*Add More Horse Breeds

I did a survey in past on this topic and saved the result. I am not going to post my detailed result because it's too much of work XD but here's basic summary of my result.

Majority favors realistic crossbreeding (Anglo-Arabs, etc) because we can create new breed arts for them. If we allow unlimited crossbreeding, it will be hard to assign a breed art for (Clyde x Welsh x Arab)... XD
A lot of players felt that realistic crossbreeding can help economy and more.

Bring in new breeds or culled breeds: A lot of players are on fence for subjects. A lot of players want to see their favorite breeds in this game. However, culled breeds did not do well in old EV and it did harm economy. Majority favors bring in crossbreeding among current breeds over introducing a brand new breed. 

Due to that, I think Abbey's plan is good... Foals then crossbreeding then new breeds.

I am wondering if we do "official" crossbreeds which get new art, but then allow for alternative crossbreeding which just gets one of the parent breeds as an image?  So Arabian x TB would get Anglo Arab artwork, but maybe a Mini x Shetland would just get either a Mini or Shetland image.

Could be worth investigating if it's wanted?

That works fine with me!
What about Anglo Arab x Appy? Would it be the same concept?

Also, when we get crossbreeding involved, is there a way we could get percentages of different breeds in one horse? That could be a large factor in sales for some people. Example:
Pedigree 
25% Thoroughbred
25% Arabian
50% Appaloosa

If I'm being honest, I'm not a fan of crossbreeding where it appears 50% Appaloosa, 35% TB etc.

I'd much prefer you can only cross to create 'recognised' breeds, because crossing say, a Clydesdale and a Shetland would rarely happen in real life and the foal produced would be well, usually it'd be a mess. Or a Clydesdale and a TWH, or something similar. I'd be happy with Anglo-Arabs, Araapaloosas, Morabs, Quarabs, Appendix QHs, Friesian Sporthorses etc. that are all types or recognised/popular crosses themselves. Even if we were limited in that only horses of a certain type could cross with each other (So ponies could only be crossbred with ponies, warmbloods with warmbloods, hotbloods with hotbloods etc.) I may support it more, but we only have one draught horse breed so I'm not sure how that would work.

I'm not sure existing breed art should be used for anything but the pure breed. If we ended up being able to breed anything to anything I think perhaps a better solution would be to have a few generic grade horse artworks, e.g. warmblood build, pony build, draft horse build, baroque build?, then you just calculate the percentage of warmblood/pony/draft/baroque blood, and assign the artwork based on whichever blood is in highest concentration.

So for example:
Horse A = 25% appaloosa, 75% clydesdale = 25% warmblood, 75% draft --> generic draft base
Horse B = 25% shetland, 25% thoroughbred, 25% paint, 25% clydesdale = 25% pony, 50% warmblood, 25% draft --> generic warmblood base
Horse C = 50% welsh pony, 50% andalusian = 50% pony, 50% baroque --> ??? maybe toss a coin between pony and baroque base?

Perhaps if a horse has more than 85% blood of a certain breed then it could get the same base as the pure breed? Then it would make sense for the foal to look like the main breed in form, even if it managed to retain colours or markings from its other heritage, that the dominant breed doesn't have. However, the biggest downside of this system is that you'd have to massively expand the amount of colours and patterns available on every base, just to account for if anyone ended up with a very pure horse with some funky patterns that it picked up generations ago from another breed. Whereas if you just had a handful of bases for all generic crossbreeds then you could just give those bases every conceivable colour and pattern, rather than doing that to every base.

I think I'm strongly in favour of having a handful of generic bases. Maybe start off using this system for all crossbreeds, both official and grade horses, then gradually replace the officially recognised crossbreeds with their own unique bases?

UlyssesBlue has actually picked up on another small issue with some crossbreeds - the issue with a generic base is that an Andalusian and a Friesian are both 'baroque' but physically are very different. And as well, you could cross say a Clydesdale and a Miniature, and get a spotted 12hh draught horse.

On top of that, some crossbreeds who are say 25% Paint, 25% Dutch Warmblood, 25% Arab and 25% Clydesdale will look very different to a generic warmblood. 

Using the system of 50% Warmblood + 50% Draught = Generic Warmblood or Generic Draught could also backfire slightly.

For example, Mulrys Error is apparently half TB, half Clydesdale. So with this system, he could have a generic warmblood base (or hotblood, as I think TB's are hotbloods)

Tamarillo was an Anglo-Arab, so 50% Arabian, 50% TB. The system with generic art could mean that an Anglo-Arab, and a ClydexTB could have the same artwork. It could also mean a QHxTB could have the same artwork as a TBxShetland. 

