To begin here is the current methodology of the breeding system as confirmed by jeb
(Pa+Pb+New)/3
Meaning
(1st parents value + second parents value + random generated value of new born horse) /3
In theory it might seem ok, however in testing and practice it has a very negative effect. Currently with this system of breeding there is a higher chance of the foal being born worse than both parents than being born on par or better than both parents. Each attribute is generated with this method seperately, meaning the speed, health and jump will all have a chance to individually be better or worse than the parents, to top this off is the immense rarity of producing a foal with slightly better stats than the parents.
Expectation : Breeding horses gives the chance of a foal born with same stats of parents and a chance of being better
Reality: Breeding horses produces a foal with a higher chance of worse stats than both parents and a very rare chance of being on par with an increasingly rare chance of being better than both parents.
To put this in numbers here is the stats of two parents I matched and sucessfully bred a faster foal - this result took 11 stacks of golden apples/carrots to get - this is 352 horses bred in order to get a desired result.
Result
Foal
Movement: 0.29452453100491977
Health: 23.84616166234822
Jump: 0.72963024811971
So I finally bred a faster foal from 2 fast parents, but the health is in-between both parents and the jump height worse, so in a way the foal isn't that much better apart from speed.
In the present state of breeding, the only way to successfully breed better horses reliably is to rely on a mod to show the horses stats in game, or to use an external program like NBT to extract each horses entitiy data to read their stats to compare.
This makes horses more complicated than redstone and in the current state of breeding it is better, faster and easier to just run around in the plains and get a horse with great stats than it is to breed them.
To breed the above result, it took me 1 week. I decided to then run 5000 blocks to a plains biome and found a horse with the following stats
Already the tamed horse exceeded the bred horses health, jump and run speed, meaning my efforts were pointless. Presently horse breeding does not provide any sense of actual progression or accomplishment as the chance of success is a lucky rng.
In conclusion, at this present time breeding horses is currently pointless for those (like me) who were hoping to be pro horse breeders that bred superior horses. The amount of gold required in order to achieve a desired result is astounding.
This really needs to be changed and simplified to be made easier for others and make breeding more worthwhile so others do not need to heavily rely on a mod to be able to breed better horses.
You could argue I am just being lazy- however I have spent my entire playing time in the past few weeks to JUST breeding horses, non stop, I have bred well over 900 horses testing this and attempting to breed superior horses. I seriously doubt anyone would go to the extremes I have been doing in order to get better horses nor would I expect anyone to have the patience or determination I have to achieve this.
I have had a ticket since the snapshots, however due to the lack of knowledge of this issue and lack of understanding of horse breeding it seems no one has yet noticed how bad the breeding system currently is. Please show some support by posting in the below ticket to have this method simplified.
Did you ever stop to consider that horse breeding was not implemented this way?If you breed to cows your don't get a better cow it's the same,Breeding horses is just like breeding any other passive mob except it gets randomly selected traits.
Did you ever stop to consider that horse breeding was not implemented this way?If you breed to cows your don't get a better cow it's the same,Breeding horses is just like breeding any other passive mob except it gets randomly selected traits.
Would be true but was that not the hole point of the mechanic to produce, by breeding, a better, stronger, faster horse?
Did you ever stop to consider that horse breeding was not implemented this way?If you breed to cows your don't get a better cow it's the same,Breeding horses is just like breeding any other passive mob except it gets randomly selected traits.
Did you ever stop to consider that there is no better cow? You can't get a better cow if there is no better cow.
Regardless, the whole point of horse breeding is so that you can selectively breed a better horse. The whole point of breeding other animals is so you don't run out. The problem here is that the horse breeding system acts too much like the regular animal system when the normal animal breeding system would not allow you to breed a better horse.
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Did something happen to you in your childhood to give you this unreasonable fear of rutabaga?
Did you ever stop to consider that there is no better cow? You can't get a better cow if there is no better cow.
