Ed. Scott Emery yobbo@shell.portal.com
Contents of this issue:First, a desperate plea.Letters to the Editor: A Couple of Important Questions
Words of Wisdom: View-sim and the Fruit of Kibitz
Pontification: The Mythstics Future Revealed!
Forum: The Forum is Open
Favorite Mistakes: Conservative vs. Hellbent
Random Thoughts: Shylock's Advice (long)
For the nonce, I will be maintaining a seperate email list for TOW distribution from the official list maintained by Mel. If you don't want to receive TOW for any reason, please contact me and I will remove you from my list. If you pick TOW up from munch and decide that you would like the direct email distribution, please contact me and I will put you on the list. If the TOW list and the sparf list continue to be equivalent I will start using the sparf list. Until I get more data, however, the only way to have TOW deliverd to your account is by contacting our circulation dept.
Thank You,
Scott Emery
TOW Editor
yobbo@shell.portal.com
To inaugurate the third season of TOW, here is a question from Craig Ferguson, newly of the Mandarins:
The draft Could you include some draft information? Like how much recruits of various skills went for in last year's draft? I personally have no idea of what to bid. I NEED recruits, but don't want to spend more than necessary.
Hospitalization What are the odds on a low-fatigue ( < 6) being hospitalized if he is injured? What happens to a player's fatigue level during hospitalization?
I am going to have to throw this one open...
I don't have any hard data on historical draft bids... I doubt I archived the data, and I can't get at my archives to confirm or deny. It would be idiotic of me to tell you what my bids are going to be, so let me try a different tack... You will need 210K SPARF for your coaches and 50K SPARF for insurance at the end of this season. (See TOW vI.3) You may want to keep cash for trades. You will play 7(8) home games and 8(7) away games this season. You will get close to 25K for away and up to 30K for home games for a maximum of 410K . (Presume slightly less... say 370. ) The difference ( max 250 but closer to 210) is your working capital. Note that teams like the California Giant Redwoods have considerably more than that lying around so they must have been saving some of it. How should you arrange your bids? Well, there are two lines of thought. One is to divide it (relatively) evenly amongst the bids in order to get a fairly uniform set of players. I prefer to bid at several price points, giving me an opportunity to work with varied initial talent. Finally, how much is a player worth? The more K SPARF that roll into circulation the more expensive players get. Some day my policy of spending will crash against a devauled K SPARF (The Giant Redwoods may decide to buy a whole new team...). In that case I will change my training strategy accordingly and start saving. I plan to have a young enough team to survive a season or two without fresh blood.
Providing a sage counterpoint to my advice here is the Mythstics' Peter Grundy:
> If you're richer, it probably means you _didn't_ spend much in the draft...
> And you don't need rookies every season - I'm not buying any this
> season 'cause I picked up 3 age 0 dudes at the end of last season
> (now about straight 16's in skill, age 1 - better than most of the
> draft prospects, and MUCH cheaper at about 5K each).
When I talked to Mel about this he provided some facts...
> In the season 3 draft, there was some inflation compared to the season
> four draft, owing to the increase in the amount of $$$ floating around.
> As always, that group of unique players at the top went for LOTS of $$$,
> from about 80k-90k each. The lowest players (the ones that come in batches
> of the largest size) got grabbed up with lowball bids of around 3k, though
> some batches required as much as 5k. In between things varied wildly, with
> a general trend to have the better players go for more, but with a few
> embarassing exceptions (I won't mention names). Offensive players generally
> went for the least, weel rounded players the most, and defensive players and
> marksmen somewhere in between. I expect a repeat of the inflation noted last
> season, but won't give a number as this will affect the bids such that the
> answer is drawn to just above the number as everyone rushes to beat the
> projected new bids by 2-3k.
Your injury questions are partially answered in Tales of Woe, Volume I, Issue 7, but for the precise answer I turned to Mel.
> Fatigue level drops five points per week in the hospital. Here is the > injury class to hosp/rec range listing. > > class hosp recv > 0 0 1 > 1 1 0 > 2 1 1 > 3 2 2-4 > 4 1-3 2-5 > 5 2-4 3-6 > 6 3-6 4-7 > 7 4-7 season > 8 season season > 9 season career > 10 possibly dead, definately never playing again. > > points class > <30 0 > 30-59 1 > 60-89 2 > 90-119 3 > 120-139 4 > 140-159 5 > 160-179 6 > 180-199 7 > 200-219 8 > 220-999 9 > 1000+ 10 > > Points are usually around 2*fatigue + 30, but can range anywhere from about 40 > points above to 40 points below that depending on the circumstances of the > injury and random factors. (95% of injuries will be within +/- 40 pts of > 30+2*fat) >
It is possible to play recovering players, Though it is generally a bad idea. If they are injured while playing early, their hospital insurance is cancelled for the season and you pay 5K SPARF for each day in the hospital.
