I’m someone who’s really enthusiastic about reptiles, reptile breeding, ect.
Snakes tend to lay all their eggs in one go. They get back to eating relatively fast and don’t have to worry about it again for the entire year. It’s also hardly a drain on them because being cold blooded really reduces your need to feed, so to say. They also usually wont lay at all unless they brumate for some time. Brumation is a state of semi-hibernation they undergo in cold temperatures. After brumation, the snake’s reproductive systems will associate “No long cold = Spring = Time to lay”.
Lizards, on the other hand, lay eggs on a regular state rather than all at once, then stop for the year. These eggs are usually quite sizable too, and are a constant drain on their hunger. Once again, it’s a yearly basis, but they see increased fertility for their lower clutch sizes, meaning most of the babies will hatch, even if not fertilized bizarrely.
Game wise, the “snake approach” would mean you get a temporarily increased appetite in winter, only to re-gain your loses in food via eggs in spring.
The “lizard approach” would be closer to slimelings gameplay wise, over a longer span of time, and would be a constant drain of appetite to where eating the eggs really wouldn’t help at all and letting them hatch would be preferable.
I’d take it, once a year appetite increase for some nice food stockpiles/minions isn’t bad at all. To answer concerns about eating your own eggs or making the minions “die faster”, reptiles arent really loyal to their family at all, and once they can survive on their own, they do so. Reptiles also really don’t care about eating their own eggs, as long as a few hatch first, they’ll gladly gobble down the “bad eggs”.
