I like the idea~

It also adds a touch more realism into the game as if anything happens to a lioness in the wild and she has cubs, another will step in to raise that cub(s) alongside her own.

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I *love* this idea.

Territory size is expensive - and understandably so; to encourage players to be a bit more selective with which lions they choose to keep in their prides so as not to bog down the site's servers if everyone had hundreds upon hundreds - BUT this suggestion would actually cut *down* on that problem by giving a huge incentive for players to get rid of females they only obtained for breeding purposes anyway.

Breeding projects are a big part of the game and just about every user has a breeding goal of some kind -- but in order for any breeding project to be successful (whether you're trying to breed a rare color like kimanjano or trophy or sunset, or rare markings like rosettes, or a mutie, or heck, all of the above) you need as many breeding females as possible to achieve your result - but you don't necessarily want to *keep* them all once they've produced a more desirable cub you wanted.
This suggestion would completely eliminate the need to hang onto the excess baggage for an extra five days until the cub is old enough to become independent.


*What is more* - it is a well known fact that real life lionesses will nurse not only their own cubs, but any other cubs from any other females in the pride, without bias towards their own. This is not only super useful, but completely believable and realistic too. Now that you've brought it up, I'm surprised the function doesn't already exist to be honest. It just makes sense.


I think a huge benefit of this would be the option to sell lionesses sooner after they've given birth without being forced to include their cubs - or possibly even being able to sell newborn cubs immediately too, as long as the new user has a nursing lioness to accept it.

If they don't - the trade/transfer could *either* be:
- unable to be accepted (just like when a user has no space for more lions/beetles/etc)
or,
- the transfer could still go through, but it would be the new owner's responsibility to provide a nursing mother if they don't want the cub to die (just like it could if left Unprotected).
* This option would even help restore value to lionesses who are on a breeding cooldown, which plenty of players currently won't touch with a ten foot pole - if the female being sold has recently given birth, perhaps she could still have the "nursing" status and able to take on a new cub.


In regards to: "The only drawback that's been pointed out to me with this mechanic is if the lioness is a huntress, as this would prolong her inability to hunt."

Actually, lionesses can go right back to hunting immediately after giving birth anyway (just not while nesting during pregnancy) -- so this isn't really an issue at all. : )


I see no downsides to this, only benefits for the site by eliminating unwanted lions and increasing user convenience.
100% support.

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100% Support! especially since i'm gonna be attempting a hybrid project soon!

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Would be a good addition to broodmothers.

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I agree 100%, but I think that the lioness's cubs would have to be the same age as the cubs, both for realism and for coding convenience.

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Realism-wise, lionesses actually nurse their younger siblings, cousins, neices & nephews and they're often of pretty noticeable different ages. They'll basically produce milk until the last cub is weaned.

This is true for regular house cats too - I've taken in newborn rescues while my Savannah was raising a litter of 6 week old kittens. She took on the new ones and fed both batches an additional month than she normally would have.
And male Savannah kittens can outgrow their moms pretty fast (females are often much smaller than males, like literally half their size full grown ), so her almost 4 month old sons being nearly her size but still occasionally nursing from her was pretty silly to watch, lmao. She was more strict about how long she'd tolerate it from the older ones who were mostly weaned, but she fed the orphaned babies until they were plenty old enough to switch to solid food completely. This isn't a particularly rare occurrence among mammals. : )

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I've raised rescue kittens too, but both my Chloe and Sassy only produced milk until their own kittens were weaned. The younger kittens I had to switch to formula because they needed an additional two months. Biologically, queens will produce milk until about 8 weeks, then their mammary glands will begin to heal over. This is because her body is reentering proestrus, and she needs those kittens gone (since they can have a new litter every 3 months).

Prolonged production of milk can cause extreme nutrient deficiencies.

That being said, if we wanted to stick to realism, a wet nurse would have to have her breeding cool downs increased (as, when a female is producing milk, she is in anestrus and her heat/estrus wouldn't come for even longer than usual).

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Mine had no problem and remained fat and healthy throughout, though I did supplement the babies with formula mixed with wet food at about a month old of course.
It might depend on the nutritional quality of the diet being fed (mine got nothing but the best and plenty of it), because I've known plenty of nursing mothers to shrivel up to scrawny little skeletal critters when they're eating nothing but low grade commercial pet foods unfortunately - or strays and ferals of course, who are sometimes lucky to nab a small rodent or bird every day or two if nobody is providing them with anything extra.

In any case, it seems reasonable to simply add a "this female will be nursing for X more days" mechanic at the top of the page with the other breeding-related notifications, not unlike any other cooldown or similar.

We already don't subscribe to realism with nursing cooldowns, because chasing/killing a female's cubs doesn't shorten her cooldown at all like it would naturally. Which would be nice, but I can completely understand why it's not implemented.

Anyway, still just brainstorming potential ideas & concepts regardless. I'd be happy with whatever the staff felt was the best way to implement it, as long as they at least take it into consideration, lol.

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Idea to add on:

I've also been thinking about this a lot recently. What if each lioness, upon having cubs, gets an equal amount of "slots" to how many cubs they have? This is relative to the amount of milk they are producing. Killing a cub or smth would open up said slot (so let's say you, ahem, forcefully remove a dud from a lady) but shit, your ugly NCL has a cub that's actually not half bad!! By removing that one dud, that slot opens up.

Just an idea on how this could be implemented. ^^

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Yeah, maybe 6 slots (that way if you have the max cubs, you can still nurse a couple more). It could also be tied to their personalities (i.e. an Evil lioness can only have 5, a Good lioness can have 7).

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I was just thinking about making a post about this! A marvellous idea and a great help for breeders who don’t want a potato mama and her tater-tots but the one nice cub she had makes you keep the whole family XD

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I very much support this, just because I like being able to give my lionesses more functional roles in the pride. Would be great role for a mutated lioness who couldn't hunt due to mutation too, clawless for example make em more useful. Unless they implanted restrictions on them. But a clawless lioness can be a broodmother. ^_^

Plus the concept and idea itself roles set aside is very nice and would defiantly save me a ton of issues if implanted! <3

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I personally think this is a bit game breaking. You already have the age up options which you can use to wean a cub off of a lioness so there isn't really any need for a wet nurse type in the game. While it's an interesting concept having to code a way to move cubs from one lioness to the next sounds like quite a task.

I might suggest that, instead of having a "wet nurse" role that our lioness' can take on, have an item that allows our cubs to age to 5 months and wean from the lionesses. This of course would not change the lioness cooldown, as other ageing items do not. But it would allow for quick mass breeds where you can rid yourself of those ugly NCLs as well as being able to sell those cubs in the TC quickly too. Also the added bonus of having all of the cub training time as well. I could see it being a bit expensive (Possibly 1-2GB a pop or so) but it would make for a more easily added/coded solution to your problem!

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I imagine the coding wouldn't be too different from the broodmother mechanic, assuming the coding for that is used as a base.

And I don't like the idea of such an item costing GB. The game has already locked all the good stuff behind a "pay to win" wall. It'd be nice to have something that was free for once.

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