Advice for new hattrick players

[BrianJames]

Little unclear about training and when you're change takes affect. As of the last Thursday's training update I still had Stamina selected even though I meant to select Defense. Saturday I made the change to Defense.

Will the training change I made effect this weeks games or will it affect the following weeks games?

[Kevin in Louisiana]

You want to have a full starting XI and a back-up at each position. Then you need to have the rest of your trainees at whatever position you're training, so you'll want a few more than 16 total players. You may also want a clown, who need not be one of your starters, back-ups, or trainees. So in short, you want about 20, more or less depending on the position you're training.

[BrianJames]

You may also want a clown,


Clown?

edit--nevermind..found info in this thread

[PezJunkie]

Little unclear about training and when you're change takes affect. As of the last Thursday's training update I still had Stamina selected even though I meant to select Defense. Saturday I made the change to Defense.

Will the training change I made effect this weeks games or will it affect the following weeks games?

In the US, training updates on Thursday nights at 8:30pm central time. Your players get training for whatever skill you have selected at that time, regardless of how many times you change it during the week.

[Craig P]

...in fact you don't really want to have any of your PM's play defensive cause that can take away from their PM ability.No, no, no! Playing a middie offensive or defensive does NOT affect their PM contribution, only their contribution to defense (from defending skill) and attack (from passing skill) ratings.

Any "Extra" player will be played normal, and on the same side where they moved from (e.g. a left central defender played as an extra inner midfielder will be playing normal and as a left IM).

In general, you should favor playing your regular inner midfielders offensive, with the exception of a player who has some defending skill and little or no passing skill.

[Craig P]

I'm in D VI. How do I know if my opponents are bots? I'm killing them now.As a new team, you will not be placed in a bot league. At worst, your league is initially only partly filled, and will be filled the rest of the way soon as more managers sign up.

[Craig P]

Do I get cash for a home one?As was already mentioned, the crowd revenue is split 50-50. For this reason, except in "friendly cups" (outside competitions like the BS cup that are contested through friendlies among teams eliminated from their national cup), where the tournament schedule may dictate home/away in a match, teams will typically prefer the location that gives the higher attendance in a domestic friendly. The attendance is driven by weather (which you typically won't know at the time you arrange the friendly, you just pray for sunshine), supporter club size (typically, older clubs are much stronger in this regard), and supporter mood (what have you done lately in competitive matches). Of late, the latter has become much more prevalent, much to the chagrin of longer-term owners.

[Craig P]

One of the things people said not to do is hit the transfer market...well I HIT THE TRANSFER MARKET! :D Anyway, I'm pretty happy with what I've got after my first day.I don't advise not to hit the transfer market. I do advise to be very careful, because when you're just starting out you have no experience with the going rates for players and it's easy to overspend, or buy players with the wrong skills. If you budget carefully (so that you don't blow through your kitty on transfers and leave nothing for e.g. the essential initial coach upgrade), know going in what skills you need (which it appears you do, judging by your initial purchase), and do a little sampling of the market (or inquire with more experienced players), you can do fine.

Then, too, even when you make a mistake, it often comes out in the wash over the long-term. I overpaid for an 18/inadequate keeper starting out at $50k (who I then didn't train until he was 19, and at that time I also started training a weak (!) keeper that I pulled from my YS), and four seasons later I'm $2 million in the black (but afraid to spend it because of my ugly financials), comfortably ensconced in a manageable IV series (but praying for a good qualifier matchup). When I sold that keeper for $2.5 million, it didn't really matter all that much that I'd badly overpaid, except for questions of opportunity cost.

[Craig P]

So my wingers need good playmaking huh? I somehow thought that their winger rating was the most important, and that it would improve through Playmaking training. Now I'm saying DUH, there is only one skill that improves through PM, PLAYMAKING!Wingers don't need good playmaking. There are some really incredible pure wingers out there, and they make an amazing attack option even though they don't contribute much to possession. On the other hand, it is nice to have some PM on them so they pitch in, even if you're playing them offensive.

