Conformation and the Breeder's Report

[Revenant]

This is all really good information, thanks everyone. I know I've been basing more on trying to get the breed *s nailed down, but I've also tried to breed my well-showing horses more frequently (even into my other breeds) in hopes that their blood will improve my stock overall.

I still love a horse I got awhile back with absolutely bizarre conformation (just from eye-balling the art). I ended up breeding him because he suited my program, but I called him CP Emeka "Giraffe" for a reason. The reason is (obviously) that he looked like a giraffe.

[Buzzsaw]

Just gonna drop a spanner in the works.... My best horse has 1 green (agility) I figured he was good enough to train up on the strength of that, however, I couldn't get him to win anything at L3 in a local show. He's been really good in player shows though, got Grand Champion and nine championships in total, and I haven't been hanging around, been rattling through my turns because I have an ongoing breeding programme.
I think that there are so many random elements involved, that it's pretty much impossible to tell who's going to do well.
P.S I had another horse with two reds who won me a lot of money in player shows!

[Rapori]

Just gonna drop a spanner in the works.... My best horse has 1 green (agility) I figured he was good enough to train up on the strength of that, however, I couldn't get him to win anything at L3 in a local show. He's been really good in player shows though, got Grand Champion and nine championships in total, and I haven't been hanging around, been rattling through my turns because I have an ongoing breeding programme.
I think that there are so many random elements involved, that it's pretty much impossible to tell who's going to do well.
P.S I had another horse with two reds who won me a lot of money in player shows!

I think (and I don't know anything for sure, so this is just speculation) that there are several factors that influence a horse's ability to show well. Breeder's report is only one of those factors. Conformation is another set of factors. I am guessing that their is also a gene or set of genes directly responsible for a horse's show-ability that is unrelated to the other factors.

[Buzzsaw]

I entered one of my youngsters into a few shows this morning, he's got no reds, a fairly decent Breeders Report and quite a bit of training. In two out of three shows he was beaten by a slightly older horse with three reds and no training! Now I'm confused! *scratches head*

[Scythian]

Seems like they love to keep us guessing.

When Argent II explains, I tend to pay a lot of attention. So if Local Shows are "absolute", that could mean that each horse that enters is being judged by absolute top criteria set by programming.

My own method is train, enter public shows, see what happens, repeat. I am still working on improving aged competitive horses (watch out! we're not done yet!), and think that training is -- just as AGII asserts -- of the essence.

[Argent II]

No, local shows and competitions are judged in the same manner. The difference is, you win competitions by beating other horses, so a mediocre horse may still be competitive if it happens to be entered against even worse horses. Local shows are placed against more absolute/fixed standards. So to win at level 4 in LS dressage, you might have to score above a 35%, but to win at level 4 in open competitions, you just have to beat the other horses, so you might get away with a 25%. Does that make sense? Polar bear principle: you don't have to be the best horse, just better than the rest lol.

[Amber]

Hi all. I'm going to help everyone out, because I want everyone to succeed.

Larissa's just posted a detailed explanation of how conformation and genes work here:
http://www.horseworldonline.net/forum/v ... 853#p16853

It confirmed some of the things I already thought and have been working for.
So I'll talk about it more below and include some tips as well. First:

YOUR BREEDER'S REPORT AND CONFORMATION SCORES
Your breeders report is your "overall" and includes conformation and other stuff like the raw gene ability you can't see.
However:
Conformation, Temperament, and various other factors can make the breeder's report basic traits better or worse. So a horse with a huge conf bonus is more likely to be green in that area, but it's not a given. As Larissa says:

"Conformation Evaluation values represent the conformation portion of the Breeders Report. So if your horse has a great breeders report comment, and a poor conformation value, you can guess that the horse must then have very high natural genes to overcome the poor conformation and still end up with a great comment. However if the horse has poor natural genes then even a high conformation value won't help him because conformation doesn't actually ADD anything to the stat value. It can only subtract from the value. However these high conformation values can still be passed on to their foals."

So Conf and all of these factors are modifiers on the raw invisible gene. (Training then improves your horse's ability on top of that.) How much your modifiers and training add or subtract is for you to find out - but the LS 's can be good indicators of this. You can use the Record Holder scores to compare in each discipline and see if your horse is any good compared to other horses already in the game.

TIPS FOR BREEDING GREENS WITH CONFORMATION
I breed for conformation as well as breeders report, so I'll let you in on a tip. Choose which discipline you want to excel in and study this page:
http://www.horseworldonline.net/forum/v ... =12&t=1235

These are the traits you want to breed for. I breed for Speed mainly and have started to branch into Stamina and Agility, but Intelligence is a useful one to go for as well since conformation doesn't affect it. I think everyone has a grip on breeding for greens in the most basic sense, so I'm going to talk about breeding for conformation. Here's an example of one of my horses:
http://www.horseworldonline.net/horse/profile/226033

He's a RH in three disciplines, but I think that's mainly because the game is still pretty early days now and people are still learning the ropes. (ie. once everyone in the game gets better, he'll probably get beaten on those records based on his stats!)

You'll notice, if you're premium, that he has a +20 speed conformation bonus. This means he has green speed and a +20 speed conf bonus. This is good for racing because Speed counts twice for both regular and Sprint Racing.

However, he has some negative traits that I want to breed out. These are:
Stamina - you'll notice he has a good stamina breeder's report (not green, though!) but his conf score is -21 stamina. This means he has decent endurance but he probably won't breed green babies in stamina without a super stamina mama and a minor miracle. There are SOME traits in conf that count positive for speed and negative for stamina. This DOES NOT mean you should breed for 0 conf bonus in speed because speed is still important. This does mean that you need to study the conf report. "Depth of Flank" for example, is a trait which a positive for speed counts for a negative for stamina, so for Racing bloodline you want the score here for Depth of Flank to be 0. This does not mean Speed or Stamina in the Summary should be 0.

