Energy Usage

[larissar]

I hear the concern you have, and I understand. I am open to other suggestions. As I said, my main purpose with this is to prevent players from abusing the system and keeping a stud or champion immortal, the simplest implementation is to have this connected with energy as once energy is depleted the horse is forced to age-up in order to continue being used.

Some questions for me to better understand your situations:
- how many times do you breed your studs between turns?
- how many shows do you enter a single horse between turns? Is it more than 100?

I am not trying to implement the suggestions in the OP for realism. Limiting to 4 shows per turn in unreasonable in my opinion.

My opinion has always been and will continue to be: "Fun > Realism"

[QuesthavenFarms]

I'm just going to jump in here and say the main purpose of a breeding and competing tax is to prevent players from keeping horses immortal while benefiting from their genes/training. The exact value is undetermined but will be very low in both cases so as to have a fairly minor effect on general game-play.

I'm considering many things to affect the value, including the ability to learn player skills to reduce the tax (competition), or horse fitness having a benefit (breeding). But nothing is set in stone.

Just thinking out loud here, but if the purpose is to prevent immortality maybe there is some other way that would not effect the general play of breeding and competing. I am thinking of an automatic aging on horses that have not been played after a certain amount of time -- maybe weekly or monthly and that slowly (maybe very slowly) these horses would age out.

Of course I am biased against immortality. I did it for a while and found it boring. My game focus is breeding and stagnant horses (even favorites) just started to bore me.

Just my 2 cents,
QHF

[QuesthavenFarms]

Or actually what if your show entries only entered when you clicked the day forward????

[Fox13]

I do have a few ideas, though I don't know how feasible they would be. (on an off note, today has been very good with no skipping days, Hurrah! maybe the problem with the recent changes has finally been fixed?)
Anyway...

Breeding Suggestions
1. Perhaps have instead of a per turn limit to breedings or energy usage for the stallions, perhaps have a lifetime breeding limit, therefore no matter how old or how young the stallion is, once that lifetime limit is reached, that's it.

2. Once the genetic deficiencies is enacted, overusage of a stallion will result in serious breeding penalties, so whatever gap-stop is introduced could be temporary.

3. Only have at-stud stallions for active stables (i.e. stables that advance a day once a day or more, or however) that log in regularly. Such as, for the stallion to remain at-stud, the stable has to have been visited within the last 24 hour period.

I do think a counter might be the potential way to go, either per year (for the stable's stallion) or for the lifetime of said stallion, especially since training and competing doesn't effect the outcome of the offspring. And if there is a limit to how many times a stallion can be used in total, then some may want to partition out and perhaps be a little more careful which stallion is used for which mare.
On a personal note, I only use my stallions maybe half a dozen times throughout their lifetime right now as I search for balancing reports with balancing points of conformation I want. But I'm not focusing on breeds right now. Even when I did, I used my stallions no more than maybe ten times and kept only perhaps three offspring.


Showing Suggestions (okay, so not so much suggestions as thoughts)
When I enter shows, I usually wait until I've hit a satisfactory weight and few or no days (mainly because if I go fooling around between farm and other places I have a skipping day issue, which may or may not yet be fixed), then I enter into all the available competitions I can find for the single horse I'm training. I have certain limits I'm working around right now, so I keep myself to a minimum of in-training horses (either one or two), so when I enter I'm obviously limiting myself to only certain competitions. When I do that, it might be between five and twenty every couple days, maybe as few as twice a week. Should the problem with the skipping days disappear... I imagine I would enter much more often.

1. If/when we're allowed to hire extra riders, being able to enter more horses into a single rider competition like races for instance, would make filling the competitions much easier. Not a suggestion, just a statement.

2. I could only agree that posing an energy consumption for entering competitions is the easiest way to limit horse entries. However, do we want to enact this right now? Often times I will head into the open competitions and find multiple from days past that haven't yet run and for no real reason (i.e. year limits are from 2-20 with no breed restrictions with little other than the occasional in-hand height issue or one rider per). Limiting how many per turn per horse I think would be most appropriate if we have our competitions filling up with multiple 20 plus entries, at least at this specific time.
That said... I do like the challenge of energy usage for entering competitions.

I hope this offers a little more food-for-thought.

[Randi Potos]

I do have a few ideas, though I don't know how feasible they would be. (on an off note, today has been very good with no skipping days, Hurrah! maybe the problem with the recent changes has finally been fixed?)
Anyway...

Breeding Suggestions
1. Perhaps have instead of a per turn limit to breedings or energy usage for the stallions, perhaps have a lifetime breeding limit, therefore no matter how old or how young the stallion is, once that lifetime limit is reached, that's it.

2. Once the genetic deficiencies is enacted, overusage of a stallion will result in serious breeding penalties, so whatever gap-stop is introduced could be temporary.

3. Only have at-stud stallions for active stables (i.e. stables that advance a day once a day or more, or however) that log in regularly. Such as, for the stallion to remain at-stud, the stable has to have been visited within the last 24 hour period.

