How about the bonuses? I feel like I can save some money (but only up to a point) by putting in goal/assist bonuses, team of the year ... even signing bonus. And the classic "after 1 international appearance" exploit.
And don't forget always keep improving. You might like your current players but in a season or two as club reputation and finances keep growing you can get better.
It's not an easy task as the same player will demand up to 10x less wages on last day of transfer window compared to first. Depends on too many variables although I'm sure some could be tested at least in the sense if they have influence or not.
Timing is definitely a big factor, interest also, whether the players currently has a club (even trial), what role you offer him, country, player reputation, league level/reputation, loyalty ...
Generally the best way is just to ask the agent or scout them. It's not 100% but gets you a ballpark figure at that moment. You can find lots of gems for very cheap wages and on the other hand below average players who demand a lot.
Dkstick said: Regarding scouting and recruitment, what I’m currently doing is simply assigning my scouts with the silver star Current Ability and Potential Ability judging attributes to search for players in Central Europe, since that’s basically the extent of my scouting budget at the moment.
I’ve also set my entire scouting team to continuously look for players between the ages of 18 and 27.
Whenever I get the opportunity, I increase the number of scouts I can employ, as well as improve the club’s training facilities and youth facilities.
Should I be doing things differently? Expand If you want to improve scouting I strongly recommend Second Yellow Card's tutorials on Youtube, including the use of "transfer room in" if you are on FM26. And again you aren't looking for players who have average CA for Polish league, you want to find better or at least players who in a season or two can become much better than the average. For that you need to be scouting the world (Poland has quite lenient transfer and registration rules) and it helps if you know where to look.
I'll reiterate that if you are starting in 2nd division your first 3 seasons should probably be a complete squad overhaul during the summer (don't ignore winter either) unless you find an absolute gem before. In order to get more value out of your transfer and wage budget sign players right at the end of transfer windows.
You probably need to be way more aggressive with transfers. After the first season you should be looking to overhaul your entire starting 11 and then keep improving year after year as much as the budget allows you. Can't get too attached to players who got you promoted from 2nd division. While they can maybe even be decent top division players you should be looking for much better.
And don't forget in order to have plenty of great transfer options available you need to be on point with scouting from the beginning.
LightningFlik said: I was digging around in the simatch.fmf file and found the attributes which are used to determine how often a player succeeds at a given task. I don't know if this is useful to anybody but it does present the opportunity for a fun experiment where you mod the file to replace everything with something like "Flair" and then give yourself a bunch of Flair: 20 players to see if that makes you incredibly OP. (If not, then it probably means this data can't be trusted anyway).
Rain said: Maybe it's just me but I never see any improvements when training GK reactions Expand I see GKs almost maxing out all 3 trained attributes with that individual training. Never had much luck with agility though, but maybe I never gave it enough chance.
"We see that work rate reduces in-match condition % identically to stamina. So stamina cannot be more important than work rate, or at least not more than ~20% more important say."
And you have the weights at 18 and 12 respectively? This is why I always ask questions because you come out with statements like this where it's one way for a few days then it completely flips, but you are 100% certain each time. You had one set of weights one day, I found them strange and enquire about the reasoning behind them, then you completely switch the system with massive changes and somehow it's my fault for asking. The "truth" shouldn't switch around so much, sure there is some inaccuracy and with more data we can hone in better.
I generally like that you are pursuing these questions, but the attitude "I am right and everyone else is wrong and stupid" is kind of offputting, especially when you do 180 as often as you do. Like do the tests and lets discuss if it makes sense, what are the limitations, can you approach it differently etc. You've found some interesting stuff that is unfortunately the victim of the level of discussion in here.
I don't think it was stated that a GK is only 20% of an outfield player.
Why you keep using league position as the end point still baffles me. Yes it has less variance because there are only 20 possible spots compared to lets say 100 possible points. You have to go really out of your way not to be in a +-3 places range. Additionally there is a lot more volatility in the middle of the table than at very top or bottom.
There was decent data for GKs from FM Arena, Harvestgreen, Orion and probably others and they mostly match with what you found so it's not exactly groundbreaking. Still valuable additional data from a different approach.
