Stud fee limits, thoughts on idea?

[J.r. Lewis]

I'm not targeting "mass breeders" but I do think it might help eliminating as many junk horses being bred each season. I hadn't really thought about it in great detail but yeah lets put the 5% fee on top of the stud fee and then charge the stud owner a $1000 as well. That should motivate people to bred better and for fewer owners to stand subpar studs. As far as being like Laura if that is your goal then go for it but try not to end up burnt out. Remember Laura has built an empire over 20 real life years and she has bloodlines in her stable that we could only dream of owning. Having a huge bankroll doesn't necessarily mean you will buy the best available horses in auction either. Sidney sold for a mere $950,000 at auction but turned out to be a once in a lifetime purchase. Still the bankroll doesn't hurt. lol

Burnout is definitely an issue and I really don't plan on running that many races again but you never know, the bankroll is definitely nice lol

I saw a comment about junk horses in that $5k AJ thread and wondered who was dumping all their horses in AJ. I took a look and it wasn't overwhelmingly any 1 kind of player. Personally I don't have any there and plan on running every horse I breed at some point. I think people mistakenly tie mass breeding to Kwok. I liked Bernard and wish he was still here but I don't breed like him. I use a lot of top studs (a lot that I bought) and I feel pretty good about the %'s I get from my mares. 33% Allowance+ on my fillies and 20% on my colts. I'm sure that's probably lower than a lot of people but I don't feel like I'm a junk breeder using studs who earned $15k on the track.

[Kent Saunders]

The definition of a Junk Horse(s) is subjective. What might be a Junk horse to a long time player is definitely not to an Intermediate player who is trying to climb the next step up the ladder. I can remember being that intermediate player thinking I would NEVER have as good a stable as the long time vets. Yes we need to address some issues in the Sim but we also have to try and be open minded about all the folks affected by "Fixes"

[Louise Bayou]

The foal limit doesn't really bother me with TBs as much as I'm utterly freaking annoyed with the Mixers. At least with TBs pedigree matters but with mixers it does not one bit. And as far as studs, saying "ohhhhh we want to spread the bloodlines and have people use other studs" as the reasoning for limits makes sense in TBs but none in mixers. You have game studs giving A+ and flat A to everything and the rest get maybe some A- and anyone would think how silly to breed to them when you can get A+ and A! Because I've tried using the other studs and guess what? My gallops sucked! So the ones that pay STUPID amounts of money for mixer studs jack the prices up(which hey I don't blame you) because of the foal limits in a division where 99% of stakes are 50k.

I guess what I'm trying to say in my rambling way is... Mixers are broken and need to be fixed ASAP. Some people might not care about mixers but a LOT of people do and spend good money in the divisions.

[Erin Sanderson]

The foal limit doesn't really bother me with TBs as much as I'm utterly freaking annoyed with the Mixers. At least with TBs pedigree matters but with mixers it does not one bit. And as far as studs, saying "ohhhhh we want to spread the bloodlines and have people use other studs" as the reasoning for limits makes sense in TBs but none in mixers. You have game studs giving A+ and flat A to everything and the rest get maybe some A- and anyone would think how silly to breed to them when you can get A+ and A! Because I've tried using the other studs and guess what? My gallops sucked! So the ones that pay STUPID amounts of money for mixer studs jack the prices up(which hey I don't blame you) because of the foal limits in a division where 99% of stakes are 50k.

I guess what I'm trying to say in my rambling way is... Mixers are broken and need to be fixed ASAP. Some people might not care about mixers but a LOT of people do and spend good money in the divisions.

I have to 100% agree. I've tried several times over the years to get into mixers in various divisions in QHs and more recently in STBs. I repeatedly get frustrated and sell off the stock that I do have. They make so much less sense than TBs. Good horses come out of seemingly nowhere, good studs seem to never come from top mares, and female families have apparently no bearing on anything like in the TBs.

My own inability to comprehend them aside, it is extremely difficult to make any kind of return on investment with QHs. A handful of top stallions stand for fees seen at the upper echelons of many TB divisions without the purses to support them. Sending the same mares to other, cheaper, stallions in hopes that you find a diamond in the rough generally results in a mid to low level claimer on the track at best. I've had several years where I leased or sold off all of my QH stock simply because the stallion pool was so very, very limited. I know taking money out of the game is usually a main goal, but a purse boost almost seems necessary amongst the mixers, at least in some of the stakes races.

