Ok so I'v been playing Starters Orders for donkeys years but I never really got a grip of the Horse Stats that were introduced in SO6.

What should I be looking for in judging my horses for racing / breeding?

The ability / potential one is obvious.

I'v got horses with relatively high potential and speed ratings who turn out to be pretty crap, and horses with much lower potential winning G1s.

Is low confidence / high quirkiness worth trying to breed out of my breeding lines?

Should a good horse with bad stats be bred from? Should a bad horse with good stats be bred from?

Firstly, you are correct, potential and extra speed plus to a slightly lesser extent cruising burst are the most important bars.

Sometimes I find my horses can't win a race as a 2 or 3 year old but for some reason when they turn 4\5 they start winning races. This is partly due to their potential going up but I think there must be a hidden stat that has to do with maturity. This hidden stat allows some horses to be good at 2yo or 3yo but may fall away as a 5yo and vice versa. Can' prove this, it's just a feeling I have about how my horses run.

I think also that the AI horses improve as you play more seasons. A horse with 80% potential will win races in the early seasons but after say 20 seasons the same horse will strugle as the AI horses improve.

I definately think that enthusiasm and confidence play a part in how a horse runs. Ideally you want these two bars to be at least 50%.

As far as quirks go. A horse that has quirks will never run with any consistancy. Breed this out of your horses.

My tactics for breeding has always been in the early seasons of the game, breed the horses with best bars with each other. Don't worry about winning races in the early seasons. Once you have horses with good bars use the race builder.

The "race builder\construction kit" is the best indicator of which horses to use for breeding purposes. Trial your horses in it and then decide which horses to breed with.

My horses now have full bars in just about everything but they don't always win every race. AI horses improve as the seasons pass but also often run far better than thier bars would suggest. I have bought horses at auction who have won G1 races but when I look at their bars I think how did this horse win any races because when I run them in G1 races they are terrible.

I swear the AI gets higher results with bad horses than we do. I've sold multiple 4yo/5yo horses who ran dead last in anything over a C3 and then seen them winning C2's or higher. And two 2yos with less than 50% light green potential who went on to win G3s. They also get to run them more often, I guess. I'm using manual training mode, so my horses only run about every 60 days.

How important would you consider finish application, constitution, going/distance adaptability or consistency?

High Constitution - horse can run more frequently but I don't like to over-race my horses but even with a low constitution they can easily run say once a month.

Distance Adaptability - not too important. I find most horses perform best over a very limited range of distances, usually that distance is closely related to the stamina bar.

Consistency - I see very little difference between my horses with 40% consistency and those with 100% consistency, so not too important.

Finishing Application & Going Adaptability - I reckon these are important bars to have as high as you can.


Ideally you want every bar to be 100% but that is a very hard thing to do unless you are prepared to spend the time breeding for a couple of hundred seasons.

Do you wait until the red condition bar reaches the top before racing again? I saw another person advise that you should wait until that bar is at the top before booking another race, so I've been doing that for the last few seasons. And then of course it takes like 3 weeks to get them fit again.

I've been focusing on Finishing Application since I started breeding, trying to get as many yearlings with a full bar as possible. Luckily, I've got a few good stallions with a full bar. I figured it would be important, like you said.

Thank you for your advice, I'm still learning all the deeper things, so I'm trying to soak up every tip I can find

I play Trainer\Owner mode with simple training, so I find that each horse's red condition bar only ever gets upto 90%, it's the green condition bar I look at. It usually takes about 3 weeks after racing to get back upto 100%.


A quick tip when you are trying to breed more green bars into your horses. Only concentrate on improving one bar at a time. In some ways it is a bit like games of chance, the odds of improving one bar at a time are better than trying to improve 2 or 3 bars at a time, just like the odds of being dealt one Ace in a hand of poker of being dealt 2 Aces. Once one bar breeds true and you have approx 2 stallions and 8 mares then move onto the next bar until both bars breeds true etc..

Keep asking your questions Twilightramblings, as I am learning things I would never think to ask.

Oh thank you Andy-H! I keep thinking the game needs a fan-wiki, like the one I use for Stardew Valley. It's not intricate from the surface but there's a lot to take into consideration.

I kind of worry that maybe people get the demo, get confused if they find something the instructions don't explain, then get discouraged and decide not to buy it. I found the forums and I'm asking questions but I'm the curious sort

Even just things like press "S" on the summary screen to save without saving and quitting, or checking how fast a particular Group race is by going to the diary, or what the different improvements in the stable info actually do (as far as is known). Or collecting all the advice on what kind of races suit which horses and how to find good horses at auction.

I agree, if you don't ask you don't learn.