I think to start off with, crossbreeding should be restricted to recognised crossbreeds, because we have enough breeds to allow for things like Warlanders, Araappaloosas, Friesian Sporthorses, Quarabs, Morabs, German Sportponies, Maxi cobs/English cobs/Show cobs/Tinker horses, Anglo-Arabs, Appendix Quarter Horses, American Warmbloods, Hispano-Arabé, Nez Perce Horses, American Walking Ponies, Welsh Sportponies/Sporthorses (WelshxTB usually), Walkaloosa, Pony of the Americas etc.

To start with I will restrict to recognised crossbreeds, I'm just wondering if in the future it might be an idea to allow more open crossbreeding because it allows members to choose any discipline with their horses instead of just what's popular within that single breed.

To save from Shetland x Clydesdales I could impose a height limit on breeding, horses must be within 3 hands of each other to breed or something?

As for generic artwork, there is the argument that warmblooded crosses will look different depending on the breeds that contributed to them.  There would either need to be generic artwork for unrecognised crosses, or it uses the breed artwork for the breed that has contributed most genetically.

If there's an even split, it could use randomly breed artwork from any of the breeds contributing.  If there was a 25% split of Arabian, Paint, Thoroughbred, Appaloosa then it would choose from one of those.

The difference (and I suppose, the selling point) of having the crossbreeds use the current art is that we could have Thoroughbred breed art with Appaloosa/Paint markings because of the crossbreeding ;)

For some crosses the differences between them are pretty subtle, so I think it would make sense to have a series of generic bases for a number of different cross breeds, although perhaps expand upon the list of 4 bases I mentioned above. Something like this?
- pony base
- draft base
- warmblood base
- baroque base
- draft x warmblood base
- pony x warmblood base
- draft x baroque base
- warmblood x baroque base?
- pony x baroque

So that's 4 different types of warmblood cross bases, depending on what's contributing, 2 different types of pony base, 3 different types of draft base, and 3-4 different types of baroque base. If you wished to expand upon this still further you could add bases corresponding to crosses with some breeds with very unique conformation, e.g.
- friesian x draft
- friesian x warmblood
- arabian x warmblood
- arabian x pony
- friesian x baroque
- others?

If we went with this system for the crossbreeds I think one good selling point for them would be the fact that they would have different breed art that couldn't be obtained with a store horse. You could effectively design your own breed. For example, I could decide I want a bunch of spotted draft horses, so I'd breed appaloosas to clydes, to get some spotted horses on the draft x warmblood base, then breed back to clydes to boost the amount of draft blood, to get some spotted horses on the draft base.

Although perhaps we could still use the pure breed base for when a crossbreed has greater than 85% of one breed, which in real life is what you get with Pintabians, and some Friesian derived breeds. Then you could get horses that look just like Arabians or Friesians, but with a large variety of extra colours or markings.

A system which had both the generic bases, and had the possibility of using pure breed bases for almost-pure crosses would be the best of both worlds, in my opinion.

Well, I don't plan on making recognised crossbreeds part of the Equine Center to purchase, they would only be obtained by breeding the foundation breeds (e.g. an Arabian and a Thoroughbred - an Anglo Arab by itself would not be purchasable directly from the EC).  So in a sense, recognised crossbreeds are already getting their own unique art that isn't available in the EC.

That's what could separate them from general crossbreeds - they will just use the parents' breed art, whereas recognised get their own.

Regardless, I will be starting with recognised crossbreeds and we can go from there, maybe I can poll the game on which they would prefer.  I personally would love to see all genetic modifiers/markings in all breeds, would make a nice change to see Clydesdales with something other than Sabino xD

I look forward to seeing what Abbey comes up with however:)

i really like the idea of an horse that's mostly (maybe 75% or more) one breed being able to use the "pure" breed artwork. 

the idea of having a rainbow of arabians on the gorgeous arabian artwork is ♥

also, if we're only going to be doing recognized cross breeds, do we need to worry about various breed mixes? or could we just have things like ''morab" art or "abstang" art? 

Last edited on 2017-07-05 at 09:42:14 by ᴋᴀʜᴢɪᴇ ɪ

Personally, I rather to stick with recognized crossbreeds. I think that unlimited crossbreeding can have negative influence in this game in long term. It might can led to mass of unwanted horses and decline in economy. I've played a lot of horse SIMs and those with unlimited crossbreeding often have a lot of unwanted horses and horrible economy.

