Pedigrees: Do they matter?

[axeracing]

All this talk about nicks, crosses, inbreeding and such is interesting and fun to learn about, but does it really make any difference?

Breeding a sim horse is basically a roll of the dice, but the dice ARE loaded. The higher rated horses give you a better chance of getting a good runner.

But...

Why not just throw together any 3 stallions, and have x chance of getting a decent horse?

I think I remember Mike saying things about female lines and inbreeding and stuff that lead me to believe it's worth studying up.

What do you all think?

[hawkz]

i think it does make a difference

[dragnil]

I was under the impression that Mike does NOT take crosses, inbreeding and dosage into account (or maybe it was just dosage?).

The real life disputes that come about regarding whether nicks actually work or not are commonplace. There are so many theories about how to evaluate such things and most conflict with another, are based on incomplete or insufficient data, and fail more often than they succeed.

I doubt Mike is going to come out and tell us anything useful anytime soon, so I guess the correct way to analyse these things would be to study the sim stats, not the real life ones. Because of the loaded nature of the sim that Axe refers to, I usually choose a SAf sire and throw in the 'best' DS and DDS sires I can afford at the time. Not very scientific.

I enjoy pulling up real life stats though and will keep using them as a guide.

[Knightmare]

Yes and No. I am of the opinion pedigrees matter. Mike has never discussed exactly what or how pedigrees are calculated. But he has said that each sire you see when viewing a pedigree has a part in the overall breeding. So it is not just the Sire, DS and DDS per say but also the sire of the sire, dam sire of the sire , and the sires sire of all three sires you choose that go into the calculation.

So in a way crosses could matter even though they are not directly programmed. In doing the Breeding Corner for a couple of years there definitely seem to be nicks for some sires. They show greater success when paired with certain sire lines.

A funny thing happens with numbers sometimes as they "randomly" generate. You can find patterns, in the randomness.

Think about it as if you where going to create the process of breeding. You could not just say the sire is this percentage the dam sire is this percentage and the DDS is this percentage, add them together and get a percentage. It is going to be a weighted formula that is complex.

Now we know based on early times in the sim when breeders would choose a Son of Mr. Prospector for each of the three sire slots that even if bargain bred these runners would have more success than they should have. In fact there where changes to lower the success rate of such breedings later in the sim which confirms that other factors go into breeding than just the Sire DS and DDS.

So yes it is mainly randomly generated numbers however I am of the belief you can manipulate your chances to be more successful through certain crosses with sires.

[dragnil]

Some interesting points there. I think I'll take a more complete look at the sim-pedigree of my future breedings from now on.

[Knightmare]

These are the sires in the pedigree view that are taken into account when breeding.

Attachments: