[ADDED] *modify breeding formula

@Marigold Sunshine Yes, that's what I mean. ^^ On all your points. Sorry, it's getting late and I'm tired. xD

With the whole non-discipline stat element in showing, we had lots of things like treating strategies - what treats at what ages?  How long do you use treats like hay cubes before you convert training?  I'm trying to think if these strategies will still be relevant without non-discipline stats being such a factor.  Will it be worth people's whiles to just throw hay cubes at their horses, in hopes that they get more discipline stats than with trait-specific treats?  You wouldn't have to worry about removing the stray stats that missed the discipline stats.  (Would you gain more discipline stats by using hay cubes than by using, say, carrots?  Probably peppermints would work that way.)

If people start using hay cubes and peppermints for treats, will that make farming obsolete before it's even introduced?  Or will there be an option for hay farms, and that will be all that people will grow?  (Now I'm thinking of possibilities for peppermint farms - they would have to be very, very expensive to obtain and be very, very slow to produce.  Or maybe have some long or expensive process to turn the raw mint leaves into actual peppermints.)

while all these ideas are interesting, i think it's still very important to remember that editing the breeding formula to allow for breeding down of non-spec stats (which makes progressive generations better at showing than their parents) already solves this issue. 

the ability to breed down non-spec stats is itself a generational bonus. 

the only down-side is the complexity of coding. 

the ability to breed down non-spec stats:
- keeps discipline specific treats important 
- allows for increasing showing ability in subsequent generations
- rewards focus breeding programs
- doesn't discriminate between player's choices of goals (ie doesn't punish for early breeding)
- is probably going to be a ***** to code

Last edited on 2018-02-05 at 22:43:18 by ᴋᴀʜᴢɪᴇ ɪ

I agree, Kahzie, and still very much support continued significance of non-specialty stats, but if Abbey does decide to go the other way, I just want to make sure we've explored the possible pit falls, and possible solutions as well.

So here's an impromptu idea I've had for generational bonuses to discourage breeding at a young age.

Last edited on 2018-02-06 at 03:07:07 by Abbey

I haven't had the chance to read 3-4 epic pages of comments, so my feedback is just based on this earlier comment by Abbey, and I'll come back to comment on the rest of the discussion once I've read through it all:

Are you thinking of making the bonus dependent on the parents' total stats, or just discipline stats?

While I do like the idea of cross-discilpline breedings being less penalized,

Last edited on 2018-02-06 at 06:41:15 by kahzie

I'm not wild about penalizing early breeding, either, except to prevent someone from gaming the new system by pushing through the generations as quickly as possible.

Although I strongly support the original suggestion (breeding down non-specialty stats), I would rather NO CHANGE be made than see the other suggestions be implemented. NO CHANGE would also lead to absolutely zero time spent coding and zero new bugs.

Last edited on 2018-02-06 at 08:01:35 by North

@Confessor
Regarding your first post on page 4, where you were speculating about the breeding formula, you may be interested to know I have already done these tests when I was working on my foal stat calculator, and already have all these results.

Firstly, there is indeed a discipline bonus. A horse with a discipline set will give a 10% bonus to the discipline-specific stats. Non-discipline stats will receive no bonus, and a horse with no discipline set will receive no bonus on any stats. It's a bit more complicated than that, but that's the brief version.

Secondly, breeding down non-discipline stats only happens due to rounding in the formula. It's the average of both parents' stats, rounded down to the nearest number. The only way to get it lower is to breed to a horse with a lower number in that stat, and if you don't use pre-recode lines there's only so low it can go.

For anyone who wants more info, I have the breeding formula explained in more detail with my online foal calculator, which is in the Game Guides forum section.

Yeah, I did figure that out about the rounding down method of lowering non-discipline stats after I thought about it a little more.

Wait, you don't already make more money at higher grades? That's something I would strongly support, then. In fact it seems essential in order to make breeding higher statted horses worth it. I think it'd also make players more willing to drop tens of thousands of dollars on a high-statted horse, as they have a higher chance of making the money back. This seems like a fairly simple, hugely important thing to change.

Also, I don't think adding generational bonuses based on age would be too penalizing for color breeders. They likely already aren't breeding for stats/showing, as many know breeding early will limit stat gain. However, some probably breed for color first and then for stats once a desirable color is obtained. Perhaps there could be some way for horses to "catch up"? Only if the generational bonus cap were decided based on a max stat total, rather than a cap based on generations, then we end up running into all of the same problems. So I'm not sure what the best solution is.

No, more advanced shows do not give higher payouts.