Rocking Rackets Strategy and Tips Thread [Archive]

Brian Swartz

01-27-2016, 08:40 PM

Now you've gone and done it. One of the most dangerous things you can do is invite me to unload a massive wall of text by asking for strategy on this game. You asked for it. I am not responsible for the consequences :P.

In all seriousness, I'm glad that people other than me are still enjoying this game. I love the fact that it doesn't have the 'micro-transaction' concept so common to many online games, forcing you to actually manage your players well to succeed.

So, here we go.

-Do you train for skill or serve first?

My rule of thumb is to have the marginal skill cost be at least twice as high as the marginal service cost. That infers that skill is twice as valuable as service--conversely, that service is half as valuable as skill. That's a minimum, I would think.

This is exactly what I do: skill until it's at least double the service cost. The logic here is that skill is used on all points, service on only half. Most managers train service more than I do but I'm not sure that's a good idea. The reason for that is higher service will help in terms of 'free points'; that is, more aces(and fewer double faults, but that's less of an issue at the top level). Other side of the 'free points' coin is having slightly better odds on each point by going the skill route. I think being close to the line where skill is double the service cost is best, but maybe one could argue for having service at 60% of skill cost. I wouldn't go more than that though.

-How do you best control Form?

This varies based on the stage of a player's career. Until they are playing at a peak level (major/challenger-level singles or doubles), the experience you gain in practice is just as important, in my book. So I will enter players into tournaments until their form approaches 30 (the max without penalty to ability and experience), then keep them out of tournaments until their form drops to just about 15 (the min).

I disagree somewhat here, but that may be partly due to playing in a slow world. Optimally for development you want to stay as close to the 15 minimum for maximum experience(without going below). That means not playing any tournaments in the following week if you are above about 16.4. For faster worlds I might do something more like britrock just to make sure you don't drop below or miss weeks, but when a daily check is enough to keep players active every week it's not necessary. Some of this, from a practical point of view, depends on how often you can check in on your players.

At the top level it's different. By top level, I mean this: ranked in the Top 32 by the above method. Before that, and this is important, you 98% don't care what your ranking is. Moving up in ranking doesn't make it a good year; getting enough experience to train a lot of skill/service makes it a good year. Wins and losses are comparatively irrelevant.

But once you get there, you have to play other top players to advance anyway. The way it works out is, if you are good enough to consistently win big Challenger events, you will soon reach the Top 32 even with a limited schedule(the point at which you are seeded in Slams). If you aren't good enough to win the big Challengers, development is more important. There really isn't any in-between. Once at the elite stage, competition for ranking points becomes the priority. And it's more or less enforced really, since you are penalized for skipping Masters if you were Top 30 the previous year. So your schedule then becomes Slams + Masters + the occasional 500/250 where it fits. Everything is then about maximizing your results in the Slams and secondarily the Masters. You want to be in the 'optimal zone' of 20-25 form at the end of the Slams, which means starting them in the 19-20 range. Sometimes(Madrid/Rome, or Canada/Cincy) you'll have to be below the optimal range for the preceding Masters in order to make that happen; at other points you can prepare for maximum results in the Masters. After a couple years you get a good hang for it. Anything else just serves to set you up with the number of matches you need to get form ready for those big events, and whatever points you get are just icing on the cake.

-How do you decide when a player is ready to move up to the next level of tournaments?

The comment about being seeded at the next level up is right on the money I think. There are some cases that are different. For example, breaking into the futures you can only go up to making the Top 1000 in amateurs, then you have to qualify in futures; there's a similar point when making the futures/challenger jump. But in general, it's the right way to go. If you aren't seeded, it's too soon because you can get stuck playing a powerful top seed in the first round and then having a nearly wasted week.

-What do you look for when you hire a player?

Here we get to the wall of text part rather severely. I did a long post on this before that I'll just reproduce here.

Most of this is in the game documentation but some is either not explained all that well or not synthesized in a way that, at least to me, makes sense.

Aging Factor -- All players have somewhere from 95% to 105% -- the lower end will result in a longer 'prime' as a professional, but players will not be as good as juniors and will not be able to train as much. Overall, less is better in terms of great pros which is what I focus on. Mehul is 95%, Girsh 96%, Mooljee 97% so my players are all on that end of the scale, quite intentionally. Most of the Top 10 is as well. Perry Hogue is a notable exception; he's about to turn 26 which isn't that old at all -- Mehul will probably hit his peak about then -- but I note him as a player in decline because he has a 103%(hence the meteoric label). Generally speaking junior #1 will have a 103% or more. A great example in my universe is a dominant junior between Alastra and Benda in age, Lubos Nedved. He is now almost 27, and basically won everything in juniors as a 17 and 18-year old and terrorized up-and-coming players(including Mehul) for a few years after that. He won the last five junior grand slams he was eligible for, but as a pro he has won just a pair of 250-level events and nothing higher, peaking at 19th and now 28th in the world and declining. Hogue is obviously a better version of this but he was never going to be a top player for long.

Age % -- This can be confused with aging factor but is not the same thing. This describes where a player is in their development, and is a multiplier that determines their actual ability at the time. For example, Mooljee has a raw ability of a little over 2.0 in skill, but because he's a young player, age % is only 68% and so he plays at a level of 1.4 instead. Skill, service, speed, strength, and endurance(twice, i.e. multiplied by 68% or whatever twice instead of once) are all affected by Age %, but the other abilities(mentality, doubles, talent, etc.) are not.

Static Attributes

These do not change throughout a player's career. They do not improve or decline with age, and they cannot be trained. They simply are -- a player is either good at them, or they are not, as a natural ability or lack thereof.

Talent -- Every player gains experience points, to be used in improving trainable skills(below) on a daily basis. It is the same amount every day. Mooljee(4.7) gets 31 xp per day, Manohar(2.0) gets 20 xp per day, etc. For particularly young and old players, this is especially important since they can't practice as much, meaning a higher proportion of their experience comes from their natural affinity or talent for the sport.

Mentality -- 'Clutch' ability that is used on important points, game points, break points, match points, etc.

Home Advantage -- Bonus given to players in front of their home crowd. This is largest in small events, and smallest in bigger ones: it disappears completely as a non-factor in Slams. I note it here only because it's there, but really it has a quite minor impact on the game. All else being equal I will play junior/future events in a player's home country, but of course all else is rarely equal and by the time you reach the level where it's really important to win, this virtually doesn't matter anymore .

Variable Attributes

All other attributes change based on a player's natural development curve(i.e., their age % which depends on the aging factor). The ones listed in this section cannot be trained either.

Endurance -- As I've mentioned, this is in my opinion the single most important attribute of a player. It defines how much a player can practice before become too tired to benefit from it. The formula here is simple: points played divided by endurance equals fatigue. I.e., a match with 100 points(for simplicity) and a player with 2.0 endurance will result in 50 fatigue. Above 500 fatigue performance penalties set in very quickly, so overworking a player beyond a certain point is just counterproductive. Since age % is divided in twice here, endurance both improves and declines much faster than anything else. This makes it doubly important to take advantadge of the 2-3 year 'physical peak' at which a player is at their maximum endurance(Girsh is about in the middle of this right now for me). That period is where trainers really shine, since these players can't play enough practice matches at that point to use up all of their fatigue allotment.

Strength -- Added directly to a player's skill to determine their playing ability in matches, but at a 20% rate(i.e., divided by five).

Speed -- The admin mentioned some years back that speed is a more complicated matter than strength, and never released the formula for it's effect. They said it was probably about the same impact as strength, but a number of players have mentioned they think strength is actually more effective in their players. It is generally thought to have the most impact on return of serve, but this is purely a logic-based conjecture.

