Animal Husbandry Thoughts

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Delphine
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Joined: Mon Jan 17, 2022 6:36 pm

Animal Husbandry Thoughts

Post by Delphine »

I know that there are eventually plans for breeding being a part of animal husbandry. I wanted to touch on an idea along those lines in this post, as well as some other animal husbandry ideas I had.

ABILITY IDEAS
Basic Breeding
This ability will allow a rancher to breed basic animals, such as sheep, goats, cows, etc. Prereq: Animal husbandry 100. Breeding pairs are always way more expensive than just the standard animals you would purchase to shear or milk, etc., as you're going to need something with better bloodlines. Perhaps you'll also need a builder to construct a special breeding pen as well where the magic happens? I'm trying to think of ways to keep this from becoming a get rich quick scheme. Don't ask me about gestation periods. You don't want it to be ridiculously long, but also not to the point where you're popping out lambs every week. Mature animals can be sold to the stockade office for some riln or to other players. Can't sell off babies. So this would be a timegated riln making enterprise, in between the gestation period and waiting for the baby animals to mature enough to sell them.

Advanced Breeding
Prereqs: Animal Husbandry 200 and Basic Breeding. This will allow a rancher to breed animals like alpacas, brachelyrs, and horses. Same as with basic breeding, breeding pairs are more expensive (I imagine a broodmare or stud for horses should go for at least twice or three times the amount you would pay for just a standard one, meaning getting into the business would be expensive, especially if you were wanting to breed warhorses, but it would be an investment to a good payoff on down the line). Builders could build stables to house the horses. Maybe also a breeding pen? Again, don't ask me about gestation periods. Only mature animals can be sold. I think it would be cool if a future Trader/Mercantiler class person from my Artisan Guild idea thread over here could maybe sometimes acquire breeding pairs of rare animals which can be put up for auction. Or maybe it would be more fair if these animals were just part of GM merchant shops or acquired through events.

Horse Whisperer
Ability to soothe cranky horses that have decided they no longer want to be friends with their owners. Maybe also the ability to treat injured horses? Tucking injured horses into the stable is still an option, of course.

OTHER THOUGHTS
I'll be honest: I don't really care about breeding sheep. (Though lambs are cute). I really just love the idea that people could breed HORSES. I am also volunteering myself and Janarc as tributes (as we're both horse nerds IRL) to help come up with the nitty-gritty details of fake horse genetics and how the code would treat different colorings being matched up and all that jazz if this is something that wants to be pursued in the future. He might have some better ideas of how gestation periods should work in-game as you don't want it to take the actual RL time (ain't nobody got time for that), but you also don't just want people to be able to dump a few million riln into starting up a horse ranch and then that's it. Give it a few months and they'll be Lost Land billionaires.

I do think the horses should take some more time, though. Like maybe you get a sellable horse every three months? (That's including gestation and raising time). Would that be too long a time? I guess I'm thinking more along the lines of warhorses and making up to $500kish every three months from a fairly passive sort of thing (aside from feeding and mucking up stalls) sounds like a pretty sweet deal. But then on the riding horse side of things… making a bit over $100k every three months? Or maybe riding horses should take less time than warhorses? From a riln standpoint, that would make more sense to me.

But in terms of general breeding, I think it would be cool if animals could have morale and keeping them at a high morale would give better breeding rolls which could result in something cool like maybe a rare coloring or an extra offspring, etc. It would be neat if cooks could whip up some treats that could then be fed to your animals (and yes, I have a cooking skill idea post in the works, too. I have a problem. Someone help me) to help increase said morale.

All-in-all, I like the idea of people being able to play animal breeder and starting their own alpaca ranch or horse ranch or whatever and living out all their wildest rancher dreams. I also recognize that's a lot of coding, though. I do think for something in the immediate future, though, implementing something like the aforementioned "Horse Whisperer" ability would be very helpful as I often see people having trouble with their horses getting injured or getting cranky at them and they just have to tuck them in the stable and hope for the best. I also know that bards can soothe a cranky horse? But I'd rather that sort of capability fall to the animal husbandry people.
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