[Tom Lin]

Here is my take. I understand the reasoning behind foal limits (sort of). And I agree that stud owners should be able to do as they choose...However...Most people (like myself) think hey if I owned WOGS or Devon Castle I would manage him like this.....Reality is hardly any of the better studs get managed the same way. Some owners are worried they will sell out too early and out of nowhere close the book/some change the fee every few weeks/some open the books then close the books then open them again. It's chaos IMO! I now have to do a stud review every single day to try and make sure I can breed to the studs I want...and I now am forced to breed much earlier in the season or risk breeding to second/third tier studs . And yes I can send emails (I believe I asked about 6 studs this season) and ask pretty please can I get one or two breedings but that stinks. Some owners reply in 10 minutes/some in 2-3 weeks/some never and some just answer no I'm saving the rest for myself. This has taken alot of my enjoyment of the game away to be honest and then you run into a bad deal like a QH sire that had about 12 bookings and then one day his book is full and closed because he got leased out and the new owner bred about 115 and maxed him out you just want to scream! Used to love to just take my time and sit down and try find good mates for my mares...now if feels like a life and death race to the finish full of aggravation and defeat...lol! Do I have definitive answers...nope. We have let the Genie out of the bottle and can't find the way back.

You've summed up my complete and utter aggravation with foal limits as applied to mixers. I don't have time or interest in trying to send emails or coordinate, when my SIM time has been more limited this year because of job insanity/stress. The SIM is supposed to be a source of stress relief, and not an aggravator.

My crops have become less diversified, because I can't chance the risk getting shut out of the popular stallions. I also use less freshman sires than I used to for the same reason. I still believe that the problems caused by foal limits, at least as applied to mixers, and the absolute frustration it causes, is worse than the problems it was trying to solve. That said, as long as those are the rules of the game, I'll play by them, but if there's some sort of tweak or relief that would help the situation, I'm all for it.

It seems to me that players would at least appreciate where they stand with regards to a specific stallion. What if the stallion owner was required to commit to a certain number of bookings (0-120) for themselves at the beginning of the year along with its stud fee. No changes. Might take some planning on behalf of the stallion owner but it would eliminate any confusion for the SIM population.

[Tammy Stawicki]

The foal limit doesn't really bother me with TBs as much as I'm utterly freaking annoyed with the Mixers. At least with TBs pedigree matters but with mixers it does not one bit. And as far as studs, saying "ohhhhh we want to spread the bloodlines and have people use other studs" as the reasoning for limits makes sense in TBs but none in mixers. You have game studs giving A+ and flat A to everything and the rest get maybe some A- and anyone would think how silly to breed to them when you can get A+ and A! Because I've tried using the other studs and guess what? My gallops sucked! So the ones that pay STUPID amounts of money for mixer studs jack the prices up(which hey I don't blame you) because of the foal limits in a division where 99% of stakes are 50k.

I guess what I'm trying to say in my rambling way is... Mixers are broken and need to be fixed ASAP. Some people might not care about mixers but a LOT of people do and spend good money in the divisions.

Yea the stallion thing in mixers is frustrating. It is very hard for homebred stallions to compete with the game created ones. I know I recently retired a beautifully bred paint stallion (dam won close to $1 million, she's a half to a millionaire and $800,000+ earner and produced 3 stakes winners, stallions sire has produced 30+ stakes winners) with $500,000 in earnings and his nicks can't compete with those of the holiday sires. Relapse is another great example. He won over $900,000. His dam is a stakes winner who produced 4 horses with $700,000+ earnings including a millionaire and he has produced 2 stakes winners in 3 crops to race. By comparison my holiday sire with the same number of crops has 18. It looks like in paints game created stallions produced 63% of all 2yo stakes winners this year. If you remove Hey Brother from the pool that number jumps up to 73%. I really try to breed a diverse crop and with my turf milers I have no probably finding enough stallions that are producing top quality foals that I don't need to repeat. In mixers it's hard. I'm all for diversity but it's hard to justify breeding to a stallion with only one or two stakes winners when there are others out there with dozens.

I don't think the answer is removing limits as it doesn't do us any good to have every paint sired by 3 stallions but if something could be done so the playerbred sires were competitive with the game created ones so we had more stallions to utilize that would be great.

