Too Confused! About the Special Kitties breeding rules

[Tad Carlucci]

A better explanation would not have had to reveal details. But it would have allowed us know that the event was bias, rather than finding out after the fact. That knowledge would have strongly effected our breeding choices during the lottery. Of course, as always, choosing wisely or unwisely is up to the player.

I do disagree with Saga that hiding a more dominant in the normally-more-recessive location would have created a situation any different than with Starters. Yes, with Starters, we don't know the recessive and it's guaranteed to be non-Genesis and therefore actually more recessive. But our normal Starter discovery testing would work just as well. As it stands, those of us looking to determine the place for Clover in the hierarchy actually have an easier time because we don't need to breed them at all to bracket the location fairly accurately.

I loved the contest and don't regret the effort at all.

But, in future, I'd suggest working harder to avoid bias in your lotteries.

Making Clover the new True Recessive would have worked, but is probably not a good idea because it's too easy to determine it's place.

So, instead of your process, I'd suggest the following:

if (looseCloverLottery) proceed as normal; otherwise ...

1) temporarily replace any eye alleles in the parents which are recessive to Clover with the parent's dominant allele. use the normal function to produce the offspring's genes

2) set the recessive allele to Clover

3) apply Clover paint

4) deliver offspring

In all cases, save one, this satisfies four requirements:

a) All offspring produced have an equal chance at winning the Clover eye

b) All offspring have genetics which are consistent with all known rules

c) While the result was obtained using slightly different logic, the player MIGHT have received different genes if no lottery were in place BUT the player cannot PROVE any modification of the process other than the expected result of Clover randomly appearing.

d) the offspring breed future offspring using the normal rules.

In that one case, where both parents dominant eye allele is recessive to Clover, requirement b is not met. The consequence is that the "hidden" allele is actually dominant to the "visible". To me, the answer to questions about the apparent inconsistency on the web site is: "So?" It's just a seeming inconsistency in the data presentation on the web site. The genetics still work. Clover is still dominant. Those few lucky winners who happened to be breeding the most recessive eyes still get their Clover. And normal breeding patterns (if used) should quickly solve any apparent inconsistencies.

Biasing the lottery against many, to avoid the few falling into this last case who might be confused by the seeming inconsistency in the Pedigree web site, makes no sense to me.