That's separate from the whole PM training issue, where you'd like them to start with enough PM ability that they actually gain some value from the half-training.

[Craig P]

Ohhhhh, ok. So the games on Sunday start the week, then there's a friendly (possibly), and THEN the update. So my 5 players from the friendly will get PM training for this week, then my game Sunday will start the week's process over again.That's pretty much right. If you want to include some of the other updates, I generally consider the week to start sometime after the training update and before the economic update on Saturday. Strictly speaking, I would say it starts with the economic update because that's when we get updated as far as expenditures and interest, but effectively, for me it starts with the training update because after that form update is when I set my lineups for the league match and my friendly or cup match.

[Craig P]

Can you retract a bid for a player once you have made it?No, you just pray that someone will outbid you (or that you can unload the player later). I've had it happen to me once or twice, and thankfully every time someone has come through for me. The one occasion I remember, I accidentally put a bid on a clown-blocker when I was looking for a forward upgrade (er, I think it was a forward upgrade).

[Craig P]

Well I just got my first team, Villanova FC. What should be my first order of business?I posted advice for new hattrick players earlier in the thread. It's a little late for you now, but it can't hurt to repost it, I don't think, especially since it will give me an opportunity to revise a little for new developments in the HT world.

I've tweaked this both with the recent changes in HT and in response to criticism posted upthread.

Read the rules. Pay particular attention to section 14, The Player, which tells you what skills at what positions are important to what ratings. These will be the things that you have to worry about when you set a lineup and bid on players. One thing that's not apparent from that section that you should keep in mind is that passing is a secondary skill. It contributes to attack ratings, but the primary skill (scoring for forwards, playmaking for midfielders) is more important.
Look at your players and figure out what you want to train. If you already have some good trainee candidates (19 or younger, inadequate or better in one of the primary skills i.e. keeper defending winger playmaking scoring, preferably better than $10 000 assessed value) then you should think seriously about training that skill. However, think twice about training defense -- it's slow to train, doesn't give great dividends to team performance, and requires you to use upset-prone formations.
Get a new coach. I recommend the passable training skill with poor leadership for about $80 000. For your attacking/defending/neutral, keep the strength of your team in mind. Some managers like to use the coach's attacking or defending preference to shore up a weak spot, others like to use it to enhance a strength. I'm in the "weak spot" school myself, and since I train goalkeepers (building up my defense) my coach is fond of attacking.
Fill out your trainees. Look for cheap, young players with at least inadequate in the skill you've decided to train. Passable is even better. If you're starting late in the season, look for 17-yo's, early in the season these players tend to be more expensive and you're probably better off with 18-yo's. You'll need two gks, nine or ten defenders, four wingers (plus four wingbacks training at half-speed), six inner midfielders (plus four wingers training at half-speed), or six forwards, in total. You can subtract any potential trainees already on your squad from these totals.
If you're in division VI, think about expanding your stadium. Most series in VI, even semi-established ones, aren't particularly strong, and you'll have an immediate leg up if you consult us for advice on how to play, not to mention that there tends to be even more turnover down at that level as managers abandon. You can expect a fair amount of success right away, and with success will come crowds. In the past, for this reason, I would have suggested definitely expanding, but this season the attendance seems to be way down across the board, so I think you should be a little more careful.
If you're in division V, you will expand your stadium eventually, but it probably doesn't make sense right now. The competitiveness in the division has increased by leaps and bounds over the last couple of seasons (back then, I'd say expand in V too), and you may have trouble getting the fannies in the seats to cover your costs. I suspect there are still some easy series that play like a non-bot series in VI, but these are becoming fewer and fewer. Furthermore, the attendance effects from HT 6.6 which I mentioned in the previous bullet point will most likely hit you even harder, because you won't be as successful as quickly.
If you expand, you should expand to somewhere between 12 000 and 15 000 seats, with 62.5% terraces, 25% basic seating, 10% covered seating, and 2.5% VIP seating (in total).
If you don't want to take the leap to a stadium that size, it's probably a waste of money (because of the $30k fixed cost for any stadium modification), but you might consider doing a modest expansion (e.g. to 10k or less) just to get a more favorable distribution of seats, the initial 5000/2000 distribution is not remotely optimal. See the ratio I suggested above.
If you have any seed money left after the new coach, trainees, and stadium expansion, consider using it on the transfer market to fill any non-trainee holes in your team. Be very careful, it's easy to lose your head and overspend (and you'll probably still do it at least once before you have a feel for the market). Keep an eye on transfer deadlines, and if you can plan to be online at the deadline, you MAY be able to get better prices that way (but be wary of getting sucked into a bidding war).
I would strongly recommend against going into debt at this point. Your weekly profit/loss is still too precarious. In particular, DON'T do it for player acquisitions, if you need to assume debt, do it for stadium expansion -- if you need to expand, you'll start making the money to pay down the debt. This is just my opinion, other people have been less fiscally responsible than I have and emerged unscathed.
Fire any players on your squad who aren't good team leaders (sympathetic or popular with the highest leadership skill on the squad) and don't have at least inadequate in a primary skill. Note that initially, you may still need some of these guys as backups, but even then only one or two of them. You don't need a full "B" squad, just your trainees, the other four subs, and a couple more for form/injury cover.
Set your lineup for your next game. If it's the midweek friendly, try to get the guys who didn't play in the league game into the lineup to maintain form. It's absolutely essential that you get the second half of your trainees in the game so they get training. If it's the league game, aim for your best possible lineup in terms of form and skill. MyBestTeam (http://www.mybestteam.org/) can be a very useful tool here, particularly when you haven't really got a feel for how to play your team yet.
A word on formation (which comes into play when setting your lineup) -- the default 4-4-2 with two inner midfielders is rarely effective. 99.9% of effective teams will use three inner midfielders (by repositioning at least one player) regardless of the formation they use. Beyond that, formation is largely driven by the training regimen. Defense trainers will play four- and five-defender formations, winger trainers will play formations that don't abandon a wing, playmaking trainers will play five-midfielder formations, and scoring trainers will play a 3-4-3.
In case I wasn't absolutely clear, this is how I rate your priorities for your seed money, in order: Coach, trainees, stadium, other players. As close as we are to the offseason, you may want to exercise some care in timing your expansion so that it doesn't come online until a day or two before your first home game of next season. For that purpose, figure the construction will take about ten days. If you finish 2nd or lower and 6th or higher, plan on having a home cup game on the Wednesday before season 22 starts and plan accordingly.

