HGG Community Forums

Personally i would be stressed if the pastures were limited to a certain number of uses per season. I tend to breed most of my foals in pasture, but i use my 10 acre for the breeding and often will have 1 stallion and 6-7 mares at most. I keep several stallions of each gen and use many of them, i don't tend to breed a lot of mares to one stallion each season.
**Edit: the one i do breed extensively is my bootstrap stallion. He sees all 50 mares in the 10 acre pasture. But I've gotten to the point that I'm breeding him to only blue and gold mares, so next season will be a lot fewer.

That's just how i do things, though.
(For context, i have a basic upgrade. I don't mind pictures not generating - making them come up one at a time is one of my favorite things to do!)

Might just need to put in a way to hard stop that auction profits exploit as that is a big issue. I am not going to judge anyone for doing it, this is a game, not the real world, but it is very much "puppy milling" and not really something we want to be a normal income stream in the game.

Ya, that would be a real concern and frustration point. I think stopping the auction churning is far more important. Force people to hold onto their pasture-bred foals for 14 days before they can be auctioned to prevent breeding and dumping for profit.

From bluegrass "I might be willing to compromise and allow bulk testing of pasture foals if we partnered that with forcing people to hang on to those foals for a few weeks to prevent breed and dumping. I think it is fair that you need enough stalls/pasture slots for your foals to go in."

Stopping people from selling foals for up to 14 days afterward I think would be the best of all of the things you've listed so far.

Only using the primary pasture once probably make the most sense to me, but its also the one I use the most often just because it feels like a whatever I need pasture instead of pastures I rename for a specific generation. But that's just a me thing.

It would be a bummer to increase pasture costs because they're already so much money. But I completely understand.

Maybe instead of limited number of times you use the pastures just limit how many mares can be bred. If that makes any sense. So whoops you click the button and only 80 mares breed, but no worries you can breed up 350 mares anyways so you can click more if needed.

Especially in my foundation stallions I use their leftover covers and have 70 mares left. Then use a second stallion and have 20 mares left so I've used the pasture 3 times even though I've only bred 100 mares.

I don't really know how other people operate, but in theory pastures should have long term residence mares anyways so probably not wanting to switch out too many times anyways. However for me the later gen pastures tend to keep the same mares in there long term, but the lower gen pastures I'll use 1-4 times depending on how it logistically works out. Not all mares can fit in my lower gen pastures so I'll breed the first batch of foundation, and maybe a second batch then the 2G's then random's from later gens. So I would be breaking the 3x rule for that pasture even though I've only used most of my pastures once.

For me I breed what pastures I can to fit my 130 primary stalls then I go through and SBA test foals whatever doesn't pass goes to auction then I comp test and whatever isn't superior (for the most part) is then auctioned. So with all my pastures and how many I have this takes me a while to get all of them done. Some I just sell back for the 1000hbs because I'm not so much doing it for profit its more for space. But that's just how I do it and even with stud colts I try and not keep to many so I forum sell or public sell when I can

You have never been and will never be able to pay for pastures using HBs because of the strain they cause on the server. Also, we already have things we sell for over 10 million, that is what IVs are for. :)

I am curious how the 14 days for the foals would be programmed in. I thought the system would only "tick over the age" when the horses change from yearling to 2 year old, so one born at the start of the season and the other at the end would essentially be the same age. Wondering if it would be easier to just ban yearlings (or only allow foundation yearlings) from auction, and kick the foals left in the pasture to the primary barn at the end of the season. Would hopefully prompt people to test them and sort out a show herd

Yeah I go back and forth on selling yearlings. I know we have an overpopulation problem so sometimes I try to sell 2G foals but they seem to make just as much or more than my later gens anyways so with this change I'd probably just keep them long term

Maybe you could just limit yearling sales to 100 per person per auction? Or 50 per person per auction.

I second Cheers. I'm not quite to mega barn status (about half as big as Cheers), but I breed similarly. I keep just about everything (barring altered collectibles) until I run out of showing barn space. Once that's full, altered foals hit the auction.

I agree that I'll support whatever decision is made.

Back to image generation....
It is awesome to have background image generation but I personally don't mind having to load foal pages individually. It is also wasted on the foals that many of us send straight to auction during the testing and sorting phase without even opening their pages.

I don't know if it would be at all helpful but is there a way to make it an option for Premium barns to turn background image generation On or Off? Kind of like how you gave us the Optimization Mode for the bigger barns?

I know that I am guilty of breeding and dumping.
I am in a place financially that I can't throw as much real life money at the game as I used to so I depend on the help of generous players helping me access the RGS by trading RGS genes for HBS. To get the HBS needed to trade for certain genes within the time period they are available I often resort to breeding and dumping.
As horrible as the real life implications of what breeding and dumping is (and how we, myself included, like to turn a blind eye to it here because this is "just a game"), if breeding caps are put on all pastures you will probably see some sort of decrease in RGS profits as less people can generate quick HBS to trade for others to purchase genes on their behalf.

I love spending money on this game. I have spent way more money than I should on this game. (Don't tell my SO!) :D
I love everything you do Ammit to make it the fantastic place it is and I want to continue to support it in any way that I can. Unfortunately, right now, I can mostly only do this indirectly through HBS for gene trades with other players.

I love you to the moon and back Ammit so in the end I am content with whatever you decide you have to do. :x
This is your game and your livelihood after all. :)
You give us this amazing place with its kind, generous, inclusive community. I want it, and you, to be able to stick around for many years to come. @};-

I just posted this in our FB group.

So if you have not paid attention there is an active conversation going on on the forums about the strain pastures cause on the server, particularly people breeding and auctioning foals in the auction to make fast cash. This costs the game a lot of money because we have to pay for that image generation and server resources, and is causing some undesirable inflation issues in the game. We were planning on hiking the price of pastures a good deal to offset the cost pastures incur on the server but there may be a better solution. I want to bring the conversation on here as well.

After a day of dialog, I am currently leaning towards the following fix. A cap on pasture use of 3X the size of the pasture. So if you have a 10-acre pasture you could breed 30 foals in that pasture before it is tapped out for the year, if you have a 100-acre pasture you could breed 300 foals in the pasture before it is done for the year. Pastures were really always supposed to be used only once per year. If you are using them to breed more than 3 times the pasture size worth of foals per year it is fair to ask you to invest in a few more pastures.

The next thing I am considering is an auction payout cap on pasture-bred foals. Foals bred in pastures would only sell back to the game for 500 hbs or so until they hit two years old. This would completely end the "puppy mill" breeding behavior outright. I think this is a more intense option and simply capping the pasture uses per season might be enough to solve it but I am holding this as a possibility as well.

I am always happy to hear feedback on any proposed changes. Thanks so much for your insights and opinions!

After a lot of member feedback, I have reached a decision on pasture changes.

1) We won't be changing the price of pastures for the foreseeable future.
2) I won't be changing the way auctioning of foals works.
2) Pastures starting next season will be capped at 3x foals per acre. 10-acre pastures can produce 30 foals per season, 100 acre pastures 300 foals etc
3) It is VERY likely that this will be reduced to 2x the size the following season.
4) I want to make it clear that we may reduce it to 1.5 or even 1x. The original idea for pastures was always for them to be used only once per year. We will ease down and see how it goes before making things that tight.

I personally don't use my pasture for breeding. I like to hand breed, it gives me a sense of control. But I understand what your saying.

I've got a lot of ponies, 5590 right now with a daily of just over 500k, and I'm guessing that qualifies me as one of the 'big barns'. I have two 1k stall show barns plus way too many other barns (over fifty but getting them cut back!) and sixteen added pastures with only one 100 acre, eight 30 acre, and seven 10 acre, plus the 100 acre primary I hardly use anymore because I'd forget what's in there and throw the wrong stallion (or multiple wrong stallions!) in there to mess up the breedings about 90% of the time. ;;)

I have bought all those pastures because I'm one of those that doesn't breed any pasture more than once, if that. I always want that best in pasture email so I can tell what's the highest quality in a particular bunch to compare that foal with other similar lines (high gold/star to high, low gold/star to low, g3 to g3, etc) in my barns to see how a particular stallion is shaping up. For instance, this month my 'best' in one pasture was snipped by SBA. I said some expletives and ran BA on the others in that pasture and everything was snipped. Daddy came out of the pasture and he's not going to ever get to leave the bachelor band again. lol

It's worth noting also that even though I am one who has bought a lot of pastures, I hardly ever use more than a few of them each month. My internet is crap and I don't have time to go through more than 200 foals between breeding and the end of the month, if that. I've had a few months when I forgot completely (brain fog is real) and all my foals got poofed, even ones I most definitely wanted to keep.

Despite my own breeding and all the stock I buy, my overall numbers have gone steadily down for months because I almost always have over 350 horses aging out each month. That's a lot of turnover and I'm still trying to get it evened out to a steady level. I've been halfheartedly trying to find a 'break even' point that will keep my daily around 500k for months, but I'm honestly not online often enough (I mentioned horrible internet, right? lol) or paying enough attention to get it pinned down in what little time I do have a good connection. Once I do, I will get rid of most of my extra empty barns and most likely all of the ten acre pastures. I've just about got my barns sorted now, I have a few more to do and a few old ones I'm clearing out into show barn when the horses all hit 20 that will give me a new empty each month to pick up the next month's foals. I've finally decided to just sort barns by year and stop trying to do it by lines. It takes me too long.

As for the auctioning foals for HBs thing, I have recommended it to people in the past because it was how I was able to grow my barns, but I don't do it anymore myself. I'm honestly just too lazy to bother at this point. *sheepish* It's too much like work to me, filling a pasture and breeding the mares and then selling the foals, and these days with my health as it is, I don't need that. I hardly have time to shuffle around and test the ones I want to *keep*, so making more just to test (because I must, it's a thing!) and sell is just not gonna happen. :)) I hardly ever auction more than a few horses in a month, if that, and usually those are going to be creates that weren't what I was trying for, not pasture foals. Mostly everything goes into a barn and I forget about it until I need to fill in empty spots in a pasture, and when I do that I use search to find the genes/PT/generation I need in my menagerie and then once the pasture's full I go do something else. There's always something I should be doing either in RL or the game.

TL;DR of all that (because this is too long, I know, even though I honestly tried to stay relevant!) is this: Ammit, I like your proposed five changes to pasture rules and am all for limiting pasture use to once a month or acres=foals available in the pasture, either one. Personally, since we can't get a BiP email for later breedings, I would be all for one and done.

That's a great idea, Ammit! I'm going to do that today with my primary pasture for sure if my internet holds out long enough.It's not often working during the daytime for some reason, so who knows how long it will work today. lol I definitely need more show ponies, I just lost over 400 this rollover and I'm just not having luck buying enough each month to keep up. I have tons of 'extra' boots, though! Breeding more seems to be my best answer, like you said. And, if they're show ponies it won't matter when I forget and toss in the wrong stallion. Mistakes show just fine. :D

Maybe making the create age a max of 3 would also help stop the big issue of bulk creating breeding and auctioning as well