Anyone who has had to deal with breeding a VLF with lower than 15% fertility will understand just how frustrating the new 'no stud racing' rule is. I have several 1% VLFs in my pride as well as a 4% VLF, and my two highest-stat lionesses, the ones I want to breed the most, just so happen to have less than 5% fertility. After more than 60 tries on both, only one is pregnant and I've given up on the other one. It's much easier to just post a stud racing topic and send requests to everyone who says they will try to breed with my VLFs, but this is no longer an option.

The reason the rule was made is because people with desirable studs were receiving stud requests from people who then proceeded to send stud requests to other desirable studs with the same lioness, which isn't fair to any of the studs who then proceed to waste their energy on a lioness which they have a very low chance of getting paid for, therefore taking away that energy which could be used for other more useful purposes.

This is definitely a problem, especially when the person sending the stud request does so without the permission of the stud. However, when people post topics asking for stud racers to breed with their lioness, they only send requests to people who have already volunteered to take part in the stud race. The new change is unfair to them, as the people they stud raced with had their permission. Therefore, I propose a few solutions:

1) A studding option that the stud can change as they wish: 'allow stud racing.' This would by default be set to 'no,' but if set to 'yes' it would allow people to take part in stud racing they agreed to do.
1a) Suggestion by Rhodalite (#123309): Try having it enabled on the lioness? And then the breeding request will say from a stud-racing-enabled lioness.

2) Send a notice that the lioness being studded is part of stud racing. This would be included in the stud request message as well as the list of current stud requests, with a different font color/boldness to draw attention so the stud knows it is a stud race and can accept/deny it from there. (Note: if the stud is the first person the request is sent to, the stud request list can be updated to say the lioness is part of stud racing even though it wasn't mentioned in the stud request message itself.)
^^I coded this one on scratch.mit.edu-- you can view the project here to see what i mean in slightly more detail.

3) Implement both the stud racing option and the stud racing notice, for better awareness and prevention of unwanted stud racing.

This would be more fair to people who stud race with the studs' permission and it would also help prevent stud racing without the studs' knowledge. For those players who rely on stud racing to impregnate their VLFs, this would be appreciated, and for those players who want nothing to do with stud racing, it can be avoided as well, even though stud racing isn't deleted altogether.

Please tell me why you like or do not like this suggestion, or if you have any modifications that can be made. Your opinion is appreciated!