Private Stallions

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Danny Derby
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Private Stallions

Post by Danny Derby »

I've been noticing a trend recently of people/partnerships buying stallions and basically shutting them off completely from outside access. Hasn't really impacted me as far as my breeding plans yet, but I don't think it's a healthy precedent especially when a number of these are real life stallions created to add diversity to the game. Don't really have a solution in mind, but felt this is something that at least warrants some discussion.
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Mr. Lord Rich
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Re: Private Stallions

Post by Mr. Lord Rich »

I know there are a few I would use if they had a reasonable stud fee in them.
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Gwayne's World
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Re: Private Stallions

Post by Gwayne's World »

Nothing wrong with having a private stud. IMO :)
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Laura Ferguson
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Re: Private Stallions

Post by Laura Ferguson »

Get rid of foal limits, and problem solved. I personally think foal limits has done more harm than good, particularly to mixers and diversity - in part by essentially privatizing certain stallions or making stallions available at limited times that may not fit with your real life schedule. I know my crops are less diverse than they were before the rule change, because for popular stallions, it's either breed now or risk getting shut out, whereas I might have gone with another stallion if I knew the popular stallion wasn't going to sell out between now and the time I would otherwise breed that mare.

As for private stallions right now - I don't worry about it, I treat them as if they don't exist, since I don't have time to wait around on the off chance that they might be briefly put on the market. I'll live with the rules as they exist, but foal limits has most negatively impacted my enjoyment of the game.
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Lisa Bennert
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Re: Private Stallions

Post by Lisa Bennert »

I noticed this too and while so far it hasn't impacted me either, I kind of wondered why it is necessary when you can reserve the spots you need for yourself already? Is it really such an advantage to have an exclusive outcross-line for yourself the public doesn't have access to?
Gwayne Mike wrote: 5 years ago Nothing wrong with having a private stud. IMO :)
Sure, but only as long as only a few individuals do it and there are enough good alternatives. For example, if this does become a trend and only 3 owners of the good arab sprinter stallions did this right now, half of the reasonable stallion options there would be gone already :?
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Gwayne's World
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Re: Private Stallions

Post by Gwayne's World »

Call it gamesmanship but if it happens in real life it should also happen here. The owner should have full discretion whether or not to publicly stand his stallion as well as how much a stud fee he will charge if he does.
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Rochelle Bos
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Re: Private Stallions

Post by Rochelle Bos »

Gwayne Mike wrote: 5 years ago Call it gamesmanship but if it happens in real life it should also happen here. The owner should have full discretion whether or not to publicly stand his stallion as well as how much a stud fee he will charge if he does.
I agree with you, it’s their horse to do with as they like 🤷‍♀️

And like Laura F said, if they aren’t available to the public I pretend they don’t exist, same as if their breeding spots are all full. Out of my control so I just move on to find a different stud
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Laura Ferguson
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Re: Private Stallions

Post by Laura Ferguson »

Gwayne Mike wrote: 5 years ago Call it gamesmanship but if it happens in real life it should also happen here. The owner should have full discretion whether or not to publicly stand his stallion as well as how much a stud fee he will charge if he does.
I would say that most of the players that are privately standing stallions right now wouldn't, if there wasn't a foal limit in place. Owners have always had this right (whether to publicly stand and for how much). Until recently, the owner could stand the stallion for $1, then minimum stud fees came in around the same time as the foal limits.

And the real life example doesn't really work here. In real life, the mare has to be approved by the stallion manager. Here, as long as I have the $$$ and the stallion has a listed fee, as long as I'm willing to pay the fee, I can send the mare to that stallion, no matter how bad the mare is or how ill-suited/mis-matched the cross. Most real-life stallions are publicly stood, only the amount of the fee itself is listed as private. In addition, in real life, there are often syndicates where people have shares or lifetime breeding rights - one person normally doesn't own 100% of a stallion.
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Danny Derby
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Re: Private Stallions

Post by Danny Derby »

Rochelle Zahacy wrote: 5 years ago
Gwayne Mike wrote: 5 years ago Call it gamesmanship but if it happens in real life it should also happen here. The owner should have full discretion whether or not to publicly stand his stallion as well as how much a stud fee he will charge if he does.
I agree with you, it’s their horse to do with as they like 🤷‍♀️

And like Laura F said, if they aren’t available to the public I pretend they don’t exist, same as if their breeding spots are all full. Out of my control so I just move on to find a different stud
Applying this real life logic, there'd be no limit to the number of Stewies I could buy from each auction and no one would ever win a horse on an underbid again. For that matter, there'd probably only be about 20-30 people that ever won TBS horses. There's obvious reasons why things aren't exactly the same as in real life.
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Danny Derby
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Re: Private Stallions

Post by Danny Derby »

Agree with Laura 100000% on foal limits.
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Gwayne's World
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Re: Private Stallions

Post by Gwayne's World »

Owner in name only???
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Michael Looker
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Re: Private Stallions

Post by Michael Looker »

Danny Derby wrote: 5 years ago when a number of these are real life stallions created to add diversity to the game.
Easy fix: don't sell these to players. Make them GP stallions that nick better than the player-bred stallions in the division (ie. Holiday Stallion level).

