Breeding mutations and stacking help?

[VibezZ]

Can someone please dumb down how the matrilineal and patrilineal works for breeding mutations please?

I am currently breeding lvl 1 Baryonix to learn how to breed and test things out. ATM I am breeding for melee and got 2 mutations in it (4 points in melee). I noticed the Patrilineal side has also gone up 2 and 0 on the Matrilineal side. I understand that once it gets to 20 the chance of getting a mutation drops to 3.7% or something.

I have a few questions though..
1) Can i get my Dino's melee level to a ridiculous number breeding mutations? I've heard people getting them to 255? if not, what is the cap?

2) Once I'm happy with the amount of melee points i have on the Dino with patrilineal side being 255 or whatever and Matrilineal side 0 still. What do i do then?

3) Can I do the same with other stats like start fresh with HP or Stamina and then merge them all together in the end? E.g. 255 HP 255 Stamina and 255 Melee all from mutations.

4) For the Melee - Do I kill a dino that got another mutation in melee (6points in melee) but its on the Mat side not Pat?

5) If a dino mutates but the level doesn't show in the stats but does in the Patrilineal side do i kill it and keep trying?

[DreadCthulhu]

The mutation counter is seperate from the mutations itself, and is always passed on, even if the mutation levels are not. The paternal counter is simply the father's paternal & maternal counts added together; the maternal is simply the mother's pat & mat counts added up. The count also gets increased by 1 when a parent triggers a new mutation, with the parent triggering it determing which side it lands on. When a creature has 20 or more mutations on its counter it can no longer trigger new mutations.

That is why the usual method is to have a line of mutated males, per stat being mutated, and many unmutated females. You replace the male everytime you get a new male baby with a mutation in the right stat. That way it does not matter which side of the mutation counter it lands on, it will get moved to the male side anyways. Also when the male side hits 20 mutations on the counter the females can still keep triggering mutations. As for the other questions.

1. Yes, you can get an large number of mutations on a stat. ASE had a hard coded limit of 255 levels in a stat; each mutation would raise a base level by +2, so the exact number of mutations you could get depends on what you started with. ASA has seperate mutation levels, with a cap set by server settings, 255 being the default. Mutations add 2 of those levels. I am not sure if the server cap is just mutation levels or base levels + mutation ones in ASA, will need more time to work on that.

2. When you are done mutating one stat, you set your final male for that stat aside, to combine with stats from other mutation lines.

3. Yes, you can combine your lines after you are finished mutating. You would simply take your final melee male, mate him with random female until you had female with finale melee stat, and mate her with final health male until you get female with both final melee & health stats, and then mate her with final stam male until you have male & female with all final stats.

4. As mentioned before, with correct breeding setup it does not matter which side a mutation lands on.

5. This is part of the counter being seperate from the stats; the counts always get passed on, even if stats level counts do not. ASE could have "hidden" mutations to the movement speed that would bump up the counter & total level, but not change stats, but in ASA that is not a thing anymore, so all new mutations will change a stat.