ARK Breeding: Math Involved

[DarthaNyan]

Experiment 1:
There are several opinions on how stat inheritance works or what is considered "wild levels" so i conducted an experiment:
Single Player, 100x taming.
Summoned two 120 trikes, luckily they were male and female, KOed them with tranq arrows, tamed with mejos. At 100x taming they both got +59 bonus levels (even tho TE was 100%). Mated them, got egg, hatched it.

Now its time for some numbers:
Base level 1 trike (according to http://ark.gamepedia.com/Triceratops )
HP: 375 (+75 per wild level)
Stam: 150 (+15)
Oxygen: 150 (+15)
Food: 3000 (+300)
Weight: 365 (+7.3)
Melee: 100% (+5%)

Wild KOed 120 Trikes in experiment:
Female: 2025 hp (22 wild levels), 480 stam (22 levels), 285 oxygen (9 levels), 9300 food (21 level), 496.4 weight (18 levels), 175 melee (15 levels). 22+22+9+21+18+16=108 levels, that means that the rest 11 levels are "lost" on unknown/hidden stat.

Male: 1650 (17), 360 (14), 285 (9), 11100 (27), 474.5 (15), 190 (18). 17+14+9+27+15+18=100, 19 wild levels are "lost" for him.

After taming (both 179):
Female: 2700.5 hp, 600 stam, 405 oxy, 12300 food, 562.1 weight, 377.9% dam.
Male: 2250.5 hp, 525 stam, 420 oxygen, 12900 food, 525.6 weight, 412.9% dam
Calculating levels is rather hard due to unknown stat and TE bonus to damage.

Baby (174): 2700.5 hp, 600 stam, 405 oxygen, 12300 food, 525.6 weight, 378.0% dam.

That means that baby inherited HP, stam, oxygen, food and damage (difference is probably due to rounding error) from female parent and weight from male.

Conclusion: TE bonus levels are included and counted as wild levels. Torpor stat is automatically adjusted to baby's level.

If baby would have inherited Male's oxygen, food and damage he would have surpassed parents in levels and would have been higher than 179 (<- that is material for further experiment: get baby that inherits all the best stats from its parents).

Some proof pictures: http://imgur.com/a/w9R9L

Update:
Fairy of breeding smiled upon me and 2nd baby from same parents got all 6 (7?) stats maxed (for these parents, it is possible to find another parent that has at least 1 stat higher).

Project (195 lvl): 2700.5 hp, 600 stam, 420 oxygen, 12900 food, 562.1 weight, 413% damage

http://imgur.com/3kiOsvU

Conclusion: it is possible to get baby dino higher than parents level, but it wont be stronger than parents in any particular stat.


Experiment 2:
Tested the cause of baby dino having sometimes higher damage than any of its parents. Tamed 2 new trikes with less than 100% TE (hit them 3-4 times with a fist during taming, btw hitting before taming starts DOES affect TE).

Parent A: http://i.imgur.com/PiGzTX7.jpg
Parent B: http://i.imgur.com/21ViHNz.jpg
Egg: http://i.imgur.com/sK2WnYd.jpg
Baby: http://i.imgur.com/mHy7d0F.jpg

As you can see Baby got higher damage% than any of its parents.
Probable cause: baby dino inherits levels in damage from one of his parents but ALWAYS receives bonus to damage as if he was tamed with 100% TE.

That also explains 0.1% deviation my previous tests had: i tamed parents with mejos and 179 trikes had TE less than 100%.

That baby got higher stam and oxygen than my "Project" and will be assimilated ^_^.


Experiment 3:
Mated baby from Experiment 2 with newly found high damage trike.
Parent A: http://i.imgur.com/YwF3Zs4.jpg
Parent B: http://i.imgur.com/Ds0XXIY.jpg
=
Project's new mating partner: http://i.imgur.com/ulwhhZv.jpg
Project: http://i.imgur.com/3kiOsvU.jpg
=
Project v2 (lvl 220): http://i.imgur.com/cgbP3GC.jpg

Took quite a few tries to breed (about 15).

