First - let me just say that I took a look through and I did not see a post dedicated to this, or at least not exclusively to this. So if there is one and I missed it, please let me know! Otherwise, onto my idea.

So, I was looking at my den and realized. I had bred my 1100+ king to one of my 900+ (not including skill) girls and got a cub, yay. Except my cubs stats weren't even half on her mother's let alone her father's. She didn't even make it to 450 stats.

Now, I don't know how this would work exactly when it comes to working this out for the programming. But what I'm suggesting, is the difference between mom and dad stat wise (again, not including skill) be halved, and then that is how above the lower parent's stats they can be.

So if Dad is 1100 stats, and mom is 900. The difference between those two numbers is 200. That would mean that the cub would have 900 stats guaranteed. If 200 is halved to 100, then the cub could have anywhere between 900 and 1000 stats at birth. The amount would be random and could be as little as 1, or as much as the full amount. So you could get a cub with 900 stats, 901 or even 999. It would all be random, but you would be guaranteed higher stats from a high stat breeding.

This would apply if mom was say 600 stats and dad was 500 stats. The highest you could get would be 550.

Long story short! I think that the lowest your cub gets stat wise in a breeding is the lower parent's stats. Which I think would encourage better breeding for better stats. I'm definitely open to ideas or critiques. This is just something I was thinking about that was bugging me is all.