*Advanced Training Lowering Horses Non-Spec Stats

First things first, the original idea to spark this came from Maple. 

I'm just typing it out cause I'd like to see it come through.

I suggest a sort of 'Advanced Training' that could either be connected to a stable, or just placed in the general town area.  It could be called 'Advanced Training' or 'Private Lessons' - though private lessons is taking by the riding school, and it would allow for non-specialty stats to be transferred into specialty stan

The general idea would be for a limited number of horses (between 5-25 per day) could be entered into this advanced training, and it would move a portion of their improper non-specialty stats into proper stats for their specialization, as to not have a net stat loss by doing this.  (Ex. A western horse would move stats from their strength, endurance, or agility into their speed or intelligence.)  The horse would keep his total net stats.

The exact amount of stats that would be transferred should be on a sliding scale, to make it viable for any horse that needs it.  Possibly a percentage of total ns stats.  So a horse with 200 ns stats would could move 10%, or 20 stats, making it 180ns stats.  The next day it might be only 9%.  I haven't worked out the math, as I figure it would be much better for someone like Abbey or River to determine what a significant but proper amount would be.   In short, this means high ns horses would have a faster ns spec exchange, but when you get beneath 50 or so non-spec stats, you may only be moving 2-3 a day.

The training would be available to any horse above training level 5.  This is to prevent people from using it all on foals, and having training level 5 would make it seem more 'advanced' in nature, and show that it was a horse properly cared for throughout its life, and it would be ready to move onto this more intensive training.

What this would do is allow us to breed down non-spec stats as well as save some good horses who just have ns stats that are a bit too high.  It would be limited between training level 5 and age, and could even be capped at a certain amount of non-spec stats (perhaps 10 in each group) or allowed to move ns stats all the way down to 0, slowly but surely.

Having a cap on the number of horses allowed would make it a big decision on which horses to work with.  Work down those high non-stat horses to a manageable amount, or take those already low ns horses and get them even lower.  Manually breeding down would still be required, but this method could save a lot of horses that don't perform well in shows due to having 60+ non spec stats.  This would also help when people breed horses of different specializations (like some of my western paints came from endurance parents, and have 100+ ns that I'm breeding down) in order to have a foal that would still be viable.

Please come forward with any and all ideas you see with this you think would make it better. 

This is just a very basic idea with basic guidelines, but if I wanted anything implemented on EV (even over foal art) this would be it.  I would absolutely love to be able to lower non-spec stats on horses that have been cubed, horses with multi-spec parents etc.  Thanks for reading!

Again, I thank Maple for coming up with the idea, and some of the guidelines (like only above training level 5) as I don't think I would have been able to flesh any of it out without her input.

Any edits based on feedback will be posted here, or in a different color.


Last edited on 2018-12-07 at 16:14:32 by River

It is an interesting idea. 
I have several questions:

- how will you ensure that poorer members will have fair advantage? there are players who can't afford training until they have enough money.

- if we all can lower our NSS, what is our next step once most of horses' NSS is low enough to compete? We don't have enough shows created for most of horses in the game. 
- also, we will lose our purpose in breeding for low NSS since we all eventually don't need to breed for it (after few generations, majority of horses will reach less than 20 NSS, then 10 NSS, then 0 NSS). what is our next step when that happens?

I am on the fence right now. yes, NSS is extremely hard to breed for but it is a challenge, the one that will last for years. without that challenge, we have nothing. conformation is useless. colors are very easy to breed for since we have tweaks. showing will be pointless due to large amount of competitors and the lack of shows. it will be much harder to win shows when everyone have horses with similar NSS. 

1 - ensuring poorer members have the ability to take part is probably something Abbey will have to think about.  I didn't bother with thinking over how the pricing would fit into a basic member's day to day.  Only because I don't have to think about it, so I don't know exactly how much 'spare' money basic members sit around with.  

2 - That's why it's on a sliding scale, and will be a limited number of horses per day.  People like myself, with 400+ horses, will only be able to choose a portion of our horses to focus on, and it'll greatly slow the process of lowering nss of our herds.  It'll be up for players to decide on which horses to focus on, and it no way would you be able to get 400 horses down to 0nss in any short period of time.  The sliding scale is in place so that you won't put your horse through 5 training sessions and be at 0nss. If it slows well enough that a horse at training level 5 (around 12yo) with 60nss were to exchange the 1-3 stats per day (averaged out to 2nss/day) that horse would have to do 30 training sessions to get down to 0nss.  That's four weeks, having trained that particular horse each day, and they would be 16yo.  If the limit is 5 horses, you could reduce 10 horses to nss before retirement (from one herd, all at 60nss starting).   If that seems fast, you adjust the sliding scale, make it so only 1nss can be moved when a horse gets below 10nss, or 20nss.  It would be drawn out further so that a horse would hit 0nss around retirement age.   

