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Most of my higher PT herd is AGA, but sometimes I get superior mares. All my studs are AGA.
Usually, though, with my higher PTs I expect the foals to have the same PT score as the highest parent or at least 0.3

A benchmark is used to compare breeding quality, not PT. PT is not equivalent to breeding ability. You have to use comparison testing to find who is best, and then compare all future colts to the benchmark, IF you want to use a benchmark :)

Well, yes, you can have a PT benchmark, but that is just going to ensure you have almost no horses to breed. If you need all horses of a generation to have the highest PT you have gotten, and still be superior, that is going to make it extremely hard to get any breeding stock. Now, I am all for culling intacts, but that is going to make it so that you will not have any stock to breed wihin just a few seasons.

You can get PTs up to over 14 without boosting (I think it was around that at least, I do not chase high PTs, so it's not something I think about alot :P ). But you can go far beyond 6th gen, I know that much. I have had all superior stock up to 11th generation, and I could definately have gone higher too, but, like I said, I do not chase high PTs at all, and I just want shiny ponies.

That's a lot of mares! :)

My current benchmark is that they must have PT same or higher than their highest parent (so 10.4 PT), and the same or higher paper level. I may tweak that but this is my first season and I am not breeding my main lines until it's closer to the end so I can do some testing.

Thank you @maribo

I "think" there is a difference between a low quality Gold / Star and a High one ; but am not sure if you can actually see it other than the amount of intacts you get ?

wait what? PT is performance testing for shows I thought?

Mmmm, yes this is a much better way of wording what I was trying to say.

@Wingedeagle ; so was I ; which is why I was questioning the answer
@SandyCreekAcres ; can you please help explain this to me (us ) again?

My understanding is it's like a cap, so Gold/* papered are the highest, paper level but a Gold paper who can produce a 14 PT foal has a higher breeding ability than one who can only produce a 12 PT. Anyone else who is able to explain it better?

Secretariat was a great race horse. (He had a KILLER high PT score). But his foals did not compare to him performance wise (low breeding score). Some of them did better than others, and some were pretty good, but of the HUGE number of foals of his, a very few broke any records. That's the performance over breeding ability part.

Ruffians mother, Shenanigans, didn't do much on the track (low PT). Only won one race, I think, but she did produce Ruffian, and Icecapade, and Near East (high breeding ability) (https://www.pedigreequery.com/progeny/shenanigans). That's the breeding over performance part.

@ConfluenceStable so back to my original question, is it still possible to get foals that are superior to their parents if parents are Gold/Star papers? Or is "about as good as" the only option once breeding quality gets that high?

Here is my PT/breeding ability dissertation. Warning: The third paragraph is rather speculative, not at all definitive.

In Foundation horses there is no direct link between showing ability (reflected in the PT score) and breeding ability, unless the horse is a Perfect Foundation (100% breeding ability--highest C and Yellow paper possible; 100% showing ability--9.9 PT) or an Exceptionally Perfect one. However this apparent linkage is only because of the set parameters of those specific Herd Helpers, not a general rule.

An Exceptional Producer of any other sort will have breeding ability ranging somewhere from 10.1 to 10.5. Their PT scores can fall almost anywhere even down to something like 2.n or even less than 1. Ordinary creates, as you've probably noticed, can be extremely varied in both areas.

The higher paper level a horse has, the higher its range of contribution to its foals' showing and breeding abilities is. The contribution from both parents are combined in some way that only Ammit knows or understands. (This game's programming is VERY mathematical and far beyond my limited talents in that field). This combination of contributions can come from any point in each parent's range--from the low level of the sire's and the high level of the dam's, for instance, or vice versa or from the middle of both. There will be a separate calculation for the foal's breeding ability and for its showing ability.

This is one of the reasons why we sometimes speak of the game being ruled by the Great Goddess Arengee (RNG--random number generator).

Generally speaking, however, the higher the breeding ability of the parents, given as close a match in paper level as can be estimated, the greater the potential of producing foals with higher breeding abilities and/or higher PT scores. However, producing foals that are worse than those parents in either breeding or showing ability or both is ALWAYS possible.

All of this uncertainty is part of both the fascination and the frustration of this game. There is no way to predict almost any part of it. I'm fond of saying that about the only sure thing we can say is that if you breed a plain chestnut stallion to a plain chestnut mare, you WILL get a plain chestnut foal. :D

I'm pretty sure that Confluence is working on graphic (picture) illustrations to clarify this issue. She hasn't set a target date for its completion and release though.

The ranges for C/Yellow, B/Red and A/Blue papers are fixed. However, since the highest papers available are *Star/*Gold, the range there is VERY large. Back when I started playing, there was a Leaderboard for the top 500 stallions (I think that's right). Anyway, I managed to get some very long pedigree stallions onto the bottom of that list. They had PT scores ranging somewhere in the upper 11.n range. The stallions at the top of that list were producing foals with PT scores that slowly advanced from 12.n to 14.n. I remember the celebrations in the forum of that day when the 12 PT, 13 PT and 14 PT levels were reached. I never achieved any of those dizzy heights.

I used to have a few remnants of my long pedigree lines and put some of them into a pasture, leaving the mares there, so they all had the maximum pasture boost. They always produced *Star and *Gold foals, but those foals seldom compared as superior to their sires (mare comparison hadn't come into the game yet), and most of them were snipped by SBA. Those long pedigrees reached way, way back almost to the beginning of the game, in some cases. We didn't have comparison tests for mares in those days, so their breeding abilities tended to lag behind the stallions', which is one reason why it was so difficult to get into the higher reaches of the few leaderboards of those days.

So, yes, once your horses reach *Star and *Gold, getting higher and higher PT scores out of them slows down and can take a very long time. At least I'm guessing that's the case, since I mostly am breeding lower generations now.

End of dissertation. :D

If anything is still totally confusing, I will be happy to clarify it, to the best of my understanding, if you ask me as specific a question as you can.

Also, Ammit may come along and tell us that I've misstated almost anything here, since I can only speculate about what the background programming is doing, and I'm frequently not correct.
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I do the same thing, when comparing foals to their parents, Confluence. It gets trickier comparing the 2nd gens with each other.

Thanks Guys :)