Instead of taking a few million SIM$ (some fraction of a Mondays prizemoney) out of the SIM economy, you get people buying GP and using them (so Em gets real life money to spend on, y'know, food and stuff). And you still get the bloodline diversity.

If people whinge about having to spend real-life money to use the good stallions, point out that a.) the current situation is that partnerships hog these stallions so being able to pay GP to use them is better than not being able to use them at all, and b.) they can always use the exchange to convert SIM$ into GP (which also has the benefit of removing SIM$ from the game via the 5% fee charged to market makers on the exchange).
Laura Ferguson wrote: 5 years ago Get rid of foal limits, and problem solved. I personally think foal limits has done more harm than good, particularly to mixers and diversity - in part by essentially privatizing certain stallions or making stallions available at limited times that may not fit with your real life schedule.
The solution here is to message the owner of the stallion you want to use and ask them to save you X spots to use when you're ready. This isn't even something that would only work for "The Great Laura Ferguson, Eighteen-time Breeder of the Year". This is a community game where most people are nice, so if you flick them a message and ask nicely for something they'll probably accommodate you.

I personally don't see the need for foal limits (except to give perceived second-tier stallions a shot at getting mares, but if you read this week's Edge you'll see that even WITH foal limits we all managed to miss a very good stallion), because I don't see the need for diversity. If Pacers all end up highly inbred/linebred to Write This Down and Igetmoney, I don't see a problem. Maybe Em does, and she knows more than I do so maybe diversity is important. Even so, if the person who sends their Hotternell mare to Missile Mike (zigging when everyone else zags) has a chance to get the new #1 outcross option (Cumberbatch) then the division will sort itself out. There will always be some brave ziggers.

Combine my two points, and you get any lack of diversity solved by ziggers using superior GP outcross stallions (like Wishing Stone) to get the next big thing in player-owned stallions (Devon Castle).
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Tammy Stawicki
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Re: Private Stallions

Post by Tammy Stawicki »

I don't think eliminating limits will completely solve the private stallion issue. The example that jumps to my mind is I'm a Fancy PYC who stood for $100,000 prelimits as a paint and was essentially a private stallion (89% of his foals were bred by his owner and a significant portion that weren't were from when the steward briefly stood him before he was sold, if you exclude his first crop the number jumps to 98%). I think the better solution for assuring that at least new bloodline type sires are broadly available is to have the Steward stand them. It could be as a game point stallion as Michael suggested or even still a sim money stallion just with the steward as an owner. In which case they would still pull money out of the game and people without game points could still breed to them.

That being said I do still think limits have some issues for mixers in general and crossbreeding quarter horses in particular (it has been awhile since I've been on this soap box). Now admittedly I only breed turf milers in thoroughbred world and there limits seem to be a complete nonissue. But when I've done my research it seems that thoroughbred usually wind up with only a couple horses booked full per division so it doesn't seem that horrible. In contrast quarter horses even with the increased limits for crossbreeding are still consistently seeing 10% of their stallions booking full. The practice of lowering stud fees for crossbreeding has also become essentially obsolete. If we are going to keep limits I would still love to see separate limits for within breed and crossbreeding to help relieve some of the pressure on quarter horses and also make it so that owners weren't hugely disincentivized to have a lower cross breeding stud fee.


Conflict of interest disclaimer: Yes I own a holiday sale/new bloodline sire, so I just argued to deny other players an "advantage" I got. Though in terms of the private stallion issue I am only the breeder of 1.8% of my stallion's foals so he has been very available to the sim community.
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Mr. Lord Rich
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Re: Private Stallions

Post by Mr. Lord Rich »

Speaking of limits, This is the first season SYM is not booked full in the first week or so of the new season.

16 slots available now with another 30 when Ronnie Dee purchases the extra (I’m 100% sure he will.

There you go Ronnie, free advertisement.
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Lucas Davenport
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Re: Private Stallions

Post by Lucas Davenport »

I can give a couple reasons why this might happen. #1) You buy a stallion but you don't have time right then to hypomate/breed your own best mares to him, so you set it aside for something to do later and or #2) you bought a stallion and don't have a lot of mares available to use right then, but know you have quite a few mares that you will probably retire later that year that might fit the bill. Or you even hope to lease/buy a bunch of mares during the rest of the year to use later. Don't see why it is a problem for one person if another person chooses to not make a stallion open to the public. Once again if we all don't play the game the way any specific person wants us to, we are playing it wrong.
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