More in depth breeding

[loftar]

Livestock credos when?

Reading that thread again, I had previously missed the core point of reducing the amount of required breeding, which is interesting. I must admit I'm not entirely sure how to square that with semi-realistic genetics :), but I very much like the idea of reducing the incentives for keeping CAFOs.

[Potjeh]

Yeah, that's the main point, besides making livestock more LARPy (this is an RPG after all), because you'd want to keep the same cow for months on end and you'd have a lot of adventures with it, so you'd shed some tears when the time comes to slaughter it. Or you'd just keep it as a pet I guess, and wind up with a dozen cows that aren't really useful because their quest counter is too high but you don't have the heart to kill them.

And yeah, you had humor theory in Salem, why not a bit of Lamarckism in H&H?

[Dakkan]

Depending on how nit picky one is about definitions and terminology, epigenetics are a real world potential example of Lamarckian inheritance. Basically there is a system of gene control overlaid on the genome (the epigenome), and it can be influenced in some ways by the environment. There are examples of environmentally induced gene upregulation/downregulation being passed on. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgenerational_epigenetic_inheritance