Career Inside The Game - The Making Of A Champion

[Scratch]

This is a 'cheat' career, designed to help learn more about how the game works.

By 'cheat', I mean I will be looking at hidden things, like the players Current Ability (CA) and Potential Ability (PA). I will not be editing the save in any way or reloading, just looking at things like CA/PA and how it relates to things in the game, particularly the training system. 

 

Warning

If you do not want to see CA/PA of current players or learn how that relates to the game, then press the back button right now!

 

The Task

I will taking Rayhaan Tulloch and turning him into a champion record breaking goal scorer. Here he is at the start of the game:

He's fast and has some promise, but it's hard to tell just how far he'll go... By the end of this however, he is going to be green all over and capable of scoring 100 goals per season. 

I can pretty much guarantee this because I know his CA and PA. In fact, that's why I chose him. I started up a new game and then searched for young players with a high PA and at least a 40 point gap between CA and PA (ie with lots left to develop). This is what I found:

Spoiler

That image is of the proof of concept web version of the AM19 app (Assistant Manager 19 for FMM) that I'm developing. You'll see screenshots of both the app and the web version as we go through this, as some things haven't been added to the app yet. It's a work in progress (no release estimate at this point). 

Note: The PA (but not CA) for players this young changes every time you start a game, so there is no guarantee that those players will have the same values for you.

Anyway, there are more promising young strikers in the game than Tulloch, but he stands out as someone who will develop a lot. We're going to follow his progress and see what we can learn.

I'm playing the game as a 1KC, but I'm not sure if I will see it all the way through to completion, or if I'll stop when our Champion is fully developed. If I do continue, this career will obviously not be eligible for the leader board because I'm cheating! 🙂

 

The Club

I'm heading back to Newcastle. Rafa has left and the media has been reporting that Steve B will get the job. They got it slightly wrong - it's Steve C (me) that's taking the job! Alright, I know it's a year earlier, but I'm their new manager either way. For those who care, Rafa will land on his feet at Tottenham a month or so after I take the job. 

The Newcastle team is pretty weak to be honest. I have the original DB as I'm using the pre winter-update version of the game still. Here's what I found when I took over:

Spoiler

 

The board expect Euro Cup qualification which is a bit rich, but I think we can probably do that - with a few changes... So I start the career by selling off all the weak links and bringing in some quality players. 

Now because I can see the CA/PA of players during this career, I've set myself some limits: I'm only going to sign 8 players in the first season and 4 players in subsequent seasons (not including youth players). I can sell as many as I like, but I can't flood the team with loads of 180+ PA players. Note: I normally end up with a team flooded with regens, so I'll probably have a weaker team this time around even though I can actually cheat in this save. 😂

At the start of the game, it's hard to attract truly top class players to Newcastle, so most of the players I picked up are ones that will develop into class acts. I don't have a screenshot of them to hand (I normally get that at the end of the season), but some will be familiar to you: Pavon, Havertz, Tonali, Passlack, Ajer all of whom I've used before. Others maybe less so: Ben Osborn from Nottingham Forest, Eberechi Eze from QPR and Tulloch himself.

Osborn and Eze a) are around the 160 PA level (in this save); b) can play multiple positions, which is useful in the first season with a small squad; and c) are English, which is important as I may end up managing England and want some Englishmen in my squad. I could have got better players, but these fit the bill perfectly for now. 

 

Training Staff / Facilities

We need to make sure that Tulloch has the best environment for him to improve.

Newcastle starts off with sub par facilities:

So the first thing I do is convince the board to upgrade them:

That was unheard of in previous versions of FMM, but is worth trying in FMM19, especially if the team report shows that the facilities is below par. I've played Newcastle a few times in FMM19 and I know that there are 4 upgrades that they'll give me at the start. The facilities can improve more, but that probably has to wait until next year.

The next thing I did was to start hiring/upgrading staff. I ended up with almost a full set of gold staff, except for one coach. I didn't get a screenshot of all staff, but here is the coaching staff I'm rolling with:

I've gone strong on Fitness and Motivation this time around. Having a little extra fitness is always good, and I'm increasingly using Motivational staff as they are pretty much the only way to improve Teamwork. That's not critical at the start, but as the game goes on, many of the better young players are lacking in this regard. Sigh, youth today...

David Weir is the weak link, but he's a decent chance to be gold around New Year, or at the end of the season if he fails his first attempt. I would have picked up a Youth coach if I could have while Tulloch is young, but I couldn't get one.

 

Final Thoughts

I'll leave it here for now, but will be back in the next few days looking at Tulloch's initial steps at the club.

Some of the things I cover might be basic knowledge to some of you - I'm just going to write up things as they occur to me as I go through this career. I hope it's useful to some of you.

Bear in mind that these are only my thoughts based on what I'm seeing and may not be always correct. If you have differing ideas, or think I've got things wrong, let me know! 🙂

 

Edited July 20, 2019 by Scratch

[AndersJ]

Great write :)! Thank you for sharing :)!

[Scratch]

On 21/07/2019 at 00:24, AndersJ said:

Great write :)! Thank you for sharing :)!

Thanks!

[Scratch]

Update 1

We have our youngster all signed up and ready to go. As a reminder, he's not much to look at now:

But, his potential growth is amazing:

Spoiler

With a PA of 164 and a CA of only 68, he has a potential growth of 96 points. That's a LOT.

 

How Many Training Increments Will He Get?

Each training increment uses up 5 points of potential growth (you'll see this as we go), meaning he has 19 full increments to come, along with a final partial increment.

Note: I think I've seen a player get a bigger update that takes up 10 points of potential growth, but have never proven this. We'll keep an eye out for this as we proceed.

 

Approach

I used to start 1KCs very gently, with my striker coming off the bench for most of the first year. I was worried about him getting injured and worried about team results with a novice up front. Turns out that was totally the wrong approach!

If the new training system has taught me anything, it's that playing youngsters speeds up their development:

• The more they play, the higher the chance they will get a good match rating

• The higher the match rating, the more training improvement points they earn

• The more training improvement points they earn, the faster the training increments come around, increasing their attribute levels

• The better their attributes, the better their performance...

And around we go in the cycle.

For strikers, the key to good match ratings is scoring goals. While strikers can score occasionally off the bench, I find it's more likely earlier in the game. Translation: It's better to play them for the first 60 mins than to bring them off the bench for the last 30 mins.

I do still try to balance that with team results (momentum is important). I might put them on the bench for tougher games, but I try to start them most of the time.

 

1st Increment - 17 July 2018

Tulloch's first training increment took my by surprise, coming via training on 17 July 2018 rather than after a match. He'd been an unused substitute in an Assistant Manager controlled friendly, but hadn't actually played for the club.

He starts with a Stamina of 4, which is obviously too low. The first thing I did when he joined the club was to set his Training Focus to Stamina. Thankfully, this increment saw a big improvement:

Increases: Stamina 4, Shooting 1, Tackling 1, Positioning 1. Total Point Increase: 7

I have to be happy with this. 7 points is a large increase and while his Stamina is still really low, it's so much better than it was and means he can spend more time on the pitch. I'm not so keen on wasting points on Defensive attributes though! Also, I see that Decisions is down a point, even though it doesn't have the red down indicator shown - maybe that changed when he joined the club? Not sure.

The cost of this increment was 5 development points, with his CA increasing from the starting 68 to 73.

Spoiler

We'll see over time that this is the standard amount of development points used.

 

2nd Increment - 15 September 2018

After the first increment, I switched Tulloch to the Target Man focus role and Aerial focus attribute. Eventually I want his Stamina to be much higher, but for now 8 will do. I'd rather have him play for a short time and score, than play for a long time without scoring, so I'm focusing on improving his attacking attributes. In FMM19, an Aerial of 20 is the best way for a striker to dominate, so Tulloch is starting down that path.

Tulloch's second increment came after scoring a goal coming off the bench in a 4-2 defeat to Man Utd:

Yes, I know I said that strikers are more likely to score when they start... In this case I started Rondon, in the hope that we could beat Man Utd. That wasn't to be, but Tulloch pinched a goal off them at the close and that was enough to get him an increment:

Increases: Movement 1, Creativity 1. Total Point Increase: 2

Well, that's dismal... Still you take the good with the bad and he still has another 18 increments to come.

What is confusing here is that he now has a green up indicator shown for Aerial, but it's still showing as 9, the same as when he joined the club. I'm not sure why that is. I do know that Aerial is made up of Jumping and Heading, with Jumping seemingly more important. Maybe the Heading sub component improved, but not enough to shift the Aerial overall because Jumping didn't improve. My AM19 app does have both values for each player, but doesn't yet output it, so I can't easily check. So it will remain a mystery for now.

Once again the cost of the increment was 5 development points, with his CA increasing from 73 to 78.

Spoiler

 

3rd Increment - 20 October 2018

Tulloch is fairly steaming through these increments now. Even though he doesn't score every match, when he does score, he gets a lot of training points. For example, a 10 star rating (a scrappy goal and a penalty), take him 19% closer to the increment.