Stellur said: @ZaZ Just some quick questions: is there a way to change the training intensity of the youth team? I have been trying to find it but cannot seem to find it anywhere, and another question is: what is the quickest way to get to the calendar for the youth team to give them the schedule Expand Click "Squad", then look in training tile - there are 2-4 dots in the top right corner. Each of those dots represents a team: senior, reserves, u21, u18 ... Click on the dot that you want to manage and then open the tile. From there you can edit whatever you want just like for the main team including intensity.
tam1236 said: Sure, with better concentration, dribbling and finishing they would be much better. But until there is no other team with good, physical players they are getting along. And, maybe that's not my coaches, but default FM schedules that give not enough quickness who sucks? CA points are really badly distributed: leadership (0 importance, unless...) is so expenxive - why? cooperation (0 importance) expensive - why? And physicals, most important, are just cheap - I can have decent player of 45 CA. When I see a CB 24 yo., 160 CA, pa, acc 10-11 I think something is really wrong in this game. It reminds me, that some time ago a club from my town won a domestic championship with a technically very weak but big, strong and quick team (and doing mainly physical training). So it happens irl, but of course not on a very high level Expand And that was my whole point. That other attributes aren't completely useless and shouldn't be valued at 0.
A 24 yo CB with 160 CA and having 11 acc is completely normal. We got so used to abusing the broken training system that we somehow forgot that. What is actually wrong in this game is that you can engineer a 18+ pace player out of "almost anyone".
tam1236 said: ... but I was really very, very curious, so I transferred in an editor the team from a table above to Arsenal (of course get rid off regular Arsenal players). And simulated whole season. They finished at 3rd place, after Chelsea and Liverpool (83-81-79 pts) and over MU (71). /Lost all cups/. Average CA of basic 11 was 103. Second part was transferring same FC Vaduz but 2 seasons later - stronger team, some weaker players sold, some came from an academy - average CA 119 (I blocked attributes) - and it's not "engineered distribution" - all from coaching and playing. They won PL over Chelsea and MC (88-83-80 pts) /won FA, lost Europa League/. Expand Now add 40 CA to them in nonessential attributes and sim again. If possible a fair assessment, not all CA into the absolute worst attributes you can think of.
Also the not engineered distribution is sort of true but not really. Using the meta schedules to boost physicals to levels that were obviously not intended is kind of engineering them, although they do happen "naturally" as opposed to straight up editing them.
GeorgeFloydOverdosed said: Here we see that speed, work rate, among others, have non-linear effects. Expand Sorry what? Other than work rate, the other attributes are pretty much linear.
Obviously we aren't looking for the 6th decimal, there is margin of error. And they might even behave slightly nonlinearly but a linear function can be a very good approximation to reduce complexity.
skawkclsrn said: TL;DR: I randomised all 60 attributes of every player in a 20-club league every 75 seconds and let the game holiday through ~16,000 full-engine matches. Pace and Acceleration are worth ~3x anything else. Everything technical measured at or below zero. According to these resutls no attribute has a threshold, they pay linearly 1-20. Once you divide by what a point costs in CA, the best buys are Work Rate, Jumping Reach and the hidden personality attributes, which are (mostly) free.
Method FM's engine is C++ with MSVC RTTI, so every object carries its class name behind the vtable pointer, so you can find every player and scoreline by name instead of hunting offsets. Loop: write a random attribute vector into every squad, sleep 75s while the game holidays, read back and harvest scorelines, repeat every 75s to take into account promoted teams.
Warning that cost me 120,000 matches Match Detail Level decides which simulator runs. On None everything resolves through the Quick Match Engine and effects come out 10x too small in the wrong order. Set the competition to All Competitive Matches. The quick path has its own QME_STAT_MANAGER sitting beside Poisson and Normal distribution objects, so it samples statistics rather than simulating football.
Dataset 15,951 full-engine matches. 47 visible + 5 hidden + 8 personality attributes randomised. CA and PA pinned at 150, morale pinned at 15. Attributes are stored 1-100 and displayed /5; personality attributes sit on a different record at plain 1-20.
Reading the numbers CA is pinned, so ability is a fixed budget and every weight answers "given fixed ability, where is it best spent?" Positioning at -9.6 does not mean Positioning harms you, rather it means CA spent there is not spent on Pace, and that trade costs about 10 points a season.
Validation Fitted on 5,011 matches, tested on 5,011 never used for fitting. Correlation with actual goal difference: Measured weights 0.392; Pace+Acceleration only 0.365; per-position 0.329; CA only 0.318; everything except the speed pair -0.043 Favourable quarter of the test set averages +1.79 goal difference, unfavourable -0.73. A two-segment fit searching every knee from 6 to 16 found no thresholds anywhere.
