EH Saddleseat

[Emiisheartless]

Goal
Set new world record in saddleseat with a 0% COI horse, using my own method for avoiding inbreeding and starting completely from scratch.

Method
Get circa four to eight foals from each breeding pair, put on 95% sweet feed for five years, then test in "real" competitions to avoid having to age them while testing. Note best results and keep the best colt and filly from each pair. Continue until a horse scores over 56 in a show, train it, get it to the right weight and hopefully set the new record.

Progress so far
Slow. Incredibly slow. Motivation is a bit low at the moment, and each generation takes several real-life days to test, cull and breed. The best result so far is 48.21, which is still a long way from my goal. Average high score of each generation is now over 46.5, but considering it seems to increase by .5 each generation, I have A LOT of work to do.

Past issues
Colors! I am of course not satisfied with only having good horses, they also have to be pretty! So I had to spend a few generations on culling out all dun, seal brown and champagne, which of course slowed my progress with the scores a fair bit. I still get a seal brown here and there, but by culling all horses who express it, I'm hoping to be rid of it completely at some point. I have also tried to make a completely metallic herd, but it was just too much to keep track of. I still have a few shiny horses, but sadly, it seems the gene is almost completely gone from the herd.

Current issues
Apparently, player-made shows are judged the very moment the horse is entered, basing the result off of its current age, training and temperament. Up until a few days ago, I was not aware of this. So, I'd figured I could enter all the horses into the shows (which, by the way, takes an eternity. Why is there not a "enter all horses"-button??), and then age them in order to just... switch it up a bit, I guess? Well, for several days now, I've been wondering why this generation had such bad scores. I went through about half of them, culling the worst scores, getting more and more frustrated, until I realised it. These horses were judged when I entered them. At one year old, instead of five. And I'd just rehomed over twenty horses, thinking their scores were terrible. What if one of those would have scored amazingly as a five year old??

Moving forward
Luckily, the previous generation had not begun to retire yet, so I've rebred all the mares and will hopefully get a few more foals for this generation. Now I just have to age, test and cull these ones as well... Cue: The NeverEnding Story theme song

Just looking for some sympathy

[BlackOak2]

Just looking for some sympathy

Don't give up. We all go through this, the inconsistent foals, the long waits and the rebreeding for umpteenth time for foals that just aren't right! You are in good company.

Here's some additional tips.
Age doesn't factor in as far as competitions are concerned. At least as far as I've seen. I've had some horses appear to do better or worse than when they were younger, but it was, in fact, the competition they were facing.

You can force-run competitions if you have 20 horses entered, so you won't have to wait as long for the competition.

You should also (as it already appears) compete your horses against your own horses. In this way, you can improve your bloodline and only aim to defeat other-bred horses when your own bloodline has gotten to their level.

Training your horses will shorten their range of lower (worse) scores. Making it MUCH easier to know which ones are worthy and which ones aren't. Without training, you could have an awful score from a really good horse, just keep that in mind.

Locals can also be helpful in the culling process. These scores will tell you where you horse can reach, but when entering competitions, you'll find their actual scores are lower than the top local scores.

I could suggest lastly, that you pin down their colors first and then deal with competitions afterward, or vice versa. You've already made yourself a hard-core objective with the 0% COI... try to give yourself some leeway with one or the other.

Good Luck!

One additional thing. Don't feel poorly if you get stuck or burnt-out on your project. You can always send them over to a freezer account, do another project and then go back with fresh eyes.

[Emiisheartless]

Thank you so much for the tips!

For my previous attempt at breaking the record, I did test the horses in local competitions as newborns, but I realized they were slowly getting taller and taller… I think the ideal height for Saddleseat is around 15 hh, so the foals were getting closer to that height, meaning the adults were too tall. Hence why I now test them as adults.

As for why I don’t use local comps: I have over 100 horses to test each generation. Testing them all individually in local competitions, noting the best results and trying to find their ranges is just a bit too much work for me… Not to mention the fact that I would have to move them back and forth between accounts for the testing to avoid everyone getting too old while I test them.

Instead, I’ve created 10 comps that run daily, so I can just enter all the horses into them and hopefully get their full range of results. I’m pretty sure the maximum point difference between best and worst result each turn is 10 for saddleseat (kudos to whoever figured that out), so as long as I get results somewhat close to that range, I get a pretty good idea of their maximum scores.

As for training them, as far as I’ve understood it, the maximum range actually stays the same, at 10 points, it just moves up around five points and the probability of scoring in the upper part of the range increases. So an untrained horse with a range from 38 to 48, with a median score of 35, would get a range of 43 to 53 when trained, but as more of the results would fall higher in the range, the median would increase even more and be around 50. Getting them to the correct weight moves the results up even more, but I haven’t experimented with that a whole lot yet.

Again, thank you so much for your advice and the kind words! I sometimes forget what an amazing community this game has, but it really does help with motivation and making this game as amazing as it is

[BlackOak2]

[PSH2]

Goal
Set new world record in saddleseat with a 0% COI horse, using my own method for avoiding inbreeding and starting completely from scratch.

Method
Get circa four to eight foals from each breeding pair, put on 95% sweet feed for five years, then test in "real" competitions to avoid having to age them while testing. Note best results and keep the best colt and filly from each pair. Continue until a horse scores over 56 in a show, train it, get it to the right weight and hopefully set the new record.

Progress so far
Slow. Incredibly slow. Motivation is a bit low at the moment, and each generation takes several real-life days to test, cull and breed. The best result so far is 48.21, which is still a long way from my goal. Average high score of each generation is now over 46.5, but considering it seems to increase by .5 each generation, I have A LOT of work to do.

Past issues
Colors! I am of course not satisfied with only having good horses, they also have to be pretty! So I had to spend a few generations on culling out all dun, seal brown and champagne, which of course slowed my progress with the scores a fair bit. I still get a seal brown here and there, but by culling all horses who express it, I'm hoping to be rid of it completely at some point. I have also tried to make a completely metallic herd, but it was just too much to keep track of. I still have a few shiny horses, but sadly, it seems the gene is almost completely gone from the herd.

Current issues
Apparently, player-made shows are judged the very moment the horse is entered, basing the result off of its current age, training and temperament. Up until a few days ago, I was not aware of this. So, I'd figured I could enter all the horses into the shows (which, by the way, takes an eternity. Why is there not a "enter all horses"-button??), and then age them in order to just... switch it up a bit, I guess? Well, for several days now, I've been wondering why this generation had such bad scores. I went through about half of them, culling the worst scores, getting more and more frustrated, until I realised it. These horses were judged when I entered them. At one year old, instead of five. And I'd just rehomed over twenty horses, thinking their scores were terrible. What if one of those would have scored amazingly as a five year old??

Moving forward
Luckily, the previous generation had not begun to retire yet, so I've rebred all the mares and will hopefully get a few more foals for this generation. Now I just have to age, test and cull these ones as well... Cue: The NeverEnding Story theme song

Just looking for some sympathy

Hello!

Lots of sympathy to you! I'm also focused on saddleseat as my farm's main discipline, any help you need, tell me (: