So a similar trait to fertility that regulates the number of eggs released each heat? There could be different categories that have a % chance to pass along from the mother to the offspring (and if it doesn't pass they get a random one) perhaps?

For instance you could have categories that have pretty balanced pros and cons:
Category A could have a 50% chance for two cubs, a 25% chance for one, a 20% chance for three, and a 5% chance for 4
Category B could have a 60% chance for one cub, 15% for two, 5% for three and 20% for four
A is better if you want consistent average litters, but B is better if you want to take the risk of getting only 1 cub but get a higher chance for a 4 cub litter than A. Category B would probably be rarer than category A though.

It's a really interesting concept though, which might make breeding a desired combination of fertility and number of cubs a nice challenge and something to work for, especially for mutation breeders. I'll go ahead and support!

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Thank you Majesty! Love how you put it into better words. I do think it would add another layer to breeding which could be interesting!

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Support, because I like finding patterns XD

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Thank you Noxis!

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If this was implemented, this is what I think would happen: 2/3/4 lionesses would become highly desirable, causing the number of these lionesses to go up, and the number of 1/2 lionesses to go down.
If lions were guaranteed to get 2-4 cubs every breeding, Grains of Paradise wouldn't be a thing anymore, no one would buy them, and the price of Buff Balls would drop. Many people rely on the price of Buff Balls, since many new players are able to sell them for GB easier than other items.
How would Buff Balls figure into all this anyway? If you used them on a lioness's first breeding, would that guarantee her to be a 2-4 lioness? Or would it fall to the second breeding to determine that?
And how would you know? Imagine you were buying an expensive lioness advertised as a 2-4, only to discover that was not the case. I don't even really think that's fair, to make the number of cubs a lioness can have over the course of her lifetime entirely dependent on luck. It sounds like it would be depressing if you put a lot of work into breeding a cub and they turned out to be a 1-2, which they most likely would considering that with the current cub rates 1 cub litters are very common.
It seems fine like it is to me. I see no reason to change it, and changing it would affect the market in a way thats not necessarily good.
Lastly, I'm not so sure that lion litters function in the same way as goats.

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I have to agree with Qetzel. With the cub market as crazy as it is I can't see something like this having the desired effect. The market for 3/4 lionesses in particular would skyrocket, making all else practically obsolete.

Lets say you have a gorgeous lioness but she's a 1/2, not many people would be willing to buy her at a fraction of the cost it probably took that person to make her. Don't get me wrong I love the idea! Just it seems a little unfair to people who make their GB solely from breeding, and it would make the whole process of trying to get special cubs even more tedious than it already is.

Maybe another idea would be to have more items like buff balls available to players? Like ones that simply guarantee a 2+ cub litter (for all those players, like me, that are cursed with 1 cub litters only!!)

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@Sweets You perfectly carried across the point I was trying to make, agreeing with everything you said.
Grains of Paradise do guarantee 2+, but they arent nearly as commonly used as Buff Balls.

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Not necessarily Quetzel, there's still the possibility that types with a better chance for bigger litters would be rare if it was put in place like I suggested. In the goat example and main post, the number of offspring in the first litters are actually an example of genes being expressed.

All mammals have some genetic predisposition to a certain number of young, you'll find in humans that twins are more likely to have twins themselves, in rats a mother of a large litter will likely have another large litter if she's bred again. Domesticated animals have been selectively bred for bigger or smaller quantities of babies in many cases. Even if lions do not work exactly like goats, they to some extent have genetic factors affecting how many eggs they release in their ovulation cycles.
Obviously for lioden this would be dumbed down a lot, and each type of 'litter modifier' gene would probably have different % chance of being passed on to any cubs your lioness gives birth to, with the ones the least similar to the current system being much harder to breed for and much rarer in general.

Having a specific trait which tells you roughly what chances your litter size will be, available to view on your lionesses page like fertility is now, means there will be no deception involved. If somebody advertises their cub as type X when it clearly says type Z you can report them for it (as false advertising).

To counteract your theory that 2/3/4 lionesses would become highly desirable, I proposed that different types have different pros and cons. Take a look at my proposed type B, yes you have a fairly high chance for a 4 cub litter compared to what it is now, but you have an even higher chance of getting only 1 cub, making it risky. The admins could easily make it a bit closer to what the chances are for every lioness right now, I was using large and simple numbers to convey a point.
This way no one lioness will have an advantage over any others, and I suggest the chances never go above 4x what they are now to make sure of that.

