Some Numbers on who is booking full

[Tammy Stawicki]

The following are percents of booked full stallions by breeds at various points. You can see my full numbers here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing

Y50 Week 15
Appy 1.5%
Arabian 0%
Paint 1.9%
QH 4.1%
Pacer 3.2%
Trotter 1.5%
All Mixers 2.3%
Thoroughbred 0.3%

Y50 End of Season
Appy 3.6%
Arabian 1.3%
Paint 2.4%
QH 5.0%
Pacer 7.4%
Trotter 4.2%
All Mixers 4.1%
Thoroughbred 0.9%
Crossbreed TB 1.9%
Crossbreed QH 10.3%

Currently (Y51 Season Open)
Appy 0%
Arabian 0%
Paint 2.5%
QH 1.8%
Pacer 0%
Trotter 0%
All Mixers 0.9%
Thoroughbred 0.3%
Crossbreed TB 0%
Crossbreed QH 2.9%

[Tom Lin]

It is a little early to be looking at numbers. For example I looked at the paint stallions, and of the ones that are listed as booked full, none of them have any foals currently. The owners have yet to open up spots for other breeders which I am sure they will probably do.

[Tammy Stawicki]

I am aware most if not all of these "booked full" stallions have very few foals on the ground. Even a significant number of the booked full horses I looked at week 15 last year had under 120 foals (see the second sheet on the linked google doc) however it doesn't change the fact that we currently can't breed to them. I am a supporter of the idea behind the limits I just think there needs to be tweaking and I worry that since mixed breeds are being disproportionately affected (as the numbers consistently show) and the steward and lots of players don't breed mixers the problems get ignored. So I'm going to keep beating this drum in hopes of change.

Limits were originally advertised as "in reality, only a few horses have more than 100 foals a year, so this will not affect most players or stallions" for thoroughbreds yea I see that. I have not felt any pain on the thoroughbred side and as late as week 15 you could still breed to 99.7% of thoroughbred sires. But mixers... is there really a single mixer breeder outside of those exclusively breeding Arabians that don't feel affected? I have 27 mixer mares split between two division and I usually lease out a subset. I try not to breed more than 1-2 mares/stallion. I have a lot of money. I would think I'm the type of breeder who should be least affected and I find it a pain. I can't imagine what it is like for breeders with larger stables or less money to spend on stud fees. Last year to work around my favorite stallions maxing out I figured out who I wanted to breed early. Then kept an eye on bred numbers and those that were getting high were bred early. For the most part this worked but I did get shut out of one stallion who went from ~30 mares bred to booked full in a single day. That scared me so I bred all my mares and wound up losing a foal to injury soon after. This year I can't even use that strategy as a few stallions I'd like to use are booked full already. So now I have to keep watching until slots open and hope I can get a mare in before those slots are filled up by someone else. That's frustrating. Currently, there are 4 stallions I would like to use that are "booked full" and 2 others are unavailable and the year is young.

[Rochelle Bos]

I remember someone mentioning in another post (can’t recall who said it) but someone mentioned how it would be awesome if the owner could breed without taking up limit slots! I really like the idea, but I could also see it being abused by leasing out the stallion to other members and avoiding the limits all together

I’d love if mixers could find a balance with the studs, I know I had 40 unbred formidable mares on Thursday because the studs I was looking at breeding to were booked full, and the mares were a hodgepodge of all mixer breeds and distances. even the GP studs maxed out!

[Laura Ferguson]

I find it an absolute pain (and I agree, this complaint is limited to mixers). I don't want to have to keep checking back - it's the one aspect of the game that is completely unuser friendly. Plus, when it says booked full, you have to dig to figure out whether the stallion is genuinely booked full, or just that the owner is holding spots (and may or may not release additional spots at some time - sometimes announced, sometimes not). No issues with TBs, but mixers make me crazy. My stable would have been completely screwed if I waited until Week 16 like I normally do. This really needs some tweaking.

I'm also going to note that the practical percentages are worse than Tammy lists, because there are always some "bad" stallions who are standing, even though they shouldn't be, so when 10% of stallions are unavailable, that doesn't really leave you with the other 90% to choose from. Then add in that some stallions aren't options because your mare is too closely related to them, and then if you're a person with budgetary constraints (fortunately, not an issue for me), you may rapidly run out of viable options. I also ended up with a LESS diverse group of foals, because with certain sires being unavailable, instead of breeding no more than 2-3 mares to a stallion, I bred 4-5 to a stallion who was both available and a reasonable price. Not sure that was the intent, but that's the consequence, at least in my barn.

This is the second year in a row that I left some good mares in training because my options were pretty limited Week 16 (I know that some owners opened up additional spots the day foals were due, but that doesn't work with my schedule).

[Kent Saunders]

It would seem that managing a Stud is a skill the same as racing/breeding being a Bloodstock Manager. And unfortunately many of the folks that have decent studs do not seem to have a definitive plan what their doing from day to day and week to week with these studs. The fees go up/then down. Books are full/then not, sometimes changing multiple times in a week. As noted it is very, very frustrating to keep up with it. Last season I had booked 2 mares to such a stud and decided to go ahead and breed early and not worry about since there were only 19 foals on the ground. Bred the first one no issue but the system wouldn't let me breed the second one. I have to admit I was quite angry when I finally figured out there were no more open breedings after the first 20! At that point I decided once I identified a suspect Stud owner to just move on to another stud and bypass the problems associated with those studs, even if I might not be getting my first choice. And IMO the same thing is going on in TB racing...the good news there is there seem to me more choices available.

