Lets me preface this by saying it’s not a complaint just observation and speculation.
With shipping I’m finding it harder to find races for some of my horses even though there are more races on the whole. The 2 horses I shipped cross continent and intercontinental at the beginning of the year are still recovering from those trips. Although subsequent trips don’t seem to have taken as much out of my horses. This could mean planning a horses year by meets. Planning more time between races especially if you are looking at the big money international races. This may mean that the dominant horses won’t run 25 to 30 times a year hitting all the big races. More of a chance for other good horses and stables to win more and earn more. One thing for sure we’ll have to pay more attention to when and where we race our horses. More long term planning, paying attention to recovery rates of each horse over varing distances.
Real life stakes racehorses run in maybe 10 races a year (in the US, anyway, I imagine the Europeans/Australians treat their horses less like they’re made of glass…though they also have less shipping distance to cover than those in North America).
The goal is to plan your horses’ racing schedules in clumps…spend a month or two at Aqueduct, a month or two at Santa Anita, a summer overseas, etc.
Having shipping cost money and time makes the game much more strategic, and less “well, here’s a race my horse can run in, let’s go”.
Yes, it makes the game much more challenging. I’ve had to scratch my horse last second without refund because I was too scared to run it because of low energy/fitness. It’s all very cool. I just need to remake a stategy to play the game. It takes much more organization and thinking. I love challenges, so I think it’s all very cool.
yup much more planning and organization! I’ve never had to worry about looking at races waaaay in the future! It’s a good thing though. I may have to make a spreadsheet or something with which horse will enter what races throughout the year, when the should ship, when they should work, etc etc
Yeah, the spreadsheet is a good idea. I’ve one right now for broodmares but it looks like I need or organize which races my horse is going to and when they’re spending time at home etc. I’m going to have to take a day and get everything down.
Points well taken but then how does this affect horses that we want to run in the Triple Crown Races? With shipping taking as much out of the horses that it does, I’m thinking that we won’t see one of those in this game again. Yes you could say well ship the horse right after the race to the next track but we have seen how if the horse is already at an “F” for energy he could be really be a long way below that if you shipped him after the race. Yes there is a month + or - between the races but that may not even be enough for some horses. Just my thoughts!!!
Shipping from Churchill Downs to Pimlico takes 2 days by road, or 1 day by air. That’s not going to take a TON out of your horse, unless your horse has a really low energy regain rate (in which case they likely wouldn’t be ready for the Preakness even without shipping).
Not to mention that the TC is supposed to be hard to run in, let alone win. That’s why so many (real life) horses skip one or two of the 3 races.
FF does have a glut of TC winners compared to the real world . Having fewer is actually something that I’d consider to be a good thing. And shipping seems much more reasonable lately, the first couple weeks I was having to scratch 2-4 horses a meet because of energy levels, but now I’m even willing to ship from Aqueduct to Gulfstream for a race a week out and the horse seems to recover fairly fast.
I must say, the whole shipping deal has made the game a ton more realistic for me, because now I have to actually exercise my horses. Last year, Favored only needed a week to recover, and there were a lot of races that he was able to run in, so I ran him pretty much every week or every ten days. Now, I’ve got him stabled in Australia, and there just aren’t enough long turf races down there. So, I run him once a month, maybe a little less, and then work him out to keep him in shape during his off times.
