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Understanding CAH, CAM, and GPS

Original article written by Regina Moore posted 8 years 4 weeks ago

While playing SIM, you might come across references to CAM mares, CAH horses, and GPS stallions. Just what are these?

The one thing they have in common is that they all involve getting yourself a new horse from the game itself, rather than from another player, and paying for such with game points, instead of SIM dollars.

The simple definitions:
CAH - Create a Horse: The player can pay 3000 game points to create a racehorse from the age of 1yo to 4yo.
CAM - Create a Mare: The player can pay 5000 game points to create a 6yo unraced broodmare that is ready for breeding.
GPS - Game Point Sire: The player can breed any broodmare to a Game Point sire to get a foal. The stud fee is paid in game points.

Let's look at each of these more in-depth.


CREATE A HORSE
If you've ever gotten tired of buying culls from other players, you can create a "clean slate" horse for 3000 game points. You do so by choosing "Create a Horse" from the My Office heading of your home office page. That's take you to a page where you choose Racehorse or Broodmare. Choose Racehorse.

You'll next be asked to select a breed. Upon doing so, you'll be taken to a page to select a sire for your new horse. Unlike the CAM sires and Game Point sires, CAH sires aren't real horses. They're made up stallions that have names that correspond to the type of foal they sire. For example, for Thoroughbreds, Early Endings sires dirt sprinters and Jumping Everest sires steeplechasers. For Appaloosas, Far Away Target sires routers. If you aren't sure from the name what type of horse the sire throws, click on the sire and choose his Progeny tab. You can sort the Progeny by earnings, and then click on the offspring with the highest earnings and see what type of runner they are.

Once you've chosen a sire, you'll be taken to a page where you create your new horse. You can write in a name, or check the box to name the horse later. You can choose a gender, or have the computer choose for you. Ditto for the horse's color and markings.

For age, you can choose a yearling through four years old. Be careful here. If it's near the end of a game year, you'll probably want a horse to race next season, so consider what age you want the horse to be next year. Another caveat is that a two year old must have two workouts in order to race at two. If, per chance, you're creating an Arabian or a steeplechaser, know that they can't start racing until they're three years old.

Click the "Create This Horse" button at the bottom, and you now have a new horse in your Racing Barn.

In my experience, most CAH are claimer level, and are capable of winning a maiden race, but not much else. Occasionally, one is a lowly "different career" galloper, and sometimes the next gallop level higher than claimer, "solid". However, every once in a blue moon, a CAH will be a major stakes winner. Just don't spend your 3000 game points expecting the latter, because it's a rare event.


CREATE A MARE
The primary purpose of CAMs is to give players access to outside bloodlines. Players choose a "real life" stallion from a list as the mare's sire, and a second "real life" stallion from a different list as the mare's maternal grandsire.

Spending 5000 game points doesn't guarantee one a particular quality of mare; just like any other broodmare in SIM, CAMs span the gauntlet of blue hen mares down to those that are assessed to have "no potential" to produce a winner. (Note that you would have to pay $10,000 SIM dollars to bloodstock check her to find out what level of broodmare the CAM is, once you create her.)

Beyond expanding the pool of available bloodlines, another benefit of CAMs is that, for players who are determined to breed their own foals, but can't find or can't afford to buy decent broodmares, they can create their own herd of CAMs, if they're willing to spend the game points.

To create a broodmare, use the same Create a Horse option, as for creating a racehorse, beneath the My Office heading of your home page. From there, choose "Broodmare". You will then be asked to choose a breed. Then you'll be taken to a page to select a sire from a list of "real life" stallions. Once a sire is selected, the next page is a different list of "real life" stallions where you choose a maternal grandsire for the mare.

With the mare's pedigree chosen, you will be taken to a page to actually create the mare. Give her a name, select a color and markings, or leave the latter two for the computer to randomly determine. Click the "Create this Horse" button, and you now have a new 6yo broodmare in your Breeding Barn, ready to be bred. Once she's created, the mare is the same as any other mare in SIM, and can be sold, leased out, etc.