Trainable Attributes

I've referred to these as the 'technical abilities/skills' at times. These are what I, as a manager, can improve using the experience points saved up via talent, matches, and training sessions.

Skill -- Basic rally ability of a player. This is used in all points, and is affected by age % as well.

Serve -- A player's serve ability is added to skill when they are the server. I.e, a player with 4.0 skill and 3.0 serve would have a base ability of 4.0 when returning, 7.0 when serving(before adding in speed/strength/mentality/etc. affects). Serve is also affected by age %.

Doubles -- Doubles is added to Skill in doubles matches, and(obviously) not used in singles. Importantly, it is not affected by age %, unlike the other trainable attributes.

Since Skill is always used but Serve only when serving, it is sensible and pretty much universally practiced to train Skill at least somewhat more.

Ok, so that's pretty much everything I know about the player attributes, all of which is a setup for:

Bryan's Overall Player Rating Formula

** Skill +
** 50% of Serve(again, since it's used half the time) +
** 40% of Mentality(a guess on it's importance, this is a matter of personal taste and the magnitude of the effect has not been publicly defined. Based on what I've seen this is a reasonable guess in my opinion. It may be a bit high but I don't think by much if it is) +
** 20% of Strength(official) +
** 20% of Speed(official estimate)

There are other matters such as a player's bonuses on the four surfaces, bonus or penalty depending on their form, and so on but all of these are completely within the control of the manager to properly prepare their player for success. The rating here is meant to simply describe the overall ability of a player at a given point in their career, to which good/mediocre/bad player management will add it's attendant effects.

digamma

01-28-2016, 08:44 AM

This is all great stuff.

I think I am in line on a lot of these things. I have trained serve more frequently, especially when the players are young because it gives you such a relative advantage in matches (looking at stats, it is not rare to see opponents with 0 Aces and 20+ double faults). If I can avoid double faults, I'm picking up 20-30 points a match. I've found that to be big in early rounds of tournaments (thus making sure you get more matches for the week).

I'm sure more questions or comments will follow.

ntndeacon

01-28-2016, 01:57 PM

This is pretty helpful. I'm already trying to get my service in line with skill.

digamma

01-30-2016, 07:23 AM

Ok, help me out here. What is this guy doing that he can play so many tournaments in a row without his form being off the charts? Same player, two characters.

Floriano (http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=player&start=1&extra=179384&match_type=tournament&subpage=tournaments)

Duane (http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=player&start=1&extra=179300&match_type=tournament&subpage=tournaments)

Did he run them down to near zero first?

Brian Swartz

01-30-2016, 01:14 PM

Impossible to know for sure how high they were in form a few months ago, but some of the weeks they are losing early. If you lose in the first couple rounds you can actually drop in form while playing, but it's a bad way to go since you won't get much benefit for the week(experience or points).

britrock88

01-30-2016, 07:28 PM

Right, you pick up form at a rate of 1 point per competitive match played, and lose it at a rate of 8% per week.

(Just FYI, I can't peek into your world if I haven't joined it, which annoys me, but alas. Don't know if that's true for Brian, too.)

Brian Swartz

01-31-2016, 05:05 AM

It is true for me also, it just doesn't matter. I'm only really active in rr1, so I can move my two 'free' slots around at my whim to look at stuff like this.

law90026

02-01-2016, 10:43 AM

So a few questions:

1) how do you determine a young player's developed stats?
2) at the journeyman levels, I assume the intention is to keep form and fatigue optimal before taking part in tournaments? However, I find fatigue tends to potentially rise a lot faster. How important is fatigue from that perspective?
3) does it make sense to take a complete week off, ie not even a practice tournament and just do friendlies in order to get form and fatigue optimal?

britrock88

02-01-2016, 01:36 PM

1) how do you determine a young player's developed stats?

On a player's profile page, next to his age will be displayed a percentage. This indicates how physically developed the player is relative to his eventual prime. Using that percentage, you can work out the math with the tennis balls on the player card for strength and speed. For endurance, however, the effect of age is doubled. I believe the formula you use to determine peak endurance is End/Age^2.

2) at the journeyman levels, I assume the intention is to keep form and fatigue optimal before taking part in tournaments? However, I find fatigue tends to potentially rise a lot faster. How important is fatigue from that perspective?

Fatigue is the backboard for the development of your young players. Players shed 50 fatigue per day, and to optimize their development, you do not want to waste any of that opportunity to shed fatigue. Of course, fatigue will rise more quickly when young players have less endurance--and that's okay. You're right that a player who enters a tournament with higher fatigue will likely suffer in later rounds, as fatigue >500 leads to penalties on their ability. But I find that to be less of a concern when the primary focus is on providing the players with experience, which is most reliably done through practice.

3) does it make sense to take a complete week off, ie not even a practice tournament and just do friendlies in order to get form and fatigue optimal?

I suppose it could, in the right circumstances. Brian had done a little experimentation to find that friendlies are only about 75% as effective as practice in providing experience relative to causing fatigue. But if you enter what would be a practice week with high fatigue, you could take this approach.

The game is supposed to hold your players out of practice matches when their fatigue is >300, but I have seen this rule broken before.

Brian Swartz

02-01-2016, 03:09 PM

Only thing I'd add is that the only reason I'd skip a week completely(on purpose that is, as opposed to the lovely schedule screw-ups) is if a player has enough fatigue to not play at all the whole week. I'd never intentionally play friendlies instead. Practice tournaments don't contribute to form, so that's not an issue.

law90026

02-01-2016, 05:21 PM

Thanks both!

law90026

02-02-2016, 08:54 AM

Yet more questions!

Is VIP worth it? And what happens if you let your VIP lapse, since you might have more than 2 players at that time.

Brian Swartz

02-05-2016, 03:33 AM

Worth it or not really depends on the person, budget, how committed you are to the game, all that stuff. For me, I can't do my dynasty without it because I need more than two players. Varies based on the person.

If it lapses, you have to either fire players to get down to the limit or you can't do anything with any of them. So basically, it's a bad idea to let it lapse :).

digamma

02-06-2016, 06:27 AM

I tried the free week of VIP, and really liked a lot of the historical features and things like that. I haven't re-upped for cash yet, but am definitely considering it.

law90026

02-06-2016, 06:53 AM

Thanks for the input

Young Drachma

02-07-2016, 03:31 PM

I knew nothing about this. Need to look now!

digamma

02-10-2016, 10:09 AM

Is patience the key to pushing a 70ish ranked player into the top 30?

I have a 22 year old who has been lingering in the 60's and 70's. Still not maxed out skill wise, but getting close.

I have a 20 year old who has had a quicker rise to around 110 in the world. We have a little time with him and he gets some ratings boosts because he has a huge home court advantage and I play to that.

Brian Swartz

02-10-2016, 11:53 PM

I knew nothing about this. Need to look now!

Yes, you do!

Is patience the key to pushing a 70ish ranked player into the top 30?

I have a 22 year old who has been lingering in the 60's and 70's. Still not maxed out skill wise, but getting close.

Well, two points here:

** Generally, yes. I can give you a more intelligent opinion if you want to post a link to the player(and tell me what world so I can pop in there). But usually it will be a couple of years after you reach the top 100 to get to the top 30 in my experience.

Having said that, if they are 22 then they shouldn't be all that close to getting maxed out. Peak for players is in the 26-27 age range.

law90026

02-15-2016, 05:06 AM

Any tips on how to improve my player's performance in the challengers? Brian wasn't kidding when he said this was a hard time for a young player because my guy can't progress far in them but isn't allowed to play futures because of his sub-200 ranking.

