Copulation preferences - simplified approach on mate selection and Animal variations
Ok this suggestion was inspired after reading the Ark-project thread. Said project has the problem that many genuses of a species are pretty much the same except for minor differences, so these genuses are lumped together in one creature. This isnt a bad thing,actually its pretty pragmatic, but i thought to myself that we can get this "just different in colouration" variants of a creature back into the game without braking the simplification in the raws.
My suggestion consists of two parts:
1. A change in Worldgen.
Upon worldgen (as i understand it) the game places a number of individuals. I suggest to place now groups of individuals which are pretty similar, say 20 red canary's instead 20 individual ones with different colours.
This would mean that the canary´s in one region stay red thanks to the new genetics system. This approach has 1 mayor problem: Blue canary´s.
Well so you dont get me wrong: I mean another group of the same base-raw but with another variation. Soon enough the region we are in will have a monopole of one canary variant or a amalgamation of the two kinds.
Thats there the second part of this suggestion should apply.
2. A change in behaviour: Copulation/sexual preference
Normally animals copulate at random.
To keep the two populations of canary´s apart the red canary´s should prefer red canary´s and blue ones their blue companions.
This can be done by a little bit of statistics Math stuff. Before a bird/mammal/whatever gets born its parents get determined. In the pairing (from the females view) of the parents you can now look for the Characteristics of the available males. If there is a father that is more similar to the females own creature variation (and preferable not a brother or something) this one is preferred over the other males.
You compare just the tags like the colour, the beak-size, body-size etc. and give the differences a certain score of points. Differences (for example!) that are higher then 10% get 10 points, over 20% 50 points, over 50% 100 points etc. Different colours / patterns get say 75 points. Being closely related could give 200 points.
The males with the lowest scores get chosen for mating.
With our canary example this means that, for a red canary female, every red canary male would have a score of 0 and every blue canary a score of 75. So our female could now at random choose from the available males of the red canary population. Only if no other red canary´s are around for mating or the all other red males are taken a blue canary should been chosen as mate.
Optional: Fitness and quirks:
Overall fitness (being stronger, faster etc.) should play a rule so differences in this direction should get a slightly lower weight then a negative difference (a weaker mate).
Quirks like a illness or being disabled should lower the mating chance a lot. This prevents that a very strong but limping male can propagate its quirks onto the next generation.
Optional: Lineage weighting:
The lineage of a creature can play a role. A red canary that has a pure red canary Ancestry could prefer red canary´s even more then a red canary which ancestry is slightly mixed.
The behaviours should variate a bit between individuals and in some cases should leave the borders of the own genus - Humanoids/humanoid (dwarf/elf, Goblin/rat-men) pairings, Feline/feline (Tiger/lion) etc.[/color]
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Topic: Copulation preferences - simplified approach on mate selction/ Animal variation (Read 615 times)