> The "Risky early play" is only available when hosp == 0, but recovery may
> be arbitrarily large (so a player who has been released from the hospital
> for an injury(4) and has three weeks of recovery ahead will be able to
> try the Risky Early Play in the last three weeks of his injury, not just
> the last one. (warning: each point of recv causes an extra injury check
> each time the player gets an injury check, so thing get bad in a hurry
> with this option)
My personal experience with injury has been good, but as I follow the guidelines that you mentioned, I will tell you that I experienced 2 0-level injuries and 1 1-level injury which is a lot lighter than the 12 (twelve) injuries (between 0 and 2) I suffered in the previous season. (Note: there was a change in the injury software between season 2 and season 3) I am not assuming that I will get off as lightly this season as I did last season, it just wouldn't be prudent.
Here are some changes which will hit the face of SPARF soon, probably at the start of season five (this season is season four, so don't panic). The biggest change by far is the coming of the long awaited view-sim. The way view-sim will work is that I will distribute a view-sim dictionary which explains the very unreadable output of view-sim. In addition to the score summaries now available, you will be able to ask munch for a play by play output of the game (in the above unreadable format).
So what good is an unreadable chuck of goop like that? Well, with the dictionary in hand, any programmer with more time on his hands than I have can write a game viewer in whatever text or graphics format he or she wants (and with around 50 managers all of whom are at least a little computer literate --- you joined by email, right? --- somebody is bound to write one and have the goodwill to distribute it. In fact, several someones are likely to do this, use whichever one you like best.)
Just as easily, summary statistics on goals kicked can be extracted rather easily, as well as info on handballs, kicks, posessions, time of possession per team, distance/angle breakdown of shooting accuracy, and whatever other statistics turn you on. In short you can make a program to extract all these stats yourselve, or bug your programmer buddies to do it for you.
The next big change is aptitude. Each player will have an aptitude for each of the four skills. His/her skill level will still indicate how good the player currently is, but the aptitude will limit how good the player can get. Once above the aptitude in a particular skill, the player receives a penalty of -1 to that skill which takes place just after the training session. For each five points (rounded down) above aptitude, an additional -1 is assigned. For example, a player with a 75 aptitude in kick has a skill level of 74. He is trained at +7 kick that week and rises to 81. This is five points above aptitude, so the player receives a -2 to his kick skill (-1 for being above aptitude and another -1 for being five points above aptitude) so his skill rises to "only" 79 instead of 81. If that player were trained at +0 kick the next week, he would receive a -1 because he is still above his aptitude, dropping his skill to 78. This means it is not impossible to rise above your aptitude, just expensive to do so (and to maintain it).
In order to make that transition from non-aptitude sparf to aptitude sparf smooth, I will give all players which existed in season four a uniform very high aptitude (probably around 80?). This will include the players now on your roster plus those rookies which get signed in the draft this season. The season five rookies will also have relatively high aptitude, but the lower grade players will not have the high value that the older players do. Each season thereafter I'll lower the aptitudes of the new rookies until I get to a "good mix" whatever that turns out to be.
Aptitude won't be as variable as skill, but it won't be perfectly static either. As players play in games, their aptitude will rise very slowly, (about a point per game in one of the four aptitudes, a tad more if the player is in at mobile). At the end of each season, the player will lose an amount of aptitude proportional to his/her age. The overall effect will be that players who play in every game will see a small net increase in aptitude until about age three, when aptitude levels off and begins to slowly drop. Players who don't play (because of injuries or whatever) will not get as much of an aptitude boost during the season, and therefore slowly lose aptitude from season to season.
There were two other proposals I want to introduce, but do not feel nearly as strongly about. These are "rust" and "experience" The idea behind rust is very simple. Each game you don't play, you accumulate a rust point. Each game you do play, you lose one third of your rust points (rounded up, so one rust point will go to zero). Your effective skill is your actual skill minus your rust. This would mean that players who come back from a whole season on the bench in a cranker group would be rather lame in the first two or three games they played, but would rapidly get back up to their actual skill level when they started playing. Similarly, this would allow for injured players to have a short-term component to their injury, which would allow me to reduce the long term penalty to skill for hospitalization. Rust, unlike fatigue, is not removed by the season break, so those cranking group will have to pay the price in their first few games. There is no specific extra rust in the off-season, but since no one plays games in the pre-season, everyone will rust during that time. (It's only a little rust, so don't panic :-) )
"Experience" is a bonus intended to increase player's longevity and to encourage players to actually play on the field. In essence, there would be a boost across the board in skill equal to the square root of the number of games played. Effective skill would be real skill + sqrt(exp) - rust. The only obstacle to implementing it is that the aging tables would need to be rebalanced to accomodate the experience factor.