I do think a counter might be the potential way to go, either per year (for the stable's stallion) or for the lifetime of said stallion, especially since training and competing doesn't effect the outcome of the offspring. And if there is a limit to how many times a stallion can be used in total, then some may want to partition out and perhaps be a little more careful which stallion is used for which mare.
On a personal note, I only use my stallions maybe half a dozen times throughout their lifetime right now as I search for balancing reports with balancing points of conformation I want. But I'm not focusing on breeds right now. Even when I did, I used my stallions no more than maybe ten times and kept only perhaps three offspring.


Showing Suggestions (okay, so not so much suggestions as thoughts)
When I enter shows, I usually wait until I've hit a satisfactory weight and few or no days (mainly because if I go fooling around between farm and other places I have a skipping day issue, which may or may not yet be fixed), then I enter into all the available competitions I can find for the single horse I'm training. I have certain limits I'm working around right now, so I keep myself to a minimum of in-training horses (either one or two), so when I enter I'm obviously limiting myself to only certain competitions. When I do that, it might be between five and twenty every couple days, maybe as few as twice a week. Should the problem with the skipping days disappear... I imagine I would enter much more often.

1. If/when we're allowed to hire extra riders, being able to enter more horses into a single rider competition like races for instance, would make filling the competitions much easier. Not a suggestion, just a statement.

2. I could only agree that posing an energy consumption for entering competitions is the easiest way to limit horse entries. However, do we want to enact this right now? Often times I will head into the open competitions and find multiple from days past that haven't yet run and for no real reason (i.e. year limits are from 2-20 with no breed restrictions with little other than the occasional in-hand height issue or one rider per). Limiting how many per turn per horse I think would be most appropriate if we have our competitions filling up with multiple 20 plus entries, at least at this specific time.
That said... I do like the challenge of energy usage for entering competitions.

I hope this offers a little more food-for-thought.

I'm not sure about a lifetime cap on breeding. I think it would discourage players from making their stallions available publicly. I also use certain stallions a lot when they have several characteristics that I want in my herd, so I imagine unless the cap was outrageously high, I would hit it fairly quickly. Long before my stallion ages.

I'm one of those players who is a week on, week off. So horses aging if I didn't log in, or horses being removed from stud if I didn't log in, would be extremely frustrating. Part of what keeps me around is the fact that I don't have to play everyday to make it work.

I hate to sit back and criticize someone else's ideas when I don't have any solution to offer myself. But I'd rather say I don't like something now then complain about when it's implemented, you know?

This is a tough one. Given the way the game is set up, it's really difficult to prevent immortality without implementing -something-. Allowing players to transfer horses from one account to another has created a loophole.

[Electron]

Some questions for me to better understand your situations:
- how many times do you breed your studs between turns?
- how many shows do you enter a single horse between turns? Is it more than 100?

I am not trying to implement the suggestions in the OP for realism. Limiting to 4 shows per turn in unreasonable in my opinion.

My opinion has always been and will continue to be: "Fun > Realism"

1. Between turns? Not many. When I don't have as much time, maybe 3-4 (I keep maybe one foal out of that). When I have a decent amount of time, I can go 2 game years in between breeding them.

2. When I have time to enter horses in shows, I have time to train them... so not many.

[Fox13]

I don't consider it criticizing. After all, the way to figure out a problem is to talk it out, get people to respond with their problems and hit all the potential issues before they become serious.

Sending a stallion to a sister stable to 'immortalize' it is a big loophole. It creates a lot of pros, but just as many cons. Really, even if the stud (or mare even, although they're limited to offspring) is a great horse, it still leaves the problem that as long as that horse is alive and being used, the breed isn't improving as much as it could beyond him as it could. If that horse is aged out and eventually becomes unusable, then it forces the breed to replace the stud, with sons or with an entirely unrelated sire.

Besides, the limit I was considering without saying would be like 300 to 400 mares, really a very large amount, but I wasn't going to give a number because everybody would have a different opinion. There is only a very small handful of breeds right now that can boast more than that as active horses.

I suppose you use a lot of studs that don't belong to you.

There might not be an easy answer to this until inbreeding issues becomes a part of the genetics.

[Randi Potos]

I don't consider it criticizing. After all, the way to figure out a problem is to talk it out, get people to respond with their problems and hit all the potential issues before they become serious.

Sending a stallion to a sister stable to 'immortalize' it is a big loophole. It creates a lot of pros, but just as many cons. Really, even if the stud (or mare even, although they're limited to offspring) is a great horse, it still leaves the problem that as long as that horse is alive and being used, the breed isn't improving as much as it could beyond him as it could. If that horse is aged out and eventually becomes unusable, then it forces the breed to replace the stud, with sons or with an entirely unrelated sire.

Besides, the limit I was considering without saying would be like 300 to 400 mares, really a very large amount, but I wasn't going to give a number because everybody would have a different opinion. There is only a very small handful of breeds right now that can boast more than that as active horses.

I suppose you use a lot of studs that don't belong to you.

There might not be an easy answer to this until inbreeding issues becomes a part of the genetics.

I very seldom use studs that are not my own. But I do offer stallions at public stud for profit. If there were a cap on mares bred I may reconsider that.

