Guys I'm a newbie and would appreciate some help breeding my horses.
What should I look for in a mare? Is rating important? Is the number of G wins important? Similarly, what should I look for in a sire? Thanks in advance for your help, and just in case you are wondering, no I'm not in a league and do not plan to be in one either. I enjoy this game as a stand alone.

In both I look for good times for the ground they have raced on.

Thanks for your reply. If I wanted to improve my foals' acceleration or consistency, for example, is one gender more responsible for some of these or are t
hey 50/50 contributors?

None of us really know in the detailed stats, this is the first time we have had them. Try breeding like with like.

I'd suggest you just give breeding a try and experiment a bit. I always struggled to breed fast milers and in SO4 had tried putting 1m2f mares/stallions to 6f mares/stallions. Almost always getting the dreaded 7f or 1m1f horse. But I have tried quite a few times in SO5 and it seems more successful. Experimentation is the best way to learn.

In my opinion the mare you use is of less importance than the stallion. But if you can find a good foundation mare who consistently produces top offspring then you'll be on a winner. The progeny seems a little more hit and miss to me in this game. In SO4 if you found a top foundation mare you were set for the game and would always have a G1 winner in your stable. In this game it seems mares produce more of a variety of offspring, I have a full brother and sister one who is a front runner and just gets 1m3f at a stretch and the other which is a 1m6f horse who will easily win a 2m race.

Just experiment when you're still learning to find a method which suits you. If you search the forum there are thousands of posts about breeding and if you look on the Online League Discussion page there is advice on how to breed league monsters if that is what you're into.

Experimenting is best... I retired my unbeaten stallion to stud, He won 15 in a season, Listed class 7f at best, of the 4 foals he had to 5f/6f mares 1 was poor 2 were average and 1... Well looking at the stats bar he was not too clever so i called him Not Too Quick (!!) Breeding pref was 6f but he was best at 5f, won C2 H'caps, Conditions events and a couple of listed races, then at start of 3 y.o career i put him in the 5f G1 sprint in dubai.. And he won by 5l in 57.1 seconds!

It is hard to know what the different stats do so hard to advise what to do in each case. Here are a few of my observations. The key stats for speed appear to be potential rating, extra speed rating and cruising boost. It's hard to generalise because we're talking of a pool of no more than 10 horses that I have that are capable of running the very fastest CK times (and another larger pool of poorer horses that were their predecessors). However in general it would appear that potential rating has the greatest influence. Off the horses I have with close to max potential rating (we're talking less than 1-2% difference in bar here) then it looks like cruising burst and extra speed rating have more influence than any of the other stats. As for the rest it's hard to know which wants to go after next and I'd be interested to see what thoughts folks have.

At the end of the day it's hard to know how many other hidden variables affect the quality of horse we see. Hence testing in CK is important. However as some have noted not all horses that run well in CK do well in game. Whether that is because of hidden variables or whether because CK disregards some e.g. confidence is hard to know. In my experience a horse that can run league standard times in CK will pretty much win most races in game but YMMV.

Just a quick update and simply because I was running some horses through CK. This would be a league standard time - 1m4 – 2.33.50s to 2.33.0s.

At present I'm breeding 1m2f+ horses and the current best ones do 2.34.00- 2.34.4 so off by between 0.5s and 0.9s. My final run in to the season includes Arc 1m4f, Melbourne Cup 2m, Japanese 1m4f and Hong Kong 1m2f. With the current crop I almost always win the 3 shorter distances and 50% of the time I get the Melbourne Cup too. That's a good example of why league standard horses could expect to dominate in game.

Thanks for all the replies, you've all been very helpful. Moving forward I guess I'll experiment keeping an eye on potential and the other factors mentioned above.

Cheers.