Rival Stars Horse Racing

Writer's Note: i am writing about desktop version - if you've got insight about the app, please chime in!

Summary
Manage and restore a family estate, breed race horses and compete in races.

Game Design
- please add

Locations
In Story Mode, you start on the main overview, which gives you access to four locations, as well as the Goals page and the market page.

Homestead
Here, you get access to settings and game stats, your storehouse, and your income. The storehouse holds the items you earn by racing or fulfilling goals, or buy in the market. Upgrading the store house increases the number of items it can hold. Your income is generated automatically every 5 minutes and collects up to 10 payouts. You need to manually pick it up in order for the next income to build up.

Stable
The stable shows all the horses you own in their stalls. You can access customized horse tack, equip special skills, and look at each horse's stats page. You can enter the foal stalls to breed horses or to visit/feed foals. There are no interactions with the horses and no care work to be done.

Race
There are different locations being unlocked as you progress in the story. From here, you can pick and ride races.

Training
The training facilities let you train your horses in Speed, Sprint Energy, and Acceleration.

Market
In the market, there are three types of item and two horses on offer. The offers renew every 10 minutes.

Mobile version
1 item for silver, 1 for gold and one random one you get for free after watching an ad. Three horses on offer, one for gold, one for silver, one for roses. There is also the "Rose Wheel", a spinning wheel that you can purchase tries on for roses, which become progressively more expensive the fewer prizes are left on the wheel. It can give out small item stacks (1-4? items), varying amounts of silver, and gold, which always comes in one larger section with a small amount of gold + the jackpot which is a small section that gives between 275 and 410 (??) gold. The rose wheel refreshes once per day.

Goals
There is a page for story goals, which challenge you to keep improving your estate and your horses, as well as winning races. There is also a page of Dailies, giving you three tasks every 24 hrs you can complete to earn Skills for your horses.

Gameplay
The game begins with an animated cutscene explaining that you have inherited your family's run down racing stables. You meet your staff: Francis Kwan, the groundskeeper (?); Sophie Martin, the barn manager (?); and Trenton 'TJ' James, the horse trainer. Along the way, you learn a few details about their personal lives. All the storytelling happens via text boxes and the NPC characters' avatars displaying different emotions.

Ranch Improvement
Foal Stalls, Store House, Income and training facilities are upgraded by tiers which are unlocked as you complete story goals. Upgrades cost a combination of items and money.

WANTED: Table of all the tiers for everything

Visually, small details change sometimes when you upgrade homestead or training facilites, but mostly it's one of your staff telling you in a text box what got improved.

Racing
When competing in races, you first pick a location (more are unlocked as the levels progress). Three Oaks Sewell Meadows Parson's Yarra Park Palm Coast Kildare Pearl River Breaker Bay

Each location has got up to four races (unlocked by winning the previous race a given number of times). Races have a varying amount of price money, distance, entry fee and horse level requirements. They also give a chance on item wins (the harder the race, the more valuable the items). You then pick your horse according to the odds of winning, which is determined by the horses trained levels and its preferences for distance and track surface. You can either ride the race yourself at no extra cost, or higher a jockey, which will also increase your odds. Last of all, you can choose to place a bet on Win, Top 2, or Top 3.

The race starts with a skippable cutscene with a camera flight across the location, a close up of your horse and some of its rivals, before you get to the starting boxes. The actual race begins with a minigame of tapping space at the best time to get a head start on pre-loaded sprint-charge bars (??). During the race, you can control lateral movement with arrows / A/D keys, slow down with S/down, use the sprint charge with Space (timed right, you get a boost), and toggle to a front camera with Q.

Racing Strategy Pointers are welcome!

Horse Stats
Each horse has preferences: How well these preferences match determines the odds the horse has in winning a race.
 * Distance (800-3200m)
 * Track Surface (Very Soft, Soft, Medium, Firm, Hard, Very Hard)
 * Position (Front, Middle, Back)

A horse has stat values: (What exactly do they do?!)
 * Speed
 * Sprint Energy
 * Acceleration

Each Horse has a grade (1-10) which determines the maximum level the horse can be trained to in all three stats.

General Info
When you access the breeding menu via the foal stalls, you can see all your mares on the left, and five stallions on the right. Four are generated by the game and refreshed every hour, the fifth is a stallion of yours that you picked as your stud. To change stud, pull up his profile and select “Set as stud“. Depending on both horses' grades, there is a fee for breeding that consists of items and money. There is a probability for the foal to be the same grade as the parent with the lowest grade, or one grade above it. Probability for a higher grade foal rises with
 * one parent's grade being several grades higher than the other parent (e.g. grade 4 mare + grade 1 stallion have a very high chance to get a grade 2 foal, as opposed to grade 1 mare + grade 1 stallion)
 * a higher tier foal stall

Horse Appearance
Quote from the Official Dev's Breeding Guide A horse’s appearance is made up of 4 elements: Color: This determines the base colors of the horse’s coat, mane, and tail. The colors in Rival Stars Horse Racing are: black, white, chestnut, bay, and brown. Dilution: This determines any variation to the base colors for the horse’s coat, mane, and tail. Dilutions can be expressed as either a single or double variation. The dilutions in Rival Stars Horse Racing are: none, cream, champagne, and grey. Pattern: This determines any additional patterns that may be visible on top of the horse’s coat, mane, and tail. The patterns in Rival Stars Horse Racing are: none, dapples, pinto, spotting, splash white, and rabicano. Markings: Additional markings that may appear on the horse’s face and legs.

