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Hattrick (Online Soccer Management Game)

HailToTheDeacons said:
It's hard to describe, and the HT article is vague. Essentially, if you play 1 IM, then he will play to 100% of his capacity. If you play 2, because of 'crowding' in the midfield, they won't be able to play towards their full capacity (people speculate that they utilize 90~95% of their skills). Playing 3 IMs makes them even less effective.

Playing 1 or 2 CD actually improves that defenders performance (IIRC), and playing 3 is just normal. 1 forward = improved performance, 2 = normal, and 3 = slight 'crowding' penalty.

With that said, remember that midfield used to be king. Now it's still viable, but the playing field has been leveled by slightly limiting the effectiveness of a stacked midfield and making defensive formations more desirable. If you want to win midfield, you still need to play 3 IM formations; however, you just won't win midfield by as much as you used to.
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Also found this in the manual HTTD to answer the earlier question:

"Worth knowing is that when more than one player plays in a central position (central defender, inner midfielder or forward); they will not be able to contribute to the team ratings with their full capacity. This contribution loss is also greater for three players than for two. The logic behind this is that as soon as more than one player plays in the same area, they start to rely on each other and thus aren't able to contribute with their whole capacity.

In short, a sole player in a central position contributes to 100%. Using two players in a central position means a contribution loss (affecting both), and using three means a bigger loss (affecting all three). This loss affects all skills of the player.

The size of the contribution loss is bigger for inner midfielders than for forwards, and bigger for forwards than for defenders. More exactly the loss for inner midfielders is around twice that of defenders, with forwards roughly in the middle of the two."
 
What the crap happened to the transfer market (and sometimes the site in general) today? It's been a complete mess. I'm looking to pick up one last player, and a pretty pricy one at this point for me (~95K) but transfers have been a mess. @hattrick twitter says it's up and running, but I'm scared to wade in until it's stable for awhile.
 
ZDeac said:
What the crap happened to the transfer market (and sometimes the site in general) today? It's been a complete mess. I'm looking to pick up one last player, and a pretty pricy one at this point for me (~95K) but transfers have been a mess. @hattrick twitter says it's up and running, but I'm scared to wade in until it's stable for awhile.
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I think things are fine now. Hattrick has server issues from time to time, and they're generally good about containing the damage. Today was definitely more of an anomaly.
 
Ok, finally down to 16 players, 11 of whom are 18 and under. I've got the 5 trainee rotation going to a degree. Strangely, I won my first two cup games but I'm staying the course and trading out the five trainees each Cup game for five different guys on the weekend (the plan with friendlies once I'm out of Cup).

I dropped my first match to the only non-bot 9-0 but I know it doesn't matter. Now my only itch is to buy a better keeper (mine is inadequate, poor form, 1230). But b/c of my trainer blunder (mistakenly paying for passable leadership in addition to passable trainer), I'm still $90k in the hole. Oh well, stay the course.
 
Good work. I need one more trainee and then I need to fire a bunch of crappy people who are only taking up salary. Need to snag that trainee in the next 24 hours I guess, too.
 
West End Deac said:
Ok, finally down to 16 players, 11 of whom are 18 and under. I've got the 5 trainee rotation going to a degree. Strangely, I won my first two cup games but I'm staying the course and trading out the five trainees each Cup game for five different guys on the weekend (the plan with friendlies once I'm out of Cup).

I dropped my first match to the only non-bot 9-0 but I know it doesn't matter. Now my only itch is to buy a better keeper (mine is inadequate, poor form, 1230). But b/c of my trainer blunder (mistakenly paying for passable leadership in addition to passable trainer), I'm still $90k in the hole. Oh well, stay the course.
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You've only won your first cup game since round 2 is tomorrow night, but still good work. And even better news, you're the home team this round. You'll take 2/3 of the gate receipts which will help with that debt.

I know its hard not to spend any extra cash laying around on non-trainee positions, but resist the urge. The better managers plan 2-3 seasons in advance. Think of your non-trainees as depreciating assets. Every week they sit on your team, they lose value. And every season you should have one goal in mind on where you want your team to finish (essentially, Stay Here or Promote). Since your team is in no shape to compete in division V yet, your goal is Stay Here. And since you're in the bottom division, that means you don't have to spend any extra funds on depreciating assets to achieve that goal. Sure, if you have guys putting up 1 star somewhere on the pitch, and you've gotten to a point where your team is producing a two week profit*, spending a couple bucks on marginal players is fine, as long as its not impeding your ability to bring in the best possible trainees. Once you've cycled through some trainees and your team gets better (maybe as soon as next season...we'll see), you should shift your focus to Promote. Then you can strategically plan how much you need to spend and where on depreciating non-trainee assets to achieve that goal. Playing in the middle is where you get hurt. If you're not going to promote and you're in no danger of relegating, don't spend extra money to be middle of the pack.

