Geldings, additional courses, new 'personality'

[BlackOak2]

I haven't read through in full detail ....

But here's my vote loud and clear: Altering with benefits.


Re: the specifics, i like the idea of misbehaving horses, but i'm a bit worried that players could pompously enter these horses to competitions with the intent to purposely harm another players horse yes, perhaps i'm being, well, less then optimistic, but there it is.

perhaps some horses can be more "accident prone" then others? i dont know... similar to the idea of "failed breedings" perhaps.

either way - love the idea.... and because i've just eaten lunch... defiantly sounds better than the freshest yummest bit of pizza right now.

Well, I suppose exactly what should happen is still on the drawing board, but I do recall we did hit on the possibility that some people would enter just for the possibility of harming other peoples horses.
I don't recall how that ended... anyway...

Thanks for voting!

[Tjigra]

I'd vote 1, but I am rather particular about those benefits are only being more predictable, not better on the base.

I have next to no experience with stallions in RL, only ever ridden geldings and an occasional mare or two. But from what I've seen as a spectator, geldings are not better (or probably that's because people don't geld their best stallions).

I played another virtual horse game before (equine-ranch), and there were geldings and spayed mares, however, you rarely saw them. They had a show bonus, I am not sure how big, but people rarely took advantage of that unless on the very highest show levels, but that meant older, seasoned horses who already had plenty of offspring by the time they were neutered. Also the market for geldings was slim to none.
The reason I see for this - in RL you have to invest so much more to breed the horses than you have to ride them. Many people can afford to buy a horse, stable it somewhere for a reasonable money, ride it, show it in beginner / novice levels. It is rare (at least where I am from) to see someone own a mare or two, actively breed them, raise the foals and train them to be their showhorses. That is usually reserved for bigger operations, you'd own your own farm normally, several mares, and it is rare indeed that a breeder shows their own horse - they could still own it, but it'd be given to someone to show anyway - in other words, in RL you normally are either a breeder or a trainer / competitor, not both. In here we are all breeders. We breed our best show horses ourselves (I am talking about established players), we raise them, train them, show them, and breed their offspring. If we buy horses, that's usually to breed them. If we sell horses, they usually end up being bred and very rarely become champions. There is however a steady market for grinders, and that is the role I see for geldings here. And I really liked the idea that the stallion handling courses affect show results, and the penalty for showing stallions without at least basic set of handling courses being done should be rather severe. Then we would have some market for our geldings.
(That, and I think gelding should be implemented together with occasional random chance of breeding a mare in pasture if kept together with stallions, and a possibility of injury if stallions are kept in a pasture together. The logistics of keeping stallions would also encourage people to geld more.)

[BlackOak2]

...

Thank you for voting!

I think we have hit upon at least a few of the points you made.
Personally, I like offering a benefit to the altered horses for showing would provide the incentive for players to think twice about whether the horse may be a better shower or a better breeder. But I think we've nominally decided is that breed-able horses should suffer more from random penalties during showing then non-breed-able. I'm alright either way, I suppose, just as long as the penalties are enough to make a difference.

After looking briefly over the beginning of this topic, maybe we didn't mention it, but I thought we had, that there may be (should be, would be... I would prefer it), no change to the horse's competition performance if altered after a certain age (for instance, we'd only see better possible results if the horse was altered before 8 years, but no change in competition results if it was altered after 8, or maybe much less changed results, or something).

But again, my personal opinion...

[Malakai10]

...

Thank you for voting!

I think we have hit upon at least a few of the points you made.
Personally, I like offering a benefit to the altered horses for showing would provide the incentive for players to think twice about whether the horse may be a better shower or a better breeder. But I think we've nominally decided is that breed-able horses should suffer more from random penalties during showing then non-breed-able. I'm alright either way, I suppose, just as long as the penalties are enough to make a difference.

After looking briefly over the beginning of this topic, maybe we didn't mention it, but I thought we had, that there may be (should be, would be... I would prefer it), no change to the horse's competition performance if altered after a certain age (for instance, we'd only see better possible results if the horse was altered before 8 years, but no change in competition results if it was altered after 8, or maybe much less changed results, or something).

But again, my personal opinion...

I think I wrote in that after age 8 there would be no change; I put it in an edit in the first post.

[BlackOak2]

I think I wrote in that after age 8 there would be no change; I put it in an edit in the first post.

I knew it sounded familiar. Somehow I must have overlooked it.

[Tjigra]

I think I wrote in that after age 8 there would be no change; I put it in an edit in the first post.

