I have seen this posted one other time here. But it was over a year ago with no feedback and it doesn't seem to be what I mean so I'm posting this topic. If you find another of that I missed please let me know so I can support it and give my thoughts.


Just about all of us have had too many lions in our dens at some point, I am personally in a moment of extreme need to get rid of lions. My suggestion is that we use surrogate mothers as a way to send cubs (0-5 months) to other users/the tree so that we can have space in our own prides and other users can get younger cubs sooner.

The way this would work:
Say I wanted to abandon a cub and they were only born yesterday (1 month), but I don't want to chase the cub because it had a nice marking, I could now abandon this cub and another user that has surrogate mothers available could claim/tempt it into their pride. The surrogate mother would act as the cub's mother and nurse it but would not have the same genes as the cub. The sm would have a drop down type menu similar to that that broodmothers currently have. The sm could nurse up to 3/4 cubs at a time and have a cooldown similar to that of cub protections.

Purposes:
•Abandon 0-5 month old cubs to the tree that other lions can welcome into their pride
•Chase a mother lion but keep the cub
•Allow you to raffle/trade 0-5 month cubs or their mothers


Additional Information:
•You wouldn't need to have as many slots for surrogate mothers because these aren't cubs coming from your pride rather than cubs you are adopting very early, you only need them for 5 months, at most, at a time.
•Surrogate mothers would only be able to nurse 3/4 cubs at a time, including cubs of their own.
•Pregnant/nursing lions couldn't be surrogates.
•The surrogate would go into a nursing cooldown after she has reached her max number of cubs to nurse. Such as 4/4 cubs to nurse this week.

Noted Comments/Concerns:
• Q: "I don't know, it's not that hard to just wait 5 days until the cub can be by itself right? It'd be cool for story telling but not so much as a game feature."
A: If you have a cub that ages into an adult, in let's say a month, and you have a cub with a mother you don't want, you can use a surrogate mother to care for the cub so that you can chase the mother and keep both cubs you want.
• Q: "No support. Waiting 5 days is not really hard, and you can purchase and use an Aging Stone if you really need to chase the mother but you want to keep a cub that is still nursing. Apart from that, I really can't see this in game as it is right now. How would you prevent from entering a raffle with a cub below 5 months as a prize those players that don't have surrogate mothers active? What about cooldowns? Would they still be able to hunt? How do you explain these newborns surviving in the Giving Tree, with only a monkey to take care of them?"
A: 1.) some people can't afford aging stones. 2.) we could have an option to exclude users that don't have surrogate mothers. 3.) the cooldowns and hunting would be the same as as broodmothers. 4.) most cubs aren't in the Giving Tree for very long, however I can see how that would be a problem and there can be a limit on how long they are there. Maybe an hour.
• Q: "
I don't support. If you can send your cub away to the tree because you don't want to keep it, you could just chase it. You don't need it, you need space, you make space by chasing, killing or sending to nature reserve. Or get an aging stone from oasis for 2GB if it's that special...
Look, I mean if you don't like to keep it, just get rid of it, no other player will ever notice that this cub ever existed. Or you could simply wait a few days till the cub is old enough to sell it or give it to the tree. Then just chase or do whatever to the mother.. or simply chase the mother with the cubs.. or... yeah.. wait the 5 days.
Furthermore, I think it's also pretty hard to put this into the game, especially for this tiny effect to just abandon/sell/trade younger cubs.. it would be too much work and it seems useless to me. Plus if you can trade/sell/tree cubs from 0-5, there would be even more cubs around instead of deleted out of lioden.. at least I could imagine that this would happen."
A: As I stated before it can be hard to get gb. But say the cub has a special mark or somebody else has stated that they're interested and you don't need it or the mother. You can sell your cub sooner and chase the mother. As I said before as well it can be used when you are about to have an adolescent age into an adult and you are trying to keep the cub but not the mother. Or we could only be able to trade/sell them and not send them to the tree, I can understand why that would be a thing. I understand how it could cause an influx of other cubs but that comes with special marks as well or any mutation, etc.
• Q: "No support from me. If we allowed the trading of 0 - 5 month cubs, there would be a complete overflow of cubs in the TC. Furthermore, it defeats the purpose of the cub needing it's mother; which in real life would be vital for the cubs survival. I know not everyone can afford aging stones, but the option is there."
A: The whole point of them being surrogate mothers would be so that they still had a mother of some sort.
• Q: "So this would be reduced to a differently named broodmother, that would take care of lions up to 4 months, and those cubs would still need to be protected by an actual broodmother because nursing and being protected are two different things. I'm sorry, but I don't see it.

Cubs protected by a broodmother that are removed from their protection have 1 day cooldown before they can be protected again, which doesn't seem to be possible for young, nursing cubs. Would they still be swapable from account to account, with no cooldown whatsoever? Would they have a 1 day cooldown before they can be sent to another surrogate mother in another account?

