Breeding and Stats

Hi everyone,

Thank you to everyone who's been answering my questions. I'm still getting the hang of everything. 

I have a question about breeding and stats. I understand that only horses from before the re-code (or their descendants) have the really low NS stats (like under 10 stats in each NS discipline). And that horses with low NSS do better during shows because more of their stats are in their specialty and show results are based primarily on the number of speciality stats a horse has. 

There is currently no way to lower your NSS, as far as I can tell. And eventually EV will run out of the ultra low, under 10 NSS horses unless they are bred EXTENSIVELY. So my question here is why are there standards about limiting breeding when breeding is literally the only way to get NSS that are lower than what you get in Foundation Horses?

TIA

From my understanding alot of people don't like to "overbreed" their horses, maybe more of a chance to accidentally inbreed, which alot of people don't like. I'm sure others have better answers 

It’s not currently impossible to lower ns stats. You have to do some selective breeding and pair horses correctly to produce a foal with lower ns stats. Though I don’t necessarily breed for low ns stats as my horses do just fine with foundation level stats so I can’t give pointers on how to do this. 

Limiting breeding is important to breeders to protect their lines. Breeders are usually picky about allowing outside breeding or selling their foals because they work hard on their lines to make them the best so by breeding lots and lots of foals and selling them causes their lines to be less rare and special. 

I'm asking specifically about lowering the NSS on an already extant horse, not breeding a new one. Because if the foal's NS stats are approximately an average of their parents' stats, then that means your NSS will increase with each generation. Especially if there is a limit on how many times a low NSS horse can be bred. 

For example, if a show jumping stallion had 5 endurance, and a show jumping mare had 15 endurance, then the foal would have 10 endurance. The foal's endurance stat will never be lower than their lowest parent's stat, and that compounds with each generation. If that show jumping foal with 10 endurance later breeds with a show jumping horse with 15 endurance, the new foal will have 12 or 13 endurance. It goes up every time. Unless there is a method for lower NSS through breeding that I don't know about? 

It also means that certain breeds, especially those who didn't have many low NSS horses that made it through the recode, are at a disadvantage considering that new NSS can't be created, they can only come from other NSS horses. 

It just seems counterintuitive. Or maybe part of a plan to phase out low stat horses from the game?

I’m pretty sure there was never a way to lower stats on a horse that already exists? You’ve always had to breed down ns stats from what I can remember. Unless I just wasn't doing the horse part of the game right, but I'm pretty sure you've never just been able to remove stats from a horse's ns when it's already been born.

Either way, there's no real limit to how many times a horse can be bred. It's up to the owner and how many times they want to breed it because again, nobody really wants a foal that came from an overbred sire or dam and people want to preserve their lines best they can. When the recode came out, precode horses were selling at a crazy amount and I guess that's when they were popular and being sold like crazy. Now they are with their respective owners and I'm not really sure there's anything that can be done about that issue. I know that if it were me, it would be more important for me to keep my lines short, preserved, and rare rather than letting other members have a free for all breeding sessions with my especially low ns stat horse, and I think that's how a lot of breeders are. I don't blame them either, if I had precode horses I wouldn't offer them for stud except for one selective breeding. It's just that important to breeders who work hard on their lines.

Last edited on 2019-10-22 at 22:10:30 by wey

It is impossible to lower a horse's base stats during its lifetime.  It IS possible to lower nss stats through breeding.

Basically, what you have to do is breed two horses together where the average of a certain stat (say, driving) ends in .5.  The game will always round down.  If you can get all three nss stats to round down, you will maximize the amount it is possible to lower nss stats per generation. You achieve that .5 by matching an odd stat to an even stat.

Obviously, this is a very slow process.  But it does work.

Certain things can complicate this process, such as the way base stats and stats acquired over a lifetime get inherited by a foal slightly differently.  But, in general, matching odd to even stats will lower your nss stats consistently.  You will be able to do things like pair a horse with 52 nss stats, and one with 51, and get a foal with 50.

As for things like "overbreeding," yes, there are players who care a great deal about that, but there are also players who do not care at all.  And many in between as well.  Of course it is easier (to a point) to bring down your herd's nss stats by repeatedly breeding a horse that has particularly low stats to begin with.  This does bring complications, though, because horses that are too closely related cannot be bred together, so you will have to bring in new blood for a couple of generations.  It's up to you if you want to do this.  Faster results, vs. being able to sell stock to players who are picky about such things.

I, personally, do not care at all about number of breedings, or "inbreeding."  I am working on a project to bring horses down to, first, zero nss stats, and then zero stats total, creating universal horses that can be bred to any discipline horse and cut its nss stats in half.  I break a number of taboos doing this.  I "overbreed," "inbreed," and breed "too young."  I also do not raise stats in any way (except strategically when you get to single digit nss stats, because it gets complicated there and you have to balance the stats a certain way to get them to drop.)

But it is possible to lower nss stats without getting that extreme.

Feel free to check out my horses.  I have two other accounts, Confessor II and Confessor III, where I have many horses available for stud and brood that have lower than normal nss stats.  I have every breed, but not every discipline, so I might have something that will help you if you use the same disciplines I do.

Confessor, this is EXACTLY what I was looking for! Its a clever trick with the pairing even and odd. Thank you so incredibly much! 

Just raked out this thread. Thanks for this - a guide on lowering nss stats would be a helpful sticky!