Is it absolutely necessary to cool during breeding season?

I cooled the last two seasons and was not going to this year. I have noticed that my animals are progressing a lot slower without the cooling process. In short, I'm going to start my night drops again as of tonight. To each his own though.

I've done both (even during the same breeding season) and got less breeding, fewer clutches and more slugs when I didn't cool. I now turn the heat tapes down 10 degrees at night for 10 weeks. There is also a natural cooling during the winter. I've had no negative effects from cooling at night and it gave me better results so I stick with it. I'm not saying cooling is "absolutely necessary" but it definietly works better here.

You can probably ask 10 people how they breed and you'll get 10 different answers...

I used to cool--the effect was that i would get one or two RIs over the winter. I read up on it, and stopped cooling.
It's had 0 effect on fertility, on male interest, or on how many females lay, so I have no plans to ever cool again.
Some years are better for breeding than others, and I suspect the weather has much to do with that. This past season was terrible, and we had massive flooding in the area. This season so far is great, with most of my females already locking. (Never had any issues with my males breeding, so long as the females are ready. Even my first timers got right to it, with only a couple weeks hesitation from the youngest).

It makes sense...if there is flooding, then eggs would not likely survive, in the wild. Normal storms passing through raise moisture, which means more prey and better conditions for incubating, so ball pythons like storms (we knew that). Drought means little prey--my guess is that they won't breed well in a drought, either. Be very interesting to track all of this.

The basement does get cooler in the winter, but not consistently. I keep the heat tape/cord at about 92F year round. I use natural ambient light from the windows, so it's always dim, but they know when the sun rises and sets.

I did a very interesting experiment this season, I dropped the temps on one of my girls, and just for poop and giggles didn't on the other much larger girl that I had rescued earlier in the year. TADA both were crawling all over the male tapping their tales within 5 minutes the female I hadnt cooled was in lock with the male and within 15 minutes the other female was in lock with the male. Lucky? The older female was just really ready to breed? IDK all I know is I have 2 potentially gravid females because they are no longer accepting the male. :banana::banana::banana::banana: