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Hello! What do you mean by high ranked? Are you talking about PT score? Or are you talking about the paper level?

PT scores are showing ability rather than breeding ability. Consistency is inheritable though, so many will snip foals that pass testing if they also test Inconsistent.

For papering *Star is the higest papering, so if a *Star throws an A the quality is less and the foal will also be snipped. There are also levels within the papering so if an A stud throws an A colt, the colt may be of worse quality and so get snipped. SBA also will work along these guidelines.

Most players will only keep the best colts of a line which can be discovered through Comparison testing. This test can be a bit expensive but is important in keeping breeding lines at the highest quality.

Hopefully this helps explain how seemingly good foals have been gelded or spayed.

Because *Star stallions and *Gold mares are as high as the papering system goes, there can be a very wide range between horses that receive those paper levels.

I searched stallions, just to give you an example, and sorted them by AFPT. I only checked a few of the oldest ones, but the lowest AFPT I saw was 11.39, and I expect there may be some *Star stallions with an AFPT a bit lower.

Then, I searched all horses by PT score. The highest scores in this game are 13.5.

There's a quite a lot of room between 11.2, let's say, and 13.5 (and remember those are average scores, so there are some foals of a stallion testing higher and some lower than the top and bottom AFPT. It takes quite a few generations of breeding the best *Star's to the best *Golds to reach an AFPT score above 13. I think Ammit has said that a reasonable improvement from one generation to the next is about .5 increase in AFPT.

In HaJ 1, the highest PT scores are 15.1. So it isn't unusual to have a *Star colt comparison test worse than his *Star sire in either game. I remember how much excitement there was when the first foals with a PT score above 12 were born in HaJ 1.

The same sort of range holds true for the *Gold mares.

Dark Star, who is one of the “oldest” players of the game, has a thread on here this month about her firs Superior to Sire colt in months.

When you get up above roughly generation 5 or 6, it starts to get really really hard to improve your lines. You’re no longer reaching for the next paper level, a really simple thing those of us breeding lower gens can strive for and use as a concrete goal. You’re using SBA (or BA if you’re not a premium player) and comparison testing your colts and just crossing your fingers a lot.

Remember, while we have Comp testing for colts, the only way to really look at the breeding quality of your mares after SBA/BA and papaering is to compare AFPT (Average Foal Performance Test) scores. If you’re breeding two mares to the same stallion over several seasons, who apparently are of the same quality (same paper, both passed whatever testing you’ve done) and after 3 or 4 foals one has an AFPT of 0.5 or more than the other mare, you have to start trying to figure out why. But you’ve invested 3 or 4 seasons, 3 or 4 foals into both mares at that point. It’s really hard to increase your quality after a point in this game!