If you're worried about overspending on players, don't be afraid to ask us for market evaluations.

Welcome to Hattrick!

(I apologize for all the bullet points running together, unfortunately this version of vb eats blank lines in between them, and with HTML off I have no way to correct this short of blank bullet points, which looks hideously ugly.)

[Craig P]

IShould I axe this coach and shell out 180k for one who is "passable"?You should axe the coach. You should not pay $180k for the replacement, if you pay that much you're buying extra leadership which should not be your primary concern right now. A passable coach with poor leadership should run you around $80k, which will be well within your budget.

What should my training budget/style be?I'm not sure what you mean on this point. Your budget for trainees is whatever you want to spend on it out of the $300k seed money less the cost to get a new coach. If by "style" you mean what skill to train, that's entirely up to you. You may be influenced by some potential trainees among your seed players, but beyond that, it's entirely a personal choice. There are advantages and disadvantages to most of the primary skill training, to wit:

Playmaking: positive = consistent improvement at the most important aspect of the game, negative = have to train stamina in offseasons (costing form), much more damaging to have to play trainees in cup or league games early in the season. Some people don't like playmaking because it's still the most popular kind of skill training.

Scoring: positive = offense is only slightly behind playmaking in match engine importance, forwards are currently very highly valued; negative = no real formation flexibility, it's pretty much impossible for you to play defensively to try to kill a game (which is not really much of a negative); your tactical options basically revolve around whether to play your one winger offensive or towards the middle.