Brian Swartz

02-15-2016, 05:26 AM

If your player is good enough he will reach a point where he will eventually 'break through'. My best advice is focus not on the results, but on the process of getting good enough. It sounds like you want to be playing CH3s or CH2s at the biggest, on favorable surfaces, even in your home country if possible, taking as many off weeks as possible for practice tournaments to train up.

Beyond that, it's just a matter of time and whether you have a player talented enough to eventually break through the wall. I went back and looked at my most recent player to navigate this level, Girish Girsh(at the moment 5th in the world but he paid his dues like everyone else).

Last junior title -- 18y 16w
Futures titles(3) -- First at 19y 12w, last at 19y 36w

Spent less than a year getting through futures which I think is quite typical from what I've seen. But as noted, once you reach the Top 200 ...

Challenger titles(10) -- First at 20y 21w, last at 21y 46w.

Took several months after leaving futures to get his first challenger title of any kind, then basically another year and a half to 'graduate' the level, over two years all together and we are talking about a guy who has been proven to be world-class, a player I've predicted to reach #1 eventually and I'm more and more confident about that all the time(weak era and all that, but still).

For a less talented player, maybe they can't do it at all; maybe it takes even longer, but even for a prodigy it takes a while and feels like beating your head against a wall for a time. So my best advice is, don't push it. Don't try to rush it. Focus on improvement, not results. If you're not ranked high enough to be seeded at the bigger challengers, don't even play 'em.

.02

law90026

02-15-2016, 05:58 AM

That's exactly the type of advice I was looking for ��

Thanks!

Brian Swartz

02-15-2016, 06:50 AM

You're welcome :).

Alf

02-16-2016, 06:22 AM

Ok, you got me in. Registered today in "Wolrd 11" and I got two 14yr New Zealanders

Rastislav Lakic (http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=player&extra=185106)
and
Robbie Commons (http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=player&extra=185307)

Played some friendly games until fatigue hit 300. Then registered for a "Junior" tournament where I got smashed.

Now, I am not sure what type of tournament I should register for ?

Amateur
Junior
Future

Practice tournaments are all full of ranked players where I guess I have no chance to win a single set.

Hints welcomed.

Brian Swartz

02-16-2016, 07:22 AM

you should register for:

JG5 until you are ranked high enough to be seeded in JG4. Only play these when you need to in order to maintain form of at least 15. That is because you will not gain as much experience from all of your activities when it dips below that. So, any week you are below about 16.3, you should play a junior event the next week(singles and doubles to maximize).

Any other week, play practice tournaments.

Practice tournaments are all full of ranked players where I guess I have no chance to win a single set.

Up to a point this is good for you. You get more experience(and therefore improve more) when you lose than you do when you win. Since you have a pair of young players, your goal is to get experience and train up and improve. Winning is irrelevant, though you do want competitive matches when you can get them, because losing badly won't teach you much.

Edit: Finally, I advise you fire both of your players and start over. Lakic will peak at about 1.5 endurance, meaning he has a better chance at becoming a Las Vegas showgirl than a world-class tennis player. Commons is better, but you can get better players than either of them. The best way to start is with one player who is young and another who is experienced(mid-20s, to earn some points so you can buy a vet to turn into a trainer). For the youngster, you correctly picked players with high talent but endurance is even more important. Anybody below 1.3 endurance(preferably higher) you should basically ignore. A combo of good endurance + talent and at least decent athleticism is what you are aiming for optimally.

Good luck, and I hope you enjoy the game.

Alf

02-16-2016, 07:30 AM

Thanks. Developping skill is my main target, yes. That's whyI took 14yr old guys.

Sometimes JG5 is not an option, should I instead keep "practicing" or enter "JG4" anyway ?

Edit : just read your edit, I'll fire the guys and look for more "adequate" guys. One young, one a tad older.

Brian Swartz

02-19-2016, 05:57 AM

If you can't play a JG5, a 4 is the next best thing. I would try to plan out so you can play a 5 though, even if you have to play a week 'early', so to speak.

Alf

02-20-2016, 03:06 AM

Ok, I reset my account so I can start fresh. here are the two youngsters I am looking at (1.6+ endurance, 4+ talent)

Bao-qing Lu (http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=player&extra=185373)

and

Louis Fremont (http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=player&extra=185442)

Care to give your advice ?

Brian Swartz

02-20-2016, 03:24 AM

Fremont is a little better(higher mentality, a bit higher peak endurance). Both are just a hair above average athletically. One thing to keep in mind is what kind of player you want, these will have roughly average career arcs(decent juniors, decent longevity in the pros) based on their aging(99 and 101%).

If it was me I'd hire Fremont and a mid-20s player, and work towards getting a trainer. I'd also keep looking for better young players, just because you have someone decent doesn't mean you don't want to keep trying for someone better. In most worlds the best players aren't easy to find, so it may take a while to get a top talent.

Alf

02-20-2016, 03:34 AM

Gotcha. I'll get Fremont and a 25ish player. I'll see what all this gives and if I am into that game.

Thanks for the early tips.

Alf

02-20-2016, 04:57 AM

First JG5 Fremont gets in and he wins the Doubles title :)

Brian Swartz

02-21-2016, 07:49 AM

Always nice to have a good start!

digamma

02-22-2016, 06:30 AM

So I've generally been ignoring doubles and using the entries simply as a way to get more experience for my players. I enter both singles and doubles in practice and tournaments. I haven't trained for doubles at all.

But...I just noticed that my 21 year old player is about to enter the top 100 in the doubles rankings. I know britrock has had some success in doubles.

Curious for any thoughts or discussion on that side of things.

Ron Ashman (http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=player&extra=180462&match_type=tournament&addb=player&addv=180462) in World 11 is the guy.

britrock88

02-22-2016, 04:49 PM

I'm not a VIP, so I can't peek into GW11 while I have guys going in GW1 and 2. But maybe Bryan can do that and I can give you a general rundown on approaching doubles...

1. Don't go into doubles without a partner. You don't have to be the Bryan brothers and play your whole career with the same guy. At the same time, waiting on the RR website to auto-match you with a random doubles entrant is not going to get the best out of your doubles player. If you're not content with someone else in your stable, there's good value to be had in the 27+ category, as players' costs aren't perfectly correlative to their cumulative ratings--especially their doubles ratings.

2. The utility of the doubles rating re: training. Forty percent of the doubles rating is added to your player's skill rating to determine his overall skill. Meanwhile, doubles rating points are only valued at 1/3 when calculating a player's potential trainer rating. This compares unfavorably to service, which has a potential impact of 50 percent (all service points), but is valued at 3/4 in the trainer rating calculation. I don't mean for this to dissuade anyone from going into doubles; it's just a thought to keep in mind based on the likelihood of you using a player as a trainer in the future.

3. Your player's career arc. If your player's 21, he likely has a few years left to have some fun in singles. Singles frees him from depending on a partner and, if he's competitive enough, provides him the opportunity to score more XP to put into all of his ratings, including doubles when the time comes.

4. If you start spending XP on doubles, there's no point in turning back. Given that the other two ratings (skill/service) improve both singles and doubles play, and that the doubles rating only impacts doubles, wait to start pouring XP into your doubles rating until you're satisfied with the singles career you've had for your player.

5. Rankings logistics. The most important things to note for high-level doubles play are: a) MSTs are never mandatory and b) the Olympics count for nothing. As a result, you can have fun with your schedule compared to the requirements of top-flight singles players. I even enjoyed entering my players into CHs and FTs singles tournaments as warmups and getting surprise titles.