In the Horse Creator, there are 80 available Coat color phenotypes combined from Color and Dilution. This also determines the color of hooves, eyes, mouth and legs, while pattern and leg/face marking are as an extra layer.  Black Variations

There are 36 pattern variations:
 * None
 * Dapples: Dapples, Blotch Dapples, Mini Dapples, Splash Dapples, Sparse Dapples, Cloudy Dapples, Patchy Dapples
 * Pinto: Pinto, Pinto Arc, Twin Pinto, Pinto Peak, Slant Pinto, Dotted Pinto, Lavish Pinto, Pinto Stripe, Pinto Band, Pinto Fade
 * Rabicano: Rabicano, Belly Rabicano, Sabino
 * Splash White: Splash White, White Flare, White Nape
 * Spotting: Milky Way, Blotch Spotting, Leopard, Hind Spotting, Cloudy Spotting, Sparse Spotting, Starry Spotting, Fleabitten, Partial Leopard, Pintaloosa, Cloudy Pintaloosa, Pintaloosa Jacket

11 Leg Markings - separately for each leg: None, Coronet, White Heel, Half Pastern, Pastern, Ankle, Irregular Fetlock, Irregular Sock, Half Sock, Full Sock, High Sock

29 Head Markings: None Badger Face, Bald Face, Bald Head, Bald Focus, Half Bald, Blaze, Arced Blaze, Scant Blaze, Broad Blaze, Irregular Blaze, Husky Blaze, Interrupted Blaze, Interrupted Stripe, Sparse Stripe, Piked Strip, Stripe, Stripe Lid, Broad Stripe, Stripe Snip, Faint Star, Irregular Star, Splotch, Star, Star Strip, Lip, Spot, Snip, Fleck,

Genetics
Quote from the Official Dev's Breeding Guide Genes exist for color, dilution, and pattern. Each horse has two genes for their color, dilution, and pattern - dominant and recessive. A horse’s dominant genes are visible in their appearance. Recessive genes are not visible in their appearance. Note: This is very simplified from RL biology, where a recessive color can be part of the phenotype, even though less likely than the dominant color in the genotype.

The offical guide - nor any other resource - has percentages for rarity and probability. Here's what we know:

Differences Between Releases
The mobile version is free to play but comes with a premium currency, a subscription model called Star Club that gives access to special studs and jockeys and some gold income, as well as possibilities to watch ads for different rewards and long waiting times.

Currencies
The mobile version has 3 different currencies, which can all be used in the market (see section about the market above) but also for the following:
 * Silver: Earn from races and homestead payouts, spend for upgrades and breeding
 * Gold: Premium currency, buy or earn from quests, sending gifts to friends and the rose wheel. Spend on premium studs, buying items that are needed but not in the market, skipping timers (NO, DO NOT SPEND IT ON SKIPPING TIMERS), the best jockeys (ALSO, NO) and most importantly on additional horse and foal stalls after the first few that can be built as normal upgrades.
 * Roses: Earned from Live Races, spend on rose wheel
 * Energy: Spend to race (1 on races up to Sewell 2, 2 for higher ones), recover 1 per 18 min. Can have 10 at a time.
 * Event Tickets: Spend to race in live races (1 to 3(?), depending on grade tier), take 2 hours (?) to recover one. Can have 5 at a time.

Live Races
At all times there are special live races, usually lasting for about 2 days, which are ranked among all players and give out a variety of rewards based on placement tiers. These live races are tiered for horse grades, meaning there is incentive to have good horses of lower grades to enter the lower tiers with. Usually the tiers are either 1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8 (?), 9-10 (?) or 1-3, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9. You receive rewards for each tier you race in and can only use horses of the appropriate grades to enter. On top of the rank rewards, there are certain goal times per race and tier and clearing them rewards you with roses. The first goal is participation, so it is always a good idea to enter if you have any horse of the appropriate grade just for this. You cannot hire jockeys for live races, you have to play the race manually.

Race Reward Picks
One neat little feature of the mobile version is that race rewards are not completely random, after winning a race X times (where X is between 3 - 7 (?), higher level races having a higher X) you get to pick one reward item from amongst the highest level item this race can reward (and one random (?) construction material).

Watching Ads
You are never forced to watch ads in this game, but there are several points that you are offered to watch an ad in exchange for a reward. You have a maximum of 10 ads available, which you use up but which also refill over time and when there is an option to watch one it will show how many you currently have left.
 * Item or silver rewards after races: Sometimes you get told that there is a "sponsor" who saw your race and wants to support you and get shown which reward it would get (usually a stack of 1-2 of an item or a few hundred or thousand silver). Rewards are better on higher level races. You can then choose to watch an ad and receive the reward or decline. It's very well done to integrate it flavourwise here and can be super useful if you know which items you are in need of.
 * Speeding up timers. You can choose to watch ads to speed up any timer, the more ads you watch in a row the more time will be deducted from the timer per ad. The first one shaves off 15 min, the next 17, then 19, 22, 25 ... TODO: COMPLETE THE LIST
 * Get a "free sample" in the market. This does not take from your available ads and independently refreshes after 2 hours. You get a random item after watching an ad.

Daily Goals
In contrast to the desktop version, daily goals do not reward skills, but instead items and silver. Skills are mostly earned through ranking rewards in live races.

Windows
Minimum: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: Windows 7 (SP1+)/10 64bit Processor: Core i5 Processor Memory: 4 GB RAM Graphics: Intel HD 4000 DirectX: Version 11 Network: Broadband Internet connection Storage: 3 GB available space

Recommended: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: Windows 10 64bit Processor: Core i5 Processor Memory: 8 GB RAM Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 or AMD Radeon RX 480 with 3GB VRAM DirectX: Version 12 Network: Broadband Internet connection Storage: 3 GB available space

Mac
Minimum: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: macOS 10.12 (Sierra) Processor: Core i5 Processor Memory: 4 GB RAM Graphics: Intel HD 4000 Storage: 3 GB available space