So, I'm pretty sure I heard it mentioned that when the site goes out of beta, the hatchery will likely be redone. I was also thinking about this thread (and also the really old thread about stablehands and pet feeding costs), and I had a few ideas for a future hatchery. These aren't well-thought-out ideas, but more like rough "you could do this sort of thing" ideas.

So, thinking about ways of increasing the cost of breeding eggs, I realized that the current hatchery is rather un-interactive: all you can do to hatchlings is nurture them, with a limit of once per day. Right now, I feel like you breed pets, forget about them for 3 days, hatch them, then forget about them for another 25 days until they become adults and can breed. This puts all of the interactive focus on breeding, which means (I think, I don't really have experience here) that players seeking interaction with their pets are encouraged to focus on breeding instead of raising hatchlings.

Then, how to make the hatchery more interactive? Aside from a more inviting UI, I think having more options/decisions for hatchlings (at times other than just hatching them) would accomplish this.

Here's the basic idea:
In order to put an egg into your hatchery, you will first need to buy "bedding" for it (probably a very small about of gold for the basic type--maybe around 100g, like food). You could have different options for bedding, that each have different effects (and different costs). Effects could be things like increased growth speed (say +1 extra maturity hour for every 8 hours or so) or increased nurture bonus (+1 nurture click per every 8 clicks or so) or bonus starting experience.

Now, doing this for every egg would probably become tedious after a while (especially for breeding projects), so a mass-choose option (or a Stablehand-type thing) to select options for batches (or even set a default) would probably also be helpful.

For buying hatchlings, you'd probably choose a new bedding when you buy, and when pets leave the hatchery their stall would empty (This system probably wouldn't work in a hatchery set up like the current one, but would instead require something more like the stables, with fixed stalls).

This is totally a rough idea, so please feel free to post any suggestions/improvements/ critiques! Also, my premise could be completely wrong, and putting more focus on hatchlings/egglings could increase mass-breeding instead of decreasing it--I really don't know!

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It would likely decrease mass breeding because of the fee. It would also set a base price for pets, since people wouldn't sell a sylesti for cheaper than what it took to breed it. It's also just an interesting and unique idea, and could help the economy a bit, even if just a little.100 seems a little low though, maybe around 500 gold? That doesn't seem like it would be too much for people that aren't mass breeding, but would add up pretty quick if you were, especially for newbies, who do it the most.

Support...mostly

Just wondering how mass project makers who don't do too much besides breeding or designing) will cope...I barely step foot in the zones and often am on mobile so yeah. Projects. Cant' really do more then jsut themes right now, lol...

The main idea isn't to add a significant cost to breeding new pets. A nominal fee like 100g is meant to point out to people, particularly new people, that keeping pets isn't free (stable space costs gold) when they are deciding whether to breed pets on not (in my experience, people tend to be more thoughtful if a price is involved, even if the cost is so low that it is insignificant). Ideally, it would reduce the number of pets that are bred for the sake of breeding, that won't fit in their owners stables and no-one else wants (and will have to be released, even if their original owner strongly dislikes releasing).
I think if players can manage paying 100g per pet every day for feeding, then they'll be able to manage paying 100 or so for hatchery pets without it being a huge impediment to breeding projects. I could be wrong though.

the feed cost is 10g, its 100g too revive if its completely starved

That's without hte decrease by using a stable hand too...

My bad! I seem to have remembered incorrectly. In that case, a cost closer to 10g would probably be a more appropriate baseline.

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