3 - the show issue is separate, as I've actually found the last few days we don't even have enough competitors in shows, and shows are running at 2-3 entries.  This might bring more participants to shows.  It'll also make horses in higher tiers (where it's a much higher stat range) perform better.  

4 - I highly doubt with this method every horse is going to his 0nss any time in the future.   Foundation and higher nss horses will still be bred to these lower nss horses, which will have to be put through this again when they age and hit training level 5.  A lot of people will just find it too tedious if they're simply selling off horses, or riding school groups at low generations.  People like me will focus on fixing nice confo/good looking horses will high nss so they're worthwhile to breed.  This option will be fixing a lot more things than it's going to mess up, is what I'm getting at.    

I think this is a really neat idea! I also think it would mean people would be more open to breeding to outside horses with higher NSS because they could bring the NSS in the foal to fit their breeding program.

Personally I think it should maybe be a little like the riding school in that it's random, you can't say you want a specific amount moved, there is a chance that blank number could be moved per training based on the NSS they have. Say there is a chance that up to 5% of a horses NSS could be moved at a time. I think something like that would be more fair as it is chance based. In a horse with 60 NSS, that would be 0-3 stats moved per training (or maybe 1-3 depending on how it's set up). And that you do either regular training or advanced training. So if you choose to advanced training you aren't working toward the stat boost. It means more strategy is involved. And so it still doesn't encourage people to use hay or sugar cubes because they can train them out.

I think with some detail tweaking this could be a really good addition to the game play!

I will support ONLY if reducing ns stats WON'T be percentage. I would suggest 0-1 per training per each ns stat group (summing 0-3 per training in total) no matter how high ns stats are. So for show jumping horse there will be a chance for reducing 0-1 STR, 0-1 INT and 0-1 END for one training. And if for example a horse will have 0 in STR already the training will have a chance to reduce only 0-1 INT and 0-1 END, no faster reducing for remaining groups. In that way ns stats will still be a challenge and there will be no way to award poor breeding in one horse life.

Last edited on 2018-11-21 at 23:24:58 by Carin Ravensdale

Personally totally off topic but sort of not in a way - a redesign of horses in general should have been done before the recode came out.

 So instead of having new foundation horses with stats all over the place in all areas of speed, intel, agility etc once you set the horses speciality any stats in those non discipline specific area would distribute as evenly as possible into the 2 set discipline categories IE a Dressage horse would have every stat in Intel & Agil & zero everywhere else. Then everyone would have a level playing field. And there would be no need for this NSS row... or even the ability to breed them down like the old game would have sufficed.

Every other game I played over the years has had new horses start at zero & you then built up those stats/points/experience etc in only the areas you wanted. 

Or just rcode the show system to only take into acct the 2 specific areas for the set discipline so it doesnt matter about whats in the NSS areas at all. Its all the same thing as being able to breed/buy/train the NSS away but quicker. And perhaps easier IDK how the show system is coded but if you can code it to in theory have the higher stat entrant with the lower NSS to win then surely its got to be easier to code it to only see the 2 Discipline specific area stats only.

Horses fed with Hay/Sugar cubes before age 3 could have their stats distributed evenly into the correct areas once a disciline is set but after age 3 or even slightly older like 5yo they possibly could not have them reset evenly. A percentage could still remain in the wrong area but as they dont count IE in effect not seen by the game its up to the player to take a risk as to keep cube feeding after a certain point. I dont see how gainng stats is hard overall even without cube stuffing & its also a bit unfair to gain up to 7stats (perhaps more I dont use them so not sure) per cube use which can be converted at any time but no more than 1-2 per single use discipline specific treat. 

Last edited on 2018-11-22 at 03:11:09 by Fabelhaft [WBs/Friesians]

I think the best way would be the chance to breed down the ns stats. It could be like 20% of chances to get 0 ns stat in AGI for example if both parents has 1 in this group, not only if at least one of the parents has 0.

@Fabelhaft - I've always liked how the stats had a bit of variation, just to keep it interesting.  It just feels realistic to me for horses to have slightly better and worse qualities.  This though, is a way to get them all to lower numbers.