There are more facets to this side of the game (like when one, but not both of your pair plays in WTCs), but I hope the above is a good starting point. The only real takeaways are to go into doubles, whenever you do, full-on and with a good partner!

law90026

02-25-2016, 12:37 AM

Damn you Britrock, my guy just lost to yours in a challenger+.

But the next question I Guess: what's the general plan once you hit the TOP 100? Continue playing in challengers until the top 32 with some opportunistic majors thrown in? Participating in grand slams: yea or nay? Any other suggestions?

Brian Swartz

02-25-2016, 02:42 AM

maybe Bryan can do that and I can give you a general rundown on approaching doubles...

I can add little to what you've said. You've got a lot more experience than I do in doubles, I haven't had a serious doubles player yet(though Mehul is going to eventually make that transition, but probably not for three or more years). At that time I'll probably be asking you for advice! :)

One thing I've noticed as a pattern with almost all the players I've seen is this -- I'm not talking to anyone specifically, if you are doing this, you know who you are :)

STOP OVERPLAYING!. This is the #1 difference between me and 95+% of the managers on Rocking Rackets. Even many of the high-ranking ones. I constantly see challenger-level developing players in the 30s with their form and I want to throw something at them every single time.

'But I want to get my ranking up!'

** No, you don't want to get your ranking up. You want to get your skills up. Stop putting the cart before the horse. Ranking is not an achievement in and of itself so much as it is a reflection of your player's abilities. It will always 'lag behind' your improvement and this is just fine. Don't lose sight of the goal. Prioritize.

'But it's soooo hard to be pat ... '

** You wanna be a lounge musician or a tennis great? STOP OVERPLAYING!

'But I need to ..'

** No, you really don't need to. STOP OVERPLAYING! Really, I mean it. If your form isn't 16.5 or above, you need to be in a practice event next week. Seriously, you do, unless you are building up for the off-season(mid-40s weeks to new year) and are a challenger player or better, or are an elite player peaking for a big event. If you are regularly having your form in the upper 20s, no matter what your level is, YOU AREN'T DOING IT RIGHT. Waste your potential if you insist, but know that's what you are doing. Seriously. Just stop doing it. *ahem* *cough* *endrant*

what's the general plan once you hit the TOP 100? Continue playing in challengers until the top 32 with some opportunistic majors thrown in? Participating in grand slams: yea or nay?

The approach I've evolved into over the years is a little counter-intuitive, and sort of flies in the face of what I seems like 'should' be effective. The controlling concept is this, which has been mentioned before:

** Play events you will be seeded in.

I think the why is very important here, because it sheds light on the original question. If you are playing events you aren't ranked highly enough to be seeded in, you run the risk of hitting a powerful top-seeded player early in the tournament. Not only will you almost certainly lose badly, but then you have to figure out what to do with the rest of the week. It's not just the ranking points you don't get -- now you have to play extra friendly matches(or training sessions if you have a trainer) which are suboptimal in terms of gaining experience. It's just not worth the risk.

So when should you play majors? I actually think you should do this when a low-level challenger player, but once you reach about 150th or so you should STOP. Again this is counterintuitive, but at a lower ranking you get the qualifying matches even if you go nowhere(likely) in the main draw. If you are, say, 90th, you are going to be a direct acceptance(no qualifying) and then have a 50% chance of playing a seed. If not in the first round, you almost certainly will in the second. And this means a very low probability of getting in many matches. Slams give great xp, but if you only get a single one-sided loss, it's not getting you anything. And again, you've not had a good week training wise which -- if you aren't an elite Top 32 player -- is the ONLY thing that matters IMO.

So back to the question of what the Top 100 player should do. Keep playing challengers is my advice until you get to about 50th. At that point you are still playing mostly challengers but there is a brief period where 250-level events become useful in certain weeks. If there are three 250s in a week as there are a number of times in the year, a top 50 player can usually be seeded and these are good opportunities.

There's another scenario you need to watch for which is really a pretty advanced concept but I just can't shut up when people ask for opinions about this game, so here it is. If there is a Masters or Slam going on and you are a Top 100 player, most of the players who are good enough to be good practice tournament competition are at the bigger event -- which means you can end up with a crappy practice week anyway because you are just beating up on inferior competition, and that doesn't help you much. There are general two kinds of scenarios here, and it basically depends on whether there are challengers the same week.

Usually, there are. One example where that is not the case is the Australian Open. Often you'll want to play it anyway, because it's either take the chance of an early exit, or take a crappy practice week. It's the last of a three-week stretch of no challengers at all near the beginning of the year. On the other hand, there are some good CH2s during the first week of Indian Wells(week 11) and Miami(week 13), where you can pick up some 'cheap' ranking points because a lot of players who probably shouldn't be are playing in the Masters events, losing early, and wasting a lot of their energy for the week. Then you get a number of matches, some points, your form goes up, and you take the next week for a good practice tournament -- you win, they lose :).

Then of course when you reach the Top 32 -- play all the Slams. Play IW and Miami too as a minimum, because you'll be seeded there. And so on.

Any intelligent questions, class? :P

law90026

02-25-2016, 05:26 AM

britrock88

02-25-2016, 09:49 AM

I will add that the ability to adhere to Bryan's principle of not overplaying can depends on your game world's speed. Unfortunately, it's kind of unworkable to hit that ideal low-yellow form consistently in a place like GW2, when the world covers 6 weeks per day (and you're asleep for 2 of them). In this case, I just get tournaments in during the day and practices in at night so that I can best manage my players' fatigue--that is, make sure they're not wasting any potential matches.

britrock88

02-25-2016, 10:00 AM

Thanks. I definitely agree in relation to seeding and it's made me micro-manage more now by checking the entrants for the challengers each week to decide which ones I would consider taking part in.

Didn't think about letting my guy play in qualifiers for masters to get experience though! Great tip.

Wow. Rask looks like he'll be really, REALLY good. 4.6 endurance!

One question: is the court preference he has something you've done consciously? My current tack is to have guys max out in hard and clay courts, as the lion's share of GSLs and MSTs take place on those surfaces. Maybe you're onto something, though--winning Wimbledon and Paris?

law90026

02-25-2016, 12:04 PM

Wow. Rask looks like he'll be really, REALLY good. 4.6 endurance!

One question: is the court preference he has something you've done consciously? My current tack is to have guys max out in hard and clay courts, as the lion's share of GSLs and MSTs take place on those surfaces. Maybe you're onto something, though--winning Wimbledon and Paris?

Definitely not conscious, haven't even thought that far to be honest.

Re the endurance, I'm not sure it's really necessary to be so high. I still have a lot of unused fatigue most weeks because it takes a lot of micromanagement to get enough friendly games in and, like you pointed out, the gameworld moves too fast to really do that effectively.

britrock88

02-25-2016, 01:48 PM

If you're in a working situation where you can click over to a tab once every 10 minutes to get a training session in, though... :thumbsup:

Brian Swartz

02-25-2016, 02:40 PM

I still have a lot of unused fatigue most weeks because it takes a lot of micromanagement to get enough friendly games in and, like you pointed out, the gameworld moves too fast to really do that effectively.

This is a really good point and, as britrock mentioned, fast gameworlds are much different. It might well be better to focus more on athleticism and talent in picking players for those worlds, and you do have to schedule differently also. It's really almost a different game from the little I've experimented with it -- I don't see myself jumping back into any of the fast ones but for those that are, they will need to adjust in some way.

digamma

02-25-2016, 04:01 PM

If you're in a working situation where you can click over to a tab once every 10 minutes to get a training session in, though... :thumbsup:

Heh, I'm blocked at work!