Got a new batch of trikes for breeding: http://i.imgur.com/GG4LSXN.jpg (lvl 143 got hit during mass KOing that batch resulting in less bonus levels).
Filtered them out: http://i.imgur.com/jSWerVh.jpg
A few (4) batches later: http://i.imgur.com/d3uEUIw.jpg

Was too quick on clearing outdated trikes =(. Now i need a male.. any male, might as well use lvl 1 to produce male trike with weight and HP to mate it with current Project.


Experiment 4:
There is common misconception that levels acquired after taming (those that dinos get for exp and you distribute manually) somehow affect breeding stats. There is only one way to refute that nonsense - test it:

Lvl 1 future parents: http://i.imgur.com/KA7Bb7E.jpg
Leveled into HP parent A (lvl 57): http://i.imgur.com/VnfhYP6.jpg
Leveled into Stam parent B (lvl 57): http://i.imgur.com/ggUSdqJ.jpg
Egg: http://i.imgur.com/bF4MsB7.jpg
Baby (lvl 1): http://i.imgur.com/ucq4Y7J.jpg

To remove Luck variable i put 2 manual levels in each stat on both parents including movement speed so they had no vanilla stats at all. As you can see baby inherited none of the manual levels from its parents.


Experiment 4.1:
Two girls, one horny male.
http://i.imgur.com/YiewW0S.jpg
It works.

Experiment 5:
I had a thought: unconscious dinos have different food consumption rate than conscious ones, what will happen if you KO a baby? Would it be easier to feed? Will maturation bar fill while it is unconscious? I tried...
Dont try to KO the baby. Just dont - the baby will die of starvation because its food consumption accelerates and unconscious baby dino doesnt eat fast enough by itself to replenish it.


Experiment 6:
Found an interesting statement in the Wiki ( http://ark.gamepedia.com/Incubation ):

The amount of time an incubated egg requires before it hatches into a baby dinosaur depends on the species and the levels of the parents, with larger species and higher parent levels both contributing toward longer incubation times.

Lets put it to the test:
Got myself 4 eggs - 2 eggs from lvl 179 parents and 2 eggs from lvl 1 parents. Weather was bad when eggs were laid so they dont start to incubate before i picked them up. Test is simple enough - drop all 4 in incubation room and see what hatches 1st.
lvl 179 eggs in inventory: http://i.imgur.com/RML4egU.jpg
lvl 1 eggs in inventory: http://i.imgur.com/fMSkVWJ.jpg
179 egg progress: http://i.imgur.com/iJpxXPd.jpg
1 egg progress: http://i.imgur.com/pVAiDdJ.jpg
(difference in the progress is because taking 2 SS takes some time and i have accelerated hatching time)
Hatching: http://i.imgur.com/U7Dhcyi.jpg

Surely enough they hatched in quick succession in the order i dropped them in hatchery (179 - 1 - 179 - 1).
Levels of parents DO NOT affect hatching time of the egg.


Experiment 7: Colors.
Tested inheritance of parents' colors by dinos. Got myself 4 females and 1 male, colored them with "cheat SetTargetDinoColor" command with different distinct colors.
Male is white. Red, Blue, Green and Black are females. Mated, got eggs, hatched. Freshly hatched babies got random generic colors and were nowhere near like their parents. Restarted game (for multiplayer you'll probably have to wait for server restart) - babies got proper colors.

Trikes ready to mate: http://i.imgur.com/YwcFKJP.jpg
Eggs: http://imgur.com/a/iJSWq
Babies: http://imgur.com/a/sThwu

That black baby is the only male (with a black female parent), all others are females. Babies are grown up because i spent quite a bit of time trying to unload/put them into stasis to see if that gives them proper colors - it didnt or i did something wrong. That pink-ish color on red-white baby is actually proper red, just some lightning playing tricks.

