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A New Players Look at SIMperiority
Original article written by Amanda Haderthauer posted 11 years 3 weeks agoNovember 6th was game point and a half day. On this wondrous day 1 (real) dollar gets you 1,500 game points (that 500 more than every other day!). I, like many others I am sure, took advantage of this turning $25 into 37,500 game points. At first I was overwhelmed by my own game point wealth, then I started pondering what to do with them. I already have silks, and don’t have horse I feel this worthy of a headshot yet. So I decided to see what the SIMperior membership was all about.
After becoming a SIMperior player, the first thing I did was check out the SIMperior Edge. This is a newsletter written by the Steward for SIMperior members only. It was very good reading and looked at many different aspects of the game. I can’t wait for the next one!
Then I went to my racing page and I immediately saw the difference SIMperior makes. The added columns for Last Workout, Last Race and Entered For are lifesavers (not to mention time savers!). When I first started the game I had a spreadsheet, but I found that the more horses you have the more work a spreadsheet is. This eliminates the need for a spreadsheet, as it also gives me ability to sort the horses by type (e.g. turf sprinters). Also when looking for races for a specific horse with the race finder it will filter for those type of races only, so if your horse is a dirt sprinter then it will show only dirt sprints. This too is a time saver and keeps you from accidentally entering a horse for the wrong surface (which I have done…twice).
Another big perk that falls under the racing category is the ability to see speed figures. When I was first able to the speed figures some of my horses had got I almost wished I couldn’t. Horses I had thought were good were actually running pretty low speed figures. But some of my horses where running better than I thought. I have a two year old turf sprinter that broke her maiden first out in a maiden special with a field of nine (this was before I has the SIMperior membership so I could not see her speed figure), since then she has been fourth of four and seven of eight at the NW2 level. I now know that she ran a 70 speed figure in her first race, then a 53 and then a 47. So I am left to wonder if that 70 was just a fluke or if there is a way to her back to running those kind of numbers.
The second biggest change to the format is that I now have access to the Studbook. The studbook is amazing! It has all the studs in the SIM, and you can search them by type. This is very helpful for a new player. But most helpful is the rankings and the statistics that are available for each stallion. It makes finding the better stallions easier. For a new player learning about pedigrees takes time and if your like me (too impatient to hold off on breeding) then you need all help you can get. The rankings help in choosing whom to hypo-mate, and eventually breed, my mares with.
Other perks to being a SIMperior member is running at Premium Park, a track just for players with a SIMperior membership. You can also create horses and races, as well as reserve names for horses. Auto shipping is awesome and makes entering horses stress free, because you don’t have worry about remembering to ship them. While I haven’t used this feature yet you can customize the markings on the foals that you breed. There are probably others that I am missing but one thing I am not missing is that SIMperior is the best way to play the game.