Sim Magic – Stable Management

Stable Management

Welcome to this edition of Sim magic, as the 2yo breeding season starts, i want to look into a part of the game, some may not even think of, when starting to play. Usually a new player will start with one stable, and soon find out, that with 10 horses he’ll have about 2 to 3 races a week, if there are 2yos in the stable even less, so most players will tend to extend the number of stables, perhaps to 4 to 6 stables, at this stage, it’s likely you’ll mostly either aim for low level claimers or cheap auction horses, to keep your stable going, and substitute horses, that you either lost via auction or claims. As soon as you start breeding, and perhaps a few 2yos, you’ll notice, that the BP production of stables is heavily slowed, when 2 or more spaces in the stable are occupied by 2yos.

So what to do, at first a logic game cycle looks like earn xxx BP with a stable, than breed a 2yo you’ll like to own, and wait with that stable until you have xxx BP to breed the next horse, however, if you did this a couple of times, the stable will only have a few claimers or BP Earners left, which will likely largen that cycle. So managing a stable purely on BP, and without credits, it will in theory take longer and longer, until you can breed again, imagine this happening to a 20 stable empire, not really what you like, cause what you look for is a constant BP Earning, and thereby a constant Breeding of new horses.

From my point of view, that, if you look for BP Breeding, claimers are the Bread and Butter of your simlife, managing Claimers well(see Claiming Strategies) will enable you to breed superhorses within half a year, and thereby change your game approach. If you reach that point, I suggest getting 2yo stables or homebred stables. And with that using different stables for different tasks. Let me give you the basic ideas of Stable Tasks.

Claimer Stable

A stable only consisting of claimers, of course claiming multiple horses you’ll find gems, that will do well in STR or ALW level, but all horses that are bought into the stable are coming in by claiming, I suggest only claiming at 2K to 7,5K level for a pure claiming stable, the target is to reach 1250 BP as fast as possible to breed a super horse.

Homebred or 2yo Stable

All stables in this one are either homebreds, or have come as unraced horses, either bought in auction, or won in contests, important, this stable will only get new horses as unraced horses, either bred directly into the stable or via transfer. Those stables can also be used to “park” 2yos before they are elegible to race, I suggest transfering all horses you have, that are unraced to transfer to a Homebred Stable before racing them.

Auction Stables or High Level Claiming Stables

This are kind of experimental, depending on with how much money you start in an auction stable, you’ll either go for low value purchases, or horses, which you think are mismanaged, or have some “hidden” abilities, not discovered by the former owner. A good idea is to start an auction stable with a former Homebred or claimer stable, that has max money in it. If you have BP and money, you can mix it, by even claiming at higher levels, and shooting at horses, that you found in claimers and can make up to ALW or stakes level. Typical forms of such stables are my old stables mullerchen, westie, herbie, helmi or harrybear, which I had the fortune of starting with a Million plus $ and a couple hundred BP.

As you can see from those basic types, I suggest not to mix them, as if you have for example a Claimer Stable with 2 spots occupied by homebreds, your BP income is slowed, as those will not run in claimers, and likely go up through ALW classes, sometimes missing, or even being unproductive, as they may be late bloomers. Of course, if you already have mixed stables, like I have, you’ll run into trouble, but I suggest starting to clean up stables, as soon as possible.

How to develop your stables:

Well, let’s make it pretty simple, at the beginning of December I had 17 stables, all of them mainly as claimer stables, with a few homebreds in them, 2 of them actually with 5 homebreds, so my stables boble and boble7 atm are quite slow producing BP, as they are real mixed stables, not what you look for.

What I did to solve this, well I got myself 8 new stables over the last 6 weeks, to make room for all future breedings, I will run the 5 original horses until I can drop them into the auction, and get more room for 2yo and 3yo homebreds.

I started breeding heavily the last 2 weeks of last year and the first two weeks of this year, flooding my stables with new talent, all my 2yos now go into future Homebred stables, which i will not run for BP production, but to develop the horses as good as I can, and hopefully get some stakes horses out of this stables.

The most important thing is, if you breed a new 2yo in a claimer stable, transfer it to a homebred stable, you’ll loose the homebred bonus, but the one more claimer you can get into the stable will make it worthwhile, as each claimer can get the double BP in his first race.

How many BP should a claimer stable earn:

Well the math is pretty simple, my target line are 1250 BP, remember sires open at 500 BP on the ticker. So for a scratch bred, with 3 opened sires the result is a max 1250 BP breeding.

You have 52 weeks, to make it easier use 50 weeks, meaning your stable will have to earn 25 BP per week to breed one superhorse each year. I think 25 BP is super easy, you’ll need 100 a month, thats 10 points per horse, I suggest targeting 15 BP per horse per month is much more realistic, good claiming stable owners can attack 20 BP, which would result in 2500 BP each year. Imagine you have 12 profitable claiming stables, you could get 12-24 superhorses, meaning, if you breed in a cycle, you can get 1-2 superhorses each month. Great, or, and that with just 12 Claimer stables. Of course for each horse you breed, you need a free space in a Homebred stable, so plan in advance, and get new stables as you get more into breeding.

Time Management:

I guess some of us really can say they get lost in the sim, as soon as you start breeding, you can spend endless hours doing research hypomating and ticker watching, not speaking of clickfests for those into credit breeding. Plus you have to account you have to manage your stables, race entries, jockey selection and of course, if managing claiming stables, claiming.

Don’t forget about the basics, the better you manage claimers, the more success you’ll have in the future, of course having superhorses means super mares, and you’re not as much relying on Scratch bred as you do likely in the beginning, but never forget to plan ahead. So choose wisely how many stables you want to manage, there is nothing worse than missing on a possible stakes horse, because you don’t have the time to manage your stables properly, and dump a horse to early into a claimer, simply because you didn’t notice something, like not letting him develop or stretching him out. Even Turf or Route bred horses can be better on dirt or in sprinting, never forget a horse can run like it’s pedigree suggests, but it doesn’t have to.  

Thats Sim Magic for this week, looking ahead to next week, I can promise you, it will be breeding related, likely looking into what form and possibilities of breeding the sim offers.