I check my phone fairly frequently though.

I have a player up to 41st in the Singles rankings. Exciting times.

digamma

02-26-2016, 01:20 PM

Anyone had a guy's Fatigue spiral out of control? For some reason, my player played practice matches above both a 300 and a 500 stamina level and ended the week above 600. I forgot to go back and take him out of the next week's tournament, so he ended up in Doubles qualifiers on Sunday and then strolled out to his first singles match at 772! You can guess how that went.

law90026

02-26-2016, 08:16 PM

I've only ever had a junior player hit that kind of fatigue, largely because he was playing multiple 3 setters in a tournament. Pretty much means the week after is a waste because the game forces the player to rest until fatigue drops below 500 I believe.

Brian Swartz

02-27-2016, 01:27 AM

I've had it happen on a few occasions. Anil Manohar actually has it spike quite often just because he's old enough to have about a 1.0 endurance right now(it wasn't that great even at his peak, maybe 3.0) so in tournament weeks if he qualifies in singles it spikes very quickly.

It's not supposed to do practice matches above 300, but it does occasionally. I don't know why. You can still keep playing regular tournaments, but as noted that goes very poorly very quickly. Nothing to be done but what's already been said, pull them out of everything and get a week of full rest.

digamma

02-29-2016, 07:26 AM

Anyone thought about hard constraints on Talent when hiring a new youngster?

Alf

02-29-2016, 07:42 AM

First JG5 Fremont gets in and he wins the Doubles title :)

Fremont has been fired and I hired a younger promising Belarus guy.

Nikolay Piontkowsky (http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=player&extra=185714)

<table class="realtable"><tbody><tr><th>Name</th><th> </th><th>Y (http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=players&start=1&subpage=all&max_cost=&player_name=piontkowsky&nation_id=all&search=Search&sort=age)</th><th>A (http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=players&start=1&subpage=all&max_cost=&player_name=piontkowsky&nation_id=all&search=Search&sort=af)</th><th>T (http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=players&start=1&subpage=all&max_cost=&player_name=piontkowsky&nation_id=all&search=Search&sort=talent)</th><th>St (http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=players&start=1&subpage=all&max_cost=&player_name=piontkowsky&nation_id=all&search=Search&sort=strength)</th><th>Sp (http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=players&start=1&subpage=all&max_cost=&player_name=piontkowsky&nation_id=all&search=Search&sort=speed)</th><th>M (http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=players&start=1&subpage=all&max_cost=&player_name=piontkowsky&nation_id=all&search=Search&sort=mentality)</th><th>E (http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=players&start=1&subpage=all&max_cost=&player_name=piontkowsky&nation_id=all&search=Search&sort=endurance)</th><th>Sk (http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=players&start=1&subpage=all&max_cost=&player_name=piontkowsky&nation_id=all&search=Search&sort=skill)</th><th>Se (http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=players&start=1&subpage=all&max_cost=&player_name=piontkowsky&nation_id=all&search=Search&sort=service)</th><th>D (http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=players&start=1&subpage=all&max_cost=&player_name=piontkowsky&nation_id=all&search=Search&sort=doubles)</th><th>C (http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=players&start=1&subpage=all&max_cost=&player_name=piontkowsky&nation_id=all&search=Search&sort=cost_d)</th></tr><tr><td class="even small">N. Piontkowsky (http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=player&extra=185714)
(http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=players&sort=cost&subpage=all&max_cost=&player_name=piontkowsky&nation_id=all&search=Search&addb=player&addv=185714)</td><td class="even small">http://shared.rockingrackets.com/images//flags/BLR.png (http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=nationinfo&extra=BLR)</td><td class="small" width="6%">14</td><td class="small" width="6%">+5%</td><td class="small" width="6%">4.<small>3</small></td><td class="small" width="6%">2.<small>3</small></td><td class="small" width="6%">2</td><td class="small" width="6%">3.<small>5</small></td><td class="small" width="6%">1.<small>7</small></td><td class="small" width="6%">0.<small>9</small></td><td class="small" width="6%">0.<small>6</small></td><td class="small" width="6%">0.<small>3</small></td><td class="small sorted " width="6%">43</td></tr></tbody></table>
Given his aging factor, I am hoping for a solid Junior career. He has already won 3 JG5 singles tournament and 2 JG5 doubles tournament.
He is also selected in Belarus U15 Junior team Cup (good idea ?).

Any comment appreciated

CrimsonFox

02-29-2016, 07:49 AM

Okay trying this out by hiring Aussie Jonathan Kemp
Practice rounds are training?

digamma

02-29-2016, 07:57 AM

Yes, you should sign up for both singles and doubles practice. So long as your fatigue is in line, you'll get 5 singles matches and 5 doubles matches, and depending on the competition, you can generate several hundred Experience points for the week.

CrimsonFox

02-29-2016, 08:03 AM

oh wait...i did a friendly match.

I just signed up for a tournament too.
it seems i can't unsignup. ah well still learning.

law90026

02-29-2016, 08:08 AM

oh wait...i did a friendly match.

I just signed up for a tournament too.
it seems i can't unsignup. ah well still learning.

Yeah I went through a lot of silly mistakes at the start too. Great thing is that you can just reset your career in the world once you get the hang of things and start over. In a fast world, things move quickly enough that you don't feel like you've wasted took much time.

Brian Swartz

02-29-2016, 02:35 PM

You can un-sign up for practice or other tournaments(just uncheck the box and click Sign Up again). Friendlies start immediately though so you are stuck with those.

Brian Swartz

02-29-2016, 02:37 PM

Anyone thought about hard constraints on Talent when hiring a new youngster?

I'd say at least 4.0 but it really depends on what's available(i.e., the more competition in a world the tougher it is to find quality so you have to change your standards). I always took the approach of finding the best overall young player I could find, then regularly looking for someone better.

Alf

02-29-2016, 02:49 PM

Fremont has been fired and I hired a younger promising Belarus guy.

Nikolay Piontkowsky (http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=player&extra=185714)

<table class="realtable"><tbody><tr><th>Name</th><th> </th><th>Y (http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=players&start=1&subpage=all&max_cost=&player_name=piontkowsky&nation_id=all&search=Search&sort=age)</th><th>A (http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=players&start=1&subpage=all&max_cost=&player_name=piontkowsky&nation_id=all&search=Search&sort=af)</th><th>T (http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=players&start=1&subpage=all&max_cost=&player_name=piontkowsky&nation_id=all&search=Search&sort=talent)</th><th>St (http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=players&start=1&subpage=all&max_cost=&player_name=piontkowsky&nation_id=all&search=Search&sort=strength)</th><th>Sp (http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=players&start=1&subpage=all&max_cost=&player_name=piontkowsky&nation_id=all&search=Search&sort=speed)</th><th>M (http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=players&start=1&subpage=all&max_cost=&player_name=piontkowsky&nation_id=all&search=Search&sort=mentality)</th><th>E (http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=players&start=1&subpage=all&max_cost=&player_name=piontkowsky&nation_id=all&search=Search&sort=endurance)</th><th>Sk (http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=players&start=1&subpage=all&max_cost=&player_name=piontkowsky&nation_id=all&search=Search&sort=skill)</th><th>Se (http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=players&start=1&subpage=all&max_cost=&player_name=piontkowsky&nation_id=all&search=Search&sort=service)</th><th>D (http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=players&start=1&subpage=all&max_cost=&player_name=piontkowsky&nation_id=all&search=Search&sort=doubles)</th><th>C (http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=players&start=1&subpage=all&max_cost=&player_name=piontkowsky&nation_id=all&search=Search&sort=cost_d)</th></tr><tr><td class="even small">N. Piontkowsky (http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=player&extra=185714)
(http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=players&sort=cost&subpage=all&max_cost=&player_name=piontkowsky&nation_id=all&search=Search&addb=player&addv=185714)</td><td class="even small">http://shared.rockingrackets.com/images//flags/BLR.png (http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=nationinfo&extra=BLR)</td><td class="small" width="6%">14</td><td class="small" width="6%">+5%</td><td class="small" width="6%">4.<small>3</small></td><td class="small" width="6%">2.<small>3</small></td><td class="small" width="6%">2</td><td class="small" width="6%">3.<small>5</small></td><td class="small" width="6%">1.<small>7</small></td><td class="small" width="6%">0.<small>9</small></td><td class="small" width="6%">0.<small>6</small></td><td class="small" width="6%">0.<small>3</small></td><td class="small sorted " width="6%">43</td></tr></tbody></table>
Given his aging factor, I am hoping for a solid Junior career. He has already won 3 JG5 singles tournament and 2 JG5 doubles tournament.
He is also selected in Belarus U15 Junior team Cup (good idea ?).

