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All valid points raised by both of you. While I understand that the game engine doesn't really handle minutes very well, I guess it isn't really supposed to. This game is meant to be challenging and make you think and find solutions to handling your minutes better, not just implement a magic feature that will allow you to limit the minutes per player/position. If those above mentioned solutions are logical and make sense, then we're doing our job right, if not, then... you get the picture.

The stamina effect is a perfect example; high stamina players accumulate more minutes per week and it hurts their game shape. That doesn't make sense and we addressed that last season by introducing the stamina factor in the game shape training. Has it helped? I think it has, subjectively. My high stamina players have kept their game shape up most of the time.

On the other hand, I'm not rejecting the possibility of implementing some new things for minute management if they make sense and don't make that aspect of the game too easy. Another example, substitutions after injuries; they can hurt your rotation badly. This needs to be fixed, I agree, but isn't it better to fix it by just making the code put that guard in the game instead of the center rather than adding an option that would do that indirectly?

While making a completely new substitution system would be great, it's unnecessary (this one works fine in most cases, therefore I prefer fixing the cases in which it doesn't) and unrealistic (given the coding resources atm, which are basically - yours truly ).

The training system is another thing. I must say I don't see it as unrealistic or "crappy" as Trainerman does. This is a game and it can't fully simulate real life, but that might be beside your point. Would like to hear how you'd improve it though.

Now, I'd like to address some of the concerns pointed out in the "Testing the empty lineup prevention code" thread, specifically the three posts starting here (259887.136) (if you don't mind me hijacking this thread now). So, the following mainly goes to Yuck and Hoosier.

1. Fixing the economy
Easier said than done. I am aware of it's imbalances. Your trainees reaching enormous prices and old, very much useful players, going for peanuts. The cause for them? Well, a combination of things, of course. Young players are attractive, have low salaries and have that "I made that guy" appeal. And they pay off over the seasons by actually playing for the team, while still keeping the bulk of their value. That means that they *do* payoff in the long run. They can improve during a season while their salary remains the same, while the same thing applies to the old guys but the other way around. Also, no one likes to see those red arrows week in and week out. Another thing, old high salary players have been flooding the market for quite some time now. Since we're bleeding users, the number of teams being able to buy them is also shrinking.

I hate to see that too, but what can we do? The obvious solutions have long term ramifications that might throw the game even more off balance. Just like your "more high talent draftees" suggestion. What happens in a couple of seasons? Or in ten seasons? Fifteen? All of those players will eventually grow old and (probably) make the old player problem even worse. You see, it's not that simple.

2. PL forums
Would a link to the dedicated PL thread on the PL page satisfy you? Or even something like we have on normal league pages?

3. Simple search
Simple? Yes. Fixable? In a word: no. There are limits to our hardware and databases of which I don't want to go into. Frustrating? Yes.

I like some of your comments and ideas about training, you might be onto something there. It's simple, deals with a frustrating (well, mostly) part of the game, makes sense and is based on some sound real life logic. I'll discuss it with my colleagues, see what they think.

On the other hand, your comments about Batum as an example for position switching between a starting position and a backup on Sf and both SG and PF can't really be used as a typical RL situation. It's more of a rarity that a player can play 3 positions and does so in one match. I don't think we should use him as an example on what we're trying to simulate here. Also, it cannot be implemented in the BB game engine without some major re-coding.
I agree partly that backup players should be able to cover two positions better, in some kind of a sixth man role. But that's also very complicated to do (read: unrealistic), and would actually string along a lot of other consequences (training minutes, roster depth,...) which would need to be addressed.

At some point you have to also view this as a game. To completely replicate real life would be extremely difficult and actually not that much fun. However, some minor training additions could make training for competitive teams more feasible. Namely out of position training. If you want to train you guard trainee up in inside shot, currently your options are to train him in the front court inside training or at a forward position one on one or JS. The more competitive teams would find this difficult and win games.

I think you should be able to train any skill at any position. If you want to train inside scoring while playing pg, have at it. This could easily be done with percentage modifiers. Say your trainee at age 22 gets .40 of a sub level at one position inside scoring. He would get .14 of a sub at one of the forward training skills. Why not let him get .15 single position at pg? He wouldn't get nearly as much level up as if he had done the training at center but that is the trade off for training him in position but out of position.

A lot of good points here.

While making a completely new substitution system would be great, it's unnecessary (this one works fine in most cases, therefore I prefer fixing the cases in which it doesn't) and unrealistic (given the coding resources atm, which are basically - yours truly ).

I removed most of the rest of your post for brevity. I understand the constraints you're working under and your perspective on this, and appreciate you sharing with the community.

I have to respectfully disagree at this point about the substitution system working well, especially with regard to stamina. I just finished playing a PL game with a fairly typical lineup for my Princeton tactic. (75690750)

Since I'm short on depth at the bigs at the moment, I just did one guy backing up both PF and C, and nothing too unusual there - it took a foul out in the fourth to get roughly a 40-40-16 split (with 5-5-4 stamina). I'd of course much rather see more subbing or at least an option to do so, but that's not too egregious and with a proper starter/backup at each position, I'd be under 36 thanks to the low stamina.

But alas, the SF position today hit both of my personal annoyances - the minutes and the exceptionally high incidence of Princeton having a player projected above 90 PP100 who ends up putting up less than 50 PP100. Some day I'll actually go through and document that because I know some of that is selection/confirmation bias, but there's something there.

Anyway, on this topic,of the three outside-ish positions today, the SF is probably roughly even with the SG - the SG is a better outside shooter, but slightly worse defensively, as a pure jump shooter and inside. Both are a fair level away from the PG in terms of overall talent, though they're all built to do different things. The backups are set up so that the worst of the three is the backup PG and the reserve SF, the middle one is backup SG and reserve PG, and then the best of the three is the backup SF and reserve SG. The backup SF, incidentally, is actually the best inside player of the six by a sizable margin.

So as for the minutes/stamina: my starter at PG has average stamina, and with the worst backup of the three the coach had the backup in for ten minutes. Given the disparity between the two, that seems fitting. The starter at SG has inept stamina, so the backup played eleven minutes. Keep in mind that both starters in these positions were performing well, and that their backups were not as good as the SF. The SF only has respectable stamina, two levels down from the functional maximum, and was having a terrible shooting day (2-14 in the first half). So how much time did the backup get? Two minutes, for the whole game - including never leaving the bench until 0:00 remained in the first half, where he came in to stand around while free throws were being shot.

Now, of course, I do realize that playing a slow offense does have an impact here, as does the fact that rebounds fumbled out of bounds don't trigger substitutions, and that teams with good passing and handling that don't foul may therefore not have substitution opportunities triggered for minutes at a time. (E.g., the last three and a half minutes of the first half after my opponent's timeout). I agree that there shouldn't be an "easy" solution of just saying "I want this guy to get X minutes". But a player with respectable stamina, a quite competent backup, on a horrible cold streak getting 46 minutes in a game is something that can't be solved just by management - unless, of course, there was a button we could push to make a player lose a level of stamina, which would be freaking awesome (though NT coaches would kill me for suggesting it). ;)

I'm not sure if there's a better or easier solution than adjusting the substitution pattern options. But I can't agree that the problem here is one that is in the realm of manager decisions - there's no training to drop stamina.

Last edited by GM-hrudey at 10/17/2014 1:40:26 PM