To make the ones with a lower 1 cub chance more desirable, all you have to do is give them some sort of boost (perhaps in stats because one cub would grow stronger faster than three cubs sharing) or like I proposed with type B, make the chance for a bigger litter an incentive that would outweigh the risks for some players, but definitely not all. That way types with a "safer" higher chance of getting two cubs, or the same chance for 1 and 2 cubs, (but a massive reduction in the chances for three/four) would actually be the most desirable for players, which is basically the same as most litters on the game now.

I also suggest that there would be fewer types as a whole that give bigger litters, with the most common (and almost guaranteed to pass from mother to daughter) being those with high chances of 1 and 2 cub litters, as per usual. Buffy balls etc would over-ride the litter modifier if the lioness wasn't alreasy having 3 or 4 cubs, just the same as it is now.

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I love hearing both the pros/cons! I honestly didn't think about the buffy balls/grain of paradise problem - so that is definitely something to consider!

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My comment was responding to the main post, not so much yours. I do see your point on the ways it could be improved, though I do feel like Sweets is right in that this system would make the whole thing more tedious, and your suggestion seems, while better, even more complicated. And unnecessarily so. The system we have now functions just fine, with enough things to consider chance wise when breeding.

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The system definitely functions just fine! Just though it'd be something to think about - but it does add a whole 'nother layer that is probably unnecessary.

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Whilst more complicated, it does make a hell of a lot of sense realistically. And honestly I would love a bit more security than "random chance but nearly always 1 cub" which is what we have now. My rarest coated lionesses never seem to have more than one cub, if I could breed in a trait, no matter how difficult and rare it was, that gives me the tiniest boosted chance for two cubs, I'd be over the moon.
To be able to roughly predict what your lioness is most likely to give you over her lifetime means you can plan accordingly, you'll know who to definitely save your buffalo scrotums and grains of paradise for and who to take a chance with. What this feature would do is allow players to actually have some in-depth breeding tactics when combined with fertility. It may even make grains and scrotums more desirable over time.

A lot of the things we have on the game are just there to give us something to breed for, like new mutations. They arguably make the game more complicated when it doesn't have to be, the same with broodmothers, fertility, coat genetics etc. After these features were put in place we now have a lot of players breeding for VLFs, buying nurturing lionesses and planning out genetic combinations for breeding as part of their overall gameplay. The chance to have a bigger influence on what you breed makes the game far more fun in my opinion.

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I do understand what you mean, really I do, but I really don't think its a good idea. With fertility, you have a chance to change it. If I had a infertile ice based 10 mark lioness born, the first thing I'm doing is changing her fertility to make it a heck of a lot higher. If that same lion was born with the fewer cubs gene, or with your system whichever thing I decide I can't live with, there's nothing to do about it.
No way I think about this can I ever see it improving the price of GOPs or Buff Balls. Personally, no matter what the chance for cubs, I'd be using Buff Balls the same on all my high priority breedings. But when it comes to all the secondary stuff, I'm not dropping 30GB for 3 cubs with 4 marks each. If the mothers only ever gonna have 1-2 cubs, I'm selling or killing her, end of story.
Using the original system from the main post, like I previously said, the amount of lionesses birthing more cubs per litter will rise, and the amount birthing less will go down over time, unless its somehow made more rare. Which would make absolutely no sense if this were to be a genetic trait passed the same way as say fertility. You'd have to follow what the mother had, at least a large majority of the time.
Using Coal's system, there are benefits to both that seem pretty arbitrary. That version just makes it all seem more unneeded.

Here's another thing:
With fertility, high fertility is obviously better, unless you take into account the chance for mutations at lower ferts.
With this, higher number of cubs is better, but there's no benefit to less cubs.
I know you suggested that stats could be given to litters with less cubs, but theres a few problems with that. This system would only really affect people breeding for mutations, bases, and markings. Most people breeding for stats will use Buff Balls on all their litters no matter what. If youre breeding for mutations, bases, and markings, stats arent gonna matter one bit to you, and the boost would be pretty small anyway. BUT. I'm assuming you could still use buff balls on these lionesses. Any high stat lioness like that gets a free boost on all her cubs, even though every litter will still have 3 cubs since Buff Balls were used. I'm assuming the boost would be 5% since thats a percentage they like for this kinda thing, but with a high enough lioness that's gonna cause a big problem.