Winger: positive = fast training time, lots of formation flexibility as any two-wingback, two-winger formation will work (including both 3-5-2 and 4-5-1, the "standard" formation and a good defensive formation), as with scoring offense is very important, wing attacks can sometimes get neglected, and they're difficult to defend; negative = market is soft, perhaps moreso than for any other skill, the best trainees need lots of secondary skills so are difficult and expensive to acquire.

Keeper: positive = fast training time, only two trainees are needed so there's little money tied up in your trainees rather than being devoted to upgrades, the keeper has the single greatest effect on defense ratings in the game, complete formation flexibility (I run both a 3-5-2 and a 3-4-3, and this is the only primary skill training type that allows that); negative = relatively low return on investment as keepers are not valued commensurate with their training, improvements are weighted to defense which is still probably the least-important aspect of the match engine

Defense: positive = high return (at least, that used to be the positive), skills and formation experience will be well-suited to killing a game against a superior opponent; negative = long training time, reliance on upset-prone formations to maximize training

Also, set pieces training can be done, although I'm not sure what the ceiling for that is -- the most notable U.S. set pieces trainer has AFAIK been bouncing between IV and V the last couple of seasons. The advantage is, everyone on your team gets trained regardless of whether or not the play, and it trains very fast. The disadvantage is, I'm not sure the return is competitive.

Should I be concerned about ensuring that I do not get regulated or should my focus be solely on development?You shouldn't sacrifice development to stay up, but if you want to try to stay up, you shouldn't need to sacrifice development to make the attempt. You can influence this somewhat with your team spirit management, PIC/MOTS decisions, and whether or not you jump into stamina training, but I would expect the deciding factor would be talent on the field more often than not.

Also I was challenged to a match in England? How much would that cost to accept?I'm sure this was LONG since answered, but $6000. If you don't think your opponent can make that money (check their last friendly at home for an attendance over 2000 and check to see whether they should win their league match this week), then don't accept the challenge. There will be others, and then if there are not, you can always just start randomly challenging people (and you might even get them to come to your park).

[Craig P]

You got that good of a player off the bat? My highest TSI was 950, a 27 year old solid striker who only fetched me 75K.

Lucky bastard.Prepare to be jealous.

My initial distribution included:
1xsolid playmaking, with decent winger and defending (but as he was the best middie on the team for much of its early history and is still in the top 3, he's only been played winger TM once). Now up to passable experience and pulling 4* played defensive in solid form. One skill slip (that I know of) in winger. (#10 Brad Courtney)

1xsolid defending, solid scoring, still my starting weakside wingback, has also seen time as a pressing forward but at this point is 4th on the team in scoring skill (#5 Demetrius Ramirez)

1xsolid defending, passable scoring, inadequate playmaking, still my starting central midfielder and sometimes played offensive. (#3 Dallas Goins)

1xinadequate keeper who promptly popped to passable under (I think) general training, netting me a little cash when I sold him (ex John Oneill)

[Craig P]

Glen Peterson (39378533)
18 years, weak form, healthy
A sympathetic guy who is balanced and honest.
Has disastrous experience and weak leadership abilities.

Stamina: inadequate Goaltending: wretched
Playmaking: solid Passing: passable
Winger: solid Defending: wretched
Scoring: passable Set Pieces: disastrousVERY nice trainee to have right off the bat. It certainly makes for an easy decision to train playmaking, I should think.

[Craig P]

How important is a coach's experience?Once he's a coach, it only matters if you want to play him in the field. Chances are, if you externally recruited his skills aren't good enough that you want want to do that. It has no effect on anything else.

(Internally-recruited coaches, it's more likely you would play them in the field, but they're guaranteed to have pretty decent experience because they need the experience to be turned into a decent coach.)