Any comment appreciated
bump as it stuck in page 1 :)

law90026

03-01-2016, 09:10 AM

Brian, how accurate roughly do you think your talent evaluation calculation works? I've been fiddling around with it and, assuming a player is able to develop to 5 skill and 4 serve, it seems mentality is a huge part of it. I've done some calculations on some of the 15/16 year olds in world 2 and they come in potentially at 9.79-9.8+ and I'm wondering whether to try developing them instead.

Brian Swartz

03-02-2016, 05:57 AM

Well I think the formula works well for a player's strength, but it's definitely not perfect. Generally speaking, surface strengths being equal(they play a significant role), I'll usually win against players who are more than 0.3 weaker, and lose if they are 0.3 stronger. Within that +/- 0.3 things are a lot more iffy, but I've also seen losses against players with a gap as high as 0.6 or 0.7 on occasion. There seems to be a hidden 'hot/cold' thing going on. Take a look at Cestmir Marcek in my dynasty, he just has no business being the world no.4 but he is and had a heck of a year, better than when he actually had higher ratings as a younger player. So it's a 'baseline', and works good as a general guideline, but players are humans and stuff happens :).

The other thing is, a player with high mentality and low athleticism/technical skill does seem to underperform a bit. I think this is basically because they aren't good enough to get into enough 'key points' with a player who is somewhat better in skill but lower mentality; i.e., their clutchness or whatever doesn't come into play. So I'd definitely suggest that it's better to have a player with good athleticism and mentality then it is to have one with average athleticism and great mentality. Balance is best I think.

The final point; you may be incorrect in assuming you can get a 15 or 16-year-old player to 5.0 skill, 4.0 serve. If they've been misused for a year or two a lot of the potential is wasted. If you have a couple examples of these kinds of players I can take a look at them, but usually I might consider a particularly good 15-year-old, at 16 or more I think it would be rare to find one that was very worthwhile.

.02.

Brian Swartz

03-02-2016, 06:02 AM

bump as it stuck in page 1

Good bump, I missed it. First of all, you always want to play things like the JTC if you can for a developing player. They have much better xp than anything else you can do. So absolutely let him play them.

** Athleticism -- peaks at 3.2 str, 2.7 spd. That's solid, not great but not terrible either.
** Mentality and talent are good, endurance will peak at 3.3 which is passable.

Definitely should be a good juniors player, with obviously a relatively short professional career. I wouldn't throw him back, you can do some fun things with a player like this.

law90026

03-02-2016, 10:36 AM

BishopMVP

03-02-2016, 11:59 AM

I've reached a bit of an inflection point in World 12, as my boy Tommy Simms (http://rr12.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=player&extra=258966) finally reached the top 32... now I'm wondering if it's worth tanking to stay out of the year end top 30 for one more year (and avoid all the required Masters tournaments indoor/on clay.)

I also think this is the last time I take an American (or a big country player). Simms was a created guy with physical stats too good to pass up when he popped up on the waiver wire, but missing out on all those sweet, juicy, JTC/WTC points will probably prevent him from really being a threat for #1.

Brian Swartz

03-02-2016, 12:44 PM

BishopMVP

03-02-2016, 01:20 PM

I personally wouldn't recommend tanking. You need to cross over to playing all the Masters eventually -- your ranking is going to go up, Simms is still getting better. Plus you get better xp for Masters matches than run-of-the-mill ones, and can always play doubles to make the week worthwhile if you expect to lose early. Strong player, better athlete than I've ever had, I'm pretty jealous! I also wouldn't worry so much about the WTC. If you are good enough to compete for #1, you'll be good enough to be on the US team -- it's only 600 points maximum and that's if you win every singles tie you can play. Relatively speaking that's chump change for a Top 5 guy.

Once again, just my .02.Yeah, I'm leaning against tanking, especially since I need to get my form up near the max soon. Didn't realize I can't play challengers as a top 32 ranked player either.

I'm not talking about the ranking points, I'm talking about training/experience points. I feel like especially as a junior with low endurance, being able to get experience at 1.5/2x fatigue in a JTC is a big advantage (that you've used to the extreme in your Sri Lankan dynasty!)

digamma

03-04-2016, 09:20 AM

Brian,
I'd love to see what you think about my American in World 11, Ron Ashman.

I also have a Croat, Teodor Cajkanovic, who is knocking on the door of the top 32, but I think he is not going to get much better than that, due to low endurance and high aging factor. He's been fun though.

Brian Swartz

03-04-2016, 10:02 PM

Rather bland in appearance, looks like he had some sort of bizarre mouth-shrinking surgery. Smells quite funny also.

Oh, that's not what you meant?

Good, talented athlete. Endurance isn't enough to be great, but it's enough to be successful. Probably because of this, his current technical attributes are good but not elite for his age.

I'll just pop one small bit of unsolicited advice: he's playing too many tournaments. Aside from that though, definitely a quality challenger player and should become more than that. A few months past his 22nd birthday and he's at 8.86, a rough guess is that he reaches 9.4-9.5 and is a solid Top 10 to Top 5 player at his apex depending of course on what other competition is out there. Good example of a guy who has some of everything, esp. athleticism. Not quite enough to really distinguish himself or be an all-time great, but still a very good player.

Alf

03-05-2016, 03:24 PM

N. Piontkowsky (http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=player&extra=185714) has just had his 15th birthday and is winning JG5s now. I mistakenly enlisted him for JG2 where he lost, but I alm trying JG4 now and he is winning again.

In terms of development, playing and wining JG4/JG3 is better than practice or not ?

Still not sure what schedule to give him in terms of tournament vs practice . And when entering tournaments, what JG should I aim for now at his stage ?

Thanks for the help.
(http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=players&sort=cost&subpage=all&max_cost=&player_name=piontkowsky&nation_id=all&search=Search&addb=player&addv=185714)

NevStar

03-05-2016, 11:21 PM

Until you get good enough for JGS & JGA events, practice will give much better XP. As a junior, it's best to only do enough tournaments to avoid getting a form penalty.

Alf

03-06-2016, 03:05 AM

Until you get good enough for JGS & JGA events, practice will give much better XP. As a junior, it's best to only do enough tournaments to avoid getting a form penalty.

Thanks

Brian Swartz

03-06-2016, 04:10 AM

Agreed. IMO that continues to be best until you reach the Top 32 as a pro.

