplay.

 

[macronecu]

Maybe animals sold in the market by frontier should have their ages determined by age of sterility and not lifespan. This can help make the period they can conceive longer.

 

[Locce]

I think this thread deserves another bump since we just have a community challenge with a species where this is very much relevant. Due to juvenile adolescence being used instead of interbirth periods (and Pandas being a bit lazy in the bedtime fun department) every female Great Panda will have at best two juveniles before she becomes sterile.
That means:

1. Pairing them up 1 male and 1 female can never grow your population but at best uphold current numbers.

2. From 1. follows that 1 male must be paired with more than 1 female to have a chance of increasing the population. That necessarily results in a chronic shortage of females put up for sale. (This whole week I saw 2 females up for sale that were not mere months away from infertility or unusable for breeding purposes to begin with. No, I will not pay 10k CC for a 33% fertility female.) So, for any long-term project involing these animals self-sustainability is a necessity.

3. For a self-sustaining breeding zoo at least 50% of offspring must be female or population numbers will decrease. To increase your population you need one big or several small "female surges" (generations with more female than male offspring). If you get a significant "male surge" before having sufficiently grown the population it's basically Game Over. (This happened to me today. Of 8 juveniles 7 were male, so that apruptly ends my contribution to the community challenge.)

This constellation basically turns breeding certain species into a very frustrating game of chance with little to no opportunity to make up for lack of luck with bought animals due to all players having to deal with the same issues to some degree for a given species. Personally, I can say with confidence that I will never incorporate habitats for Bornean Orangutans, Great Pandas or similarly handicapped species in any of my larger franchise zoos until this problem is adequately addressed since I can't just put the whole zoo on hold for a couple of real-time weeks or months just to keep those habitats from ending up empty.

 

[Cool Cats and Kittens]

I started to build kindergarten habitats for animals like these in the background of the zoo and move the babies there. Then, the mother's interbirth period is independent from her offsprings adolescence.

This method is a crutch, that allows me to breed certain animals, but it introduces other problems: It means more micromanagement, it's not how I want to run this zoo, so it reduces the immersion (I am not Joe exotic after all), and it denies me the opportunity to see the amazing juvenile plays with adult animations, if the animal has any. But for me, it still better than not having these animals in a franchise zoo

 

[Locce]

Yeah, the kindergarten habitats seem to be an unavoidable evil if you want to keep those species at all in a franchise zoo. It really kills my immersion, though, since it adds this micromanagement requirement for each species and I don't usually roleplay as a Disney villain. I'd rather avoid having to run each and every zoo like a puppy farm to make these animal viable at all.

 

[Urufu1997]

Personally, I can say with confidence that I will never incorporate habitats for Bornean Orangutans, Great Pandas or similarly handicapped species in any of my larger franchise zoos until this problem is adequately addressed since I can't just put the whole zoo on hold for a couple of real-time weeks or months just to keep those habitats from ending up empty.

Didn't know that there are Problems with the Orangutans. This explains why it's sometimes a bit hard to sustain a Population. I recommend to get as many females as possible in a Enclosure. I think with that Method I've had a good Population for a very long Time. But I think that was relatively short after the Beta, so maybe it changed

I started to build kindergarten habitats for animals like these in the background of the zoo and move the babies there. Then, the mother's interbirth period is independent from her offsprings adolescence.

Didn't know that. I won't do this with Mammals or Birds but it could be useful for a Challenge where we need to breed Reptiles

 

[Locce]

Didn't know that there are Problems with the Orangutans. This explains why it's sometimes a bit hard to sustain a Population. I recommend to get as many females as possible in a Enclosure. I think with that Method I've had a good Population for a very long Time. But I think that was relatively short after the Beta, so maybe it changed

When the maths are as bad as they are for Great Pandas multiple females are necessary for any growth at all but unfortunately not sufficient for safe growth. The matter is made worse by the fact that Pandas are not exactly eager lovers. You can throw up to 9 females into one habitat with 1 male, but in reality any more than 5-ish tend to become quite inefficient since males mate so rarely that it would result in several females with only one pregnancy in their lifetime, thus actually slowing down your population growth. Best case scenario seems to be 2 males and 8 females per habitat, but without kindergarten habitats that still leaves you very vulnerable to "male surges".

Didn't know that. I won't do this with Mammals or Birds but it could be useful for a Challenge where we need to breed Reptiles

That won't even be necessary. Reptiles mate after the interbirth period no matter if there are juveniles in the habitat or not. And since they actually do produce multiple offspring in one go this easily leads to habitats that are just lousy with juvenile crocs or turtles. It's a bit maddening, too, since the fact that those species that could afford to wait until the juveniles have matured don't even have this problem really rubs it in how unnecessarily bad the situation for Pandas and some of those other mammals is.

