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[Gullydwarf]

Hello everyone,
I kind of felt like this was a much discussed topic, but I did not find many (1 or 2) threads about this in the suggestions forum and they are more than a year old.
I'd like to propose proximity breeding as opposed to spore breeding. Maybe even make a tag for animals to be monogamous or not, like in nature some animals stay in pairs for their whole life.
In every fort I create I tend to give a lot of attention to my animals and try to get a nice breeding pair of anything I can get my hands on. As a lot of other people have mentioned, it would be nice if we could now just lock our favorite breeding pair up in a room or pen and get them to get it on.

I found this in the development pages:

Bloat281, IMPROVE ANIMAL MANAGEMENT, (Future): There are many improvements that can be made to animal management, including improved abilities to assign animals and replace lost assignees as well as various breeding and cull settings.

Will this include above mentioned suggestions to some extent or is this something that is not considered a near future feature?

I have spent some time researching these requests but could not find a satisfying answer as of yet. I hope that opening this thread will eventually provide me one as well as some HFS.

[knutor]

Not sure I understand.  I know, spore breeding is asexual, one parent.  Proximity breeding is sexual, two or more parents.  Never passed biology 101.  Doh!  I prefer only requiring a female animal in the spore model, as opposed to losing a soldier to become a private stud servicer. I would like the males around for the ability to generate leather hides half of the time, aswell.  In animals, I'd rather that be represented the same way, for simplicity.  However, that is not to say, that I would not want to lose the ability to breed a Gryphon, out of lions and eagles, if the possibility ever presents itself.  I would certainly enjoy bioengineering monsters, if it were a mod, or a skill.  But until I can see the individual statistics in a clear and precise built in GUI within DF;  I cannot say that I would enjoy any kind of breeding, whatsoever.  Tasking out to confab Runesmith isn't as fun the 520th time as it is the first time.  I dunno.



Sincerely,
Knutor

[Gullydwarf]

@knutor:
Ok, to clarify, I mean that instead of animals just breeding with any of their kind all over the map. They must get within so many tiles and be able to see eachother. Maybe even have a brief moment of being in the same tile, but I am not sure if this will require the animals to have some sort of attraction to eachother so they basically choose to go near an animal of the other sexe when they see one and are not pregnant already.

So I am not suggesting any other changes to the way animals breed. I don't want it to be a job either.
You can still have all the animals around that you want. If you let them roam in the fortress they will eventually find each other and breed. If you keep them locked up somewhere you should make sure there is at least one of the opposite sexe around.

This suggestion would also solve the problem some people are having with out-of-fortress breeding. Where your tame fortress animals get McRaped by wild forest creatures.

[King Mir]

I imagine you would want the male to seek out an eligible female in the same pasture every once in a while. Probably by having the female generate a work order for male members of it's race only.

[Gullydwarf]

That sounds really good, but do you mean that only animals in pastures will breed?
That is not exactly what I meant and I think it would be too big of a change to the current situation.
To make sure animals do breed you might indeed need some sort of job for the male animal to actively seek out a female of the same species. In case of horses and donkeys this might even be one of a different species.
This would also stop catsplosions as far as they have not been outcoded yet. Male cats and female cats need to actively seek eachother and get close to eachother to be able to breed.

[knutor]

It certainly would improve the variety and randomness of the game, that is for certain.  I'm for anything that makes consecutive games different. *thumbsup*  It would be nice to breed our own work beast for when we can send out our caravan to other Civies, someday.  With the penultimate being one that flies, faster and safer than the mechanics unsafe, hydrocopter.  Like a gryphon, in the fantasy I read, they hold three, 1 saddle and 2 baskets.  Ha!  I'm all for combining things as long as the results are relatively known fantasy creatures and not science horrors, like geeps or peppermint pussies that purr and pounce, yet still generate miasma like a trash compactor out their bilge port.

Sincerely,
Knutor

[King Mir]

That sounds really good, but do you mean that only animals in pastures will breed?
That is not exactly what I meant and I think it would be too big of a change to the current situation.
To make sure animals do breed you might indeed need some sort of job for the male animal to actively seek out a female of the same species. In case of horses and donkeys this might even be one of a different species.
This would also stop catsplosions as far as they have not been outcoded yet. Male cats and female cats need to actively seek eachother and get close to eachother to be able to breed.

The way I imagine it, pastures would act like burrows. Free animals would be able to breed. Restraints are tricky, and whatever applies to them should apply to cages for consistency.

I agree it's a bigger change than you are suggestion, but if you're going to improve a system like this, then you might as well do it right.

[Geneoce]

I think a better handling of livestock interface should be the first thing in order for animals. More realistic is good and all, but keeping track of 200+ animals in 5 different species can be a pain.

Especially when you like your breeders to be butchered just before death and your run-of-the-mill walking meat stockpiles to be offed the second there at full maturity

[Loud Whispers]

Sounds potentially cpu intensive.

[Gullydwarf]

Dwarf Fortress is potentially CPU intensive.
I wonder if creatures are already aware of eachother. I know they are when they get to the same tile. That is how they fight when they are in too small pens, I guess.. If they are already aware of eachother, it won't take too much more power to include checks if the close creature is of the same species, the other sexe and if it is receptive to impregnation or if the creature checking is himself.

[Neowulf]

I would want this to wait until hand/trough feeding of animals is put in. Build an actual stable where your animals are kept in chains next to food troughs, selective breeding by moving animals to breeding pens.

These breeding changes, expanded feeding setup, a revamp of the animals stocks screen, diet/behavioral changes (young drink mothers milk would be one), implementation of animal sickness and care, and a much more informative info screen on particular animals would make for a real nice ranching update.

[Gullydwarf]

"You, Sir, are a genius."
I agree with above post. There is still a lot about animals which is not really well done or just not finished.
So do you have any idea on when or where in the process these changes are planned?

My fowl pasture just got out of control when Rhesus Macaques raided my fortress and scared my birds... Now they all stand for repasturing but somehow no dwarf will take up the job...

[knutor]

Animal hauling could be a low priority job.  Almost, at the priority of doing, no job. *shrug* 

There is interesting research and studies, about blood type relationships with behavior and evolution of species.  Blood types are determined in the mother's womb by the microbes in the food she consumes and passes along to her child.  Its the kind of research tho, McDonalds doesn't want us to read about.

Type, Desc, Animal

O - old meat eater.               Short faced bear.(true carnivore)
A - agricultureral herberval.    *
B - both large.                      Grizzly bear.(omnivore)
AB - both evolved small.        Black bear.(omnivore, with less large meat available in terrain)

*Terrain unavailable.

I know some human women who would be jealous of bears.  Bears have no pain during child birth.  They never wake up from hibernation, and give birth while in deep sleep.  I have no idea how the umbilical cords of bears are severed, the offspring must tear it.  They prolly don't have umbilical cords.  I don't think horses do.  *shrug*  Nature is really amazing. 

Sincerely,
Knutor