[Louise Bayou]

The foal limit doesn't really bother me with TBs as much as I'm utterly freaking annoyed with the Mixers. At least with TBs pedigree matters but with mixers it does not one bit. And as far as studs, saying "ohhhhh we want to spread the bloodlines and have people use other studs" as the reasoning for limits makes sense in TBs but none in mixers. You have game studs giving A+ and flat A to everything and the rest get maybe some A- and anyone would think how silly to breed to them when you can get A+ and A! Because I've tried using the other studs and guess what? My gallops sucked! So the ones that pay STUPID amounts of money for mixer studs jack the prices up(which hey I don't blame you) because of the foal limits in a division where 99% of stakes are 50k.

I guess what I'm trying to say in my rambling way is... Mixers are broken and need to be fixed ASAP. Some people might not care about mixers but a LOT of people do and spend good money in the divisions.

Yea the stallion thing in mixers is frustrating. It is very hard for homebred stallions to compete with the game created ones. I know I recently retired a beautifully bred paint stallion (dam won close to $1 million, she's a half to a millionaire and $800,000+ earner and produced 3 stakes winners, stallions sire has produced 30+ stakes winners) with $500,000 in earnings and his nicks can't compete with those of the holiday sires. Relapse is another great example. He won over $900,000. His dam is a stakes winner who produced 4 horses with $700,000+ earnings including a millionaire and he has produced 2 stakes winners in 3 crops to race. By comparison my holiday sire with the same number of crops has 18. It looks like in paints game created stallions produced 63% of all 2yo stakes winners this year. If you remove Hey Brother from the pool that number jumps up to 73%. I really try to breed a diverse crop and with my turf milers I have no probably finding enough stallions that are producing top quality foals that I don't need to repeat. In mixers it's hard. I'm all for diversity but it's hard to justify breeding to a stallion with only one or two stakes winners when there are others out there with dozens.

I don't think the answer is removing limits as it doesn't do us any good to have every paint sired by 3 stallions but if something could be done so the playerbred sires were competitive with the game created ones so we had more stallions to utilize that would be great.

Tammy, that is because pedigree means NOTHING in mixers. And that is so frustrating. I've culled down my mixer mares because you just can't win. I lost my mind and bred 85 QH foals last year, bred nothing below A- and most were at least flat A. I have a decent amount of nice stakes mares. I got a whopping 16 stakes and NO freaks. 60% of them were below allowance.

[The Steward]

The foal limit doesn't really bother me with TBs as much as I'm utterly freaking annoyed with the Mixers. At least with TBs pedigree matters but with mixers it does not one bit. And as far as studs, saying "ohhhhh we want to spread the bloodlines and have people use other studs" as the reasoning for limits makes sense in TBs but none in mixers. You have game studs giving A+ and flat A to everything and the rest get maybe some A- and anyone would think how silly to breed to them when you can get A+ and A! Because I've tried using the other studs and guess what? My gallops sucked! So the ones that pay STUPID amounts of money for mixer studs jack the prices up(which hey I don't blame you) because of the foal limits in a division where 99% of stakes are 50k.

I guess what I'm trying to say in my rambling way is... Mixers are broken and need to be fixed ASAP. Some people might not care about mixers but a LOT of people do and spend good money in the divisions.

Yea the stallion thing in mixers is frustrating. It is very hard for homebred stallions to compete with the game created ones. I know I recently retired a beautifully bred paint stallion (dam won close to $1 million, she's a half to a millionaire and $800,000+ earner and produced 3 stakes winners, stallions sire has produced 30+ stakes winners) with $500,000 in earnings and his nicks can't compete with those of the holiday sires. Relapse is another great example. He won over $900,000. His dam is a stakes winner who produced 4 horses with $700,000+ earnings including a millionaire and he has produced 2 stakes winners in 3 crops to race. By comparison my holiday sire with the same number of crops has 18. It looks like in paints game created stallions produced 63% of all 2yo stakes winners this year. If you remove Hey Brother from the pool that number jumps up to 73%. I really try to breed a diverse crop and with my turf milers I have no probably finding enough stallions that are producing top quality foals that I don't need to repeat. In mixers it's hard. I'm all for diversity but it's hard to justify breeding to a stallion with only one or two stakes winners when there are others out there with dozens.

