RE: SUGGESTION ABOUT PERMAPET! DISCOUNT OR PACK OR AUTOPARMAPETTING!
This comes up almost every time the market, for whatever reason, is going through a protracted contraction.
My personal opinion is that food costs are a licensing fee to produce more copies and, once no more copies can be produced from a given source, no more fees should be charged. At the same time, it's in best interests to encourage people to breed (creating leveraged sales) rather than make pets (non-leveraged, basically one-time sales). To that end, I'd make the price for changing a 0-day old live into a pet exceed the costs of food for the full effective life-time of the cat. But, I cannot see why a 120+ day-old cat should have anything other than a very nominal fee.
There is, presently, so I'm told (never really looked) a two-tier system in place. That this subject comes up fairly regularly indicates, to me, that the discount at 120+ days is too small, and there should probably be additional tiers along the way.
Consider a "pet injector" and a "pet vial". To create a pet, one must have one, or more vials. This could be a web-only factor, or an in-world factor. The vials hold "doses". Take the age of the cat. If that age exceeds 120, use 120. Subtract that from 121. The result is the number of doses which must be in the vial. Inject the cat with that number of doses and it becomes a pet.
This could be a forward-stored factor, as well. Take a new cat, 0 days old. Inject it with 61 doses. When the cat becomes 60 days old, it becomes a pet automatically. This, however, would want to be Very Clearly Marked on every cat so subsequent purchasers are not surprised when it occurs. So, while possible, it's probably not a very good idea.
I would then price a "dose" somewhat higher than the maximum weekly food costs.
In addition, I would track the number of missed meals and factor those into the dosage required. This would effectively shut down the immense cost savings to be had by simply not feeding a cat for a few weeks.
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