One other point about learning positions. The cost to go from accomplished to natural is small, so it’s usually worth it to do that if you will use the player in the position where he is accomplished.
I’m glad to see a few more different formations getting tested since my previous post. I understand that a lot of people are focused on trying to create the absolute best tactic so they aren’t going to submit formations that won’t be competitive. That’s entirely their choice. My comment was really to the FMArena team to be aware of the situation and suggesting that they should automatically rerun a wider diversity of tactics. This helps us to know to what extent ME flaws are being addressed by SI and to support members who like to use tactics that are popular in real football.
ZaZ said: Many people are trying different formations, you can see at least a dozen in the first page of the tactic testing log. You are just focusing on the tactics on the top of the table, which are similar because that is what works in this version. People trying to improve the meta will use others as inspiration, or try to tweak their tactics, but that does not stop others from trying what they want. Expand
That was true in v2 but unfortunately not in v3. There are almost no 442, 4231, 433 tested in the latest ME. I think because of the dominance of strikerless 3atb formations people gave up. And now we have at least a partial fix for the defending it’s difficult to tell what impact it’s had on the more realistic formations.
I’ve noticed that almost all the retested tactics are strikerless, 3 atb formations. I understand that priority is given to the highest rated tactics but when the ME is so messed up as it was this year that means that we don’t get enough variety in formations rated in the current ME. I also don’t think I should be submitting tactics that are 99% the work of others just to get them retested. So is it possible to go back and retest more formations from v2 ME? I don’t think I’m alone in not wanting to use completely unrealistic tactics.
I think it’s a valid question though. I suspect given how much of a mess development of the game has been the last 2 years that promises of doing the women’s game properly were not fulfilled, and it’s just some different animations stuck on top of the same ME. But if I’m wrong then there should be differences in what tactics work. In particular physical differences have a large impact; in the women’s game pressing is a lot more effective, pass accuracy worse, less fouls, higher defensive lines, I could go on. Obviously these are not just random differences but based on different tactics being successful than in the men’s game.
Yarema said: Not sure how it's determined, probably some general growth pattern for the position. But those are not hard caps and with training you can go above what it says. Expand
The potential attributes in Genie Scout aren’t supposed to be accurate, they are just a roughly equal increase to each attribute until the potential cap is reached. So for example with a player with a lot of remaining growth you’ll see that most attributes increase by say 3 with a few at 4 or 2. It’s a bit more complicated that that because you have the 20 cap, attributes that don’t ever change, and attributes that don’t count towards CA, but roughly that’s what it does. So it isn’t factoring in the position, training or anything that would shift the balance of how you would optimize the growth. I take it as being a kind of worst case if the player hits his PA.
In past versions of FM I presume that you used players in the test league that were natural at their position. In FM26 are the players natural in both the in and out of possession positions if they differ? It would seem to be an important factor in interpreting the test results since in practice making the player natural in two positions requires a tradeoff in attributes if the CA is fixed. Or do you fix the attributes and allow the CA to be higher?
My point is that depending on how this is done it’s possible that that tactics with different in and out of possession positions could be either at an advantage or a disadvantage because the players attributes are better or worse than those in single position tactics. Of course it’s also possible that SI created a “fake” system in which attributes aren’t penalized for lack of knowledge of the OOP position. Any thoughts about testing this? Thanks.
Pun said: Thanks George for this amazing post! I got a couple questions.
1. I noticed you said that dirtiness is much worse than injury proneness, however in the genie scout rating file injury proneness's value is -47 while dirtiness is only -14. Why is that?
2. Where did you find the data for how much hidden attributes like pressure and professionalism affect performance so much? for pressure to be as important as 37% of pace seems really high to me so I was curious. Expand
I would be cautious in taking any single number as an absolute. Most things in FM are non linear so something like pressure may have a large effect if your whole team has a rating of 1, but having a couple of players with 7 or 8s and the rest 10+ will have only a small impact compared to every player at 15+ (which is impossible anyway). I don’t believe professionalism makes any difference in games, its good to have for your high PA players as they grow faster.