@Carin - The point of a percentage-based decrease of stats is exactly for the reason to correct poor breeding, and feeding of cubes, because it does significantly effect the way a horse performs.  The percentage doesn't half to be a significantly high one, but I think that it's important to be able to fix things in the lifetime of a horse, or at least make an impact on them.  I'm not saying a 200-300ns horse should reach 0 by retirement, but he should at least reach below 100, or even into an alright showing range.  If we think realistically, a good horse, with training, should reach it's potential in it's lifetime if properly cared for from the start. 

That being said, I wouldn't be against the stats dropping like you say, if that's how Abbey would configure it.  I was just offering an option to consider.  In the end all I want is a way to lower non-spec stats.

The breeding down of non-spec stats and a way to do it is another suggestion I've been tempted to make though, haha.

I understood the point, but I think that it would be absolutely unfair towards breeders who are doing hard work to breed the lowest ns stat horses as they can. Most of those poor bred horses won't be even put on the market. The percentage way will still award breeders who didn't breed them well :) 

@ Fabelhaft;
I agree. I always thought that we should've changed how horses' stats works.
I always find it unrealistic that a horse that are super weak in strength, intelligence, and agility still can do very well in racing. In reality, that horse's bone would snap within 5 minutes due to lack of strength. That horse won't be smart enough to listen to rider and avoid other horses since it is stupid. A horse even need some basic agility in racing in order to able dodging other horses and is able to make their curve properly without messing up. Same thing applies to all speciality. In order to do well, a horse need to be skilled in all of stats. Also, there are many horses that can switch their speciality in RL. A former racing horse can be trained into an excellent jumper. I know a breeder who bred their warmbloods for dressage and jumping/hunting/etc. The buyers can choose what to train their horses for since that breeder bred their horses to be versatile. In RL, temperament have larger role in horses' ability to perform instead of stats since a decent horse need to excel in all of stats anyways. That breeder I know taught me that. Her horses are versatile because of their temperament. A skittish horse with excellent stats won't be able to perform well because it will be too busy flinching over little things. -rants over-
It is too late for us to fix it anyways... things would've worked a lot better if we went with this path.

@ Carin, I agree with you. I do think it is unfair to breeders.

@ Nittrous, let's be realistic... Abbey probably will never have time to code in a sliding scale system. It will takes too much of time since we don't have any similar system in the game. You're talking about a brand new system which will brings us more bugs when Abbey still have a lot bugs to tackle. The best solution to NSS issue is to modify the formula for breeding down since it should just require Abbey to change numbers instead of coding in a brand new scripts. It is the only fair solution for everyone. Poorer players won't be disadvantaged and breeders who worked their a** off won't lose their hard work since they still are ahead of players who start breeding down only after the formula are tweaked.
I will choose to see Abbey modify the formula instead of waiting for other 2+ years for this feature. 

Last edited on 2018-11-22 at 20:49:38 by ωιςκεδ

I might be OK with something like this if it was very, very slow.  Maybe something like how stat boost points work?  So you would have to train multiple times to get a non-discipline stat decrease, and that decrease should be very small.  Low non-discipline stats should be difficult but achievable.  

However, I have found it is possible to breed non-discipline stats down, by maybe a point or two from the average of the parents, but only if they are matched properly.  And, of course, a really high non-discipline stat can be quickly decreased by breeding it to a really low one.  So there are already options to decrease those stats.

I like the system Confessor has proposed.

I also like the idea that its 'further training' after level 5, and works in a similar way. Say you lose between 5-10 NSS after reaching level 1 of 'further training' etc

it would mean that those who breed to decrease NSS stats still have a way to do so, and if horses only have say 25 NSS that they don't essentially have a way to go to completely 0 in all NSS, but there would be a significant decrease that for future breeding would help bring down NSS. It would also mean that the horses wouldn't be reaching 'further training' and the chance to decrease NSS until later in life which fits with a lot of breeding programs. It also wouldn't impact on those who breed for lower NSS significantly as the goal would still be lower NSS and it wouldn't be too easily attainable. It also means the horses with higher NSS may not be abandoned if it's possible to bring a horse who has say, 70 NSS down to 50 before the time they've retired. 

As for horses fed with cubes, I feed mine cubes until age 3 (although may be changing this) and whilst it's expensive when they hit 3 I give them the 'wrong' discipline and convert them over. I've even started doing this with my non-cubed horses and the only issue is you then have to pay credits to convert them again. I know for buying horses in who've been cubed it can be different, but I find it works to me and I get a nice redistribution of stats too

Or, maybe, there could be a cap of how low you could bring non-discipline stats with this method.  Maybe it would only work until those stats were at 60 total, or something like that, around foundation levels.  That way, it would be a good way to reduce those really high nd stats, but you'd still have to put in the careful breeding work that it takes to bring those stats below foundation levels.