(These are generalizations, but they work well when starting out. Of course, when you get to higher divisions, you'll need to spend to replace players just to stay in that division)

*Two week profit is a good measure of your team's economic stability. Your biggest revenue generator on a weekly basis is gate receipts from home games. And since you'll generally rotate one away and one home game every two weeks, if you're turning a profit over those two weeks, it means you're keeping your head above water.
 
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Thanks for the note. Not sure why I thought this was week 3 -- my fault. The team I have up next is D IV thus I know the drill. His team is 2.5 years older than mine which truly illustrates your point about patience.

I forget who noted on the SB about Hattrick and one's ability to spend but a few minutes per week and still enjoy the experience. I can vouch that this is true -- there's a bit more of a time investment early but right now I really just get to it when I can. It's a few minutes of fun every other day or so.
 
Since I know we have some new owners I'll throw out my newest youth pull. Doesn't have a good primary, but you can't win 'em all.

Harry Fields (318028383)
17 years and 3 days, Next birthday: 7-17-2011
In passable form, weak stamina.
A sympathetic guy who is balanced and honest.
Has disastrous experience and passable leadership abilities.
Owner: Deaconator WFFC
(since 3-30-2011 (2/45), 0d)
Total Skill Index (TSI): 760
Wage: 370 US$/week
5 920 US$/season
Warnings: 0
Injuries: Healthy
HTMS Points: Ability: 294 / Potential: 1931
TRANSFER-LISTED
Deadline: 4-2-2011 04.10 (2 days 23hr 59min)
Asking price: 5 000 US$
Place a bid for this player US$

Current skills

Keeper: disastrous
Defending: poor
Playmaking: weak
Winger: inadequate
Passing: solid
Scoring: weak
Set pieces: wretched
 
Working through buying trainees. Since I plan on running 3-5-2 and 4-5-1 exclusively, I worked through the roster to figure out who I can use at multiple non-trainee positions (in my case non-IM's) to cut down on extra players and, albeit small, wages.

After purchasing a passable trainer for 79.6k, I had roughly 150k left. I decided to start off with a decent young purchase with a high side skill. I go to look at the transfer market and find a guy who is 17.14 with passable PM, passable W, and weak passing. Without a bidding war I got him for 21k, leaving me with roughly 119k, but also providing my team with a decent start.

The passable winger will pay off when he bumps up a bit and I can maximize profit when selling him. With a relatively high purchase (21k versus spending roughly 15k per player for 10 trainees and having 150k) I decided to make a couple of small purchases next which I can use as friendly trainees, or perhaps even starters depending on what else I find in the trainee area.

The two players I ended up with were:

Age: 17.61
PM: Passable
W: Inadequate
D: Disastrous
P: Wretched
Price: 3k

Age: 17.82
PM: Passable
W: Weak
D: Weak
P: Poor
Price: 1k

All in all I'm happy with the three purchases and now have 7 spots left to fill and 117k to do so.
 
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And forgot there were 24 tasks on the License quiz which will give me some more money. GM approved my details and I was thinking that was it for some reason.

I have more money to spend than I originally thought so those two players I bought will definitely be backup trainees.
 
Spent the last two hours trying to get passable/passable or passable/inadequate 17 YO's and keep getting into massive bidding wars.

Making me pretty mad. It's making the 21k passable/passable 17.14 signing look great. These prices keep getting up to like 40k.

It's even worse because my account expired with like 1.4 mil and me searching for solid/excellent 17 YO's for training. Guess that should be a lesson to me.
 
Still working on picking up this last player - trying to get the right guy and not leave too much money in my bank account.

One question though, training defense, how long will it take a passable/solid defender to "pop" (think I'm using that term correctly)?

Also, I can't believe it took me 5 days to realize that there are only 100 something days in the year (when looking at guys' ages). I'm an idiot.
 