toiletfootball said: Been following this thread right from the start with a lot of interest and sometimes a lot of confusion. Thank you to @harvestgreen22 and everyone else who has contributed. I've settled on using what seems to be accepted as the meta wich is Quickness x 1 Attacking x 1 Match Practice x 1 and extra recovery using the exploit. I've seen good growth from my youngsters especially Acceleration and Pace as one would expect. I'm doing a youth only save and a lot of my squad are now fully developed. So, it got me thinking. Has anyone done any research or have any thoughts on preparing for matches and how training might improve the chance of winning for the next game? I've been using a version of the default 'big game prep' which includes attacking and defensive shadowplay, set pieces and team bonding. I'm finding in big champions league games in the latter knockout phase I just can't win. And this is often against teams who are not theoretically as strong as league opponents who I can beat easily. I suspect the game just won't let you win the UEFA Champions League as a smaller club for the first four of five seasons you're in it.(That old chestnut about scripted outcomes again). I have won it previously but it takes 7-10 years of struggle. At least that has been my experience across a number of different saves over the years. Any thoughts appreciated. Expand
Champions League is a knockout competition with the highest level of competition, so of course this will be the most difficult to win. If you have any players who don’t like big games, can’t handle pressure, are inconsistent, then this is the maximum test for them. I have never seen anything suggesting the game behaves in an unfair way. When your reputation is low you often have the advantage that better opponents will rotate players and be very aggressive. When your reputation is higher they play their best players and play more carefully at the back.
DarthTrone said: Going to repoint this up as a follow up idea has come to my head,
What if a rating of 19/20 is achieved and merely used for "special" occasions? This would mean that the rating balance would still be of that of a CDM, while only losing a 5% performance from them not being a natural 20/20
Would the CA lost from retraining a singular position not be offset by the substantial gains made by a CDM with striker esque stats. Expand
Additional positions start affecting the CA used at around 10 or 11 position rating (‘competent’) so you either get a massive hit to the ratings from the CA or from the positional ability. Theres no way to get around it, multiple positions will always make a player worse than he would be at a single position except if it’s just a left/right sided combo that doesn’t change weights.
Personally I don’t bother with training since you can only train the first team and they will gain mostly by playing time. Optimizing training was really useful for players from 15-18 when physicals could grow quickly but after that the player is either in the first team (with no role training and quickness individual trning) or loaned out so he continues to improve. The most I will do for the overall training is make a full day of rest after a game or add a bonding if the ass man doesn’t.
tam1236 said: In FM24 loaning is destroyed by SI and nearly unusable. For both sides (!). But actually free agents would be enough.
btw @Panneton0 if you read this thread You wouldnt ask this stupid (in this place) question. Expand
I never had any trouble loaning; in non-league you usually have to wait for the transfer deadline to pass for the big clubs so you will be the only choice for a loan.
Panneton0 said: Out of curiosity, anyone tested part-time training? Only having 6 slots (2 of them likely being a game) changes things. Not clear to me if the "unavailable" slots count as rest. Anyone tested the progress cap with that? Wondering how to boost a semi-pro team :P Expand
Doesn’t make sense to worry about it. Sign the best free agents and loans you can get at the start of each year. No young player is ever going to progress enough from training to get into your team, or to stay with the team as you get promoted.
Go to change the schedule. Click create new schedule Top left select an existing type of schedule Choose custom schedules Bottom of that is load schedule Load it, then select and save it. You'll then likely have to advance a day for it to "save" in the system Then you should be able to go back into the calendar select a custom schedule and your imported one will be there.
It's honestly way trickier than it used to be, but it's doable.
Deleting schedules works similarly so your custom schedule don't pile up. Expand
Two things about this. 1) it only works for the first team, SI confirms that general training is not under our control for u21, u18 etc. you can change individual training and intensity but no commitment yet that si brings back ability to edit general training. 2) sometimes advancing time isn’t enough, you may have to completely exit the game and restart it before the custom schedule shows up.
CryosFeron said: ok here is another interesting find: I thought/hoped that the passing skills made this big difference, but I wanted to be sure that it actually changed how the match engine behaves on the pitch. So I ran another experiment and this time I left every attribute unchanged and only increased PA and CA to 200 of every player. So basically nothing had changed except for PA and CA - and this was right before the match started so the attributes were 100% untouched. And guess what: I also won every match (reloaded 10 times) against this much stronger side that beat me every time before I made any changes in the first place. I guess this means two things:
1. The Match Engine isn't directly linked to each and every attribute - it seems that SI just skews the general match odds a little bit into the direction of the side it things should be stronger.
2. Things like passing and off the ball etc. do have an impact after all, since SI considers them to be so strong for certain positions assigns so much CA points towards it. So indirectly these attributes should have an impact on matches. Maybe not as strong as Pace but hey: winning every game that I previously lost is not a small change. Expand
If you increased the CA then the game is going to change to the attributes to match the new CA.
That was true in v2 but unfortunately not in v3. There are almost no 442, 4231, 433 tested in the latest ME. I think because of the dominance of strikerless 3atb formations people gave up. And now we have at least a partial fix for the defending it’s difficult to tell what impact it’s had on the more realistic formations.
