Contents this issue: Editor's PrerogativeWords of Wisdom: A Note from the Commissioner
Pontification: Rotating Mobiles
Forum:
Mistake of the Week
Random Thoughts for New Managers
Now that the season has begun in earnest, this issue contains mostly old thoughts that still have relevance (I deleted a number of old thoughts that no longer make sense) and one new set of interesting items for Mel to sweat over.
Let me just say that the divisional splits excite me, since I expect, barring serious errors, every match to be competitive (except perhaps in St. Louis). With the advent of full automation, this should be a fun season for everyone. Except the Borg in week 1, of course.
Preface: this was the reply to an old question I asked Mel. In a playoff match last season, I had one offensive player who clearly dominated the opposing defender (SCR > OPP(DEF), MARK >> OPP(MARK)), and yet got very few "shots" (listed as misses, points, or goals in the rawstats). Here was his answer, which made me TOTALLY CHANGE my team philosophy. Again.
(>> = Steve Buffum, > = Mel Nicholson)>> What fundemental concept am I missing here?
> The person who "makes" a shot (makes the opportunity) and the person who > takes the shot are not always (in fact very rarely) the same person. You > notice that your rover wasn't doing all that well against his counter, but > he got a whole lot of shots off. These are likely the shots that Parker > and Teller created. Looking at the stats on Parker, I'd agree that she > should be marking every pass that came near her, but then go back two zones > and look at the RW (and to a lesser extent the C and LW) to see how many > passes she should expect to come her way... > > I don't have the stat in front of me, but I'd guess you were shut down at RW > (no passes == no marks)
A result of this is that the "hourglass" lineup I used to run (weakest overall players in the midfield) turns out to be a lousy way to make a living, and only the fact that I had good mobiles (until the last six weeks or so) kept Wallamaloo in the black.
This week's rant comes from Livermore, where Scott Emery tells us about what to do with the extra mobiles you've built. You _have_ built more than three mobiles, haven't you? (see Volume 1)
From: emery@acfcri1.arc.nasa.gov (Scott Emery)
Maybe it just takes me a while, but reading about people "hiding" their mobiles to avoid injury has finally got my back up. It is a STRATEGY, dammit!
Some background... I ignore anything between +4 and -4 fatigue in the charts. I yabber about why I do this in an early TOW. This approach simplifies the training decision considerably. Your players will always be at fatigue zero or fatigue four... Unless your players pick up fatigue during a game.
[Editor's Note: A little math: if you have a guy at Rover (say) forever, a rotation that keeps his fatigue below four would be +4, -4, +2, -4, +2, -4... Why? Because your mobiles almost ALWAYS gain 1 Fatigue in a match (Mine have never done anything else). Does that make this a GOOD rotation? I didn't say that. One might infer, for example, that perhaps ALWAYS playing a player at mobile hinders his advancement because of the increased Fatigue; that is, playing him off-mobile gives him a "rest" of sorts. Think about it.]
Every time you send someone to the hospital for a game you lose 20 points on the player. This is equivalent to six games of excellent training. ( four on, four off in a group of three for six games [yeah, you can get there in five, but that is a quibble]) Do this three times and the player will not recover their original glory in that season. Do it twice to your mobiles and prepare to lose games.
In TOW #7, Steve recommends that you have 4 mobiles on tap. I ran last season with 5 mobiles ( being a new manager and getting 5 straight 30's helped chose that number :-) ). I would rotate these players through the mobile positions based on who was the most rested, not who had the highest scores. Having fairly high scores for the whole season is more important to me than getting out those high scores and losing them to injury. I would frequently rest a player two games in a row in order to keep their fatigue down. The little bonuses that you get for an active player tended to balance out the "loss" of skill.
What did I do with the mobiles that weren't being mobile at the time? Well, I placed them in the best possible position. A mobile is generally either high mark and/or high mobility and thereby a good offensive player. I always consider putting one in the IC2 slot with a 2F of RKM RVR ROV (fill in appropriate offensive slots) if I happen to be caught with a high fatigue offensive line. Nothing like substituting a better player in when Ol' Weenie drops from exhaustion. If you are experimenting with a defensive specialist mobile (as I did for several games) the change in strategy is obvious.
[Editor's Note: Not only this, but WPD's subs were quite awful last season, and several times I would lose when the scouting report suggested I should have dominated a certain position. The reason: if my sub was bad, he got dominated; if his sub was actually better than the starter (which did happen, by the way), the scouting report was very misleading because the matchup turned out to be against a much better player. By the way, Mel, is there any way to indicate in a match report at approximately what time the injury occured? I'd settle for something as simple as which half (quarter?); just something to indicate if the sub was in for a long time or not.]
Last season, as I have said, all of my age 3 players were mobiles and the age of the mobiles never came into consideration. This season I will have mobiles from a number of different age groups. This leaves me the option of letting the fatigue build up on one of my younger mobiles if resting it would mess up the training schedule. I will still feel uncomfortable letting the fatigue get above 7, no matter what the player's position or age. Last season I was fortunate enough to not lose a mobile to the hospital until the very end of the season (he was a static at the time, go figure... ). This year with half of my mobiles feeling the effects of age, I will probably train 6 players as mobiles. I like to run a heterogenous mobile squad (mobile specialists), so I have a hard time describing what I mean by training a player as a mobile. I expect to lose a mobile spectacularly around mid-season at which point (assuming an oldie) I will specialize it as a static and run with five mobiles for the rest of the season.
