Foundation herd thing

So I'm starting with a foundation herd of 32 gypsy vanners, specializing in endurance but it's so difficult to get one's WITHOUT markings from the EC as I usually get out of 10 2-3 that are plain or roan 

Can I start with the ones that have markings too and just breed it out? Or would it be easier to just keep going and do what I'm doing?

Sorry if this doesn't make sense 

You can definitely breed it out. If you breed, for example, a TT tobiano to a tt Tobiano, you will get a Tt tobiano. Next generation down you can then breed that Tt tobiano to a tt tobiano and get a tt tobiano, therefor having no expression/markings. I usually cheat to get what I want and buy credits/use coat color or marking applicators/randomizers, so if that's an option you can always do that as well. 

Ah thanks, Wey! I'll go with that idea it seems easier lol 

I probably wouldn't specialize them all in Endurance right away as they won't place well in shows. Place them in disciplines based on their highest stats and then breed to get to the discipline you want. I use your page as a cheat sheet when assigning disciplines and cheats for mine.

@reign
Is this assuming that they will switch the discipline to endurance right before breeding? 
Cross breeding disciplines is detrimental to the performance of foals.

Since they have all foundation, the stats are randomized (right?) which means all of them would perform better in different disciplines, which may not always be endurance. Would it be better to just set them all endurance anyway?

In terms of if they were breeding outside of her herd, I assume it would be better to breed with horses that have the desired stats to mix and make a horse that would excel in endurance.

Last edited on 2022-02-21 at 16:21:57 by Reign

Yes, the EC does randomize stats and sometimes in a way that benefits certain disciplines, but if two horses of different disciplines are bred together, their earned stats will translate to high NSS in the resulting foals. In my personal opinion, I try to find the horses out of the EC that best fit my preferred specialty in terms of low NSS then conformation and then color. If you want solid coats, I would try breeding out the markings in future generations, or using marking applicators! So sticking to one discipline for each herd is best in terms of earning money in shows, since purebred discipline horses do much better due to their lowered NSS.

@Reign - Personally I would never do that, it's much more time consuming and cost effective to have to convert horses before breeding them. In my opinion it makes the most sense to either continuing creating random EC horses until you have enough with desired NSS, or just breed them down. EC horses really don't have awful NSS to begin with even if some are a little higher, they still end up performing well (never have had a problem with my first gen horses performing well once at a good training level, can just randomize the shows they go into to ensure they aren't fighting each other for placement) and their NSS are still so relatively low that it doesn't even bother me and I just take whatever first 20 horses they give me. Breeding them down isn't so hard that I would go through all of that to get what I want. I'm also not sure what you mean by "get the discipline you want" but if the focus in endurance bred horses, it makes no sense at all to have anything other than endurance horses. Crossing disciplines is the last thing someone who's aiming for show horses would want to do, as it raises NSS.

@reighn just a reminder my pronouns are they/them or he/him :)

Thanks for the help y'all! I'll take it into account when choosing my horses for the herd

@Marlu I'm sorry love, I wasn't aware. I edited my post. ♥

Thank y'all for educating me as well. I guess I forgot to take into account that EC horses only start out with 100ish stats so they're pretty much evenly divided so it wouldn't make much of a difference.

@reighn It's okay! We don't talk much you wouldn't have known :) and same I'm completely new to this 😂

Also I hope I didn't come across as harsh at all! I just really want to help everyone get as much out of this game as they can by sharing what I know to be effective :)

@Saditome I don't think you did! I found it quite helpful actually