Alf

03-06-2016, 04:16 AM

You only gain ranking points by playing in tournaments, so to get into top32, you (at some point) need to win some ranking points by playing tournaments. Correct ?

Brian Swartz

03-06-2016, 04:44 AM

Sure, but you don't need to play a ton of tournaments in order to do that. Even if you only play enough to keep your form above 15, you are still going to play 10-11 approximately a year. You can only count 18 at maximum in your ranking.

In my experience so far, the way it happens is basically that if you are good enough to be a consistent threat to win the big challengers(CH1 and CH+) then you will get yourself into the Top 32 even if you only play a dozen events a year or whatever. Playing more at that point will get you there a bit faster ... but not that much faster, and playing more also hurts your development overall since in regular tournaments you are winning most of your matches if you are entering the right events, and the loser gets the most experience. At the same level, in practice tournaments you will get a mix of wins and losses, and also have a much better guaranteed number of matches, allowing you to develop faster.

Everyone should do what they think is best, and I'm open to counter-arguments, but that's the way I approach it.

Alf

03-06-2016, 04:51 AM

Makes sense. I didn't know about the 18 tournaments counting only.

Next question regarding my other player in regards to the objective to get a trainer :
Jasen Džodanović (http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=player&extra=176818) : the guy is 25, he is winning FT3 tournaments, I like him (he is a grass specialist).
but
I encounterd that other guy
Claudio Albertrani (http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=player&extra=174144) : the guy is 27yr and 44wk, but is still a top 50 player. I am about to fire Jasen Dzodanovic to get Claudio (it would cost me 505 hiring points).

Is that a "sound" move ? He looks like a potential great trainer.

Brian Swartz

03-06-2016, 05:10 AM

If you want to get a trainer, and I totally agree that you should want to, I would go for someone who is old enough to get there a lot more quickly. Even a great player will need to be well into their 30s by the time they are skilled enough to be a 5.0 trainer. Albertrani would be about a 4.0 at best right now(estimating, but I'm sure it's not very far off). You can do a lot better. For example, Dimos Sanroma is 35 and about a 4.5 right now, and there are others much closer such as Shinzue Kentaro who by my calculations is probably over 4.9 already. I have yet to see a world that doesn't have great trainer candidates available, most of them will be in their mid-30s or so and already at 4.7-4.8 or so. These players require a relatively minimal amount of work to convert into a strong trainer. Albertrani will need years of work that in this case isn't necessary.

Alf

03-06-2016, 05:23 AM

Gotcha.

BishopMVP

03-07-2016, 11:45 PM

This is exactly what I do: skill until it's at least double the service cost. The logic here is that skill is used on all points, service on only half. Most managers train service more than I do but I'm not sure that's a good idea. The reason for that is higher service will help in terms of 'free points'; that is, more aces(and fewer double faults, but that's less of an issue at the top level). Other side of the 'free points' coin is having slightly better odds on each point by going the skill route. I think being close to the line where skill is double the service cost is best, but maybe one could argue for having service at 60% of skill cost. I wouldn't go more than that though. I've generally used the 2:1 ratio here, but I've been doing some contemplating. Particularly in that really tough 19-23 range where you're fighting to make the top 30 I wonder if it might be worth bumping serve up to 3.9/4.0 early under the theory it'd lead to more close matches. When I was hanging around that 4.7/3.2 range it seemed like I was getting broken constantly and thus blown out by every (near) world class player, but then blowing out all the early round opponents in challengers. With the training point penalty for matches that are less than 60% won by one side, I do wonder if focusing more on serve during that critical junction would have led to more close matches, and ideally more 3/5 setters. Didn't do a deep dive though, so it could just be me reading too much into what, imo, is easily the most frustrating period.

So this isn't entirely rambling, let's talk about Court Preferences. These can play a significant role, certainly during the initial years, but even at the highest level they play a big role each week. My goal right now is to get as close to a 60/40/0/0 split as I can on my players, making sure that one of Hard/Clay is built up, and then tailoring his secondary one based off his current percentages when I pick him up or maybe what courts seem most prominent in his country. (I know that's dumb, but when it's not a big difference I also try signing up for tournaments geographically close to his home country... unnecessary sure, but helps a little with my immersion!) I'm not sure if they are solely based off what percentage of your past matches have been on each surface or there is a little bit of hard coding built in for individual players, but they're definitely fairly set in stone by age 21/22. One other thing to note is that by that top level I've arrived at (Tommy Simms just turned 23, 4.9/3.6, ranked #23), practice sessions on grass (his secondary preference at 35%) are much less useful than practice sessions on hard/clay, partly because he's one of the best players in the world on grass but mostly because very few top players end up in those, and even being placed in Tier 1 I'd only get 2 decent practice matches at best in a week. So if you do try specializing in grass/indoor it might be worth baking a couple extra points in during those 18-22 year old years, because you'll likely be losing them once you're in the top 30 and playing such a varied schedule/dominating most practice opponents below the top 50.

Brian Swartz

03-09-2016, 05:22 AM

Particularly in that really tough 19-23 range where you're fighting to make the top 30 ... imo, is easily the most frustrating period.

You're not wrong, which would make you correct here. It's all about patience for that time period. I'm going through it for the third time starting very soon and within a game year I expect to be thoroughly annoyed but you just have to wait for things to take their course. With the rest of your comments I need to be much less dogmatic than usual though. There are still some things about the game I don't know.

You are right in that better serving does lead to closer matches, just need to look at what happens on grass to see that. What I think would happen is that you would see closer matches but also more losses, how big the effect would be depends of course on how much extra you put into the serve. My approach has always been to try and 'stay in my lane' and not play events where I'm going to get killed by world-class players: in challengers you don't run into many unless it's the end of the tournament, and at that point sort of who cares? I've always approached tournaments in the philosophy that the goal is boosting form and not worried too much about the quality of matches I get -- that's what practice weeks are for. I think this is the best way, but I can't prove it by any stretch.

I'm even less certain about the court preferences thing, which is related. I've used friendly matches to 'correct' to where I want to be in these, but that's because I need friendlies and don't have a trainer. I'll get my first at the end of the current game year, though that's still several weeks away in real-life time. How to properly adapt to using a trainer, since their sessions don't correct preferences among other differences, is something I need to play around with and don't completely have a handle on. I figure I probably know about 80-90% of what I can learn about strategy for the game, but this is the biggest missing piece that I'll need to get into. I do almost all my practice weeks on hardcourt right now for my top players so they can get good competition, but no doubt I'll have to approach it differently to some degree once I am able to get better xp, but lose the surface correction aspect of friendlies. I'll need to experiment before I have a good handle on what's best.

Really good post though, I think your mind is in the right direction.

britrock88

03-11-2016, 10:42 AM

Question: are trainers actually force-retired at age 60? My 5.0 trainer in GW2 is 56, so it's time to think about this...

Brian Swartz

03-11-2016, 01:08 PM

I'm 90% sure they are. I don't know if they raised the retirement age from 60 to 65 when they upped the trainer age from 40 to 45, but I think it's still at 60 -- I don't think I've seen any older than that. I do not know for sure though.