The only way to tank a game when your mobiles are fatigued is to not put them in the lineup at all. I have never "tanked" a game. I never will.
CAVEAT: Why listen to me? I'm not in the Gold league.
[Editor's Note: Because those uppity bastards in Gold won't share their secrets with us! :-) Actually, Dave, Nick, and Fred have contributed; it's not meant seriously.]
Doesn't seem like the time to be discussing rules changes, especially with the en masse implementation of Munch, but hey, Fred's the Champeen, and besides, he's never written before.
From: fred_s@earwax.pei.com (Fred Scott)
SPARF Features I'd Like See
Although I like what Mel has done with SPARF a great deal - and I've had a lot of fun playing these last two seasons - I'd like to have my chance to speak about things I'd change in the game if it were up to me.
To start with, I'd like to point out one thing which I think is really unusually good about this particular sports game in comparison to others: the ability to start from scratch and weld the type of team you like to play. Everyone started with the same players. Everyone has a chance at the same rookies. But over time, your training decisions inevitably weld the team you like to field. In essense, you don't need to go draft or buy the sort of player you like, you just have to train him.
Another important point about the game is that it moderates the advantages and disadvanages of age vs. youth so well. Young players can only be devoloped in a way that takes muliple season's worth of time and a long-term commitment to the process. Older players can have wonderful skill levels but after a certain age, it gradually begins to get difficult and counter-productive to attempt to maintain them - particularly if you run into injury problems, which older players are vulnerable to.
So what would I like to see? A few things:
* Home team advantage. I know this reduces Mel's flexability with respect to scheduling, but I still think a home team advantage would tend to make things more interesting. It makes the occasional upset more likely, if the underdog is playing at home. It would also give playoff-bound teams something extra to fight for, besides seeding. I don't think it should be an over-whelming advantage, but distinct enough to be noticable when two evenly matched teams play a home-and-home series. (Maybe the home team should win about 60-65% of the time against a mirror image opponent. Or maybe that's too high.) The effects of home team advantage may even be somewhat variable by popularity, thus increasing the importance of the latter.
[Editor's Note: This is easier to implement in other games due to the basic algorithms used (rawer numbers). Maybe a home team gets 3 random skill levels added to each player? 5? An increased kick accuracy (which, of course, I know nothing about since it's a software issue)?]
* Variable learning abilities. Although completely flexible training rules are the strength of this game, they are also a weakness. One thing which I've found disturbing about SPARF is the tendency to think of players not so much as individuals, fulfilling necessary roles for the Cattle, but as vessels to pour skill points into as part of my training process. How do gain individuality without giving up the training flexiblity or the time it takes to develop a young player? By rating players as to their ability to learn different given skills.
For instance, you could grant each new rookie not just an individual skill level for each skill category but a learning coefficient in the form of a letter: "A" through "E". A player with a "C" rating in a skill category is trained as current players are. A player with a "B" rating gets a bonus skill point in a category each time he's trained for 6 or 7 points in that category. A player with an "A" rating gets a bonus skill point every time he's trained for 4 or more points in that category. A player with a "D" rating is penalized a point every time he's trained for more than three points in a category (therefore it's not worth ever training him for four points since he'd be docked the fourth point). A player with an "E" rating is penalized a point every time he's trained for more than one point in a category. (Perhaps you would also alter how players lose points when reducing fatigue points, as well.)
This would be only one way to implement it - there may be other, better suggestions. The point is, with added skill learning ratings, players will suddenly seem much more indivialistic. This in turn will increase the attraction of actually *trading* players - not just buying and selling them like so much a commodity.
* "Box Score" results. Our current game results lists only goals, behinds, points, and injuries. It seems like a "box score" report could be added fairly easily which lists things like marks, goals, points, etc. and, for defensive purposes, something like "tackles" and "turnovers". (Are there such things - I would think there would have to be some indication of the number of times a defensive player managed to stop an opponent and/or gained the ball for his team.) Last season, I found myself sending off to munch for the full non-cumulative lists and actually deleting the lines belonging to other teams just so I could see how my team members (and those of my opponent) did during the game. I could also follow the same procedure for other games, if I wanted, to find out how another game went. But it would be much easier if munch could format such a report for me. I'm betting others in the league would find use for such an animal, too.
* And last, but not least, A DAMN mailer which sends my training orders to the recipient where I *WANTED* to send them, not to the one I happened to type in!!!
Well, I'll include a very basic Mistake to get us started; since we don't know anything yet, it's hard to have made a serious Mistake. One that you're aware of NOW, that is...
I had a few players that were actually pretty decent, but in trying to cut down my roster to allow for small training pockets, I had to get rid of them. The obvious answer would be to sell them, right, since they're still decent and may actually fetch some decent money?
Well, I waited until Friday to send out feelers, and sure enough, all of the answers I got back on Monday (meeting day) were from Australia and Europe. This meant I couldn't get back-and-forth communication in time to sell them, and ended up cutting them (whereupon they got snapped up the next week, meaning that Mel got the money instead of me) because I couldn't afford to lose the extra skill levels that would have been lost if I'd kept them in larger training groups.
Moral: Start negotiations early in the week.
No, you don't get any. Nyeah.
Well, all right: remember not to include any whitespace between the "short" positions and your player's name. For example:
LHF Abel \ | / LHF Abel RW Baker ` ' RW Baker C Charlie - NOT - C Charlie LW Dildo ' ` LW Dildo RHB Ectoplasm / | \ RHB Ectoplasm
Things like this can help you keep your sanity if Munch doesn't acknowledge your orders promptly.