I don’t know if this is something you would consider adding in the future but I was wondering if race restrictions could be altered? So if a horse hadn’t won a race in say 3 months they would be bumped down to being eligible for NW3 races and if they haven’t won a race in 6 months they would be eligible for NW2 races and so on. This way horses that are no longer competitive in open allowances, or are going through a rough period, could have a chance to run against a field more suited to their abilities. I know claiming races are always an option but there are only so many claimers and this way older or more over the hill horses could still be useful for stables (especially geldings). Anyways, I know this would be a long way off, and I have no idea how difficult this would be to code, but I just thought I would throw it out there and see what other people think.
NW1, NW2, etc. races are an “American” thing. Many other countries, eg. England, France, Dubai, using Ratings where each horse has a Rating and their rating changes from race-to-race, depending on the class of race (e.g. Maiden, Handicap, Stakes) and where they finished in the Race. Then they have Handicap Races for different Rating Groups, say 0-45, 0-60, 61-75, and so on. That way, a 5YO horse who won a number of races as a 2 & 3YO but hasn’t won for more than 2 years is not stuck racing against horses who are on top of their form at present.
I have no idea how easy it would be to change FF from the current Allowance-style system to a more Handicap-style system and suspect that it would require an almost total rewrite of the Code.
Perhaps an easier thing to code would be to have a few Allowance races restricted to horses who haven’t won any races in the last year (similar to Starter Allowance Races which are for horses that have run in a Claiming Race within the past 12 months).
I like that idea a lot and (to someone who has no idea where you’d even begin coding a game like this) it sounds like it would be the easier-to-implement option.
It would definitely be useful for newbies who have acquired older horses, many of whom have had too many wins to run in the NW_s, but may have gotten those wins 2-3 years ago and not been raced in between. Still have a chance to win some money with them by racing them in more suitable company than the open allowances would have.
I also like the “never won in a year” suggestion. I have a few who are getting slapped around in Allowance company but can’t move down due to 2 or 3yo careers.
I’ve always wanted to suggest this idea, don’t know why I never did. They have these restrictions in real life, Non-Winners of how ever many races lifetime and also non-winners of how ever many races in a time period, usually anywhere from 3 months to a year.
That would be feasible to do…in the rewrite. Feel free to submit it in the bug system as a feature request and that way I should remember to add it in.
Plan is to rewrite all the non-race code (since that just got rewritten a couple years ago and got a run-through of bug fixes this year). Then, likely after I work on a few other projects, go back and rewrite race code (again).
Feel free to submit it in the bug system as a feature request and that way I should remember to add it in.