Game Development

Started adding user skills to the game.

As you do things in the sim, your skill in certain actions will increase.  Skills will also slowly decrease over time as well.

You'll also be able to 'contract' or work for other users who need certain services you have a high skill at.

Examples of skills...

Artificial Insemination

When you are doing it for the first few times, your conception rates will be pretty low, in the 50% range.  As you do more your conception rates will get up to the 75% range.

Showmanship

It will be part of the game and you'll get better at it the more you do it.

Will there be an in game technician/fitter/showman? That way if we can't find anyone to do it for us we can pay the game a higher price? And/or does the person I higher actually have to log on and do it or can I just hit a button and they get paid and my cow gets bred or fit or whatever?

Also I think an IVF feature would be awesome. Ivf lets you flush heifers at a way younger age and it let's you flush cows like every 2 weeks instead of every 30 to 60 days or whatever. Also it lets you use one straw on multiple donors at once and/or have more success with sexed semen. So this paired with cloning means you could take that awesome heifer that just got to her best looking stage and flush her and clone her so then you could be flushing her and her young clones. And if you knew or suspected a heifer to be good at a young age you could flush her earlier. 

I think it would be cool if you could put "anything" into a pen and if you could put a pen up for auction. So you could sell a group of cows through the auction. Also you could sell embryos and semen privately and not have to post them for the world to be able to purchase them. And if you did put embryos up for everyone you could sell them in a group. 

maybe having different nitrogen tanks? So when you flushed donors you could assign which tank it went to  and then when you bulk et you could choose which tank you pulled from. Also same thing for semen so if you had some you weren't going to use for a while you could store it but not have to scroll past it to find the sire you wanted

also the notes on showcattle is pretty handy not just for stats but to keep track on how much you paid or sold or what works best on them and what not. So that would be cool to have. 

[deleted]

It's already been stated elsewhere in one of Jeff's posts about YOUR skills in the game. This included Fitting and AI breeding. Not hiring a "game wrangler" to perform all these jobs for you. That adds nothing to your skills needed for Fitting and AI breeding that Jeff stated. 

IVF for heifers? Are you talking IVF for commercial heifers or heifers that are fitted and shown? I really don't think it would be a viable idea to IVF and cloning of heifers as they are, or have not proven themselves in the showring or otherwise. As a dairy farmer in the past, I never relied on a first calf heifer for milk production. Nor did I ever keep their first calves. And yes, I used AI breeding. But that's never a guarantee that that first calf heifer or her heifer calf were going to be viable. It's their 2nd calving that I pulled all the stops out and their lives were literally on the line. They didn't produce the same or better than their Dams, they went to the packers or auction. 

I really don't believe that having different nitrogen tanks for this and that will work here. How many players are really going to know what to do with them? And,  is Jeff going to really want to spend all that time programming it? Pen sales? Is this something like we did on Showcattle? Or are you talking about having 100 greenies for $2000/each? Isn't that going back to the feedlots, get rich quick game monopoly on all the Sire's semen sales? Personally I'm sick and tired of looking at a Sire and really wanting to purchase some semen,  only yet again to see that it's monopolized by the same rancher or its affiliates, which weren't and aren't hard to figure out, and I refuse to buy from. 

Last edited: 9/20/2022 3:51:34 PM by Jeff

i don't understand what's not to understand lol. IVF would let you flush younger and more often than traditional ET. also using reverse sort sexed semen or using one straw on multiple cows you flushed. Which I think I talked about all that. 

Cloning would let you have more of the same animal, you could show the same steer time and time again, you could have more of the same bull to produce semen or breed cows or sell to other producers, another of the same cow to flush, bring back a steer as a bull so you can breed him because he was such a good calf, make a clone of your top producing cow or bull because they died too soon. 

Multiple tanks is just an idea that would give you the ability to bulk et your recips with a certain type of embryo so it wasn't so random (like all new embryos so it was a better conception or all embryos of a certain breed) just another feature to make life easier

and paying an in game helper would make it so if you hadn't bred any cows and really wanted the expensive semen put in a cow to take, you had an option that is better than you that is an instant option and not something where you have to wait for someone else to get on the game that is looking for work. 

all this was just ideas I had that I thought could make the game more fun to play. Not a dig at Jeff in anyway just FYI. Just things that while playing show cattle I thought would be nice to have. 

So you're telling me, as far as cloning goes, you mentioned about cloning a steer that I'm assuming is a multiple grand champion or multiple breed championships and you want to keep showing that same steer continually? How very sportsman like. What about other people trying to win something with their steers or whatever? So you just want to monopolize the game to your liking? 

I am completely against your ideas that you've stated while playing showcattle. Perhaps you should create your own game, or take over showcattle when Jeff is done with it and you can add all these things to that game. This game here is not about how much a player can monopolize. Read it again: Jeff has already stated that he's getting away from showcattle and this game will not be like it. 

If you've done anything with your ranch on here, you will start to see where you are building skills. Fitting, ET, AI, bull breeding, semen collection, and others. I've already bred 14 generations of Charolais cattle. All 100% starting off with a purebred Charolais bull, a Hereford cow and 3 Angus cows. Albeit these are generics right now and I can't register them,  but at least now I have skills!! And I'm figuring things out now, before the game starts. 

No offenses meant, just giving my honest thoughts and opinions about things. It's good for people to communicate. 

DD 

Either way I like the ideas regardless of playing show cattle or not. They would be handy in this game. 

cloning a steer could also be to bring him back as a bull and use him on cows and/or sell semen on him. But in theory cloning him to make a steer would only work for so long because you'd be breeding cows to make better stock including steers and so would everyone else. 

i think there's a ton of things that are in the works to be added to this game that will make it better than the last and I am excited for this one to get going even if it's not "complete" by the time we have traits we can breed for and cattle we can show. I've just thrown out some ideas that I think would be cool to add to the game.