Dear Players!
Today we are adding an experimental update to the game. After we started working on improving the breeding system, we received a lot of requests from players asking to display horse potential in the breeding system. We are aware of the great importance of breeding foals with potential, and we can assume that this change might significantly affect the economy of the game. However, it also has many positive aspects, so as an experiment we decided to temporarily add a display of the potential of both parents in the breeding system. This change will be active for one month, and after analyzing the results, we will decide whether to leave this change in the game permanently.
But first of all, we would like to explain how the horse potential inheritance works at the moment. Basically, every horse has two genetically inherited properties:
- potential growth rate (how fast potential value rises on the average each level, and correspondingly what final value it can reach when potential level is maxed out);
- potential type (for example, Magic Harvest, Strong Heart, or no potential).
It is important to note that potential type and potential growth rate are inherited independently. This means that even if a foal was born without potential, it could still inherit good potential growth rate. And although this good potential growth rate will not have any effect on this foal, it can still be passed on to future generations. Therefore a horse without potential but having very good potential growth rate in many cases might be even a better choice for breeding than a horse with potential but having not very good potential growth rate.
By the way, the inherited potential growth rate doesn't determine the exact final value of the maxed out potential in advance, but only determines how fast it rises on the average. This means that two horses with exactly the same potential growth rate can get different maxed out potential values, because this also depends on luck. But in most cases horses with higher potential growth rates also get higher values of the potential after reaching the maximum potential level.
At the current moment the potential of the foal is inherited directly from the parents (grandparents currently have no influence). If one of the parents has potential, then the chance of getting a foal with potential increases approximately twice, and if both parents have potential, then approximately three times. The potential growth rate is inherited from both parents, and if parents have high potential growth rate, then in most cases the foal will also inherit high potential growth rate. Please note that potential growth rate is a genetically inherited property, therefore it absolutely doesn't matter if the potential of the parent horse was maxed out prior to breeding or not, or whether the parent horse had any particular potential type at all. If the foal is born with potential, then the type of potential (Magic Harvest, Strong Heart, etc.) is currently determined randomly, and doesn't depend on the potential types of the parents. In the future we are planning to improve the potential inheritance system, for example, in such a way that the entire lineage, and not just the parents, influences potential of the foal. It might also be a good idea to improve the inheritance of the potential type, for example, so that the chances of getting a foal with a certain type of potential would get higher if this type of potential was already present in the lineage.
Today we have added a display of the potential type, its current value and its level for the parents in the breeding system. Although, of course, this may not be sufficient for a comprehensive estimation of the foal's potential. For example, if a horse doesn't have potential, then its potential growth rate can be only estimated using known potential values from the lineage, which are currently not displayed. With further improvements of the potential inheritance system, it would also be useful to display the potential type for all the horses in the lineage. We will try to improve this in the future updates.
We wish you good luck in breeding!