Explain Base Stats

I originally thought base stats meant the stats a horse has at birth, but I notice when I looked at my newborn foals, that their base stats don't match their birth stats....

For example
Birth stats of new foal
STR: 5
SPD: 225
AGI: 267
INT: 2
END: 6
ALL: 505

Base Stats of same foal
STR: 3
SPD: 160
AGI: 185
INT: 2
END: 4
ALL: 354

That's a 150 stat difference

So what Determines base stats? And what are they used for?

Base stats are purely from the inhereted stats. Birth stats include base stats and bonuses for a multitude of things such as the horse being healthy/happy/well fed and both parents having the same division.

If you were to convert the foals stats, the base stats would not move, but all the other stats (including ones gained from treats and shows) would be converted.

Last edited on 2017-04-28 at 19:02:35 by Crossroad Farms

I asked this question a while ago and Nittrous gave this fantastic answer:


"First, to clarify some stuff below:
Non-spec stats: any stats that are not counted towards the horse's showing ability, or stats not pertaining to their chosen specialty. The goal with stat-bred horses is to have the lowest non-spec stats available, hoping to eventually total 0. Example: Western discipline focuses on Intelligence and Speed stats. Non-spec stats would be Strength, Agility, and Endurance, as they provide no benefit to it's showing ability.

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Horses that are born (i.e. not foundation horses) technically have two sets of stats, their "birth" stats - the ones that come up at the top of the page next to the horse's image, and their "base" stats, which are stats that are nonconvertible, no matter what you do - shown at the bottom of the page next to the private notes box.

So when my horse Web Smoke (my most recently born foal), was born, his stats were:
STR: 26
SPD: 155
AGI: 27
INT: 173
END: 29
ALL: 410

At the bottom of the page, it shows his 'base' stats as:
STR: 22
SPD: 89
AGI: 23
INT: 98
END: 24
ALL: 256

But why are the base stats so much lower? Well, as his birth stats show, he was born inclined to the Western discipline (high Intelligence and Speed) because his parents were Western trained. I breed all of my Quarter Horses as Western, so for me this is a really good thing. His non-spec stats for Western (Strength, Agility, and Endurance) are low, totaling 82 (26+27+29). But what if I decide to sell him to someone who wants all their Quarter Horses to be Show Jumping (Agility and Speed stats)? Well, they could easily go to the training center, and transfer him to the Show Jumping specialization (because at birth, I set him to Western). Now, this isn't really the best idea to do if you want him to do well in shows, as his non-spec stats would be much higher (Non-spec stats for Show Jumping would be Strength, Intelligence, and Endurance). His non-spec stats would equal 143 (22+98+24), which is high, and would have him do worse in shows compared to another horse with the same total stats, but lower non-spec stats.

But why don't the birth and base total equal each other? Because if you were to convert this horse from Western to Show Jumping, the base stats shown would have to remain on the horse. The final placement of his stats would look something like:
STR: 22
SPD: 133
AGI: 133
INT: 98
END: 24
ALL: 410

You can see from this that he would be more inclined towards Show Jumping, but he would still have stats in Intelligence at 98, because those stats are nonconvertible. This horse would produce foals that would be better in Show Jumping, but it would take much longer to breed down the Intelligence stat.

Ugh, this is confusing! Why would we even have this option?! Abbey wanted to make it so people could potentially change disciplines of pedigree'd horses, and this makes it much easier. If we worked only from the birth stats as the nonconvertible stats, it would be near impossible to change the specialization of a born horse, you wouldn't be able to change anything but the stats that were earned over that horse's life. While with more serious breeders it's not something that is commonly done, due to the amount of stats lost on the horse (in this case, the amount that don't transfer out of intelligence and into agility and speed) and inevitably, the amount lost to future foals. But it is an option for breeders who don't follow the most popular discipline of their breed and cannot find a proper mate for their horses within that discipline.

So, do I need to worry about this? If you intend to breed horses that follow the same disciplines that they are born inclined to, then no! You'll probably never need to worry about how stats convert unless you're trying to switch disciplines. Some serious breeders (I often do) will do this conversion when foals are born or when they are done boosting them with hay cubes in order to get those non-spec stats just a little bit smaller. (In this example, if I set the horse to show jumping at birth, and then converted it to it's inclined specialization - Western - it would lost 13 non-spec stats, bringing it's total to 69, a better number than the original 82 it was born with. Unfortunately, I forgot to do it with this foal! D:)

In foundation horses, base stats = birth stats.

Sorry for the novel, I'm long winded and wanted to try to explain it well! If you need any clarification at all feel free to reply or message me and I can explain any of the nitty gritty. c: "

Base stats are used for breeding, and are weighted much more heavily than the rest of a horse's stats. Base stats are calculated from a combination of the parents' base stats and the rest of their stats, while birth stats are a sum of the foal's base stats and some extra stats that are calculated from the parents' stats at the time of breeding. Birth stats do not influence breeding, so there's no need to record them precisely except if you want to see how a horse has improved over their lifetime.

I recently managed to work out the breeding formula, so if you want a more precise idea of what base stats do, you can have a look at the foal stat calculator I made, and the breeding guide I'm putting together which explains exactly what the formulas are.