[Laura Smith]

I agree it's annoying to keep checking back and so forth, and unless the stallion owner has publicized their plans, it's hard to know what's going on.
Might be nice if stallion owners could put a little public note on their horse's studbook page to describe their plans for availability. I'm sure there are many people who wouldn't use it, but it beats sifting through forum threads in case you missed something about horse X going off the market at 89 foals and reopening Week 13 Day 4 at 2:41pm or whatever.
A PM does go a long way when wondering about a specific horse, too.

[Mr. Lord Rich]

In terms of mixers, the steward just created 3-4 different gp studs for each breed.

All are priced cheap for their hypo.

That along with all the holiday studs that she sold at auction, there are a lot of really nice options to use and all are completely different bloodlines from each other.

Yes I know they are for GP, but the conversion is around 1k gp = 10k simcash so for 3k gp or 30k you are getting a nice foal.

[Tammy Stawicki]

Funny you should mention holiday sires. When the year opened the only paint sprinter holiday sire available was the one I owned, though admittedly since then 20 slots have opened on Gray Patches. The pure paint middle distance sire is still booked full. My holiday paint sprinter booked full last year despite being the most expensive of the 3 and me only sending 2 mares his way. I got shut out of one of the QH holiday sires I was interested in as I didn't have mares for him early in the year and he was booked full by the time my week 16ers retired. Instead those mares went to stallions I already had used echoing Laura's point that this is decreasing diversity.

That being said I had not been aware of the new game point sires, that is good to know and will give me a few more options for this year.

[Dave Trainer]

In terms of mixers, the steward just created 3-4 different gp studs for each breed.

Yes I know they are for GP, but the conversion is around 1k gp = 10k simcash so for 3k gp or 30k you are getting a nice foal.

That is ok if they have Sim money. If they don't thy can't buy the GP either.

[Mr. Lord Rich]

In terms of mixers, the steward just created 3-4 different gp studs for each breed.

Yes I know they are for GP, but the conversion is around 1k gp = 10k simcash so for 3k gp or 30k you are getting a nice foal.

That is ok if they have Sim money. If they don't thy can't buy the GP either.

If they don’t have sim cash they can’t breed anyway limits or not so what’s that point?

[Dave Trainer]

There are a lot of mixer studs cheaper than 30k. They get used quickly, often by owners of studs who have reserved all their slots for themselves.

There would likely be even more if a lot of studs weren't booked full by their owners driving up the price of others.

If there is a limit on the number of foals that can be bred there should also be a limit on how many an owner can reserve for themselves. The way things are a stud owner can use up a lot of slots on other players horses while keeping all theirs reserved.

[Mr. Lord Rich]

If there is a limit on the number of foals that can be bred there should also be a limit on how many an owner can reserve for themselves. The way things are a stud owner can use up a lot of slots on other players horses while keeping all theirs reserved.

I like you Dave, nothing personal, but your response is rediculous.
How are you going to tell someone to handle their own horse? If someone owns a stud are you telling me that they don’t hold the right to reserve the limited number of foals for themselves if they wanted to?

[Dave Trainer]

In a word, Yes

[Tammy Stawicki]

I've seen multiple players suggest owners be limited in how many mares they can send to their sires. I certainly understand the frustration leading to the suggestion but don't personally support the idea.I think if you own the horse you should be able to use it as much as you want, its part of the privelages that come with owning a stallion. I think it is also important that stallion owners have the space to send nice mares to their studs to give them the best chance of succeeding. And all this is coming from someone who rarely if ever sends more than 5 mares to of her stallions so would most likely not be affected by such a rule change.

Also looking at the numbers I gathered from last year (number of mares bred sheet in document linked above), limiting owner breedings is only going to help in some cases. There are plenty of stallions on that list that have 100+ foals and <20 of them were bred by their owners. I think a more globally helpful rule would be to limit the number of mares other breeders could send so you don't have a few people sending 20, 40, 100+ mares to a stallion that isn't their own and others being shut out completely. My thoughts on how that would work is that instead of opening up breeding immediately when the year turns over we could have a "reservation period' until races open. Owners of a stallion would reserve their spots before the year opens as is currently the case. During the reservation period then other people could prepay the stud fee and be reserved a spot to stallions of their choosing. People would be limited to only 1-2 reservations/stallion. Breeding would open when races/training opened and at that point people could breed as normal if stallions still had open spots. This would help switch the limits from the couple quickest/lucky people get to use the popular stallions to lots of players get to use popular stallions but they can only send a few mares. You'd still have time to think about what mare you wanted to send to the stallions you reserved bring breeding back to thoughtful decisions not shove mares at popular stallions as quick as you can before they fill, and you could save those spots for mares retiring late in the season. It isn't a perfect system as it wouldn't help if an owner had all the spots reserved during the reservation period, but I could see it helping.

The other simpler fix that I see no real downside to is making separate limits for within breed and crossbreed on crossbreed eligible stallions. Crossbreeding quarter horses have consistently been the heaviest hit by this change which makes sense as 3 different breeds are sending mares to them. There was an attempted fix last year where their limits were slightly increased but a 25% limit increase isn't going to fully account for a 300% possible mare difference. That change doesn't seem to have really helped as we still saw about 10% of crossbreed eligible quarter horses booking full and as Laura mentioned not all of those 90% reamining are really breedable stallions (6% earned some money in the races but didn't reach the $350,000 cutoff for example). Having separate limits would doulbe these stallions limits and relieve a lot more of the pressure on them. It would also incentivize owners to once again have separate stud fees for within breed and crossbreeding something that has essentially stopped happening since the limits have come into play. A paint/appy doesn't have the earning potential of a quarter horse, so for players where money is an issue its hard paying quarter horse stud fees if you want to crossbreed.