I've always played the game 'as is' in as much as I breed horses, race them, retire them to breeding barn, breed from them and wait for them to get too old or to die. And then they are gone forever. I've done it this way because I usually play very long saves spanning many decades.

I want to try something different though for a couple of reasons. One is to avoid the devastation I always feel when I lose a long term save due to corrupted save file etc and the other is that I want to really try to get more indepth with selective breeding.

So, I need a wee bit of advice on the most efficient way to have my chosen breeding horses available across multiple saves. Eventually I want to end up with the choice between hundreds of breeding options spanning different timescales and different saves rather than the 80 or so I usually have in my breeding barn on a long term individual save.

Can someone please give me a step by step guide to achieving this as I'm getting myself in a muddle thinking about how to do it. I seem to remember it was mentioned previously that you can get to last day of season and save game, retire a horse to game pool, start the new season but then quit without saving so that the horse is both still in the game and in the game pool? If so, I guess that's step one?

How would I then go about having that game pool horse available to me multiple times? This part confused me as every time I transfer a horse in and out of the game pool it will age a year I think which isn't ideal bearing in mind horses eventually start producing weaker offspring as they reach a certain age.

Hope this makes sense and someone can guide me in the right direction

Copy the ttf file from the SO6 documents, save a copy to the desktop. Do this every time you add more horses to the pool. Then every time you import a horse from the game pool, copy that copy over the ttf file in the game and that horse will be back in the pool again.

This is correct. After I save a horse to the game pool I make a copy of the ttf file. I also at the same time make a copy of the hdb file (exports) and save it to a new folder I've created and keep in SO6 saves folder found in My Documents. What mine looks like...



I make a copy of the ttf and hdb file and place it in the 'Transfer~Export' folder. So when I transfer a horse into a game I always right afterwards make a copy of my backup ttf in the 'Transfer~Export' folder and then overwrite the one in the main saves folder. You then have your just transferred horse back in your pool. You must be vigilant and remember to do this everytime you transfer a horse in or they are lost forever.

For stats keeping I retire my horses at the end of their 4yo season but first I save on the last day of the 4yo year and then go to first day of the 5yo season. I do my stats recording and then close the game out. I reload the save and then retire to game pool.

Thank you both for explaining

After I transfer a horse in from the export pool can I save my game before overwriting my default TTF with the copy?

And I don't transfer the copied HDB file back in - just the TTF?

Yes you can. For details sake - the ttf file holds your transfer horses in the Transfer Pool. The hdb file holds your horse exports for the CK that are used in running races you can make.

The hdb file is not necessary. I just mentioned it because I save a copy of it every year after I do my exports to be safe from crashes or game updates that might mess things up.

That makes sense - thank you