I think a foal cap is something that is viable but you would have to accompany it with a bunch of other changes. The reason there are so many Tapit’s/ Frankels being bred is because there are so many BPs in the game. You can make 1000bps with GGGG in next to no time and I’m sure the there are other just as good alternative methods. So if you capped the Tapit’s/ Frankels to 150 you would have to address the fact that most of them would go to a select group of stables that are raking in BPs like crazy and they would just breed them all out before most people got a chance. You could argue now that at least in it’s current form everyone gets a chance of breeding a blueblood.
If the sim was setup a little differently and you could differentiate between players I’ve always thought that you could keep the Sires uncapped but make it progressively more expensive for a single player to breed using one sire. Like after the fifth Tapit it becomes 1500bps. After the 10th it becomes 2000bps. So people are forced into experimentation. But the sim allows people to split up their stables and have multiple groups so we can’t go down that route unless we change some fundamentals about stable groups.
Another way to address it is to look into the BP making ‘exploits’ and cut them off. I love GGGG breeding as much as anyone but should a 2yo claimer be the most desirable race in the game to win? Is that 50/40/30 bp for 1st/2nd/3rd really justifiable? It’s an oddity that fuels the games BPflation for no real benefit.
Lastly, an evening out of the top sires would be something that I would look into. People are not at all encouraged to look beyond the Sea the Stars/ Dubawi’s etc because despite the high price they seem to be the best value proposition in generating a top class horse. Japanese stallions as an example seem to have quite a high baseline in the sim (the cheap ones can do quite well) but the top ones like Lord Kanaloa etc who has produced some of the best horses in the world, just doesn’t work anywhere near as well. So you’re incentivised to just save up more for one of the same top 2-3 stallions rather than blow your chance with a upper-mid tier sire.
Why did you mention Incels? I am sure someone is shooting pictures of Eddie the Eagle already. Dying your eyebrows and wearing a snapback isn’t helping.
Tapit has 120 cover in real life (2022 75 named foals from his 3yo crop 2 graded stakes winners). He should be being downgraded 24 stallions had more some from less foals. It seems stupid at best he can cover 476 in the sim. If we are real his fertility would have not been that good when he was 6.
There should be some cap 150 appears reasonable. The quality of mares is very important in breeding and with better quality mares under used stallions would do a lot better.
The reason why Lord Kanaloa does not produce a high percentage of graded winners is simple 2022 192 named foals from his 3yo crop 2 graded stakes winners) He is less around a third of the sire Tapit is once other factors are taken into effect. Number of graded stakes winners does not mean the ones that hit cannot be outstanding like the few he gets in real life. These two things are not linked as with real life.
If any of the Tapit breeders just have a fetish for grey (gray) horses there were 3 on the list of the 24 who did better. One though is not a long term prospect he has been dumped twice already. Imagine he is the Incel who asked his date to go Dutch at the soup kitchen.
Iant comparing Japanese sires by stakes/ graded wins to stallions in other countries by the same metric is entirely misleading. Japan has basically no blacktype/ graded races compared to anywhere else. In Ireland 1 in every 10 races is blacktype, 1 in every 100 is a G1. In Japan 1 in every 70 races is blacktype and 1 in every 666 races is a G1. You can’t hold Maurice/ Kitasan Black/ Lord Kanaloa to the same percentages if there just isn’t the same amount of possible blacktype races to be won. For their dirt sires it’s even worse, some of their top dirt races aren’t even graded at all.
Lord Kanaloa was just an example. He is the no.1 sire in one of the all round strongest nations in the sport. He shouldn’t be sub 10% stakes winners when the best sires are 25%
How many of those races are on the A league? I am sure on the top quality tracks the percentage is way higher. Note a lot of the fact they have few races is the way the do not comply with international regulations on ownership, competition and breeding. That is there choice if they think they are the best prove it by having an open door policy.