Before you start the process of creating a mare, you'll want to know ahead of time which stallions you're going to choose for her sire and grandsire. How do you know which stallions to select from the sire lists, especially considering the ones for Thoroughbreds each have dozens of stallions? That's going to depend on what type of foal you're trying to produce from the mare. Let's say you're eager to breed to a recently retired turf mile stallion, but you don't have any mares to breed to him, so decide to create a CAM. You'll want to choose a sire and maternal grandsire that have turf mile ability, so that your CAM will also have turf mile ability. To determine which CAM sires/grandsires have a particular distance/surface ability, see the section below on choosing the right type of stallion.


GAME POINT SIRES
Like the CAM sires, the primary purpose of GP sires is to diversify bloodlines. They also have a secondary benefit of allowing players to spend game points to breed mares, for players that otherwise can't afford stud fees for player-owned stallions.

For a fee ranging from 500 game points to 4000 game points, a player can breed their mare to any one of a large number of available GP sires. Like the CAM sires, the GP sires are "real life" horses. Unlike the CAM sires (many of which are deceased in real life), the GP sires are all living and owned by The Steward. When the sire dies in real life, it's removed from the list of available GP sires. (Some stallions might be available as both a CAM sire and a GP sire.)

Except for having their stud fees paid in game points, rather than SIM dollars, GP stallions are like any other stallions in the SIM. They appear in the Stud Book and in the sire rankings. They can be nicked with mares.

One big advantage to having a Game Point Sired foal is that players can sponsor races restricted to Game Point Sired horses. What's more, the SIM itself cards 2yo stakes races, one for each gender, for every breed/distance/surface division, that are restricted to GPS horses. These races are run Week 12 with $150,000 purses, and then Week 14 with $200,000 purses. Sometimes, the competition is sparse, or otherwise mediocre, and some horses can rack up a lot of purse money in just those two races, despite being average horses.

To breed your mare to a GPS, click the "Breed This Mare" button from her page. That takes you to a page with dropdown boxes, and from the one on the left, select "Game Point Stallions". That will present you with available GP stallions for your mare's breed. (Note that some mixer mares have the option of breeding to a stallion of a different breed, and one can therefore use the middle dropdown box.) The box on the right is for Horse Type -- in other words, you would likely want to breed a dirt sprinter to a dirt sprinter. That box will filter, for example, so that only dirt sprint stallions are available. However, be careful here. Many of the GP sires have abilities in multiple categories, so those will be under "Unspecified", "Any Dirt", etc. For help with choosing a stallion, see the next section.


CHOOSING THE RIGHT TYPE OF STALLION
For creating CAMs and for breeding to GP stallions, it's important that one choose the right type of sire. Again, many sires have abilities in multiple distance/surface categories.

Distance information isn't necessary for Standardbred trotters and pacers, because they only race at a mile.

For other breeds, I have put links on my SIM stable website, that lead to distance/surface information for the stallions:
http://www.magicravenranch.com/newplayers.html

The page has separate links for mixers, for Thoroughbred Game Point sires, and for Thoroughbred CAM sires/grandsires. These links are also available in the appropriate breeding sections of the Forum.

To clarify definitions for the Thoroughbred tables on my website:
When a stallion's name appears in blue, that means the category he's in is his main or only category. If it's his main category, you'll find him in at least one other category in orange. If it's his only category, you won't find his name elsewhere in the table.

When a stallion's name appears in green, then you will also find it in green in at least one other category. The stallion has equal siring ability for the categories where his name is in green. You might also find him in orange in additional categories. You won't find him in blue under any category, since blue is for stallions with a single major strength.

When a stallion's name appears in orange, that means he has "some" ability in that category. I don't know how The Steward defines "some", but it won't be as strong an influence as the categories where the stallion appears in green or blue. All stallions in orange should also appear in at least one category in blue OR at least two categories in green.


Hopefully, this article has helped players understand the difference between Create a Horse, Create a Mare, and Game Point stallions. If you have further questions about these differences, or how to use the tables, please feel free to drop me an in-game message.


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