Global weights, CA cost and value Format: attribute, points per season, (CA cost of one point, points per CA point). CA cost measured separately by ramping a single attribute on an isolated player, R2=0.93. Hidden and personality attributes cost no CA at all. Ratios for near-free attributes are huge because the denominator is tiny, and read those as "free", not as literal multiples. Work Rate is the standout: nearly as valuable as Pace per point of ability, at a third of the cost. Decisions is the worst buy in the game, while the second most expensive attribute and negative. Pressure is worth 14.9 points a season and costs nothing.
Positional weights (0-20 within each group) Acceleration outranks Pace for CB and FB and the order flips further forward which seems plausible. The positional tables predicted worse out of sample than the pooled one (0.329 vs 0.392).
For goalkeepers, read the top two or three only. Reflexes and Agility separate cleanly; below that it is noise, and Handling ranking under Corners is not a finding. One keeper per match against ten outfielders means that column has about a tenth of the statistical power.
Timing is definitely a big factor, interest also, whether the players currently has a club (even trial), what role you offer him, country, player reputation, league level/reputation, loyalty ...
Generally the best way is just to ask the agent or scout them. It's not 100% but gets you a ballpark figure at that moment. You can find lots of gems for very cheap wages and on the other hand below average players who demand a lot.
I’ve also set my entire scouting team to continuously look for players between the ages of 18 and 27.
Whenever I get the opportunity, I increase the number of scouts I can employ, as well as improve the club’s training facilities and youth facilities.
Should I be doing things differently?
If you want to improve scouting I strongly recommend Second Yellow Card's tutorials on Youtube, including the use of "transfer room in" if you are on FM26. And again you aren't looking for players who have average CA for Polish league, you want to find better or at least players who in a season or two can become much better than the average. For that you need to be scouting the world (Poland has quite lenient transfer and registration rules) and it helps if you know where to look.
I'll reiterate that if you are starting in 2nd division your first 3 seasons should probably be a complete squad overhaul during the summer (don't ignore winter either) unless you find an absolute gem before. In order to get more value out of your transfer and wage budget sign players right at the end of transfer windows.
And don't forget in order to have plenty of great transfer options available you need to be on point with scouting from the beginning.
| Statistic | Encoded attributes |
| --- | --- |
| Passes attempted | Passing, Work Rate |
| Pass completion | Passing, Decisions |
| Key passes | Passing, Vision |
| Crosses attempted | Crossing, Work Rate |
| Cross completion | Crossing, Vision, Technique |
| Tackles attempted | Tackling, Positioning, Work Rate |
| Tackle completion | Tackling, Positioning |
| Interceptions | Anticipation, Positioning |
| Blocks | Anticipation, Positioning, Bravery |
| Clearances | Positioning |
| Headers attempted | Positioning, Jumping |
| Header completion | Heading, Strength, Jumping |
| Fouls made | Dirtiness, Aggression |
| Dribbles | Dribbling, Flair, Pace, Acceleration |
| Offsides | Movement, Work Rate, Acceleration, Concentration |
| Distance run | Work Rate, Stamina, Pace |
| Sprints | Work Rate, Stamina |
| Pressures attempted | Work Rate, Anticipation |
| Pressure completion | Work Rate, Anticipation, Acceleration |
| Progressive passes | Passing, Vision |
https://fm-arena.com/thread/14180-a-player-have-found-and-improved-the-game-s-physics-engine-simatch-physics-physical-constraints-jsb/
I see GKs almost maxing out all 3 trained attributes with that individual training. Never had much luck with agility though, but maybe I never gave it enough chance.
Over and out.
And you have the weights at 18 and 12 respectively? This is why I always ask questions because you come out with statements like this where it's one way for a few days then it completely flips, but you are 100% certain each time. You had one set of weights one day, I found them strange and enquire about the reasoning behind them, then you completely switch the system with massive changes and somehow it's my fault for asking. The "truth" shouldn't switch around so much, sure there is some inaccuracy and with more data we can hone in better.
I generally like that you are pursuing these questions, but the attitude "I am right and everyone else is wrong and stupid" is kind of offputting, especially when you do 180 as often as you do. Like do the tests and lets discuss if it makes sense, what are the limitations, can you approach it differently etc. You've found some interesting stuff that is unfortunately the victim of the level of discussion in here.
Why you keep using league position as the end point still baffles me. Yes it has less variance because there are only 20 possible spots compared to lets say 100 possible points. You have to go really out of your way not to be in a +-3 places range. Additionally there is a lot more volatility in the middle of the table than at very top or bottom.
There was decent data for GKs from FM Arena, Harvestgreen, Orion and probably others and they mostly match with what you found so it's not exactly groundbreaking. Still valuable additional data from a different approach.