I can buy a horse and race it in Ireland, USA, Australia or South Africa but not Japan. You only have to look on the restrictions on Godolphin to know what a joke they are. Unless you play fair do not expect to get treated fair. Only the races without restrictions are assessed for grade purpose their choice.
The other issue is Deep Impact 8.83% graded stakes winners, only Danzig, Monsun, Dubawi and Galileo are better sires this century. Lord Kanaloa is 2.56% big difference.
He should not be a 10% sire similar percentage graded stakes winning sires usually hit 5% stakes winners. His sim percentage of stakes winners looks fine his graded % low. I guarantee his sim mare quality is pathetic compared to real life. Note Coolmore took the mares back to Ireland after they were covered the year Deep Impact died. Coolmore are a lot of things stupid is not one of them. They know Wotton Bassett is better.
The one thing I would agree is the 25% stakes winners that should be for a very few 15% maximum. Then your guy and others like him the world over get a fair chance.
Hence the sensible question of should breeding numbers be restricted. The answer is pretty obvious.
Again Lord Kanaloa was an example. Notice how i followed his name with an ‘etc’. My original point about narrowing the gap from the absolute elite to the very good stallions never even restricted itself to Japanese racing, hence the use of ‘as an example’. It includes all the lovely sires in Europe not called Frankel/Sea the Stars and Dubawi too.
I disagree that in the current state that the top sires in Japan like LK/ Duramente before he passed etc should be sub 10% in this game as it stands. Duramente struggled to get a stakes winner at all in the game with 100+ foals a year. 10% stakes winners in the sim is very average. Blue Point as a random example has already had an 11% stakes winning year in the sim. He may or may not turn out to be the greatest stallion to have ever lived but he has performed better than any Japanese sire in the last few years and his progeny are only just starting to race. The argument about whether 10% stakes should be average is a seperate issue. 15% is where the better Australian sires are at and I think that’s where the Japanese sires should stack up so you don’t feel like you’re gimping your chances so much by not going to the same handful of sires.
On the original topic of capping stallions at 150. If we don’t combat BPflation as well then where do people think the BPs for the 300 Tapits no longer available will go? The 150 Frankels not bought? At the moment there are 20+ sires that never leave 1000bps. Say hello to 100+ stallions that will never leave 1000bps.
I was able go to YouTube and find the video. Regarding the foal cap I would definitely vote “NO” to this. There are so many reasons why. One being we have quite a few people that pour lots of money into this sim and those people would have the purchasing power. I also remind the players of the sim that we have many players that live in various countries where their dollar against the U.S. dollar already puts them at a disadvantage in the purchase of credits due to the currency exchange rate.
The second reason is that there are those that have multiple accounts. Thus, they have a lot of buying power in the sim by the use of BP’s. Currently any blueblood sire in the sim can be purchased for 1000 BP’s. I personally have three accounts, two that I made and one that I inherited due to the passing of a player that use to be in the sim. Just with three accounts I generate a lot of BP’s but still less than many others of which I know have 5 or more accounts full of horses in the sim.
There has been over the past few years a large increase in the number of horses in total running in races in the sim. At certain times it is often difficult to find a Listed or Graded stakes race for your horse. This past week alone I had to move a horse that got knocked out three times in three different Graded stakes. When I finally found a spot for her that she finally made the cut going off at 21/1, she went gate to wire for the G3 win. I mention this as an example because we have many more horses and many newer or returning players and more master accounts being made by existing players than in past years. I kind of feel we should be encouraging people, not bestowing more rules, limitations or a mad dash for a sire share with those that have a distinct buying power advantage. Also, this would take a lot of time, effort and long hours by Admin Mike Wallace to implement. He is already bogged down and working on various updates/upgrades to the sim and there are several other things that he has on his plate to look at that have not even hit the radar yet.
I feel things are fine with the purchase of sire shares just the way they are and that placing limits on sire share purchases would negatively impact the game in several ways, not just the examples that I have shared. Also, as a reminder there is a lottery for sire shares and this would have to be taken into account if a limit where to be put in place.