This is crucial:
BREEDING FOR CONFORMATION IS NOT AS SIMPLE AS LOOKING AT THE SUMMARY OF CONFORMATION DEFECTS.

For example, if you breed for speed, you are looking at the following traits:
Face, Hip, Leg, Flank, Neck, and Croup - this is where all of the speed bonuses are.

Each trait has a set of conformation traits you want to look at. I track all of these traits on each horse to bring the score up. The reason Casablanca has a +20 conf speed bonus is because I bred horses with a -6 neck score to horses with a +6 neck score etc. over many generations. (along with face, hip, croup, etc.) Some conformation aspects are more important than others. I know what they are for speed, but I feel like I have to leave some surprises here!

As I mentioned before, the desire is for the overall conformation bonuses on your desired traits to be positive. In the case of Racing it's Speed, Stamina, Strength and Speed again. (You'll notice that Casablanca also needs some help in the Strength department in both breeder's report and conformation!).


Hope that helps! Any questions, let me know. And have fun out there!

[Argent II]

(Training then improves your horse's ability on top of that.)

Inaccurate wording. Training helps your horse perform to its genetic potential, it doesn't improve its ability. This guy is performing at 40.76% of his genetic potential for balance; a better horse with less training could still beat him, and he could still beat a worse horse with more training.

Here's an example of one of my horses:
http://www.horseworldonline.net/horse/profile/226033

You'll notice, if you're premium, that he has a +20 speed conformation bonus. This means he has green speed AND a +20 speed conf bonus. This is good for racing because Speed counts twice for both regular and Sprint Racing.

However, he has some negative traits that I want to breed out. These are:
Stamina - you'll notice he has a good stamina breeder's report (not green, though!) but his conf score is -21 stamina. This means he has decent endurance but he probably won't breed green babies in stamina without a super stamina mama and a minor miracle. There are SOME traits in conf that count positive for speed and negative for stamina. This DOES NOT mean you should breed for 0 conf bonus in speed because speed is still important. This does mean that you need to study the conf report. "Depth of Flank" for example, is a trait which a positive for speed counts for a negative for stamina, so for Racing bloodline you want the score here for Depth of Flank to be 0. This does not mean Speed or Stamina in the Summary should be 0.

For reference, that's actually not a very good confo/BR combination for green speed. Green speed is attainable with as little as -15 conformation, as I remember from my brief green speed/stamina/agility project. So this horse is likely working with modest speed genes and is being bumped into green purely on his high conformation. His stamina is not far off from still being good enough for green; you can get that at -15 conformation as well. Overall, I probably would have culled him with such a high speed confo.

Breeding for the lowest possible conformation with the highest possible breeders report comments is the best possible breeding method if you want high quality horses. You can improve the conformation later.


Waiting for people to figure things out for themselves -- rather than spoon feeding them all of the answers --- is quite fun, but now that boss has given away all of the non-secrets (they were fairly obvious/intuitive/simple, tbh) it can't hurt to share my methods.

[Amber]

Yikes! But I'm going to remain civil.

1) By "ability" I meant ability to perform and not genetic ability.
(EDIT: Just noticed you edited your last post after I responded, to address my response about ability. In any case, I'll clarify again: "ability to perform" mean against its own previous ability - ie. a great horse that is trained is better than a great horse with the same stats that is not trained. Otherwise there would be no point at all to training!)

Some other points:
2) According to Larissa's post, -15 conf + green speed means you probably have a very high "invisible" speed gene. But -15 conf is going to pull that speed down as a modifier to a lower green than it would be otherwise. (Green comprises a wide range, as per Larissa's post.)

2) It is possible - and also likely - to be green and have a high speed conf. It only stands to reason that a high speed gene + good conf would also = green.
I have done about 10-20 generations of my own experimentation and all of this horse's pedigree is comprised of high speed "breeding reports" back generations. The conformation was done afterwards.

Which is not to say Casablanca is my fastest horse! I have other record holders to prove that. I'm sorry you don't like my horse, but I'm kind of glad I didn't cull him because, as I said, he's a multiple record holder across various events and Grand Champion who has earned me loads of money. But again, he and all of my horses can be improved. Being a breeder of purebreds makes it harder because it's much easier to combine breeds. But it keeps the game challenging and fun.

Finally - just because I don't comment a whole lot, doesn't mean I haven't been at it for a while. There are multiple players in this game who are successful and knowledgeable! But really - unless it comes from Larissa, it's just a theory. That goes for everything we both say, i think - unless you have additional secrets directly from the admin!

Really I just want everyone to have fun and be successful. Yay Community! Yay us!

Stay cool, Argent-o!

[Argent II]

If you mean theory in the scientific sense, then yes, I have theories, as they've been proven time and again and confirmed by the admin. Not sure if your observations fall into the same category.

2) Exactly why I say you can improve conformation later. The -15 green horse is infinitely more likely to be a good horse compared to the +20 green horse. In fact, the latter is probably mediocre.

2, again) Obviously, but as Larissa stated, green is achieved at a very low threshold. If your horse has high conformation and is green, it is likely that it has poor hidden genes and is being propped up with its conformation, whereas a horse with low conformation and green has high enough hidden genes to overcome its poor conformation. Thus, keeping horses with high conformation greens likely means keeping horses with mediocre hidden genes, which doesn't help your breeding program.

I don't care one way or the other about your horse. He just isn't something I would have kept as I have very stringent standards for my stallions. Breeding purebreds actually doesn't make it harder. In fact, crossbreds are more complicated specifically because you're mixing gene pools. Homozygousity vs heterzygosity and such.