Horse World Online

Why are 90% of my foals always colts? There's something wrong here...

Jewels65 wrote:Why are 90% of my foals always colts? There's something wrong here...

We all go through this problem. You are not alone.
My experience is by years. Every three to five years my production will switch from mostly fillies to mostly colts and back, so when I get to breeding them, I'll have a few years of too many mares and not enough stallions to match, then it'll switch with too many stallions and not enough mares to go around.

It's annoying at the best of times and sometimes even disheartening at the worst. Sometimes a different combination seems to break the cycle.

The game is supposed to be coded as a coin flip, 50/50 chance of either being born.

I find that's also my pattern, though I rarely get too many fillies. There does seem to be "colt streaks" fairly often though and yes, it's disheartening when you spend 5 years breeding 30 mares and end up with a ton of really nice colts which you end up rehoming because nobody will buy them and you just don't have room. Having to breed mares repeatedly year after year just in the hopes that the "colt streak" will end is frustrating.

If it's a coin flip, they need to re-examine their random seed generator. It's heavily waited towards colts and it needs to be fixed. I do agree that there does seem to be a connection with the date, though I'm not sure what it is. It would be interesting to know if the sex of the foal is determined on the day the mare is bred, or the day the foal is born. If I knew what that connection was, I'd be sure not to waste my time breeding during those periods so I don't end up with mares retiring before they've managed to produce a filly.

We just tested this to make sure it was working properly. The random number generator doesn't use the date in it's seed.

The game has produced:
196365 male horses
290796 female horses

Remember that random numbers do include streaks, though they would be spread across all users as the random number generator is for the game, not individual users.

Thank you for the follow up, Tom. Much appreciated!

I could be wrong by this, but I think the sex is decided at the moment of breeding. I thought I also read somewhere that the stats for the foal is also decided at the same moment of breeding, but maybe my recollection is incorrect.

However, using the simple information offered by what our admin has just said, perhaps if you change the time you play and breed your mares then, perhaps your streak of colts might be broken. Streaks are always going to occur, you just need to get into the 'filly-producing' streak.

The random function runs on one of our servers and the time component is down to microseconds. If we went the simplest route and just had the game produce alternating boy girl boy girl then it would still be possible for someone to get a streak because if two people breed at the same time then one person could get all of the girls and one could get all of the boys if they just happened to breed in an alternating order. Players would figure this out and abuse it so we can't do that.

If the breeding happened client side then we could use a biased random with limits on streaks to better match player expectations. That would open up an avenue for abuse and streaks happen in real life though so it's not something we would want to do.

Remember if you flip a coin 100 times getting 100 heads is just as likely as getting a perfectly alternating pattern of heads tails heads tails etc.

Math is fun!

Indeed!
I always found that 100 heads verses 50/50 very annoying and satisfying at the same time.
Math is so annoying fun... or is that so funny it's seriously annoying? that it can certainly make one loose their mind with the possibilities.

Personally, I prefer the way the system handles the foals right now, as frustrating as it can be from time to time. Perhaps I would prefer some changes to certain things, like a slightly better chance of one sex over the other under certain circumstances... but again, I would prefer the absence of ability for abuse in exchange for true random-ability as far as technology allows.

Good luck, Jewels65! In breaking your streak soon.

Jewels65 wrote:I find that's also my pattern, though I rarely get too many fillies. There does seem to be "colt streaks" fairly often though and yes, it's disheartening when you spend 5 years breeding 30 mares and end up with a ton of really nice colts which you end up rehoming because nobody will buy them and you just don't have room. Having to breed mares repeatedly year after year just in the hopes that the "colt streak" will end is frustrating.

If it's a coin flip, they need to re-examine their random seed generator. It's heavily waited towards colts and it needs to be fixed. I do agree that there does seem to be a connection with the date, though I'm not sure what it is. It would be interesting to know if the sex of the foal is determined on the day the mare is bred, or the day the foal is born. If I knew what that connection was, I'd be sure not to waste my time breeding during those periods so I don't end up with mares retiring before they've managed to produce a filly.

Hi do you need any fillies