Problem with breeding

[Profesor_Rod]

I'm getting started with the breeding chains, but this is the point:

I want a kingdra w/ dragon breath. Now I got a horsea(female obvious) and a bagon w/ dragonbreath(male).

Now i took them to the daycare and then the old man says:
"Your pokemon prefer to play with others than each other".
¿What I am doing wrong?

[Poryhedron]

Well, let's see...they're opposite genders, they share a breeding group...are they somehow related by previous breeding? The game actually tracks that, and prevents poké-incest. Other than that, I've heard that two random pokémon, otherwise capable of mating, may simply not be compatible with each other, for a reason (involving hidden values) that is impossible to explain satisfactorily. You may have to get another female Horsea.

[Dark Scizor]

If i remember correctly, that message means you can get a baby, its just abit misleading thats all. Keep them in and see if you get an egg (Will take quite a while first tmie if i'm right)

EDIT: Your right Don't Run With Scizors, i checked my sapphire and it was the 'they dont seem to like each other message' that yielded a baby, sorry about the mistake.

[Don't Run With Scizors]

If i remember correctly, that message means you can get a baby, its just abit misleading thats all. Keep them in and see if you get an egg (Will take quite a while first tmie if i'm right)

No, that's the "They don't seem to like each other message."

[pokeguy76]

Don't you worry one bit.
I had the same problem and every time I changed Bagon/Horsea the old guy said the same thing. So what gives?

Easy, if the pokémon are compatible and are of opposite genders, everything should work perfectly.

You wil just have to wait a whole lot longer to get that egg

[Don't Run With Scizors]

"Your pokemon prefer to play with others than each other" is the message you get when you try to breed together Pokémon that are of incompatible genders and\or species. There won't be a way to get an egg out of two Pokémon that produce this message.

[rinku]

It's a myth that related pokémon cannot breed in Ruby and Sapphire - it was true in Gold/Silver/Crystal but I can assure you I have been breeding sons with mothers, fathers with daughters and brothers with sisters a lot (often this is the best way to ensure good potential IV inheritance). Unless there is something unusual about my copy of Sapphire that lets me do it...

However, it is quite possible that there is a random element that prevents a particular individual breeding with another particular individual. As others have said, if you are getting "They prefer to play with other pokémon" you will not get an egg and you will have to try another pairing.

[Profesor_Rod]

Yeah! Now I'm going to some way. They are producing a nice offspring.

I changed the bagon, errr.....

Well, actually it was a kingdra and a bagon (maybe they are incompatible) and before I tried Kingdra-Salamance but I got the "They seem to...." message, so assumed that they don't produce eggs.

Thanks. One or Two things more:

What are all the messages that you can get from the old guy? I was used to the GSC messages, but now, I don´t get why if it says "They don't seem to like each other", they are going at it?

rinku marked that exist IV inheritance. Someone want to explain the algoritm or give me a page where to read this info? I'm not so rookie and I'm studying Engineer grade (I'm from México and study in ESCOM http://www.escom.ipn.mx/ ) so I can take math and programing threads very well!

And thanks for the feedback!

[rinku]

As far as I know or have seen posted the inheritance of IVs is totally random, but works like this:

The baby will inherit three of its six IVs from its parents, selected randomly. Sometimes it will inherit the same IV from both, meaning that only two IVs will be inherited ones. As near as I can make out the process is like having a fishbowl with 12 ping pong balls, from which three are drawn in sequence. So you might draw:

Father's Attack
Mother's Speed
Mother's HP

or

Father's Special Defense
Father's Speed
Mother's Speed

which would result in the baby inheriting only dad's SD and mum's Speed. Note that with three trials, at least 2 different stats must be chosen, usually three.

The remaining IVs are allocated randomly, so it IS quite possible that they will be generated to be the same as one of the parents' values, which has the effect of masking some cases of minor inheritance and giving the occasional result of looking like 4 or more IVs have been inherited. I do have to say that from my own data the ocurrance of only two inherited IVs is a lot lower than you would expect from a truly random selection as detailled above; treat it as a working hypotheses at best.

Now, it is still possible that there are bias factors in the process based on parent personality and gender that affect *which* IVs get selected, but I haven't seen any solid research on this yet. I've been working a fair bit on it, but over 40-odd weeks of play I would probably only have bred a couple of hundred eggs in total, and no more than a few dozen for any one pairing (it just gets so boring...). At some point I'll settle down with a set of fast breeding and hatching pokémon from different owners (maybe magikarp/gyarados) and churn out a couple of hundred test specimens.

[Poryhedron]

What are all the messages that you can get from the old guy? I was used to the GSC messages, but now, I don´t get why if it says "They don't seem to like each other", they are going at it?

That's just a bad choice of wording on NoA's part. basically, what they mean is "They get along okay, but they don't seem to be drawn passionately to each other." It might be that if you get two pokémon, of opposite gender but the same species, with two different Original Trainers, they will get a message saying the two do seem to 'like' each other, just like in GSC where that situation produces eggs the fastest. Sadly, I've never seen it.