Wolf Pack Behavior?

[Alchymaera]

Read a great article this morning that got me super hyped for the game; https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...eature-the-most-realistic-animals-in-any-game

Genetics and breeding playing a part in conservation? Count me in!

But it also brought a few questions to mind; will the game take real life animal pack behavior into account? A great example is wolf packs.

Wolf packs are formed and led by a male and a female; the rest of the pack consists mostly of their young. Generally, only the leading pair continue to mate. Will the game take this behavior into consideration, or will there be a very high risk of inbreeding if you try to re-create a wolf pack?

Of course, this question also applies to other animal species that have similar/complex pack hierarchies, but we really don't know yet exactly which animals we can expect to see in the game (outside of the animals we've seen in screenshots/trailer etc.)

 

[eulemur]

I expect packing/herding behaviour will definitely be present - Frontier has already established it has the ability to implement this with the alpha system in JWE. Obviously there is no breeding aspect in that game so we can't say anything based on that, but I do predict we will have tighter control over breeding than in previous zoo management titles. I suspect first relatives (parents, siblings) will 'naturally' not breed a la zoo tycoon 2, and inbreeding is more of a concern with cousins, half-siblings perhaps, more distant relatives like that. Perhaps contraception will be an option so we can prevent certain animals from breeding, or animals need to be 'encouraged' to breed, maybe.

I'm sure this is something the devs have considered for social animals, regardless. I don't foresee that we will have any issues trying to recreate a wolf pack consisting of parents and children in the first place, and if there was, there will likely be ways to mitigate that risk with controlled breeding management.

Either way - I will be grateful if the breeding system can at least be managed to a level where there won't be exponential growth of animal populations. It was always a big problem for me when I tried to create realistic group sizes in my zoo tycoon games in the past, and over the course of an hours playtime the population would quadruple even without inbreeding @_@

 

[Alchymaera]

Oh yeah I'm sure there'll be some sort of pack behavior - just hoping the individual species have different ones. Wolf packs and lion prides are vastly different in real life, so hoping that'll be reflected in game. I didn't really notice the alpha system in JWE having much of an impact though? Then again, haven't played it all that much.

Some animals don't have much regard for avoiding parent/siblings though, and I imagine avoiding inbreeding might be pretty easy if that's the case. But spaying/neutering would be a really good option! Hope that's in the game, that would also be useful to prevent certain genetics to pass down.

Regarding your last point; couldn't agree more. xD Some animals in ZT2 bred like rabbits -- and that game doesn't even originally have any rabbits/hares...