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no support because of these reasons
1 - quetz is right
2 - these litter expectancy items are my GB sources
3 - lions aren't goats

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Well, I never said there wouldn't be the opportunity to change it, but you definitely would not be allowed to change it to the ones the most different from the current system (the rarest) those would have to be random to stop a flood of cubs.
There would probably be a cheap changer with an 100% chance of getting a random common gene and a slightly more expensive one that let you pick a specific common gene.
Others would give you a chance at uncommon/very uncommon as well, but NOT a specific gene. Even the vuka vuka doesn't allow you to specifically choose a % so it seems fair to have most of them a little bit randomised.
I imagine any item would work like personality masks crossed with the vuka vuka, and there might also be rare and exclusive genes you can buy through events. It's all hypothetical, but if you can change coat genes and eye genes and mane shapes and even the sex of your lion, I doubt you're going to be stuck with what your lioness is born with even if it's still somewhat random what you can replace it with if you want a less common gene.

If your lioness having a bigger chance for 1-2 cubs means you're going to kill her, you better kill every lioness you have right now, chances are they're going to produce mainly 1's and 2's their entire life. It sounds overdramatic, but so does your statement. I'm pretty happy if my lioness fits the rest of my criteria for what I think is 'good' and if she's a VLF, for example, I usually just deal with it. I certainly don't kill her or pass her up in sales because of one trait I'm not fond of, and I definitely don't have a enough spare GB to give every VLF a vuka vuka.
Unfortunately to prevent a flood of cubs 1 and 2 will always have to be the most common, and the pass rates for each 'rare' gene as opposed to its common counterpart would have to pretty low. Think of it like special eyes, some hardly pass at all, but they all have 'fails' to more common traits when they don't.

The way I suggested it means that there are slightly different chances for the most common litters depending on your lionesses' litter modifier. For example you could have a lioness with 40% chance for both 1 and 2, but another lioness has 35% chance for two and a 40% chance for one, yet another could have 50% chance for two and 37% chance for one. All of these seem fairly close to what we have now judging by my own previous litters, but it still gives more control over your experience if you can choose.

To put it in a bit more perspective, many people were against the genetics change, first to actually having the categories in place, and second to adding medium shade and making it more difficult to breed the special bases in that category. However, by adding genetics it made the outcome far more predictable, and by adding medium it gave you even more specifics to work with, whilst adding a challenge. I'll admit I still don't like some aspects of coat genetics, but I had to work around it and some people do really love it.
If litter modifiers were added it would pretty much be the same scenario; less randomness and much more room for planning.

About the GOP/buffy balls thing, that's how you play the game and I respect that. I personally can't afford to use items on every single breeding I would like to, and unfortunately I do breed a lot of things that are hard to pass by trying to combine high stats, medium special bases (that have to have one parent of that type), and rosettes.
Referring back to my hypothetical type B, it has a big advantage in the way of 4 cub litters, but it nearly always gets one. For a lioness with this risky type people who like taking chances (but want a failsafe for certain litters) might use more grains. It was mentioned earlier that they were used far less commonly than buffalo scrotums, but that's a way in which the demand for grains could actually go up.

As always, the admins can modify this idea to suit the game better if its implemented. I suggested higher stats as a logical example of a benefit, but things like mutation chances, a tiny extra boost to passing your lionesses coat colour/eye colour/mane shape etc could also work just as well. I'm only giving examples off the top of my head here, it's in no way a polished idea, so feel free to add things you would think make good benefits.
I also suggested making the pros and cons of each type fairly difficult to choose between, so that you can either take a big gamble or play it safe. If no one type has any massive advantage in cub numbers (a bit like no one personality has an incredible advantage) then we don't even need a benefit for any type. It's a players choice whether they want a massive chance at only 1 or 2 cubs but a much higher chance at four, or a lioness with a higher chance at 3 and moderate chance for 2 and 1 but no possibility of 4, if you see what I mean? Neither of those stand out to me as amazing or able to ruin the lion market any worse than it already is.

In fact, I'm almost certain that this will help the cub market a little and add value to lions. Just like pretty VLFs under 20% are more valuable to mutation breeders than average lionesses, some people might have a preference for certain types. Of course some people might not care, but if you like risks you'd probably try to breed rarer genes and if you like the way it is now you'd stick to common ones and it would barely affect you.

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