People will start to breed recklessly and ends up with Clydes x Trakes x Welsh x Arabs x TWH x etc (probably every breed in this game in one pedigree DX) In result, it also affected the players. The players would become angry when their lines become tainted because they make a mistake of trusting the buyers. In result, a lot of players kept their lines private and economy was horrible. 

This is the main reason why I choose and stay with EV. In here, I don't have to worry about checking every single pedigree to make sure that it is not Clydes x Trakes x Welsh x Arabs x TWH x etc horse... That and because of breed arts, I HATE generic arts and I tend to avoided those games with generic breed arts. Generic arts make the game feels unrealistic. 

I've seen a lot of games that did a lot better with recognized crossbreeds so I support this especially if they get their own breed arts. I love the idea that you can't get them from store as well.

If realistic, it would be nice to see every breed on this game to have ability to be crossbreed into a recognized crossbreed. I am not familiar with horse breeds so if there's a breed that cannot be crossed with current breed, maybe use that as bridge to bring in a new breed. 

EX: if Clydes can't be crossed with any of current breeds. Introduce Shires to this game so Clydes can be crossed with Shires.
Again, this is just example XD I am not expert with horse breeds and I have no idea if there is a recognized crossbreed for Shires and Clydes XD

Anyways, my point is, you can kill two birds with one stone... we get to have a new breed plus new recognized crossbreed option.

Last edited on 2017-07-05 at 10:51:32 by Aɴᴅʀᴏᴍᴇᴅᴀ

I agree with Andromeda. I think allowing unlimited crossbreeding will allow things to get really messy, cluttered, and excessive. Sticking with recognized crossbreeds is a lot easier and safer.

I'm honestly pretty excited for the (eventual) addition of recognized crossbreeds! (You have no idea how excited I am for the potential to breed Warlanders!)
I also think it has the potential to create some additional cooperation among players... if one player has an amazing thoroughbred herd, and another has a great appaloosa program, they could work together to create some fantastic appaloosa sport horses, for instance.

Though honestly, I do feel like regardless of the percentage of various breeds within a horse, it should use the "mix" artwork, otherwise it would be visually indistinguishable from the "pure" horses, and could make it very hard for someone who is trying to only breed a pure breed... Thinking about real life breeding programs, it can at times cause a ton of later issues when it comes to genetic testing and such if it turns out that a horse somewhere back in the gene pool wasn't the pure breed that it was claimed to be.

The semi-exception to that, which I would think would almost *have* to be included within the limited crossbreeding would be for breeds where crosses are registerable as a pure breed... like breeding a quarter horse to a paint in real life results in a horse that can be registered as a purebred paint. So in-game, a quarter horse x paint cross should result in offspring that would use the paint breed art, and be listed as a purebred paint. I know this is the case for some other breeds as well, though I don't know an entire list.

Though introducing the recognized crossbreeds will obviously require a ton of research into all the potential combinations that have enough recognition to count, as well as accepted outcrosses that result in offspring that can be registered as pure! I'm sure we have a lot of players who would be willing to lend what they know of favored crosses. Maybe something similar to Abbey's post regarding adding colors and patterns to our existing breeds could be helpful in compiling a list of crosses that would be common/deliberate enough to qualify in-game.

(Though since I mentioned it, I would love to see the color and pattern additions to our existing breeds happen before new crosses get added, and even before foal art.)

In the farther future, I support adding new pure breeds, though doing so slowly. With a slow rollout of them, maybe one or two a year, I would hope enough hype around them could build so that they would have some popularity for breeding. And while it would make it more work-intensive, if this were done after crossbreeding were implemented, that could add to popularity as well. Like, if saddlebreds were added, suddenly we could also have national show horses (saddlebred x arabian crosses!)

Ulysses Blue's suggestion earlier for having somewhat "generic" "type" breed art is actually really interesting, too, though I feel like it's kind of a completely different thing than the recognized crosses. But the ability to breed different 'types' to each other to get new color and pattern combinations, and breed those gradually onto a different base art could be a really interesting long-term project. I can see it being a really fun long-term project, as she suggested, to essentially create your own breed. If someone were interested, they could even potentially use that system to recreate an existing breed that we don't have in-game. I DO think that would have to be a very, very far-future plan, though, since it would come with a lot of additional game and market issues. Lots of grade-type crosses that don't have a plan behind them that could clog up the market. Still, that could be a really interesting mechanic, eventually.

(Apparently I have many feelings on this topic.)

There's actually already a list of recognised crossbreeds that could potentially be added to EV. :) There's almost 30 of them, and only the Lipizzaners don't produce any recognised crossbreed, although technically there's one or two crossbreeds which only need one particular breed to be present, and the other breed can be anything, so Lipizzaners could be used for them.