I don't think the answer is removing limits as it doesn't do us any good to have every paint sired by 3 stallions but if something could be done so the playerbred sires were competitive with the game created ones so we had more stallions to utilize that would be great.

Tammy, that is because pedigree means NOTHING in mixers. And that is so frustrating. I've culled down my mixer mares because you just can't win. I lost my mind and bred 85 QH foals last year, bred nothing below A- and most were at least flat A. I have a decent amount of nice stakes mares. I got a whopping 16 stakes and NO freaks. 60% of them were below allowance.

It's not like it's different. It uses the exact same formula as T-breds. It's not like when you breed a Mixer the SIM says, Throw out 3 generation pedigree this time!

**ETA - I'm not saying breeding Mixers aren't frustrating, etc. I just don't want anyone who reads this to think Bay knows something about pedigrees and how they work that they don't.

[Dave Trainer]

I don't think the answer is removing limits as it doesn't do us any good to have every paint sired by 3 stallions but if something could be done so the playerbred sires were competitive with the game created ones so we had more stallions to utilize that would be great.

The obvious simple solution to that would be stop creating game studs that are better than the player ones.

[Louise Bayou]

Yea the stallion thing in mixers is frustrating. It is very hard for homebred stallions to compete with the game created ones. I know I recently retired a beautifully bred paint stallion (dam won close to $1 million, she's a half to a millionaire and $800,000+ earner and produced 3 stakes winners, stallions sire has produced 30+ stakes winners) with $500,000 in earnings and his nicks can't compete with those of the holiday sires. Relapse is another great example. He won over $900,000. His dam is a stakes winner who produced 4 horses with $700,000+ earnings including a millionaire and he has produced 2 stakes winners in 3 crops to race. By comparison my holiday sire with the same number of crops has 18. It looks like in paints game created stallions produced 63% of all 2yo stakes winners this year. If you remove Hey Brother from the pool that number jumps up to 73%. I really try to breed a diverse crop and with my turf milers I have no probably finding enough stallions that are producing top quality foals that I don't need to repeat. In mixers it's hard. I'm all for diversity but it's hard to justify breeding to a stallion with only one or two stakes winners when there are others out there with dozens.

I don't think the answer is removing limits as it doesn't do us any good to have every paint sired by 3 stallions but if something could be done so the playerbred sires were competitive with the game created ones so we had more stallions to utilize that would be great.

Tammy, that is because pedigree means NOTHING in mixers. And that is so frustrating. I've culled down my mixer mares because you just can't win. I lost my mind and bred 85 QH foals last year, bred nothing below A- and most were at least flat A. I have a decent amount of nice stakes mares. I got a whopping 16 stakes and NO freaks. 60% of them were below allowance.

It's not like it's different. It uses the exact same formula as T-breds. It's not like when you breed a Mixer the SIM says, Throw out 3 generation pedigree this time!

**ETA - I'm not saying breeding Mixers aren't frustrating, etc. I just don't want anyone who reads this to think Bay knows something about pedigrees and how they work that they don't.

OH You know I know it allllllll. mawhahahahahaha

[Laura Smith]

I think the discrepancy in quality with the game-created vs. fully player-bred mixer stallions will even out in a few seasons once those bloodlines become integrated. Won't take long at all.

Interestingly, my three favourite paint route stallions - Gilmer, Stetson and Jordy - are all player-bred, and I think they outproduce the holiday stallions, even though Paint routers have always been one of the weaker mixer divisions.

[Mr. Lord Rich]

I don't think the answer is removing limits as it doesn't do us any good to have every paint sired by 3 stallions but if something could be done so the playerbred sires were competitive with the game created ones so we had more stallions to utilize that would be great.

The obvious simple solution to that would be stop creating game studs that are better than the player ones.

I said that 3 seasons ago when all those holiday studs were born (like 3 per division per distance) that made all the playerbred studs obsolete.

[Mr. Lord Rich]

Anyway this whole thread derailed into a mixer discussion vs new stud limit idea. Oh well.

[Danny Derby]

Anyway this whole thread derailed into a mixer discussion vs new stud limit idea. Oh well.

You tried Pete.

[Nena Olson]

All I can think is... just think how much money would have left the game had Em just stood all of these game created stallions (mixers and TB) herself? **end random thought**