For Ladies Only

The Female Cycle

Most of the functionality, as is the case in real life, is on the female side. When the HUD is first worn, a cycle is established at a random point within the cycle. When a partner contributes his (or her, depending on your role play!) seed, it will remain available for about one RL "day" before it expires. Increased potency will encourage it to last for up to one more day. Each contribution is maintained for this time; a new contribution from the same partner will not replace the prior one, but will expire later. Multiple partners' contributions may be active, and will all have a chance at fertilization when an egg is released. And yes, this means there can be more than one father in very rare occasions. Ovulation typically occurs around the 14th day of the cycle. In the current implementation, it is guaranteed to occur sometime within the cycle (i.e., no skipped cycles). Occasionally, more than one egg will be released. However, all eggs that are going to be released within a cycle will be released at the same time; ovulation occurs only once (well, normally -- more on that later).

When an egg is present, there is a roughly 35% chance that it will be fertilized if sperm is available at the time of ovulation. Each egg has an equal chance of being fertilized, so the presence of multiple eggs increases the odds of pregnancy. An egg will survive for about one to two SL days; during this time, all active (non-expired) "contributions" will have an opportunity to fertilize the egg during that time, with chance being skewed by the potency of the contribution.

If conception occurs, the gender and paternity are determined immediately. The cycle will appear to continue a bit longer than it's normal completion time. After enough time has elapsed (usually once you've been a few days "late") or a home pregnancy test is taken and provides a positive result, and the HUD that conception has occurred by changing appearance and displaying how many weeks have passed (generally at least four, since gestational age is determined from the beginning of the cycle in which conception occurred).

If conception does not occur, the cycle will reset to the first day. Any "contributions" are also purged at this time.

IMPORTANT: if you are not on-line or are not wearing your HUD at the time your cycle would have ended normally (i.e., conception did not occur), the cycle will start when you are next logged in and attached. However, if the conditions were met that might have resulted in conception, things will proceed as expected (i.e., if conception has occurred, your cycle will not restart!)

More on Ovulation

As stated above, ovulation occurs once during the cycle. There is a small chance that multiple eggs will be released -- the chance is representative of the chances of fraternal twin and triplet live birth in real life. As such, the chances of multiple egg release is actually somewhat lower than in real life since there is presently no chance of a gestation not proceeding to completion unless intervened upon by the Physician's HUD.