8 years won't really make a difference.
Let's count.
Professional trainers with training courses finished can more or less get their horses to their peak by the age of 3.
When a stallion turns 3, he becomes breedable. With training out of the way, all his energy can go into breeding. 10 breedings each turn result in 10 foals every 2 weeks of stallion's age, amounting to 240 a year, amounting to well over a 1000 by the time he turns 8.
With each and every breeding resulting in a live, healthy foal, that's more than enough to consider his breeding done. Now we can geld him, and he's got unlimited time to make his show career as a gelding. With no breeding, he won't expend energy, no need to take turns, no need to age him any more. Voila! We've got the best from both worlds - plenty of foals on the ground, and gelding performance in the ring.
As I see it, the only limiting factor (although not very realistic) would be shaping the gelding impact on the number of breedings the stallion has done before the procedure. The more experienced Casanova we have, the less impact on behavior / show performance gelding would make. If he's covered more than, say, 10 mares, there is no use to geld him anymore regardless of age.

[BlackOak2]

The more experienced Casanova we have, the less impact on behavior / show performance gelding would make. If he's covered more than, say, 10 mares, there is no use to geld him anymore regardless of age.

I like the idea, but how difficult would it be to program this?

For a breeder like me, I may breed a mare or stallion 20 times, but only two, maybe three, sometimes just one will be kept, the rest would all be rehomed. So choosing to alter a horse for me would be a very early thing, like within the first year or two.

I like the idea of limiting breedings or limiting ages for altering horses to benefit competitions. My issue is, how easy would it be to implement something and what bugs could we face with it? Attaching it to age might arguably prevent the most bugginess and be the easiest to program. But attaching it to the amount of offspring might be more appropriate. However, attaching 10 offspring count to a mare, would already make her well over 10 years and possibly over 15 years if she carries long.

Would you then be suggesting having two separate commands for the mares and stallions? Or having an if, but, and scenario, meaning 'if the horse doesn't have x number of children by x age, then...' ?

[Tjigra]

Would you then be suggesting having two separate commands for the mares and stallions? Or having an if, but, and scenario, meaning 'if the horse doesn't have x number of children by x age, then...' ?

I was thinking mainly about stallions. For mares it might as well be the age, mares are much more limited in their number of offspring anyway.
But for stallions, I meant specifically the number of breeding attempts, not the number of living offspring. So that you really have to choose, not breed 100 foals, keep 5 best, then geld the stallion and show him as a gelding. This way you still have the best of both worlds. You don't need 100 living foals for the stallion to be successful producer, you only need one or two exceptional foals. And of course, with limiting the number of breeding attempts, someone can get lucky and get that one exceptional colt on the first try, but that would be just it - luck, not timing around the rules.

[BlackOak2]

Would you then be suggesting having two separate commands for the mares and stallions? Or having an if, but, and scenario, meaning 'if the horse doesn't have x number of children by x age, then...' ?

I was thinking mainly about stallions. For mares it might as well be the age, mares are much more limited in their number of offspring anyway.
But for stallions, I meant specifically the number of breeding attempts, not the number of living offspring. So that you really have to choose, not breed 100 foals, keep 5 best, then geld the stallion and show him as a gelding. This way you still have the best of both worlds. You don't need 100 living foals for the stallion to be successful producer, you only need one or two exceptional foals. And of course, with limiting the number of breeding attempts, someone can get lucky and get that one exceptional colt on the first try, but that would be just it - luck, not timing around the rules.

I understood what you said.
I asked you for the mares so that you would include them and offer what your thoughts were concerning them.
I also didn't mean living foals, I meant offspring in total, i.e. breedings, but I see how that could have been taken incorrectly.

But I still wonder how difficult this might be to script and input?
If everything were easy, we could snap our fingers, right?

I see where you went with it though. For a breeder like myself, I don't freeze stallions to breed to indefinitely (or almost so), the only exception to that is the quest breeders (sometimes they're difficult to get what's needed). But what you said, there can be a lot of misuse of the ability to breed for the best of the best, then alter and use indefinitely for earning competition money on a frozen account and if done before the age limit, the benefits for altering would still be in play.
To prevent (or at least help prevent) this, your suggestion is to simply attach it directly to the coverings of studs (leaving mares unmentioned), in total, rather then age.

Now that I've revisited what you typed and considered it further, I can see a potential problem arising from this in the future when another part of the game gets implemented.
When our admins see fit to add in the possibility of not achieving pregnancy with a covering, the '10 limited coverings' will be even more restricting. I don't really have a problem with this though. I wonder if they'll attach potency to genes?

But like I said, as a primary breeder and not a primary competitor, the argument between altering or not altering really isn't big with me. My decision for such would be done early, either the horse would always be breedable or it would be altered within the first year or two. So perhaps I'm not an appropriate one to answer back on this argument of the 'best of both worlds'.

[Abbih]

I vote for a bonus for gelding/spaying, but it needs to be small. Maybe it would work better if the bonus wasn't in show results. Maybe the horse would train slightly faster. If or when injuries become a thing in the game (I know it was something planned), maybe spayed/gelded horses have less of a chance of getting injured.