Conclusion: Babies get a mix of colors their parents have for each color region (just like stats: either males or females). Colors dont mix into new ones.

[DarthaNyan]

aaaaaaaand... Updated. 4

[DarthaNyan]

Updated with small funny fact. 4.1

[Lilkinsly]

lol yea, my rex did 4 females at once.

[DarthaNyan]

Another small update. 5

[DarthaNyan]

Updated with part 6.

[Lilkinsly]

Good updates.

[tyonisius]

Originally posted by fractal:

"tamed with mejos"
Why didn't you just forcetame them? lol

A better option would be to use dotame as it simulates the natural taming of the dino, but does it instantly with 100% TE. However, for true testing, they must be truly knocked out and tamed as the OP did.

Btw, OP, thank you very much for your findings. You have proven several of the theories I had regarding breeding and now I don't need to run the tests!

[DarthaNyan]

Originally posted by tyonisius:

Btw, OP, thank you very much for your findings. You have proven several of the theories I had regarding breeding and now I don't need to run the tests!

Glad to be of any help. At least i hope that my findings will help to bring misinformation and misunderstandings about breeding on the forum to the minimum.

[Dragon]

Nizidra, question, I hatched a Rex egg, (Turned out to be twins!), but do the Dinos always take their Father's coloration? The twins look exactly like the Dad. Solo player on a multiplayer server, so I didn't want to risk having more than two hatchlings around to check on colors.

[DarthaNyan]

Originally posted by Dragon:

Nizidra, question, I hatched a Rex egg, (Turned out to be twins!), but do the Dinos always take their Father's coloration? The twins look exactly like the Dad. Solo player on a multiplayer server, so I didn't want to risk having more than two hatchlings around to check on colors.

I'll take a look into this next time.

[Stonkeep]

Originally posted by Nizidramaniiyt:

Wild KOed 120 Trikes in experiment:
Female: 2025 hp (22 wild levels), 480 stam (22 levels), 285 oxygen (9 levels), 9300 food (21 level), 496.4 weight (18 levels), 175 melee (15 levels). 22+22+9+21+18+16=108 levels, that means that the rest 11 levels are "lost" on unknown/hidden stat.

Male: 1650 (17), 360 (14), 285 (9), 11100 (27), 474.5 (15), 190 (18). 17+14+9+27+15+18=100, 19 wild levels are "lost" for him.

This is also what I have found on my extensive testings and it is puzzling. In short, it is quite obvious that dinos do not level up one of their stats every time they level in wild which is disturbing.
Is this a bug or a feature We do not know but I will be doing some more research on this soon.

[Dragon]

Oh, and the current theory is the lost levels were used on Movement speed which is defaulted to standard speed per species. Otherwise there would be God dactyls running around with 200-300+% movement speed at Tame.

As for the color thing I'm kind of hoping it's true, a guaranteed way to get a coloration you want, you just have to breed for it.

[DarthaNyan]

Originally posted by Dragon:

Oh, and the current theory is the lost levels were used on Movement speed which is defaulted to standard speed per species. Otherwise there would be God dactyls running around with 200-300+% movement speed at Tame.

As for the color thing I'm kind of hoping it's true, a guaranteed way to get a coloration you want, you just have to breed for it.

Pretty much my theory exactly: dinos put it into movement speed with zero increase per (wild)level.

[Lilkinsly]

Yea, I am pretty sure that is what is happening as well.

Nizi, I am going to link your thread into my breeding guide.

[DarthaNyan]

Originally posted by lilkinsly:

Yea, I am pretty sure that is what is happening as well.

Nizi, I am going to link your thread into my breeding guide.

I'm thinking of re-doing "update 4" to remove any "Luck" variables tomorrow ^_^... I'll just have to do the same but put at least one point in each stat on both dinos (so no stock stats remain).