Animal Suggestion: Pack Alpha Male

[lode]

Longtime player but relatively new to the boards. Sorry if I screw up but I've been thinking about this for a little while. I'll be brief as the concept itself is pretty straightforward.

Abstract: Designate and manage Alpha status, a new designation, to a single male of a given species that the colony owns. Add minor buffs and debuffs associated to presence of alpha. Introduce competitive intra-species mechanic for self-selection of new alpha.

To simplify the verbiage below, i will refer to these colony-owned groups as 'packs', where a given pack is 100% of a given species the colony owns, any of which could potentially have an alpha male.

Concepts:

• First adult male for each pack (species) adopted by colony assumes the alpha role.
  
• When Alpha is present in a pack
  a. minor buff to mood
  b. minor buff to combat stats / resiliency
  
• When Alpha is not present in a pack
  a. major debuff to mating/pregnancy
  b. moderate negative moodlet/debuff
  c. all males in pack hostile with other males in pack until only a single male in the pack is conscious (all others being either dead or unconscious), thus triggering the appointment of the new alpha
  d. not sure how plausible this is , but one way to avoid brutal (and entertaining) bloodbaths would be to give all males a major consciousness debuff when there is no alpha, that way there would be more knock-outs than deaths.
  

The reason I like this, aside from the potential for treacherous bloodbaths in the barn, is the drama that then surrounds keeping the alpha out of trouble. It's good to be the king!

Anyway, just thought I'd post the idea. Cheers all

[schizmo]

I like the idea of an alpha animal but I don't like the idea of them fighting whenever the alpha leaves, because an alpha with a master will leave frequently and the pack will fall into chaos regularly.

I would replace it perhaps with animals getting into social fights where a new alpha occasionally beats out an old alpha. Nothing too violent or dangerous though.

My one question is how would alphas be determined across multiple breeds? Is it species based or animal type based? ie is there a wolf alpha over all wolves, or is there a timberwolf alpha over all timberwolves, or is there a "dog type" alpha over all dogs and wolves?