 

[Urufu1997]

It seems to also happen with Llamas currently. I'm trying to get a bigger Population of brown and black Llamas but for some Reason they seem to breed slower than they did at the Time when they were introduced

 

[Taske]

Since no one has brought this up in this thread, I will clue you all into a little work around for this little annoyance. Remove the babies from the parents habitat and into their own. I run Massive breeding programs and I use this to maximize the baby output of all my breeding pairs/Herds. This will make it so the mother breeds at their Interbirth time and not the maturation of the babies time.

 

[KimoKat]

Same issue, only animals that seem to actually stick to their interbirth periods are reptiles like torts (do not let torts go breeding unattended @_@ especially with 100% fertility groups), Saltwater crocs, Nile Monitors, and Komodo's idk if the other reptiles like Gharial and Caiman do this do but probably. I'm considering making separate enclosures to just keep the babies in as they seem very self sufficient anyways and keeps my enclosures from filling up with 56 torts in one place (my poor computer)

 

[KimoKat]

Since no one has brought this up in this thread, I will clue you all into a little work around for this little annoyance. Remove the babies from the parents habitat and into their own. I run Massive breeding programs and I use this to maximize the baby output of all my breeding pairs/Herds. This will make it so the mother breeds at their Interbirth time and not the maturation of the babies time.

Unless it's damn reptiles. But glad to know this works, horrible to take babies from their mothers but for the sake of maxing output I might start doing this.

 

[Villa11]

This should really be fixed, no respectable zoo takes mammal babies away from their parents ( expect if it is necessary for their health and safety).

 

[Taske]

This should really be fixed, no respectable zoo takes mammal babies away from their parents ( expect if it is necessary for their health and safety).

Yes, in real life you would never take a mammal baby from its mother until it matures buuuuut this is a game where the Inter-birth intervals are on the long side(Elephants in game take 9 years to give birth to a second baby after the first, in the real world this is closer to four to six years with the possibility for longer depending on outside variables) and that is just the inter-birth rate, if you take into account mammals in game don't give birth to another baby when the first is still present elephants take a full 15 years to produce another baby... Where in real life animals like Elephants DO have staggered young (an adolescent and a infant/child) at the same time.... SOOOO yes you are right, a real life zoo wouldn't take young from their mothers but this is a game, not real life; and the best way to breed high quality animals is to maximize the number of young your animals are giving you... and the best way to do that with single birthed babies is to take advantage of inter-birth time and not maturation time.

And lets be real, do you really want to decrease the number of elephants (or other hard to breed animals) on the market? They already are hard to find with this workaround, let alone when you limit the babies a female elephant can have to 3 with a max of 5 at 100% longevity....

 

[Villa11]

My point is that we, as players shouldn't need to do it. It simply isn't ethical. Frontier keeps saying they care about animal welfare, but this contradicts that message. I hope they see this and fix the interbirth period to function correctly.

 

[macronecu]

My point is that we, as players shouldn't need to do it. It simply isn't ethical. Frontier keeps saying they care about animal welfare, but this contradicts that message. I hope they see this and fix the interbirth period to function correctly.

One thing though, is in real life this is separate too. Young animals can get eaten in the wild, so the next pregnancy would quicker than the actual time in takes for the animal to mature. I'm not very well informed in reproduction biology of animals, but if anyone who knows can answer. What happends when a baby is still alive and the mother is past interbirth interval but a male wants to mate with her. The baby is ditched? Or do they grow together? Or is it different from species to species? Maybe the answers to these questions can help find a solution to the in-game problem without making it unrealistic or anything.

 

[Villa11]

What happends when a baby is still alive and the mother is past interbirth interval but a male wants to mate with her. The baby is ditched? Or do they grow together? Or is it different from species to species? Maybe the answers to these questions can help find a solution to the in-game problem without making it unrealistic or anything.

It differs per species. For some mammals weaning also means departing from their mother, others still need their mother after weaning (for example apes and elephants). In case of the later they can have multiple young at the same time, all aged differently.

so the next pregnancy would quicker than the actual time in takes for the animal to mature

Maturation and separating from the parents are not the same. A lot of animals go through an adultescent stage after they have left their parents and are thus not mature at the time they leave.

Additionally interbirth period refers to the time between births, this includes the gestation period for the next birth, some animals (for example seals and kangaroos) can mate again just days after they gave birth and this while their first young is alive.
I hopes this clears some things up