[ Suggestion ] Plant and Livestock Genetics

[Creative Principle]

It'd be cool to have a genetics type system added to Vintage Story.

[Maelstrom]

Care to elaborate on what that would look like?

[egorvsv]

Perhaps you mean plant breeding. Since, based on the plants available in the game, they do not have genetic diversity (except for the apple tree, it has three species). As for animals, there are very few of them at the moment. Waiting for game updates.

Edited August 1, 2023 by egorvsv

[Thorfinn]

There sort of already is, at least for animals. It's just that it's been streamlined to "3rd generation can be slain with cleaver", etc. You wouldn't want anything "realistic" genetically speaking -- centuries of artificial selection to get even minor variations, millennia for anything significant. In a game that lots of people don't play more than a year or two before generating a new world. 

[Creative Principle]

What I'm suggesting is randomized trait system which picks from something like 5 traits which you can mix and combine.

Example: color, size, shape, hardiness, production etc

You could crossbreed each to get what outcome you want.

[Creative Principle]

There should be some type of cap though so you don't produce a superplant which creates fruit which'll restore all of your nutrition in one go.

[Thorfinn]

Sure, but how many generations are you getting in a year? Even if every generation had one beneficial mutation/trait, and there were never any bad traits or recessive genes, and it bred true within that direct line of that packet of seeds or for that lamb or piglet, how long would it take to crossbreed something that would be better than, say, just planting another couple blocks of parsnips, or milking an additional ewe? IME, a multiplayer server that runs for 4 game years is pretty unusual. I'm not sure I've ever seen a game with 10th generation sheep, for example.

[Creative Principle]

Bad traits should be included I agree, as for how many generations should be allowed it should depend on the growth time of each plants and if it's kept in a greenhouse or not. You could get around 4 generations with a greenhouse and 2 outside depending on which biome you'd be in.

Side note: perhaps when these crops generate they'll have different genetics in a cluster, you could have something like 3 differentials per biome of the same crop.