Regardless, the whole point of horse breeding is so that you can selectively breed a better horse. The whole point of breeding other animals is so you don't run out. The problem here is that the horse breeding system acts too much like the regular animal system when the normal animal breeding system would not allow you to breed a better horse.
Yes that's true but did mojang ever say they were going to ever have it work the way people wanted it to?
If they were never going to have it work that way then it wouldn't have been implemented. The idea is great it gives people something to dedicate themselves to, but unfortunately with the current methodology and the cost of breeding it is not effective and is negated by the fact you can find better horses by running around for 10-15 minutes.
Did you ever stop to consider that horse breeding was not implemented this way?
It is implemented that way. It's in the game's code. There's only one random factor out of three, the other two being parents' stats. It isn't an entirely random process.
You aren't really reading properly, to get good horses you need to breed more than 25 times to get a horse better than both parents, but it could be better only in one stat and then worse than both parents in the other 2 stats.
You are currently better off running around for 5 minutes in plains and finding a better horse than to spend 2 weeks breeding one. That is what I am trying to explain.
Actually, what the third random factor does is "drags" the new horse's stats toward the mean (on a sufficiently high umber of breeding trials). So yeah if you start off with 2 good horses all odds are the newborn will be worthless.
Weird design choice as it makes breeding worthless unless it is to get all horse types, not good horses.
For example, let's say you have 2 horses which are 90% of the maximum value in all 3 stats. (rare!), and let's say the random value is linearly distributed too.
The odds of getting an even better horse through breeding are:
Per stat: 1/10
All 3 stats: 1/1000!
Given that it requires nearly 2 gold per breeding (2 golden carrots), that is a LOT of time and gold.
Actually, what the third random factor does is "drags" the new horse's stats toward the mean (on a sufficiently high umber of breeding trials). So yeah if you start off with 2 good horses all odds are the newborn will be worthless.
Weird design choice as it makes breeding worthless unless it is to get all horse types, not good horses.
For example, let's say you have 2 horses which are 90% of the maximum value in all 3 stats. (rare!), and let's say the random value is linearly distributed too.
The odds of getting an even better horse through breeding are:
Per stat: 1/10
All 3 stats: 1/1000!
Given that it requires nearly 2 gold per breeding (2 golden carrots), that is a LOT of time and gold.
If anything it is a very bad design choice as the idea of breeding anything is to get better or more of the same thing. It sucks they made breeding this way, and breeding to get every colour from only 2 horses is just as rare and is a random chance. They really need to actually make breeding worthwhile for the price it is as a golden apple to make a worse horse is definitely not logical.
I just hope more attention and comments go to this so they rethink this design choice, I just want breeding to actually be worthwhile and fun for everyone. Not a long drawn out and expensive method where you have to rely on a mod to see every horses stats to tell which horse is born with slightly better stats and which ones to kill off.
Good post OP. You're a little sloppy with your summary of the math involved (specifically, when you're referencing the likelihood of improving stats -- that's entirely dependent on the parent's stats. It's very difficult to improve from great->best, but it's very easy to improve from worst->bad). However, your point is spot on. Horse breeding is currently not very effective at producing anything besides a mass quantity of average to above-average horses. The only really good way to achieve a very good horse is to just find it out in the wild. That seems like it's completely backwards, because we should be rewarding player's investing of resources and time rather than relying on running around until lucking out.
I'm glad someone analyzed this as I would never have the patience to do so. Hope Mojang might raise the chances of improving upon traits, as it does seem counter-intuitive that you get lesser horses from doing more work... I guess you can improve really poor horses by breeding them into your random superior stock, but there ought to be at least a slight chance that the traits of parents will 'stack' just a little.
We're building a horse farm/breeding facility on the private server where I play, and I'm just hoping to breed somewhat-improved stats into preferred color horses with bad stats. Although, if you breed 2 really good horses it seems you can get a decent result at times. I have a VERY fast solid black with 8 health and a decent jump, bred to a grey pinto with really good jump, great speed and 13 health. The foal came out as fast or nearly as fast as the black, very good jump and 12 health, so that produced an overall improved solid black horse. (Although, the only method we currently have to measure speed is to race and see who gets there fastest.)