Thank you for your article and Happy Derby weekend to everyone!
I think sires should be capped but it has to take place within an overall restructuring of the breeding process. People are breeding to Tapit 400+ times because there are not enough high-rated dirt sires in the game. We don’t have this problem with turf sires because players can get a host of reasonably priced turf sires (Blue Point was already mentioned and there are dozens of other Euro and Australian sires that fit this profile). Look at the mixed messages this year, American Pharoah was nerfed and Munnings was given an upgrade but (I’m paraphrasing) we don’t want to make him too good. Well, given that, why is anyone going to do, breed a Pharoah or Munnings? They will just breed a Tapit.
I look at the real Derby trail and wonder why almost no one in the SIM can get a Mage? Good Magic came into the SIM with a very good pedigree (Curlin x Hard Spun x Miswaki). He won a G1 at 2 and at 3. He ran 2nd in the KY Derby. And in the SIM he has one G1 winner out of 452 runners. He has a 0.7% graded winning %. Why was he rated so poorly coming into the SIM? And if stallions like this keep coming into the game as basically a sunk cost, why would any player want to veer away from Tapit? And it is even fair to cap their breeding to Tapit to and de facto force them to use sires that aren’t going to perform?
So yes, I think capping stallions at 175 makes sense, but only if done in coordination with other changes. If nothing changes and a flat cap is put into place, I wouldn’t support that since as has been pointed out the people who drops tons of money on the game or those that are using BP breeding mills would still get what they wanted and everyone else would suffer.
Capping stallions at say, 150 or what ever, will lead to prices on other sire shares increasing. The trainers will still earn the same amount of bp’s and they would probably still breed and equal amount of horses, so the horses that doesn’t cost 1000 would be bred more often – bringing the prices up. It wouldn’t change much for the “wealthy” trainers, but would change things for the not so well off.
Trying to limit the number of offsprings/sire by making the most popular stallions more expensive, say having the maximum price set to 2000, would probably also increase the prices for cheaper sire shares, but not as much as having a cap. Having a 2000 maximum price would only decrease the number of offsprings to half, if trainers used the same amount of bp’s. (With some stallions selling 450 share, that would still be over 200 shares for those sires. Getting it down to 150 would require a 3000 maximum price.)
If the maximum price could go to 1500 when 50 shares has been sold, to 2000 when 75 has been sold, to 2500 at 100, 3000 at 125 and so on, the number of shares sold – if trainers spent the same amount of money – would end up at almost 200. If the maximum price could go to 2000 when 50 shares has been sold, to 3000 when 75 has been sold, to 4000 at 100, 5000 at 125 and so on, the number of shares sold – if trainers spent the same amount of money – would end up at almost 160. If the maximum price could go from 2000 to 2500 when 50 shares has been sold, to 3000 when 75 has been sold, to 3500 at 100, 4000 at 125 and so on, the number of shares sold – if trainers spent the same amount of money – would end up at about 155.
Changing the maximum price could be a way, but what would the “wealthy” trainers do when prices for their shares increase? Would they go for breeding less number of horses or would they use cheaper sires? It’s hard to say. We have to assume they are rational – even though some might not be (and it’s nothing wrong with that!) – so they wouldn’t buy the shares if they didn’t get the same success/bp’s invested. When I look at the KY stats I see Tapit is very popular, but other than him it’s only a handful that have more than 200 offsprings/crop. Their earnings aren’t as good as Tapit’s, but they are not that bad. I would pay at least twice as much for a Tapit bred horse than for say one of the other 49 top-50 earners.
I think an increased maximum price, say 2000, for all horses or a cap at 250 offspring could do some changes without messing around to much. It would decrease the number of offsprings/stallion. On the other hand, stallions with those extreme share numbers – like Tapit – are extremely rare, so is it worth changing the entire system?
The video hasn’t embedded properly for me.
