Y35 New Gender Selection Format

[The Steward]

As just announced in the chat room

For one year we are testing random gender selection. Your ability to breed whatever gender you want whenever you want will be taken away, but do not panic: You will get to pick 20 genders a year. That way you can select your lease genders or your most special mares whenever you want, although it will cut you off at 20.

After 1 year we will see if the result was close to 50/50 in gender and tweak/change/remove this format as necessary. We also realize (and apologize that) this will affect the Nursery Stud Lease Program, which will have to be tweaked to be random gender unless Laura wants to donate her generous 20 to you and/or make you pay a premium for getting to pick and/or no longer breeding the mares herself.

[Laura Ferguson]

I'll let everyone know up front that I'm not that generous, so options 1 and 2 are out. Option 3 means I would no longer get the breeder awards, which is one of the reasons I've been willing to lease some of these mares for as low as $20k. I'll have to sit down and decide what I'm doing with the Lease Program, but that won't be until later in the break.

[Kay O. Johnson]

I do NOT like this at all! Why must the innocent always pay for the stupidity of a few? I have 700 mares and usually I am careful to keep the gender close to 50/50. Picking only 20 foals to choose gender is crazy. Shouldn't it be a percentage of mares instead of only 20. How about the people who breed all fillies just don't get to breed the following year. It seems like there could have been an easier solution then to penalize those who always tried to follow the 50/50 rule.

[Kay O. Johnson]

Wouldn't it be easier to kick out the players who can't seem to stick to the 50/50 plan?

[Carole Hanson]

Wouldn't it be easier to kick out the players who can't seem to stick to the 50/50 plan?

But would it be fair? No. People have reasons for not breeding 50/50. I bred 33% more colts this year than fillies and I should be kicked out for this?

[Kay O. Johnson]

The Steward had a reason for asking all of us to try to keep it 50/50 (although I think she is more worried about people breeding more fillies then colts) and now because some people just can't do what was asked of them all of us have to breed random. So if you were one of the people who caused this rule change I would vote to kick you out and the other guilty parties rather then to have random gender breeding forced on me and the rest of the SIM. Nothing personal, I just feel like everyone should have kept it close to 50/50 as was asked of us.

[Carole Hanson]

The Steward had a reason for asking all of us to try to keep it 50/50 (although I think she is more worried about people breeding more fillies then colts) and now because some people just can't do what was asked of them all of us have to breed random. So if you were one of the people who caused this rule change I would vote to kick you out and the other guilty parties rather then to have random gender breeding forced on me and the rest of the SIM. Nothing personal, I just feel like everyone should have kept it close to 50/50 as was asked of us.

Kicking out is way too harsh, I understand something like a big fine (SIM cash) or limited breeding opportunities for the 'offenders' but kicking someone out is over the top, yes they didn't listen to The Steward (although I haven't heard a message from the Steward about this anywhere) but they didn't cheat in the game, they were allowed to breed more fillies if they wanted to, there was no ban. So they didn't break any rules.

Another thing is that people are treating it as though there are going to be TONS of colts now and that they can only get 20 fillies per year but random gender does throw fillies you know. In fact, for me it mostly throws fillies when I put random gender.

[Kay O. Johnson]

How about you have to use random breeding but I can still choose the gender of my foals since I can follow simple suggestions that other players can't. Why am I and other players being penalized because of the actions of a few?

[Jennifer Francis]

i always use random even when it comes to leases anyone who i have leased a mare from that they bred for me can tell u that i use to choose the gender when i first started breeding but for about the last five sim years i always do everything random

[Carole Hanson]

How about you have to use random breeding but I can still choose the gender of my foals since I can follow simple suggestions that other players can't. Why am I and other players being penalized because of the actions of a few?

First of all I am not one of the 'offenders' and I don't mind the fact that we have random genders. And second of all, by setting the rule for everyone's stables, The Steward is clarifying that if you don't follow her rules, she will punish not only you but everyone else making you feel guilty about your actions.

Also, maybe it's impossible for The Steward to do it for just some stables so she has to set this rule for everyone's stables.

I understand that you have a large stable but I'm pretty sure the rule is in place not to bring more colts in every year but to make sure the fillies don't dominate in a single crop but it doesn't mean that suddenly colts will just pop up all the time. The rule is to keep it 50/50 which is apparently what you were trying to do with your own foal crop so this rule is sort of helping you, not making it worse.

[Nikki Everdeen]

I am disappointed by this, not because I want more fillies but because I purposely breed more colts. However, I will see how this goes next year as The Steward has asked before I jump to conclusions!

[Lori Hamill]

I almost exclusively use random gender and I do not have a very large stable so this new rule will not bother me at all but I am very sad that it has become necessary to have it. The 20 we are being given to choose is way more than I will ever use. It is only one 16 week trial so we'll just have to see how it goes.

[Marzy Dotes]

I'm cool with it. Guilty as charged but I did improve this year or took a more conscious role in what I was doing. Feel free to vote to kick me off the island but I've totally given up trying to play this game "right" or the "right way". I just try to have a lot of fun.

I've found with randomizing gender, I still get a slew of fillies for some reason (having four out of five randoms being fillies wasn't uncommon) probably due to statistical variance b/c my sample of randomizing is miniscule in the scheme of randomizing among all the stables and in order for true randomness to exist, there has to be smaller samples skewing up and down throughouth your variance curve. As someone with a stats minor I understand it but hopefully this time if I'm on the curve, I'll skew more towards colts. 8)

I had more fillies but this was I admit, the first year I worked harder to police myself and I still wound up over though it was less of a chick club. I think with newer breeders, the focus has been on breeding fillies b/c unlike colts, you can breed them even if they're not stars. Also I think the random injury bug affected breeding a bit too with people more inclined to insure colts than fillies in some stables b/c if a filly youngster or even racer got hit you could breed, with a colt more of a total loss. But then I think with the passage of time on the injury bug people are realizing that its scope is not quite as much as thought previously.

The only thing that bothers me is Laura Ferguson's lease which is an excellent program. I wish there was someway to work that out, Iknow that because as a breeder, she's probably been much more responsible than other people including me. If I do participate in it this year, I'll probably randomize gender this time out. I do feel bad if I played any role in penalizing her program.

[Kay O. Johnson]

Ok, I confess my lifetime breeding ratio is 59% fillies but that includes a bunch of CAMs so I am going to try to subtract them and then figure it out.

[Tammy Stawicki]

I think the steward has better things to do with her time then check every single players M/F ratio and then deal with those that are off kilter. I have no problem with this new rule, as others have said in real life you can't pick a gender and its generous that we will still be able to select the gender on 20 of our foals.