My theory with onyx (don't breed for it exclusively, but have 3 onyx girls, used a few studs) is that it *seems* to be random. There's 29 possible natural and custom bases, yes? And of those, 7 are goldens, and 4 are creams. So if it is truly random, then there would be a 11/29 chance or the cubs being creams or goldens. Does that match up with what people are seeing? Apparently there's a higher onyx success rate breeding onyx x special, but I don't know ^^" I tend to avoid onyx studs unless I'm wanting to breed naturals nowadays x.o

1/29 seems a pretty steep skew, even for maintaining onyx as rare, is it was boosted so that the coat was more common to pass, it would be better, although would likely decrease the value of onyxes somewhat (not that i'd be affected, just saying ^^" )

Edit: but felicat, then it would make it far more difficult to bred for specific markings, so people choose studs passed on whether they have a free slot or not to try and pass on a favoured marking, not have the layering all randomised and jumbled. I'd be upset if I used a stud with a slot 1-4 onyx cover, and it moved up to slot 10 and ruined the entire look :/

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This is actually why I refuse to buy or breed to onyx bases! I agree there should be a higher percentage to breed an onyx cub.
Support

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I support.

I try to make the perfeckt pride of onyx but close to all my cubs turn anythin then onyx >,<" i realy hope that they gonna fix it all.

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Partial support, I think?

I do agree that it should be a little bit less random, however, I'm not advocating that there should be any higher percentage in an onyx x onyx or for that matter, any special x special base. Because of how genetics work, I don't get too fussed about the crazy inherting that lioden does.

After all, you can breed two black horses and end up with a red foal in real life.

However, from what I understand of Lioden, base colors are kind of inherited in a willy nilly pattern. Onyx can have babies of any kind that have a base coat of a specialty rating (not sure on the right terminology there) lower than itself. I wish this bit was a little less random, but that's myself personally. I'd love a real genetics system with genes that we can understand, but that's a matter for a different thread.

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Just want to put this in here... (I sort of support, by the way)
This comes from my Base Coat Breeding Guide. Read about the "stacks" there.

I've done quite a bit of "research" into LD's "genetics", and this is the reasoning I've come up for some of our seemingly "random" bases on cubs.

Lilac- According to Falcon (#26476)'s calculations, it has a 15% pass rate "and it 'fails'[like red eyes fails to brown] to dove gray. It behaves much like red eyes in this way. Onyx's randomness seems to mess with this though, resulting in a higher overall chance."
Onyx- Has a certain pass rate, but otherwise is a wild card and can throw almost anything.
Maroon
Slate
Fiery
Cocoa
Prune
Maltese
White
Albino

That is just the "specials stack" that I've mostly figured out. The rest of the "basic stack" looks like this-
Dark colors (Black, Dark Brown, Brown, Gray, Copper, Vandal, and Mahogany)
NCL bases(+Fawns and Beige, -Albino and White. Read my thread for why.)
White
Albino

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Why I only sort of support is mostly because after spending many months learning to understand how base coat is passed on, it's gotten to the point for me that I can practically predict exactly what base my cub will have, even from Onyx. I like the randomness personally, but I completely understand everyone else's frustration with it and other bases ^^

And the Scrying Stone does help a little if you know what to look for ;)

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