I think a foal cap is something that is viable but you would have to accompany it with a bunch of other changes. The reason there are so many Tapit’s/ Frankels being bred is because there are so many BPs in the game. You can make 1000bps with GGGG in next to no time and I’m sure the there are other just as good alternative methods. So if you capped the Tapit’s/ Frankels to 150 you would have to address the fact that most of them would go to a select group of stables that are raking in BPs like crazy and they would just breed them all out before most people got a chance. You could argue now that at least in it’s current form everyone gets a chance of breeding a blueblood.
If the sim was setup a little differently and you could differentiate between players I’ve always thought that you could keep the Sires uncapped but make it progressively more expensive for a single player to breed using one sire. Like after the fifth Tapit it becomes 1500bps. After the 10th it becomes 2000bps. So people are forced into experimentation. But the sim allows people to split up their stables and have multiple groups so we can’t go down that route unless we change some fundamentals about stable groups.
Another way to address it is to look into the BP making ‘exploits’ and cut them off. I love GGGG breeding as much as anyone but should a 2yo claimer be the most desirable race in the game to win? Is that 50/40/30 bp for 1st/2nd/3rd really justifiable? It’s an oddity that fuels the games BPflation for no real benefit.
Lastly, an evening out of the top sires would be something that I would look into. People are not at all encouraged to look beyond the Sea the Stars/ Dubawi’s etc because despite the high price they seem to be the best value proposition in generating a top class horse. Japanese stallions as an example seem to have quite a high baseline in the sim (the cheap ones can do quite well) but the top ones like Lord Kanaloa etc who has produced some of the best horses in the world, just doesn’t work anywhere near as well. So you’re incentivised to just save up more for one of the same top 2-3 stallions rather than blow your chance with a upper-mid tier sire.
Video not embedded.
Why did you mention Incels? I am sure someone is shooting pictures of Eddie the Eagle already. Dying your eyebrows and wearing a snapback isn’t helping.
Tapit has 120 cover in real life (2022 75 named foals from his 3yo crop 2 graded stakes winners). He should be being downgraded 24 stallions had more some from less foals. It seems stupid at best he can cover 476 in the sim. If we are real his fertility would have not been that good when he was 6.
There should be some cap 150 appears reasonable. The quality of mares is very important in breeding and with better quality mares under used stallions would do a lot better.
The reason why Lord Kanaloa does not produce a high percentage of graded winners is simple 2022 192 named foals from his 3yo crop 2 graded stakes winners) He is less around a third of the sire Tapit is once other factors are taken into effect. Number of graded stakes winners does not mean the ones that hit cannot be outstanding like the few he gets in real life. These two things are not linked as with real life.
If any of the Tapit breeders just have a fetish for grey (gray) horses there were 3 on the list of the 24 who did better. One though is not a long term prospect he has been dumped twice already. Imagine he is the Incel who asked his date to go Dutch at the soup kitchen.
Iant comparing Japanese sires by stakes/ graded wins to stallions in other countries by the same metric is entirely misleading. Japan has basically no blacktype/ graded races compared to anywhere else. In Ireland 1 in every 10 races is blacktype, 1 in every 100 is a G1. In Japan 1 in every 70 races is blacktype and 1 in every 666 races is a G1. You can’t hold Maurice/ Kitasan Black/ Lord Kanaloa to the same percentages if there just isn’t the same amount of possible blacktype races to be won. For their dirt sires it’s even worse, some of their top dirt races aren’t even graded at all.
Lord Kanaloa was just an example. He is the no.1 sire in one of the all round strongest nations in the sport. He shouldn’t be sub 10% stakes winners when the best sires are 25%
How many of those races are on the A league? I am sure on the top quality tracks the percentage is way higher. Note a lot of the fact they have few races is the way the do not comply with international regulations on ownership, competition and breeding. That is there choice if they think they are the best prove it by having an open door policy.