The potential attributes in Genie Scout aren’t supposed to be accurate, they are just a roughly equal increase to each attribute until the potential cap is reached. So for example with a player with a lot of remaining growth you’ll see that most attributes increase by say 3 with a few at 4 or 2. It’s a bit more complicated that that because you have the 20 cap, attributes that don’t ever change, and attributes that don’t count towards CA, but roughly that’s what it does. So it isn’t factoring in the position, training or anything that would shift the balance of how you would optimize the growth. I take it as being a kind of worst case if the player hits his PA.
My point is that depending on how this is done it’s possible that that tactics with different in and out of possession positions could be either at an advantage or a disadvantage because the players attributes are better or worse than those in single position tactics. Of course it’s also possible that SI created a “fake” system in which attributes aren’t penalized for lack of knowledge of the OOP position. Any thoughts about testing this? Thanks.
I got a couple questions.
1. I noticed you said that dirtiness is much worse than injury proneness, however in the genie scout rating file injury proneness's value is -47 while dirtiness is only -14. Why is that?
2. Where did you find the data for how much hidden attributes like pressure and professionalism affect performance so much? for pressure to be as important as 37% of pace seems really high to me so I was curious.
I would be cautious in taking any single number as an absolute. Most things in FM are non linear so something like pressure may have a large effect if your whole team has a rating of 1, but having a couple of players with 7 or 8s and the rest 10+ will have only a small impact compared to every player at 15+ (which is impossible anyway). I don’t believe professionalism makes any difference in games, its good to have for your high PA players as they grow faster.
Champions League is a knockout competition with the highest level of competition, so of course this will be the most difficult to win. If you have any players who don’t like big games, can’t handle pressure, are inconsistent, then this is the maximum test for them. I have never seen anything suggesting the game behaves in an unfair way. When your reputation is low you often have the advantage that better opponents will rotate players and be very aggressive. When your reputation is higher they play their best players and play more carefully at the back.
What if a rating of 19/20 is achieved and merely used for "special" occasions? This would mean that the rating balance would still be of that of a CDM, while only losing a 5% performance from them not being a natural 20/20
Would the CA lost from retraining a singular position not be offset by the substantial gains made by a CDM with striker esque stats.
Additional positions start affecting the CA used at around 10 or 11 position rating (‘competent’) so you either get a massive hit to the ratings from the CA or from the positional ability. Theres no way to get around it, multiple positions will always make a player worse than he would be at a single position except if it’s just a left/right sided combo that doesn’t change weights.
Is that going to do anything without also removing Get Stuck In ?
So true. I usually read it but only ever use it if the game is going badly. 90% of the time he wants me to attack down the left and use early crosses.
I took it as advice by the AssMan during the game
btw @Panneton0 if you read this thread You wouldnt ask this stupid (in this place) question.
I never had any trouble loaning; in non-league you usually have to wait for the transfer deadline to pass for the big clubs so you will be the only choice for a loan.
Doesn’t make sense to worry about it. Sign the best free agents and loans you can get at the start of each year. No young player is ever going to progress enough from training to get into your team, or to stay with the team as you get promoted.
Go to change the schedule.
Click create new schedule
Top left select an existing type of schedule
Choose custom schedules
Bottom of that is load schedule
Load it, then select and save it.
You'll then likely have to advance a day for it to "save" in the system
Then you should be able to go back into the calendar select a custom schedule and your imported one will be there.
It's honestly way trickier than it used to be, but it's doable.
Deleting schedules works similarly so your custom schedule don't pile up.
Two things about this. 1) it only works for the first team, SI confirms that general training is not under our control for u21, u18 etc. you can change individual training and intensity but no commitment yet that si brings back ability to edit general training. 2) sometimes advancing time isn’t enough, you may have to completely exit the game and restart it before the custom schedule shows up.
I thought/hoped that the passing skills made this big difference, but I wanted to be sure that it actually changed how the match engine behaves on the pitch. So I ran another experiment and this time I left every attribute unchanged and only increased PA and CA to 200 of every player. So basically nothing had changed except for PA and CA - and this was right before the match started so the attributes were 100% untouched. And guess what: I also won every match (reloaded 10 times) against this much stronger side that beat me every time before I made any changes in the first place. I guess this means two things:
1. The Match Engine isn't directly linked to each and every attribute - it seems that SI just skews the general match odds a little bit into the direction of the side it things should be stronger.
2. Things like passing and off the ball etc. do have an impact after all, since SI considers them to be so strong for certain positions assigns so much CA points towards it. So indirectly these attributes should have an impact on matches. Maybe not as strong as Pace but hey: winning every game that I previously lost is not a small change.
If you increased the CA then the game is going to change to the attributes to match the new CA.