[Ed. note: Experience would tend to favor smaller teams without reducing the short term threat of high injury rates. Some people feel that small teams already have a large advantage. I have a relatively small team.]
I would like feedback on all of the above (and I think the forum section of TOW may be held for exactly that purpose next issue), but unless I get strong reactions of an overwhelming majority, I will probably implement aptitude and rust, but not experience (making that aging table once was quite enough, thanks). Of course cosmetic changes, like a different name for aptitude or rust, won't require an overwhelming response to implement.
Guest Pontifex Peter Grundy reviews his last season and shares some of his insight on the game:
The secret of The Mythstics (relative) success
----------------------------------------------
Although I run the risk of being cursed by Madame Venusia, I am privy to The Mythstics (TM) secret plan for SPARF domination and can reveal to TOW what they're really doing behind that mask of mysticism and paranormal exhibitionism.
What have they done right?: Very little of what follows is original: most (all??) has been in TOW before in some form or other. But if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
The Mythstics Fairland Follies ROV VGOOD VGOOD TRIFC VGOOD VGOOD TRIFC OUTST VGOOD RKM VGOOD VGOOD TRIFC VGOOD VGOOD TRIFC TRIFC TRIFC RKR VGOOD VGOOD VGOOD VGOOD TRIFC TRIFC VGOOD GOOD
The score? TM 182 - FF 99. Superior depth throughout the squad countered those mobiles, even under the old simulator.
Of course, after a full season with the new simulator this will all need to be revised.
The forum is open! Let the citizens of SPARF speak!
So, How about those plans for SPARF's future? At the end of last season Mel invited all interested parties to join a kibitz mailing list to talk about the future direction of SPARF. The Words of Wisdom in this issue contain the distillation of the the off-season discussion. Now the iconic columns of the Forum have been dusted off and all may speak to the issue. Do you have an opinion about aptitude, rust, or experience? Speak loudly and ennunciate well, the future of SPARF is before us.
Last season, before my young mobiles started really taking off, I had four year 4 vetrans who were performing mobile duties while the young ones were coming up to speed. One was acting as Center, and one as FF (Bruce was already mobile). I faced my season nemesis Wallamaloo with 5 or 6 fatigue on each of the veterans. I did the conservative thing and pulled my (fourth year) star FF into an IC slot to cover injuries. I lost that game by one point. (this was not tanking, I intended to win, this was conservative play) Would I have won the game if Dawn was on-field. Yes, unless one of my mobiles was injured. My point? In the *critical* games it just might be better not to prepare for an injury, but to go all out.
Opinions?
Hi there, Mr. Pokerface here. This is my version of Shylock's advice to his son. The guess factor in the following article is likely to disappear when there is a game viewing program... The type of analysis is likely to change, and some of the conclusions are guarenteed to change. The fundamentals are likely to remain the same. Most of this article is a condensation (read: rehash) of material already presented in previous issues of TOW.
The first strategy for winning a sparf game is to have a ten point advantage (on all opposing stats) in every position. There is one other strategy that comes close to the effectiveness of this one (ignoring injuries), but it is hard to rely on the other team forfeiting. The best way to totally outpoint your opponents is to train more efficiently than they do. With that basic premise I came up with the diffchart and some simple total point calculations that I have obfuscated in a previous TOW. Extending that concept I wrote a simple program that explored the 'most efficient' way to train a team. It all comes down to (except for for a few exceptional exceptions [Hi, Pamela]) the more equally you spread your training out in optimally sized groups (2 3 4 6 9) the higher your team's total point increase (or lack of decrease) will be. The ideal group sizes are weighted differently for resting teams than they are for fatiguing teams, which was also covered earlier. (Programs, crude as they are, available on request).
An integral part of this first element of strategy is deciding on an "ideal" team size and age distribution and planning how to get there. I want a team of GREAT year 0 players, but it will never happen. As I am biased toward younger players, I think that year 3 is a player's prime season and the last one that they should be seriously considered as mobiles. Other people disagree (the California Redwoods and St. Louis Cattle number among those, if my scouting is correct). My mobiles in season 3 were years 1, 1 and 2 with some year 4 players as backup... I like to have a relatively even distribution of players from year 0 to my cutoff point, heavy on the youth to soak up injuries and any other such disaster. (Like guessing wrong in the draft). It is the team size that determines how many points a SPARF player may grow by per training session. You need 20 players to field a team. You will want extra players to cover in case of injury. You may want to treat some players to intensive training (see cranking later). The programs mentioned before or an active pencil and paper will show you how the points per player tail off as team size grows. Of course, there is always trading.