I can buy a horse and race it in Ireland, USA, Australia or South Africa but not Japan. You only have to look on the restrictions on Godolphin to know what a joke they are. Unless you play fair do not expect to get treated fair. Only the races without restrictions are assessed for grade purpose their choice.
The other issue is Deep Impact 8.83% graded stakes winners, only Danzig, Monsun, Dubawi and Galileo are better sires this century. Lord Kanaloa is 2.56% big difference.
He should not be a 10% sire similar percentage graded stakes winning sires usually hit 5% stakes winners. His sim percentage of stakes winners looks fine his graded % low. I guarantee his sim mare quality is pathetic compared to real life. Note Coolmore took the mares back to Ireland after they were covered the year Deep Impact died. Coolmore are a lot of things stupid is not one of them. They know Wotton Bassett is better.
The one thing I would agree is the 25% stakes winners that should be for a very few 15% maximum. Then your guy and others like him the world over get a fair chance.
Hence the sensible question of should breeding numbers be restricted. The answer is pretty obvious.
Again Lord Kanaloa was an example. Notice how i followed his name with an ‘etc’. My original point about narrowing the gap from the absolute elite to the very good stallions never even restricted itself to Japanese racing, hence the use of ‘as an example’. It includes all the lovely sires in Europe not called Frankel/Sea the Stars and Dubawi too.
I disagree that in the current state that the top sires in Japan like LK/ Duramente before he passed etc should be sub 10% in this game as it stands. Duramente struggled to get a stakes winner at all in the game with 100+ foals a year. 10% stakes winners in the sim is very average. Blue Point as a random example has already had an 11% stakes winning year in the sim. He may or may not turn out to be the greatest stallion to have ever lived but he has performed better than any Japanese sire in the last few years and his progeny are only just starting to race. The argument about whether 10% stakes should be average is a seperate issue. 15% is where the better Australian sires are at and I think that’s where the Japanese sires should stack up so you don’t feel like you’re gimping your chances so much by not going to the same handful of sires.
On the original topic of capping stallions at 150. If we don’t combat BPflation as well then where do people think the BPs for the 300 Tapits no longer available will go? The 150 Frankels not bought? At the moment there are 20+ sires that never leave 1000bps. Say hello to 100+ stallions that will never leave 1000bps.
I was able go to YouTube and find the video. Regarding the foal cap I would definitely vote “NO” to this. There are so many reasons why. One being we have quite a few people that pour lots of money into this sim and those people would have the purchasing power. I also remind the players of the sim that we have many players that live in various countries where their dollar against the U.S. dollar already puts them at a disadvantage in the purchase of credits due to the currency exchange rate.
The second reason is that there are those that have multiple accounts. Thus, they have a lot of buying power in the sim by the use of BP’s. Currently any blueblood sire in the sim can be purchased for 1000 BP’s. I personally have three accounts, two that I made and one that I inherited due to the passing of a player that use to be in the sim. Just with three accounts I generate a lot of BP’s but still less than many others of which I know have 5 or more accounts full of horses in the sim.
There has been over the past few years a large increase in the number of horses in total running in races in the sim. At certain times it is often difficult to find a Listed or Graded stakes race for your horse. This past week alone I had to move a horse that got knocked out three times in three different Graded stakes. When I finally found a spot for her that she finally made the cut going off at 21/1, she went gate to wire for the G3 win. I mention this as an example because we have many more horses and many newer or returning players and more master accounts being made by existing players than in past years. I kind of feel we should be encouraging people, not bestowing more rules, limitations or a mad dash for a sire share with those that have a distinct buying power advantage. Also, this would take a lot of time, effort and long hours by Admin Mike Wallace to implement. He is already bogged down and working on various updates/upgrades to the sim and there are several other things that he has on his plate to look at that have not even hit the radar yet.
I feel things are fine with the purchase of sire shares just the way they are and that placing limits on sire share purchases would negatively impact the game in several ways, not just the examples that I have shared. Also, as a reminder there is a lottery for sire shares and this would have to be taken into account if a limit where to be put in place.