I breed every available mare every cycle. Sometimes all to the same stallion. That's 36 mares every game year.If I used the same stallion until he was 20, that would be over 700 breedings. I probably wouldn't do this, but I have in the past used a stallion quite significantly to solidify certain traits in my herd.

I don't keep every foal, mind you. Only the ones which meet my standards. Most others are rehomed. I could see a "living foal cap" being a more realistic way to enforce a stallion cap.

[QuesthavenFarms]

I don't keep every foal, mind you. Only the ones which meet my standards. Most others are rehomed. I could see a "living foal cap" being a more realistic way to enforce a stallion cap.

This might be a way that would not inhibit gaming but solves the breeding problem.

[Argent II]

This also means I wasted the money to upgrade and will not upgrade in the future.

Seriously? The entire upgrade is a waste because you can't run auto shows? Being able to see conformation, have more banked days, and regenerate days faster -- and whatever future perks are yet to be added -- is completely worthless to you? That's extreme, and unfortunate.

I am thinking of an automatic aging on horses that have not been played after a certain amount of time -- maybe weekly or monthly and that slowly (maybe very slowly) these horses would age out.

Barring the fact that horses aging at the players' pace is one of the best perks of HWO, I doubt you'd be able to age horses slow/fast enough using this method to actually have an impact. If they only aged once a week, it could take over 40 weeks for a horse to age out, assuming they were set aside as babies. I can't imagine a horse being useful for that long anyway. And it punishes people who move on to different projects and just need to take a break from whatever they were working on. I bred for greens for over a month before I got tired and frustrated and transitioned back to breeding for Lipizzans, which also took me over a month, and after I reached that goal, I switched back to breeding for greens. I can't progress with my Lipizzan program until Larissa completes the features promised in the KS/PP fundraisers, which is completely out of my control. So my Lipizzan project ponies have been locked since mid November and will continue to stay locked until further notice. I would prefer not to have four months of work slowly erased because of something out of my control.

Breeding Suggestions
1. Perhaps have instead of a per turn limit to breedings or energy usage for the stallions, perhaps have a lifetime breeding limit, therefore no matter how old or how young the stallion is, once that lifetime limit is reached, that's it.

2. Once the genetic deficiencies is enacted, overusage of a stallion will result in serious breeding penalties, so whatever gap-stop is introduced could be temporary.

3. Only have at-stud stallions for active stables (i.e. stables that advance a day once a day or more, or however) that log in regularly. Such as, for the stallion to remain at-stud, the stable has to have been visited within the last 24 hour period.

I do think a counter might be the potential way to go, either per year (for the stable's stallion) or for the lifetime of said stallion, especially since training and competing doesn't effect the outcome of the offspring. And if there is a limit to how many times a stallion can be used in total, then some may want to partition out and perhaps be a little more careful which stallion is used for which mare.
On a personal note, I only use my stallions maybe half a dozen times throughout their lifetime right now as I search for balancing reports with balancing points of conformation I want. But I'm not focusing on breeds right now. Even when I did, I used my stallions no more than maybe ten times and kept only perhaps three offspring.

1. You'd have to be really careful about what sort of limit you set. Too low and you'd kill the breeding market because no one would want to waste their breedings from their good stallions on outside mares, or else they'd price them extremely high. And what might seem reasonable now may not be so once the game is larger. Regardless, I think it limits the gene pool and player freedom in an unsavory way, and it makes the potential addition of artificial insemination moot.
2. "Overusage of a stallion will result in serious breeding penalties" based on what? I don't understand how you came to this conclusion.
3. Having stud ads (and sale ads) expire after a certain time has been mentioned before. I think keeping them up for only a week would be a good idea. Having longer terms for ads to stay up might be an additional upgrade perk.

I hear the concern you have, and I understand. I am open to other suggestions. As I said, my main purpose with this is to prevent players from abusing the system and keeping a stud or champion immortal, the simplest implementation is to have this connected with energy as once energy is depleted the horse is forced to age-up in order to continue being used.

Some questions for me to better understand your situations:
- how many times do you breed your studs between turns?
- how many shows do you enter a single horse between turns? Is it more than 100?

I am not trying to implement the suggestions in the OP for realism. Limiting to 4 shows per turn in unreasonable in my opinion.

My opinion has always been and will continue to be: "Fun > Realism"

1. Between turns? I don't understand the question. But each of my stallions covers my entire mare band several times; each mare has two or three foals by each of the eight or so stallions I'm currently using. So each stallion covers 24 to 36 mares two to three times, for a total of 48 to 108 foals born. Of those, I keep the best two fillies from each crop, and I only keep colts that surpass their sire for whatever attribute I'm using him for, so from each stud I keep about 4 to 7 foals total. Lately I've been recycling stallions if they don't give me a colt; he usually goes through another round of of the above.
2. Almost none. I used to show breeding prospects, so that would be 10-25 shows per horse without aging, but since September, I've only trained three stallions. I entered each in roughly 100 shows (all the open ones lol) in one day, and not much beyond that, maybe 10 shows max since then.