If they were never going to have it work that way then it wouldn't have been implemented. The idea is great it gives people something to dedicate themselves to, but unfortunately with the current methodology and the cost of breeding it is not effective and is negated by the fact you can find better horses by running around for 10-15 minutes.
Horse breeding could use some tweaking, and possibly that random factor could end up producing the potential of a better horse than you can get naturally from running around (I'm not saying it is right now, but it would be a desirable mechanic.)
It would be nice to encourage people, especially on a server, to try and get some really excellent "breeding lines" of horses that would have some superior stats. Things like genuine horse races or other kinds of equestrian events seems like something that would add a whole new dimension to the game and sort of the point of having horses added in the first place. I would have to presume this is also the point of having random attributes for horses in general?
The Meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything.
Join Date:
7/4/2012
Posts:
62
Member Details
I run an online horse racing game. In my game each horse has 40+ stats, and when you breed to horses, each stat can be either the same as the father's, the same as the mother's, an average of both, or a random mutation. These four happen on a statistical bell curve, with the greatest chance being the average, and the random mutation being split on either small end of the curve. With this method, if you breed two good horses you will usually get something halfway decent, but it can also be better or worse, depending on which stats and where those random mutations show up and whether they're good or bad.
It sounds complicated, but it, not. It's just a lil more complicated than the way Mojang decided to do it.
(Pa+Pb+New)/3
Meaning
(1st parents value + second parents value + random generated value of new born horse) /3
In theory it might seem ok, however in testing and practice it has a very negative effect. Currently with this system of breeding there is a higher chance of the foal being born worse than both parents than being born on par or better than both parents. Each attribute is generated with this method seperately, meaning the speed, health and jump will all have a chance to individually be better or worse than the parents, to top this off is the immense rarity of producing a foal with slightly better stats than the parents.
Expectation : Breeding horses gives the chance of a foal born with same stats of parents and a chance of being better
Reality: Breeding horses produces a foal with a higher chance of worse stats than both parents and a very rare chance of being on par with an increasingly rare chance of being better than both parents.
To put this in numbers here is the stats of two parents I matched and sucessfully bred a faster foal - this result took 11 stacks of golden apples/carrots to get - this is 352 horses bred in order to get a desired result.
Parent 1
Movement: 0.2861759696540014
Health: 23.884621246761167
Jump: 0.7660536715135388
Parent 2
Movement: 0.2890115841860407
Health: 23.653863740283494
Jump: 0.7637059616547069
Result
Foal
Movement: 0.29452453100491977
Health: 23.84616166234822
Jump: 0.72963024811971
So I finally bred a faster foal from 2 fast parents, but the health is in-between both parents and the jump height worse, so in a way the foal isn't that much better apart from speed.
In the present state of breeding, the only way to successfully breed better horses reliably is to rely on a mod to show the horses stats in game, or to use an external program like NBT to extract each horses entitiy data to read their stats to compare.
This makes horses more complicated than redstone and in the current state of breeding it is better, faster and easier to just run around in the plains and get a horse with great stats than it is to breed them.
To breed the above result, it took me 1 week. I decided to then run 5000 blocks to a plains biome and found a horse with the following stats
Tamed Wild Horse
Movement: 0.29616763833616183
Health: 28.0
Jump: 0.824004267934707
Already the tamed horse exceeded the bred horses health, jump and run speed, meaning my efforts were pointless. Presently horse breeding does not provide any sense of actual progression or accomplishment as the chance of success is a lucky rng.
In conclusion, at this present time breeding horses is currently pointless for those (like me) who were hoping to be pro horse breeders that bred superior horses. The amount of gold required in order to achieve a desired result is astounding.