Thank you for your article and Happy Derby weekend to everyone!
I think sires should be capped but it has to take place within an overall restructuring of the breeding process. People are breeding to Tapit 400+ times because there are not enough high-rated dirt sires in the game. We don’t have this problem with turf sires because players can get a host of reasonably priced turf sires (Blue Point was already mentioned and there are dozens of other Euro and Australian sires that fit this profile). Look at the mixed messages this year, American Pharoah was nerfed and Munnings was given an upgrade but (I’m paraphrasing) we don’t want to make him too good. Well, given that, why is anyone going to do, breed a Pharoah or Munnings? They will just breed a Tapit.
I look at the real Derby trail and wonder why almost no one in the SIM can get a Mage? Good Magic came into the SIM with a very good pedigree (Curlin x Hard Spun x Miswaki). He won a G1 at 2 and at 3. He ran 2nd in the KY Derby. And in the SIM he has one G1 winner out of 452 runners. He has a 0.7% graded winning %. Why was he rated so poorly coming into the SIM? And if stallions like this keep coming into the game as basically a sunk cost, why would any player want to veer away from Tapit? And it is even fair to cap their breeding to Tapit to and de facto force them to use sires that aren’t going to perform?
So yes, I think capping stallions at 175 makes sense, but only if done in coordination with other changes. If nothing changes and a flat cap is put into place, I wouldn’t support that since as has been pointed out the people who drops tons of money on the game or those that are using BP breeding mills would still get what they wanted and everyone else would suffer.
Capping stallions at say, 150 or what ever, will lead to prices on other sire shares increasing. The trainers will still earn the same amount of bp’s and they would probably still breed and equal amount of horses, so the horses that doesn’t cost 1000 would be bred more often – bringing the prices up. It wouldn’t change much for the “wealthy” trainers, but would change things for the not so well off.
Trying to limit the number of offsprings/sire by making the most popular stallions more expensive, say having the maximum price set to 2000, would probably also increase the prices for cheaper sire shares, but not as much as having a cap. Having a 2000 maximum price would only decrease the number of offsprings to half, if trainers used the same amount of bp’s. (With some stallions selling 450 share, that would still be over 200 shares for those sires. Getting it down to 150 would require a 3000 maximum price.)
If the maximum price could go to 1500 when 50 shares has been sold, to 2000 when 75 has been sold, to 2500 at 100, 3000 at 125 and so on, the number of shares sold – if trainers spent the same amount of money – would end up at almost 200. If the maximum price could go to 2000 when 50 shares has been sold, to 3000 when 75 has been sold, to 4000 at 100, 5000 at 125 and so on, the number of shares sold – if trainers spent the same amount of money – would end up at almost 160. If the maximum price could go from 2000 to 2500 when 50 shares has been sold, to 3000 when 75 has been sold, to 3500 at 100, 4000 at 125 and so on, the number of shares sold – if trainers spent the same amount of money – would end up at about 155.
Changing the maximum price could be a way, but what would the “wealthy” trainers do when prices for their shares increase? Would they go for breeding less number of horses or would they use cheaper sires? It’s hard to say. We have to assume they are rational – even though some might not be (and it’s nothing wrong with that!) – so they wouldn’t buy the shares if they didn’t get the same success/bp’s invested. When I look at the KY stats I see Tapit is very popular, but other than him it’s only a handful that have more than 200 offsprings/crop. Their earnings aren’t as good as Tapit’s, but they are not that bad. I would pay at least twice as much for a Tapit bred horse than for say one of the other 49 top-50 earners.
I think an increased maximum price, say 2000, for all horses or a cap at 250 offspring could do some changes without messing around to much. It would decrease the number of offsprings/stallion. On the other hand, stallions with those extreme share numbers – like Tapit – are extremely rare, so is it worth changing the entire system?