Click "Squad", then look in training tile - there are 2-4 dots in the top right corner. Each of those dots represents a team: senior, reserves, u21, u18 ... Click on the dot that you want to manage and then open the tile. From there you can edit whatever you want just like for the main team including intensity.
It reminds me, that some time ago a club from my town won a domestic championship with a technically very weak but big, strong and quick team (and doing mainly physical training). So it happens irl, but of course not on a very high level
And that was my whole point. That other attributes aren't completely useless and shouldn't be valued at 0.
A 24 yo CB with 160 CA and having 11 acc is completely normal. We got so used to abusing the broken training system that we somehow forgot that. What is actually wrong in this game is that you can engineer a 18+ pace player out of "almost anyone".
Now add 40 CA to them in nonessential attributes and sim again. If possible a fair assessment, not all CA into the absolute worst attributes you can think of.
Also the not engineered distribution is sort of true but not really. Using the meta schedules to boost physicals to levels that were obviously not intended is kind of engineering them, although they do happen "naturally" as opposed to straight up editing them.
Sorry what? Other than work rate, the other attributes are pretty much linear.
Obviously we aren't looking for the 6th decimal, there is margin of error. And they might even behave slightly nonlinearly but a linear function can be a very good approximation to reduce complexity.
Pace and Acceleration are worth ~3x anything else.
Everything technical measured at or below zero.
According to these resutls no attribute has a threshold, they pay linearly 1-20.
Once you divide by what a point costs in CA, the best buys are Work Rate, Jumping Reach and the hidden personality attributes, which are (mostly) free.
Method
FM's engine is C++ with MSVC RTTI, so every object carries its class name behind the vtable pointer, so you can find every player and scoreline by name instead of hunting offsets.
Loop: write a random attribute vector into every squad, sleep 75s while the game holidays, read back and harvest scorelines, repeat every 75s to take into account promoted teams.
Warning that cost me 120,000 matches
Match Detail Level decides which simulator runs.
On None everything resolves through the Quick Match Engine and effects come out 10x too small in the wrong order. Set the competition to All Competitive Matches.
The quick path has its own QME_STAT_MANAGER sitting beside Poisson and Normal distribution objects, so it samples statistics rather than simulating football.
Dataset
15,951 full-engine matches.
47 visible + 5 hidden + 8 personality attributes randomised.
CA and PA pinned at 150, morale pinned at 15.
Attributes are stored 1-100 and displayed /5;
personality attributes sit on a different record at plain 1-20.
Reading the numbers
CA is pinned, so ability is a fixed budget and every weight answers "given fixed ability, where is it best spent?"
Positioning at -9.6 does not mean Positioning harms you, rather it means CA spent there is not spent on Pace, and that trade costs about 10 points a season.
Validation
Fitted on 5,011 matches, tested on 5,011 never used for fitting.
Correlation with actual goal difference:
Measured weights 0.392; Pace+Acceleration only 0.365; per-position 0.329; CA only 0.318; everything except the speed pair -0.043
Favourable quarter of the test set averages +1.79 goal difference, unfavourable -0.73.
A two-segment fit searching every knee from 6 to 16 found no thresholds anywhere.
Global weights, CA cost and value
Format: attribute, points per season, (CA cost of one point, points per CA point).
CA cost measured separately by ramping a single attribute on an isolated player, R2=0.93.
Hidden and personality attributes cost no CA at all.
Ratios for near-free attributes are huge because the denominator is tiny, and read those as "free", not as literal multiples.
Work Rate is the standout: nearly as valuable as Pace per point of ability, at a third of the cost. Decisions is the worst buy in the game, while the second most expensive attribute and negative.
Pressure is worth 14.9 points a season and costs nothing.
Positional weights (0-20 within each group)
Acceleration outranks Pace for CB and FB and the order flips further forward which seems plausible.
The positional tables predicted worse out of sample than the pooled one (0.329 vs 0.392).
For goalkeepers, read the top two or three only.
Reflexes and Agility separate cleanly; below that it is noise, and Handling ranking under Corners is not a finding.
One keeper per match against ten outfielders means that column has about a tenth of the statistical power.
Shout out
to mavarobli / mavali / mark17072
@https://fm-arena.com/thread/20087-fmsuperscout-free-open-source-scouting-tool-for-fm26-with-a-meta-score-built-on-fm-arena-attribute-testing/
Anyway, back to the actual thread. It's an interesting approach with results more or less in line with what we already know so that's good. Could maybe argue about some of the attributes especially once broken down by position, but overall seems pretty decent.