Besides, I think that if you need the space of the nursing mother, then you have to have an amount of lionesses around to hunt to be able to purchase a 2GB item in an emergency to make the cub grow up, or buy another territory slot."
A: I do agree that nursing and protecting are different so yes you would still need another broodmother. As I said before they would still have the same cooldowns as a cub being protected by a broodmother. A lion that is protected by a broodmother is able to be sent to another account, so the cub wouldn't have to be removed from their sm to be sent to the other account. They can just be sent. If you only have, let's say 8 territory slots, then you have enough slots to hunt enough to feed your pride and enough to have babies. This may seem illogical to somebody with plenty of territory or lionesses but this could really help newbies to get started.
• Q: "I think this "it's hard to gb" thing is a bit irrelevant, because if it's a cub which is that special you'll mostly going to sell it for gb anyway, so you can get the gb for the aging crystal from that player beforehand. And if you want to keep it and need to chase the mother for space reasons, you can still get gb, by selling things for sb and then trade it for gb or something similar. And if it's a cub with just one special marking (whatever that means to you, because I think the only markings that are hard to obtain are rosettes, but I don't know tbh) and someone still wants it, just sell it with the mother, because you would chase her anyway, so you can "gift" her to the buyer and they can chase/kill whatever her later. Furthermore I think if it's a cub with just simple special or breed-only marks, you can just chase it. No one loses anything. No one saw the cub, no one wanted the cub including yourself, so just chase it. Idk.
You can even have a side-account and transfer them there, so your adol can age up. Or you could chase a lioness without cubs. Or sell the mother with the cub as I said before.
I just think it's too much work to code this feature just for a small effect. Idk."
A: As I just said it may be more beneficial for new players, who may not have a side account with more space than their main account.
• Q: "You can attack other players for territory until you hit 40 territory slots, or pay SB, which is way easier for a player with only 8 lioness slots to do that commit a lioness out of 7 - because you need to chase the 8th one - to nurse this motherless cub and lose her 10 hunts."
A: Cooldowns effect how much territory somebody can gain in a fashion quick enough for them to sell their cub.
• Q: "You can attack a player for territory once a day, true. But that doesn't change the fact that it is easier to gain 1 territory every day the 4 days you need to keep the mother around than losing a huntress by using her as a surrogate lioness as a shortcut. The way I see it, this would not help newer players, but other players that have already hit the 40 territory limit or have even more territory slots, and for karma fodder purposes more than anything. "
A: Maybe it does help people that aren't very new rather than newer players, but it would still be helping people. It would still make some game play easier.
• Q: "I'm talking about the fact that cubs need to be 5 months old to be independent from their mother. That is, in itself, a cooldown.

If you want to raffle, trade or sell the cub, you simply place the mother as the raffle prize or lion in the TC and the cub goes with her - if you don't care about what happens to her - or wait the additional 4 days it takes for the cub to be 5 months old to do it. If you need the space really bad, you use the aging stone, send some lions to your side account temporarily... whatever. As far as I can see it, surrogate mothers would only help to get more karma fodder, because you can kill/chase/send to reserve the mother, then wait for the cubs to be 5 months old to do the same to them."
A: They would still be dependent on a mother, just not their biological mother. They would be as much use for karma as lions without a surrogate mother, the mother would still have the cooldown from breeding and having cubs, regardless of whether or not she nurses the cubs.
• Q: "It's not the same, because, in theory, I could mass breed NCLs, make them surrogate mothers and nest them until I hit the limit o surrogate mothers. The first batch of NCLs I bred would give birth, the still pregnant NCLs would take on their cubs in addition to the ones they are going to have, do whatever with the ones that already gave birth, wait for the others to give birth, and do whatever with the mothers and the grown cubs. Do you see what I mean now?"
A: If you can only have 4 surrogate mothers and they can only nurse 3/4 cubs at a time, including their own cubs, then you couldn't use the surrogate mothers as surrogates.
• Q: "I understand from that up there that we couldn't use pregnant/lionesses already nursing as surrogates Alright, but this still permits players to mass breed, keep the cubs they want by "giving" them to another lioness, and get rid of the rest much more quickly than we are able right now. How would that be helpful? I still maintain the cubs being dependant from their own mother is useful and prevents mass breeding, bypassing it would not be helpful in the slightest. You are in dire need of space? There are ways - some cheaper than others - to keep the cubs around without resorting to this."
A: Correct, a surrogate wouldn't be able to get pregnant unless the cubs it was nursing were transferred to a different surrogate which would leave your newborn to starvation because they wouldn't be being nursed. However it doesn't allow you to mass breed because, as stated, the lioness giving birth would still have the cooldowns that occur after naturally being bred. You would be getting rid of cubs that you didn't need, whether you trade or chase them.



I would love your feedback to help me shape this idea as well as your support, please be constructive rather than destructive :)



This is my first time using any form of HTML (including the bold text, please help me with any errors.