[Craig P]

I've just started in D5, I believe, and will soon be relegated into D6. I'm told I have a very poor side so I figure I will try to rebuild my side through pulling youths which may take some time, but I'm patient.Unless you're going to train keeper, it'd take way too long to get the players you need via pulls of youth. In fact, over four seasons of pulling mostly outfielders, I'm not sure I've staffed a full lot of playmakers or forwards in salable pulls and I know I haven't staffed a full lot of wingers or defenders.

Even keepers, it's pretty questionable. I've trained one keeper pull (seriously, I mean, I took another from weak to solid but that was when I was young and inexperienced) who was a 19 and high solid and sold two more who were passables when I wanted a solid (and wound up just buying what I wanted).

What I'm getting at is, you start out with more than enough money to take care of buying your set of trainees, plus you're at least a half a season from having a decent enough youth squad to expect anything other than dreck, so go ahead and buy the trainees you need.

[SoftTackle]

Thanks, any advice on the price range I should be bidding on for trainees? I've bought a couple of young inadequates between $1,000 and $2,000. Should I be going higher?

[Danks81]

Craig P, thank you very much for your tips, very insightful stuff. Hopefully I'll be wise enough to make use of it and not shoot myself in the foot. :)

I've had my club for two weeks now. So far here is what I've done.

In my first week I lost 11-1 in the league and 7-1 in a friendly. So I realized that I had a lot of rebuilding and reorganizing to go through. (My team was winless at this point)

So after the first friendly I sold the following prospect for $800k. I realized that it was a tantalizing prospect of training him and possibly selling him later for $1 million +. But I decided to cash in now when he was still under 19.

Glen Peterson (39378533)
18 years, weak form, healthy
A sympathetic guy who is balanced and honest.
Has disastrous experience and weak leadership abilities.

Stamina: inadequate Goaltending: wretched
Playmaking: solid Passing: passable
Winger: solid Defending: wretched
Scoring: passable Set Pieces: disastrous


VERY nice trainee to have right off the bat. It certainly makes for an easy decision to train playmaking, I should think.

I took that money and immediately hired a solid coach with poor leadership. I also decided to run a 4-5-1 and train playmaking. I'm training PM with less of an eye for the transfer market (finances aren't an issue at this point) but with my focus being developing my team's midfield so that I can actually start competing. I figure that if I don't have a midfield I cannot win. No wins = no support.

So, this week I played my new 4-5-1 and beat the #7th placed team 4-0 for my squad's first win of the year. I followed that up with a 4-1 friendly win in Spain. I've made a few moves in the transfer market. Some overpaying, but nothing to get worked up about. I am playing to try to move up in the standings before the year is done so that I can start getting more supporters. I am 3 points out of 7th and 5 points out of 6th with 4 games to go. My goal will be to get to 6th place.

With $550k in the bank I am in a great spot considering I just started. I have a solid coach, a full staff, and some decent talent. My next steps are to develop what I have and try to win some games. I plan on a stadium expansion in the offseason to a capacity in the 12,000 range.

Thanks for your help, we'll see how this all pans out!

Good luck with your squad,
Jon

[puddleduck]

Glen Peterson (39378533)
18 years, weak form, healthy
A sympathetic guy who is balanced and honest.
Has disastrous experience and weak leadership abilities.

Stamina: inadequate Goaltending: wretched
Playmaking: solid Passing: passable
Winger: solid Defending: wretched
Scoring: passable Set Pieces: disastrous

VERY nice trainee to have right off the bat. It certainly makes for an easy decision to train playmaking, I should think.

I know danks already sold this guy (for a pretty penny indeed), but I'm just curious:

Craig P, you suggest that this trainee makes training playmaker a no brainer. My (completely unexperienced, and no doubt wrong) call would have been to go winger.

My reasoning would be that the while playmaking and passing are both good secondaries for a winger. Winger is of no value to an IM. Therefore I would expect a high level winger with solid PM and passable passing to fetch signigantly more than a high level playmaker with solid winger and passable passing.

Are my assumptions off? Does winger effect the performance of IMs? Or is the market for IM's just *that* much better that "wasting" a rating of solid winger comes out in the wash?