Hi everyone,

In my flat games I often get my horses to max out their potential bars (bringing their realised potential up to their absolute potential), but in my jumps games I seem to very rarely manage this. In fact, sometimes my horses never get anywhere near to maxing them out.

I know that sometimes horses just don't max their potential out, for one reason or another, but my jumpers seem to be miles behind my flat horses in terms of their progression.

Is there anything obvious that might explain this?

The Jumpers take longer to Mature but I wouldn't worry to much about Maxing out the potential in Jumpers to me its more important to get good solid Jumping Potential.

Thank you! Good to know as I have been perplexed by this...

What has been driving me crazy is that my best horses do tend to get much closer to realising their potential, which makes me think it does make a significant difference.

Having played the game for a good while now, I do think the jumps is considerably harder than the flat. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's odd that it seems so much tougher.

The jumps side is generally more perplexing, I have had full potential flats who won nothing switch to jumps to be stars, horses short of realising full potential also becoming stars and multi (20+) g1 winning milers with zero jumping potential make career changes at 5 and dominate the jumps, one who is now 8yo won a stack of g1 hurdles at 6yo and has been equally successful from 7 at 2m chases, another who after owning the mile and 1.2 division for years moved to become a star 3m two gold cups until running out of steam at 8yo.

And I am sure we have all had those horse who look good on paper but never deliver period. I would also say I found the jumps harder when playing dual game and trying to manage horses in both, I have more recently split this out by creating a new jumps only game and transferring my horses over, whilst stopping the jumps on my main game, though I still switch between the two and support this with three additional breeding games, but I have found the jumps easier to crack since making this partition.

That's interesting about finding it easier since splitting the games - I might give this a whirl too and see how I get on.

The main difference I notice is that it's not that uncommon on the Flat for me to send out a first-time juvenile winner that earns a rating of say, 90. Next time if I step this hose straight into a Group 2 race against horses rated in the low 100's it often wins and shoots up to say, 105. That reflects real life fairly well I think - that's a route that sometimes pays dividends in real life (although, as in the game, more often than not your horse is found wanting as it steps up in grade).

However, if I saddle a first-time hurdle or chase winner in a novice race to earn a rating of, say 120, in the jumps game, I virtually never then saddle the same horse to win a Graded race next time, even if it's rating is similar or better than most of its competitors. If anything, in real life, I'd argue this is more likely to result in a second win over jumps than on the Flat, but the level of difficulty is very high in my opinion in the game.

I do love the game and am sure its impossible to create something that pleases most people, let alone everyone, but I am a huge National Hunt fan, and wish there was a bit more put into that side of the SO series.

I am not sure that I agree that jumping is more important than potential.

I have exported horses to the CK at 5yo with max potential and 30% jumping, then exported the same horse as an 8yo with 85% potential and 50% jumping and most of the time the 5yo is faster. The 5yo ocassionally falls a little more often but when it gets round it is much faster.

I am currently experimenting with my league horses on this subject and am leaning towards the 5yo as they have a better chance of winning a race if they get round, whereas the 8yo will finnish the race but place about 6th in the race.

It could be that my horses deteriote faster as they were bred originally (20 generations back) from flat stock with good extra speed and cruising speed rating. I have never found a jumper in the auctions with as good green bars in these categories.

I will maybe put a few 8yo with my 5yo in the league and see how they do. Probably over 3m+ distances where more consistent jumping is preferrable.

I have had success in previous league meetings with 5yo but mainly over shorter distances.

I had similiar concerns about breeding jumps horses and reaching full potential. I have discussed my way around the problem in another thread.

http://www.startersorders.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=15830