As he gets close to the next increment, I switch his Training intensity from Normal to Intensive. I'm not sure if it just looks at the value at the point of increment, or if it takes into account the whole training period, but after only two attribute points last time, I want to maximise this update. Sure enough, this one is better:

Increases: Heading 3, Shooting 1, Crossing 1, Dribbling 1, Passing 1, Stamina 1, Strength 1. Total Point Increase: 9

Wow! That's massive. Whether intensive has anything to do with it though is uncertain. I have noticed players who want to train harder seem to end up better, but I don't like training people using intense if they aren't up to it..

I was wondering if this would have a 10 development point cost since it was so big, but it still only cost 5 development points, with his CA increasing from 78 to 83.

Spoiler

 

And we'll leave it there for now... He still has a LONG way to go, but if he keeps this up, he'll soon be a half decent striker...

Edited July 22, 2019 by Scratch

[Mr Tree]

5 hours ago, Scratch said:

I used to start 1KCs very gently, with my striker coming off the bench for most of the first year. I was worried about him getting injured and worried about team results with a novice up front. Turns out that was totally the wrong approach!

If the new training system has taught me anything, it's that playing youngsters speeds up their development:

• The more they play, the higher the chance they will get a good match rating

• The higher the match rating, the more training improvement points they earn

• The more training improvement points they earn, the faster the training increments come around, increasing their attribute levels

• The better their attributes, the better their performance...

And around we go in the cycle.

For strikers, the key to good match ratings is scoring goals. While strikers can score occasionally off the bench, I find it's more likely earlier in the game. Translation: It's better to play them for the first 60 mins than to bring them off the bench for the last 30 mins.

I do still try to balance that with team results (momentum is important). I might put them on the bench for tougher games, but I try to start them most of the time.

hot-damn - i mean, thanks for this, but i wish i'd known it before starting on my new DT journey! still, my younger lad's still young enough that i can try to implement it from here...

[Scratch]

14 hours ago, Mr Tree said:

hot-damn - i mean, thanks for this, but i wish i'd known it before starting on my new DT journey! still, my younger lad's still young enough that i can try to implement it from here...

Thanks. You still need to balance team results (winning team generally means higher player ratings) and things like the Slightly Tired warning, but the best way to improve them is to play them.

It's a bit of a cycle: to score goals, you need to improve their attributes, and to do that you need them to level up, and to get them to do that they need to gain experience points, and to do that you need a high match rating, and to do that for a striker you need them to score goals! 😂

But yeah, the sooner you jump on that cycle, the better, so giving them the most opportunity to score makes sense to me.

[Teemhothy]

Hey which app let's you see the CA and PA

[Mr Tree]

1 hour ago, Teemhothy said:

Hey which app let's you see the CA and PA

Just read the first post carefully, it's mentioned there, it's something Scratch has been making himself

[Teemhothy]

4 hours ago, Mr Tree said:

Just read the first post carefully, it's mentioned there, it's something Scratch has been making himself

Any idea as per when it'll be ready?

[Scratch]

5 hours ago, Teemhothy said:

Any idea as per when it'll be ready?

At this point I'm thinking more about having it ready for FMM20 because that's only a couple of months away. I may release the 19 one as well, but it's still a ways from being ready. I had to rewrite a lot of it and now I'm not getting much time to spend on it - but still working on it.

I have most of the underlying search logic sorted and can search for players using a test app that doesn't have a real interface (you have to run it on a PC and type the search criteria in the program's code), but need to write an interface for the app. Then there is some other stuff I'm working on like reading and creating shortlists (created a proof of concept) and saving a snapshot so the app can compare players over time etc.

As for this career, I actually played 3 or 4 seasons and got Tulloch almost fully developed, but I ran out of time to write about it and lost interest and have had a series of other careers, none of which have stuck...

[Teemhothy]

5 hours ago, Scratch said:

At this point I'm thinking more about having it ready for FMM20 because that's only a couple of months away. I may release the 19 one as well, but it's still a ways from being ready. I had to rewrite a lot of it and now I'm not getting much time to spend on it - but still working on it.

I have most of the underlying search logic sorted and can search for players using a test app that doesn't have a real interface (you have to run it on a PC and type the search criteria in the program's code), but need to write an interface for the app. Then there is some other stuff I'm working on like reading and creating shortlists (created a proof of concept) and saving a snapshot so the app can compare players over time etc.

As for this career, I actually played 3 or 4 seasons and got Tulloch almost fully developed, but I ran out of time to write about it and lost interest and have had a series of other careers, none of which have stuck...

Brilliant stuff....keep it up ....