I would expect around 4.5-6 weeks for passable to solid and maybe 5.5-7 for solid to excellent at 17 years old. A little longer for 18 year olds. I think defense goes slightly slower than PM, but I could be wrong. Someone else would be best to ask for that.

I do know though that you are better off taking a low passable player close to 17 than a guy close to 18 with a low solid. Look into the PsicoTSI tool Z, it may help a bit for you. Basically it has a formula that has adapted TSI to break down each level more. For instance a low passable would be something between 6.04-6.1, while a high passable would be 6.8-6.9. If you can find someone around 6.8 and is low 17, you may be able to get a bit of a bargain since not everyone is going to have the Psico tool and would just see two different players at passable, but at the same age.

If this was confusing feel free to ask more questions. Others will chime in I'm sure. I got four more trainees and need three more to round out my side. Have around 105k left so I'm looking to spend that.
 
Thanks for the info - I just bought my last trainee, so it probably won't matter for awhile but I'll keep it in mind. Starting at the bottom as a complete newbie I'll cut myself some slack if I didn't get the optimal mix of trainees the first time around. I'm hoping the simple fact that I was mentored well enough to come in with an actual plan means I'll start seeing success a couple seasons down the road.

I had been a little bit all over the place with my purchases, so I was left with $96K in the bank. I just made my final purchase:

17 years 50 days
Current skills
Keeper: disastrous
Defending: solid
Playmaking:weak
Winger: inadequate
Passing: weak
Scoring: weak
Set pieces: poor

Paid $116K - which puts me in $20K of debt for the time being, but I've got two guys I'm selling right now who's deadline is tomorrow, and I expect them to net me 50-100K total so I should be fine.

Now to really get down to the business of setting up a rotation. I also need to sack a bunch of crappy players, as I've got 28 total on my roster.

I've got my 10 trainees, so obviously they'll rotate games as my back 5. I assume the ones who have better winger skills should play WB positions, true?

After that I need a GK and a total of 5 other outfield players. How many extras should I keep around in case of injuries/suspensions? I guess I don't technically need any as I could just use my defensive players who wouldn't otherwise play that game, but let me know what you guys think. I'm going to go ahead and trim from 28 to 20. If you think I should trim farther let me know.
 
I've gone for players with higher winger and defense skills this time while trying to take passing skills a little lower. I discovered someone on my team who can act as a backup winger and spare me buying an extra player as well as land a 17.61 Passable PM/Passable Scoring/Inadequate Defense/Weak Passing for 24k when the TC was 104k.

I'm experimenting a bit to see if better rounded players will make any difference when I sell them off (albeit with passing being slightly lower). My guess is it won't make any real difference on the market as long as they all have a decent second skill.

I'll post all 10 of my trainees and the reasoning behind playing them where I am as soon as I find my 10th trainee (as well as get some advice from people to make sure I've got the best 6 playing in the IM position and maximizing training)
 
Just by having a training plan you're well ahead of a ton of other players. Plus any mistakes you make can probably be aided through paying attention and asking questions on here whenever you have them.

Oh also I wouldn't play trainees when they're not getting training minutes at risk of them getting hurt. Games don't matter much at this point (except for having fun watching them) so I would just keep scrubs from your initial roster rather than use trainees. That being said friendlies REALLY don't matter as long as you field the full lineup and get training so I wouldn't worry about being bad in other positions.
 
So 16 players is obviously the bare minimum - 10 trainees, 1 GK, 5 other outfielders. How many extra would you keep above that?
 
Once I can trim down (you can only cut a certain number of people in a day/12 hours) I'm going to get to 17 or 18. I don't mind having a couple of people around just in case since wages are pretty low at this point.

Obviously make sure you don't fire your trainer as well. I don't know if you can or not, but they're listed on the players page and that would be a pretty bad mistake hah.
 
Haha yea - I know who he is. He stands out too much cause all of his skills are non-existent.

I forgot about the 12 hour rule, so I guess I'm stuck with most of these jokers for awhile, but it's all good. I'll trim it down - I played with it and I think I'm going to keep 17+ my trainer. Sucks that it will take most of the next week to sack them all, though.

ETA: My GK is pretty expensive - something like $1400 in wages/week. Are GK's generally so much more expensive? His skills aren't that good.
 
This is a really great opportunity for you new guys to have someone like 22890 who's done it before walk through the process again and talk out loud about what he's doing and why. Good stuff.
 
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