The second basic element of strategy is that the mobiles are several more times important than the statics. That means that 3 (to 7) of your players shoulder a disproportionate responsibility for your offensive and defensive opportunities. They should therefore have disproportionately large stats. Under the old simulator, I would have taken on any sparf team in the league will straight 100 mobiles and straight 10 statics and probably win. Heck I could have probably done it with straight 90s (just to step back from end cases). In order to acheive this I would need to really rack up the training on a couple of individuals and put the rest of my team in huge groups. Even under the new simulator the mobiles are disproportionately important and should be trained as such.
Well, as you can see, the first consideration, to outpoint your opponent in all positions, requires that you spread your points around evenly to maximize your points per training session. The second consideration, to dominate the field with your mobiles, requires that you neglect the rest of your team in order to pump up your prize players and results in fewer total points per training session. What a world, What a world! The way that you balance this dilemma is at the core of the way that you chose to play SPARF. Any injuries that you receive (through exhaustion or bad luck) that put players in the hospital will 1) make that player unavailable for play and 2) cut into their point total, possibly damaging your training strategy.
If after all of this balancing you find that you do not dominiate the opposing player by 10 on all stats in all positions or by 40 on all stats on the mobiles, then you probably have to resort to tactics. Then you pull out your longballs and left-hand drives and "Plunge with Defensive Chaser"s. Tactics only make a difference when you had a chance in the first place. It isn't just points alone that give you a chance. Your opponent may not follow one of the basic tactical rules. Even after two (or more) seasons tactical rules are still being discovered, codified and broken. The only source of information for these rules (aside from TOW) is the analysis of scouting reports (in conjuction with the rawstats file) for games.
Matt Galer of the Borg runs WBRG a "cable TV service" started by
Steve Buffum (then KWPD). Matt acts as the agent for a group of managers
that pool scouting reports. To use this service, send the info on your
opponent gleaned from the after game scouting report to Matt ( with the
header "WBRG:
The best games to analyze are the ones that are close. Figure out who made the marks (who probably gave someone else their best chance to score), and the scores. See who committed the Misses and consider upping their Kick or moving them closer to the goal. Are your defgoods all at the goal line or are you preventing the ball from moving down-field in the first place. Where were the opportunities made and for whom. Who stopped plays and who was not capable of making them. Consider the game from the opponents point of view and, better yet, consider games that you did not play in. A lot of people out there are experimenting with tactics. Take advantage of all of the data that you can gather.
Blowouts and games with injuries are not usually good analysis material. If the blowout occured with teams that you think are evenly matched then take a cursory look at the game, but be aware that with the granuarity of the scouting reports, one could (at the upper end) nearly fit my primary recommendation (dominance) into stats that look about the same. Games with more than one injury are simply to be avoided, and data gathered from single injury games are to be looked on with suspicion. There are simply too many variables piled on top of the already vague information provided to conduct reliable analysis. This paragraph will become less valid once the game viewer is available, if the game viewer explicitly tells you when an injury occured and who got subbed. In fact, it might be better to look at injury games then, since you can compare and contrast two lineups that are nearly the same.
One final note on a subject that I have not yet touched on. SPARF is a multi-season phenomenon. A team that does not plan ahead is doomed to failure. A team that does... Well, take a look at the New York Hungry Vultures... They sucked air in season 2, and in season 3 they should probably have been in Silver... If you don't have any more games for a player to play in a season, train it's little heart out. They won't be injured (unless you get a suprise game... :-) ) and you might be able to cushion the blow of season end skill loss. Take a look at that season end skill loss chart. Youth may be wasted on the young, but training sure as heck isn't. (to a point...) In season 2, I experimented with cranking (exercising without rest) a couple of year 0 dweebs that I wasn't doing anything else with (an important consideration, I refer to a cranked player that hits the field as a "popped" one [i.e. injured badly])... In season 3 (after some more work) I had some killer young mobiles that I could play no matter where they were in the training cycle. There are rumors flying around that SPARF will change to make cranking more difficult and less valid, get it while it lasts :-).
Most of all, write good press! Good press can make the games a lot of fun no matter who wins or loses. You don't have to devote a lot of time to it, and you don't have to do it every time. One way to write good press is to come up with a simple theme (Say, Lawn Chairs, or Balls of Wool) and drive it into the ground, with vigor. I pretend that I am a certain character (or characters) talking to someone else when I write press. It may result in bad english, but it is very direct and involving. There are many other ways to write good press and I have seen some great examples. Don't be afraid to interact with other SPARF owners when writing press. I sometimes email my mention of someone else's team to them so that they have time to incorporate it or respond in their own press. Versimilitude is the spice of press.
Scott Emery TOW Editor yobbo@shell.portal.com