This really needs to be changed and simplified to be made easier for others and make breeding more worthwhile so others do not need to heavily rely on a mod to be able to breed better horses.
You could argue I am just being lazy- however I have spent my entire playing time in the past few weeks to JUST breeding horses, non stop, I have bred well over 900 horses testing this and attempting to breed superior horses. I seriously doubt anyone would go to the extremes I have been doing in order to get better horses nor would I expect anyone to have the patience or determination I have to achieve this.
I have had a ticket since the snapshots, however due to the lack of knowledge of this issue and lack of understanding of horse breeding it seems no one has yet noticed how bad the breeding system currently is. Please show some support by posting in the below ticket to have this method simplified.
MC-16533
here is an image example of breeding results between 2 pairs over 32 breedings (equal to 1 stack of golden apples/carrots)
Would be true but was that not the hole point of the mechanic to produce, by breeding, a better, stronger, faster horse?
Did you ever stop to consider that there is no better cow? You can't get a better cow if there is no better cow.
Regardless, the whole point of horse breeding is so that you can selectively breed a better horse. The whole point of breeding other animals is so you don't run out. The problem here is that the horse breeding system acts too much like the regular animal system when the normal animal breeding system would not allow you to breed a better horse.
Yes that's true but did mojang ever say they were going to ever have it work the way people wanted it to?
Praise be to Spode.
It is implemented that way. It's in the game's code. There's only one random factor out of three, the other two being parents' stats. It isn't an entirely random process.
Horse trading may become important on smp servers.
(Use golden carrots instead of golden apples to breed horses, they use less gold)
You are currently better off running around for 5 minutes in plains and finding a better horse than to spend 2 weeks breeding one. That is what I am trying to explain.
Weird design choice as it makes breeding worthless unless it is to get all horse types, not good horses.
For example, let's say you have 2 horses which are 90% of the maximum value in all 3 stats. (rare!), and let's say the random value is linearly distributed too.
The odds of getting an even better horse through breeding are:
Per stat: 1/10
All 3 stats: 1/1000!
Given that it requires nearly 2 gold per breeding (2 golden carrots), that is a LOT of time and gold.
If anything it is a very bad design choice as the idea of breeding anything is to get better or more of the same thing. It sucks they made breeding this way, and breeding to get every colour from only 2 horses is just as rare and is a random chance. They really need to actually make breeding worthwhile for the price it is as a golden apple to make a worse horse is definitely not logical.
I just hope more attention and comments go to this so they rethink this design choice, I just want breeding to actually be worthwhile and fun for everyone. Not a long drawn out and expensive method where you have to rely on a mod to see every horses stats to tell which horse is born with slightly better stats and which ones to kill off.
See that fire extinguisher over there?
Kidding, but horses are very useful.
Although I agree with this thread.
We're building a horse farm/breeding facility on the private server where I play, and I'm just hoping to breed somewhat-improved stats into preferred color horses with bad stats. Although, if you breed 2 really good horses it seems you can get a decent result at times. I have a VERY fast solid black with 8 health and a decent jump, bred to a grey pinto with really good jump, great speed and 13 health. The foal came out as fast or nearly as fast as the black, very good jump and 12 health, so that produced an overall improved solid black horse. (Although, the only method we currently have to measure speed is to race and see who gets there fastest.)
But horses are still useless.
Praise be to Spode.
Horse breeding could use some tweaking, and possibly that random factor could end up producing the potential of a better horse than you can get naturally from running around (I'm not saying it is right now, but it would be a desirable mechanic.)
It would be nice to encourage people, especially on a server, to try and get some really excellent "breeding lines" of horses that would have some superior stats. Things like genuine horse races or other kinds of equestrian events seems like something that would add a whole new dimension to the game and sort of the point of having horses added in the first place. I would have to presume this is also the point of having random attributes for horses in general?
Version 2.1 now updated for MC 1.6.2
It sounds complicated, but it, not. It's just a lil more complicated than the way Mojang decided to do it.