Hello !
I have a few questions about the game.
First is about the speed of a horse changing as it ages. I had a young mare, bred in my stud, with its speed to the maximum (much to my delight, I was hoping this could be a Group Race winner). But then, as she turned 2, I noticed that her speed bar had dropped down to about half. She still seems like she'll be a good runner, but still, I'm quite annoyed at this. Is it a bug, or a normal process ?
Second question, related to that, how do you breed a good horse ? I have quite a few good stallions in my stables, but I don't want to retire them to the stud yet, because they earn me quite some money. So I breed mares (1 quite good, 2 alright and the last one quite bad) with horses outside my stables, with absolutely no garanty of what the foal will be like, which is probably not the best way to do this. So if you guys have any advice on it, I'll gladly take it
Thanks !

Breed horses with stats like Thunderspark's horses shown in this thread...

http://www.startersorders.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=15899

Extra Speed,Potential and Cruising burst are the key stats. Others help too. My horses usually get me a mid to upper placing in the trainers rankings in the online league. While Thunderspark is in his 2nd season and his horses are beasts. Likely to win the trainers title.

Use the transfer pool to save your best horses so you can bring them into new games to breed with whatever you like.

Yep I have two like this one, but they're racing right now, they're basically my only two good horses, I can't exactly afford to retire them :') It's actually my first game (or the first one I'm actually happy about, I gave up on the last two after a season or two), so I don't have any other horse to use for breeding.
And I can't see the stats for the outside-my-stables stallions I use for breeding, which is my main issue with that system. Should I use some money to buy a G Race Winner stallion only for breeding (and if so, how am I supposed to come up with that much money) ?

Mel - Not sure how much you have in the bank but money is the key.

Once you get around 10 to 20 million banked you can open up on your spending and breeding. But before then you can breed a few mares and sell their off spring to kick your bank along.
Follow the link in SiriusChill's reply to understand what you need to aim at.

Regarding age - I have found most flat horses (I play on Australian tracks) peak at 5yo and I usually race into their 6th year.
I also find it is easier to breed good mares with a few of them being outstanding. Mares that win in open class and overseas are real keepers!

With your speed bar dropping - was that the red vertical speed bar next to the horses profile or the green horizontal speed bar?

Just took a look at the horses in the link. Some exceptional species there. What I wonder is how you determine the horses best distance. Is it by looking at the speed and stamina bars, the average distance, jockey feedback, or trial and error?

Sometimes I feel I never can work out my horses best distance. It might be other factors as well, of course, but what do you look at? I saw a horse in the link that was reckoned as a 7f horse, but average distance from its parents was 2m.

Stamina bar is your best indicator...especially for sprints. Middle distance horses is that and a bit of trial and error.

Race trial and error, export and trial and the gallops can help work out distance, the latter of which is often overlooked.

Re the early breeding question few things you may find useful.

1 - gambling can be risky but unless your owning at g1 it is a good way to earn cash, follow frankel about if you have the legends in game, rarely if ever loses, or e/w bet for safety

2 - breeding with game horses in the beginning is no bad thing; some of my early leaps forward came from game horses and even now I sprinkle them into my lines on occasion. Look at the quality of the races they have won, the age they won them, and who they beat plus look at the times though track and going plays a part with this. Breeding fee is just based on money won, so there are often gems lurking lower down who were simply lightly raced. Is common to find a classic winner right down the pack at 4yo.

3 - a colt in the barn breeds more horses per year than a filly, if you have the money lose a colt, it will pay dividends in years to come, and chances are what you have now is just scratching the surface of what you can breed, and you can always sell the offspring, unraced at 2yo they may command top money.

4 - from the horses tab, have a look at who the best horses are in your game, especially the colts, select a few you like the look of and follow them, not only are you notified when there running which can help with betting, your also told if they are going to be auctioned. My original game went from scratching about at G3 to winning g1 after g1 when finding such a horse, 30 g1 wins auctioned at 7yo. Cost me about 2m but I never looked back from there.

Josh

If you want to keep racing your good horses, but also breed from them at the same time, try this:

Just before the season ends, save your game and then export your good horses to a ttf file. This is done by selecting the "retire to game pool" in the horses info screen.

Progress the game to the next year, but DO NOT SAVE the game. The horse will have disappeared from your stable. The next part depends on whether you run the game in a window or in full-screen mode.

If you run in a window just close the window using the cross at the top right of the window. You will quit the game without saving it.

If you run in full-screen mode, press the ctrl, alt and del keys all at the same time. This will bring up windows task manager. Use task manager to shut down the game. The game will be closed without it being saved.

Make a copy the ttf file so you can use it over and over again.

Now all you have to do is restart SO6 and the horse will still be in your stable. Use the Transfer button to bring the horse back into the game. You now have 2 copies of the horse, one to race and one to breed.

Hey !
Thanks for all your tips !
A season has passed in my game since my last post. I managed to gain about 2millions by betting (mostly on my horses, it's quite safe, especially on some horses who never got higher than C7 but always win those). I used one of those millions to buy what seemed to be an excellent mare (G1 winner, 3yo, good stats), and two quite alright jumpers. It took me the whole season to finally get a win (C2) from that mare, but well, in the worst case she can make good foals. The two jumpers were surprisingly good.
As for the 4 foals that I had from the last season's breeding, well, they really surprised me. I don't know which stallions I picked from the barn, but they must have been some darn good horses, because in the four 3yo, I have a G2 winner (best 3yo of the flat season), a Listed Race Winner and the two others are winning their C2 et C3 Conditions races easily. I really hope the next bunch of foals will be as good.
The G2 winner is actually the horse whose speed bar had dropped at the beginning of the season for some reason. It got higher again, and anyway I noticed that it keeps changing for all my horses for some reason (I should find the time to read that manuel, maybe I'll find an explanation there). I'm still quite far from breeding the perfect G1 racer as shown in SiriusChill's post, but maybe in a few dozen seasons I'll get there (it's only 2022 after all, still early in game)
Anyway, for this season, I'll try again the breeding with random stallions and my alright mares, and at the end of the season I'll retire most of those mares to use some better ones I have running for now, and my G3 stallion who has really faded this season (couldn't even win a Listed Race, and he's 7yo).
I'll try the pool system soon, as Wannabe suggested, but I'm really not familiar with this thing so I'll try it on other games first, just to make sure I don't end up messing things up !
I have a few other questions tho :
- How does the genetic works in game ? Because out of the 4 mares I have in my breeding barn, 2 are alright and 2 mediocres. Yet my G2 winner came out of a mediocre one, while the weakest foal of the bunch (C2-C3) came out of the best mare.
- I hired the lad (? not sure of the name) to help calm down the horses before each race. Is it useful, or is it just a coincidence that my horses had better results after that ? (Especially that G1 horse I bought, who was quite lazy and raced weirdly before and started to win after I hired it)
- Is it useful to have both a apprentice jockey and a retained jockey ? (Only have the apprentice for now, but I'm thinking of hiring one of the main jockeys as he's cheap and won all the races with my bunch of foals)
Thanks !

1 - i believe without being absolutely certain it is between the high and low point of the two horses used to breed with, simply stated so if the mare has 80% speed and the stallion 60% the foal will land from 60-80%. Though I am maybe less scientific about it than some. Thunder spark is our resident breeding expert of late maybe worth looking for his posts on breeding.

2 - not convinced about the lad but there not expensive when you have cash so I always hire one.

3 - worth it if you have enough horses, if not the stable chap will take the rides and your apprentice will sit around doing nothing, assuming you use the auto book option. You can of course manage this manually.

Josh