Give those "Teen-kitties" a boost of love! (Faster breeding)

[Tad Carlucci]

I've been thinking on this suggestion and have not done enough modelling to decide if I think it would change the dependency on luck, making the game more about breeding.

But, I can rephrase the suggestion in other ways with basically the same effect:

As suggested, at 7 days of age a now sexually mature cat starts at 100% love.

Alternate method: When birthed, the kitten is sexually mature and begins gaining love but sees no effect from Milk nor can it accept vitamins. This caveat makes the effect of this method identical to the suggestion: at 7 days of age, the kitten will be able to produce a box.

With some math, we could determine other ages at which the kitten becomes sexually mature and can accept Milk and/or vitamins to be able to produce a nest no earlier than age 7. These would allow some variation where those who want to pay could hurry things to get a box as soon as possible after reaching age 7, but the player could balance cost against delay and let it ride to get a nest earlier than the present lower limit of age 10.

As I said, I'm not sure the 3 to 7 day speed-up of the suggestion would actually reduce luck and make the game about breeding.

Clearly, though, what it would do, if implemented as suggested, or some alternative thereof, is eliminate (or reduce) any advantage "those who choose to pay" gain from using milk and vitamins to get a box at age 10 might have over "those who choose not to pay" who wait until age 14 in the "race to discover that newly released trait." And that leveling of the field, alone, is probably sufficient reason to seriously consider implementing the suggested change.

[Sanura Snowpaw]

(03-11-2012 11:32 AM)Tad Carlucci Wrote:  I've been thinking on this suggestion and have not done enough modelling to decide if I think it would change the dependency on luck, making the game more about breeding.

But, I can rephrase the suggestion in other ways with basically the same effect:

As suggested, at 7 days of age a now sexually mature cat starts at 100% love.

Alternate method: When birthed, the kitten is sexually mature and begins gaining love but sees no effect from Milk nor can it accept vitamins. This caveat makes the effect of this method identical to the suggestion: at 7 days of age, the kitten will be able to produce a box.

With some math, we could determine other ages at which the kitten becomes sexually mature and can accept Milk and/or vitamins to be able to produce a nest no earlier than age 7. These would allow some variation where those who want to pay could hurry things to get a box as soon as possible after reaching age 7, but the player could balance cost against delay and let it ride to get a nest earlier than the present lower limit of age 10.

As I said, I'm not sure the 3 to 7 day speed-up of the suggestion would actually reduce luck and make the game about breeding.

Clearly, though, what it would do, if implemented as suggested, or some alternative thereof, is eliminate (or reduce) any advantage "those who choose to pay" gain from using milk and vitamins to get a box at age 10 might have over "those who choose not to pay" who wait until age 14 in the "race to discover that newly released trait." And that leveling of the field, alone, is probably sufficient reason to seriously consider implementing the suggested change.

I can agree with not being able to accept love but without milk they would breed at 10 days not 7.

[Saga Felix]

My original suggestion in this thread says 7 days, and 7 days exactly, due to one important thing: Breeding cycles. We would gain very little if the kittens could breed at the age of 10, as it would then STILL take 2 breeding cycles to back-breed them or breed with siblings etc., as we often do when looking for hidden traits.

If they could breed at 10, it'd be roughly 1½ "cycle" of the already adult cats, leading to even more frustration than the current 2 cycles it takes to mature a kitten.

So, if KittyCatS are listening and considering this suggestion, I'll repeat that without taking the "maturity" all the way down to 7 days, it's not much worth, really.

However, I do agree that it shouldn't be possible to use love-vitamins on kittens. It is an aspect of my suggestion that I hadn't considered till now, but it makes sense the way Tad says it.

[Tad Carlucci]

Yeah, I'm a computer scientist and mathematician and, so, am far better at big, complex formula than arithmetic .. that's what calculators are for

My points:

- there are several ways which can arrive at the same result,

- there are ways which can arrive at intermediate results, and

- no matter what method is actually implemented .. and this is the important thought .. it levels the playing field a bit more.

(Cross thread random thought .. which sorta goes to leveling the playing fields .. elsewhere there is discussion thread about "starter lotteries" .. Charm read some of it to me last night .. which I suggest should be more properly classified as "paint-job lotteries" in those threads. I've spent a LOT of time thinking on alternatives and modifications which would level those playing fields. To date I've found no workable solutions. I have one which is half-a-solution to the starter-lotto problem but the computational complexity is (sorry about this) O(N^M); so it won't work in any real implementation. The paint-job lotto problem, though, is a different problem, and might not be solvable with a mathematical solution. The best suggestion I've seen .. and this goes back decades in online gaming development .. is to consider "balance" .. whatever that means since that is mostly a psychological solution rather than mathematical. And "balance" is why I'm saying all this .. Saga's suggestion definitely appears to enhance "balance" .. both mathematically and psychologically.)

[Destiny Mimiteh]

this is a definate

[Margo Sciarri]

I agree - I think that 2 weeks is a long time to have to wait for breeding. I would much rather see them start when they mature at 7 days, even if that would mean making their breeding life span shorter. There are too many potions out now, it would be better if the script could be changed time-wise

[Kikii Littlepaws]

I have to say that I completely agree with Saga; the 2 week wait is really frustrating and long, for older breeders *and* new, I think. I can't think of any animal that reaches (sexual) maturity and doesn't *immediately* feel the pangs of the reproductive part of the biological imperative.

[Yip Jannings]

Big YAY from me! Although this subject was already suggested in a previous thread and lots of people posted their yay's on it nothing happened. Hopefully Saga's word will be heard!

[ArellaMarie Resident]

Also going to agree that the 2-week wait is frustrating. I find it difficult to lure new people into KittyCats because of that wait period alone, they just don't want to have to sit and wait that long to get new babies. Those that are trying to establish a new breeding program find it frustrating too, so on and so forth.

[Jaide Logan]

Damn straight 2 weeks waiting is ridiculous considering how much money I spend on my KittyCats. I have always been frustrated by this waiting period for many reasons as mentioned above. BUMP THIS POST PLEASE!