Perhaps I could just offer a view on all this. I can’t really add anything to what experienced players have already said. But it may be of interest to developers to hear from a relative newbie – the kind of player that needs to be attracted and kept if the Starters Orders series is to flourish going forwards.

I bought the game on Steam six months or so ago. I consider playing strategy games to be pretty much my main hobby. I am retired so have huge amounts of time available to play. I am up to season 14 of a UK jumps and flat game on easy mode with manual training, and have played the game really slowly – partly because I had no knowledge of horse racing when I made the purchase. It’s the only run through I have attempted and it has been incredibly difficult at times. I have spent quite a lot of time on the net working out how the racing industry works.

However, I have to say it is exactly the game I was looking for and I have great respect for all those who have worked to make SO7 possible.

The reason for posting on this thread is that over the last couple of seasons I have found myself really frustrated at the lack of races available. Not so much on the jumps as there are plenty of bumpers to use as you develop your bred horses. But on the flat I have been able to breed a few horses with what look to me pretty decent stats, especially in speed. But if they win early on, you are left with only C1 and C2 races. Which they don’t win. So you just run them in races in which they are outclassed. Eventually a few selling and claiming races appear and you win less than two grand and it costs fifty grand (i.e five grand) to buy the horse back. In my game I am only talking about four or five horses a season like this. But over four seasons this pool grows to fifteen to twenty horses. I love this game. But I would love it even more if I could run these horses in C5 or C6 races for a few seasons. Prestige doesn’t come into it. I know, like most other players, that breeding an absolute monster is possibly a dream I will never achieve. I keep trying and keep expanding the breeding operation. But all those flat horses with nothing much to do with them is starting to take the edge off the fun factor for me and I would rather concentrate on the jumps where it really is possible to develop horses and have some good wins in doing so.

I can’t comment on technical issues that maybe prevent more races and a bigger horse pool. I can’t comment on whether SO7 is better or worse than SO6. I can’t comment on whether adding more C5 and C6 races to the UK flat calendar is in line with real life.
But it would be brilliant to encourage players of less ability (i.e newbie players that get over the initial difficulties and want to push on with their game) by at least giving them a few more available races for their decent but not great horses.

I am sure one day I will be able to come on here and talk about feature races and group races. Maybe even join in league racing one day. Certainly play with that mod being talked about.

But for now I am an ‘experienced newbie’. And for what it’s worth more lower class races on the flat (and a few more on the hurdles and chases) would have massive appeal. And I really believe it would help people at my stage to become even more engaged and absorbed in SO7.

Sorry to go on, but I thought maybe a few others out there might relate to my thoughts. Stay safe in these difficult times.

Regarding the non-feature races in the schedule, I remember reading a post ages ago (I can't find it) saying that in terms of the distance spread of these races, it's calculated based on the number of races over each distance in the feature race schedule? So, purely as an example, if 10% of the feature races were staying races of 1m6f and upwards, the schedule would generate roughly 10% of non-feature races as staying races? Is this still the case? And if so, does it separate 2yo feature races from the calculation? As obviously the inclusion of 2yo races in any calculation would probably result in a higher percentage of sprint races.