Alf

03-14-2016, 11:38 AM

I have seen a 64yr44xk old trainer on gameworld 11

Trainer: http://shared.rockingrackets.com/images//flags/RUS.png (http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=nationinfo&extra=RUS) Demyan Fedorenko (http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=player&extra=140326) http://shared.rockingrackets.com/images//icons/info.png (http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=player&extra=140326&match_type=tournament&addb=player&addv=140326)

http://shared.rockingrackets.com/faces/3LJ8612605-00-8-6YC88C.png<form action="index.php?page=player&extra=140326&match_type=tournament" method="post"><table class="player_infotable"><tbody><tr><th>Prize Money</th><td>$6,331,761</td></tr><tr><th>Manager</th><td>lq4868540 (http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=userinfo&extra=lq4868540) http://shared.rockingrackets.com/images//icons/offline.png</td></tr><tr><th>Age</th><td>64y44wk (0%)</td></tr><tr><th>Aging factor</th><td>100%</td></tr><tr><th>Fatigue</th><td>0 (100%)</td></tr><tr><th>Form</th><td>0 (Skill -1.5, Service -1.5, Experience 55%)</td></tr><tr><th>Singles W-L</th><td>794 - 362 (http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=player&subpage=winloss&extra=140326)</td></tr><tr><th>Doubles W-L</th><td>511 - 262 (http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=player&subpage=winloss&extra=140326)</td></tr><tr><th>Partner</th><td>-</td></tr></tbody></table></form>

Brian Swartz

03-14-2016, 12:01 PM

Wrong again! Must be 65 now.

law90026

03-16-2016, 07:02 AM

When would be the best time to stop playing doubles? Reaching top 100? 50?

britrock88

03-16-2016, 10:40 AM

It's a YMMV situation. For instance, right now I'm ruing the fact that Mendez/Lebedyenko have done well enough in their few doubles entries (the GSLs plus a couple others for form purposes) that they reached the top 200 and can't play in futures-level doubles tourneys during the year-end dead period.

I would say quit fairly early--once you're playing challengers and maintaining form. After that point, doubles becomes a tool to keep up players' form during the peaks and troughs of the tournament schedule.

law90026

03-16-2016, 10:45 AM

That's actually a really good point re year end doubles!

BishopMVP

03-16-2016, 07:46 PM

With my mid-20's ranked player and top 10 Junior player in rr11, I jump in the occasional doubles field for Masters/JGA's, or more frequently Grand Slam's, especially on bad surfaces for me to try and ensure I get some decent training for the week. (It is worth noting that qualifiers for even Grand Slams do not give extra XP, but count equally as 1 match for form.)

So yes, I completely agree that Doubles should be used only as a tool for controlling form, usually either where you fear an early exit or if there are no majors coming up and you want to jack up that form in an FT/CH so you can get a few weeks of practice in in a row.

Brian Swartz

03-16-2016, 09:18 PM

I approach it a little different it seems. I always play singles and doubles until I reach elite status(Top 32) as a singles player. Then I mostly stop playing, only as a tool to control form as mentioned in an event I'm already playing. I.e., I'll add in a doubles entry in a Slam or Masters if I'm a bit low on form but not enough to justify another tournament ahead of time. I play extra tournaments in the post-Shanghai(week 42) period in order to boost form so I don't need to worry about the year-end period.

Brian Swartz

03-18-2016, 04:01 AM

The Master's Wheel

Thought it might be useful in terms of recent discussions and developments to go into a little more detail on how I view and approach reaching the top of the sport. There's a couple of people with elite players now and more on the way(well done, ya'll!). For this exercise my example is Teo Rask from law90026(not to be confused with law90027)'s World 2 dynasty thread: A Rocking Rackets Dynasty (World 2) - Front Office Football Central (http://www.operationsports.com/fofc/showthread.php?t=91312)

The name 'Master's Wheel' is just basically an illustration; being as I am a massive geek/nerd, it's a reference to the Mask of Zorro and the 'training' scene with Hopkins and Banderas: The Mask of Zorro (1/8) Movie CLIP - Master and Pupil (1998) HD - YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Du8HRf6pRVY). As one advances up the rankings, as the man says, 'with each new circle your world contracts'. In this case, each circle inward is half the size of the one preceding it, because math, as follows:

** Challenger Wannabes -- The great unwashed masses from 33rd down through pretty much the rest of the Top 100. A cesspool of overplayed journeymen combined with declining former stars and rising talents. Most will never amount to a thing, but there are a few diamonds who will find their way through the morass.

** Outer Circle(Top 32) -- Emerging from said morass is Teo Rask this recently-begun season, having ranked 28th in the previous year. This is the most significant transition point from a scheduling point of view that a player will ever encounter. Prior to this, through juniors, amateurs if chosen, futures, and challengers, you can for the most part choose how often you play as befits your strategy. Now the game is different though; Slams + Mandatory Masters will make up 12 of the 18 events in the ranking pool going forward, and challengers are no longer permitted. The schedule is mostly chosen for you, and only consistent success in these big events will allow further progress. Therefore great care must be taken to peak at the right time; the point at which you will face higher-ranked opponents in the big tournaments. This point changes a bit depending on what circle you find yourself in, but the basic approach does not.

** Seeded Everywhere(Top 16) -- At this point a player is seeded at even the smaller Masters. The Round of 16 is now the focal point for peak performance.

** World Tour Qualifiers(Top 8) -- Elite enough that you get your own 'bonus tournament' at the end of the year. Most who make it here have aspirations to be Slam champions and/or world #1s at some stage.

** True Contenders(Top 4) -- For those who have reached the mountaintop, and expect to be active at the business end of almost any tournament they enter.

An Unsettling Transition

Getting back to our hero, Teo Rask; he's taken a step or two into the Outer Circle once or twice only to fall back out in a very competitive game world, but now he appears to be there to stay. There's a real 'fight or flight' reality to this, as in the last year 10 of his top 13 tournament results were challengers, and events at that now-forbidden level accounted for over 57% of his points total to start the new year. Most of them were in the second half of the season; it seemed that beginning with the Nottingham Challenger in week 25, right in the middle of the so-called 'Channel Slams' of the late spring and early summer, he really started stepping forward in his consistency of results. That ultimately led him to reaching elite status in the tour.

As I mentioned in the run-down above, the biggest thing is peaking for the right point of the big events in terms of form. For someone in the Outer Circle(Top 32), that is still a bit tricky. For Slams and the big Masters(Indian Wells and Miami), the goal is to reach peak form(low 20s) by the third round or just beforehand. This way, if an opportunity presents itself through a good draw, unprepared opponent, unexpected upset, etc., you are poised to break through and make a deep run to propel yourself up the rankings. For the smaller Masters, it's really the beginning of the tournament since you can meet anyone from 17th on down from the start; only the Top 16 are seeded.

The other point I would mention is that 250s and 500s are now 'fill-in' events. Their primary purpose is not to get more points though of course they help there, and you should choose the events you can be most successful at. The main thing is to get your form to where you want it to be ahead of the next big tournament on the calendar. Everything else should be secondary to that, since even if you load up on 500/250 points, the players who rise to the top will be those consistently doing well in the more lucrative Masters and Slams. Better to lose a battle(less points in the smaller events) than to lose the war.

When you move from challengers to the elite-based schedule, there's always a lot of big-points weeks you can't replace right away, certainly not by defending them directly. The ranking will bounce around quite a bit. I find it's useful to focus on what matters; consistently getting to the round of 32 or beyond in the big tournaments is quite sufficient to make progress and in fact the only real way to do it. All the ups and downs and yo-yoing will sort itself out eventually.

law90026

03-18-2016, 05:18 AM

Great insights as always. As I play more of this game, I realise that a lot of what you've said is incredibly accurate, especially things like not overplaying. It's not worth chasing points because your player needs to be ready for the next stage otherwise he gets knocked out early anyways.

Brian Swartz

03-23-2016, 05:02 PM

Excellent. There is an issue you(and many others I'm sure) could potentially help me out on. In about a month real-life time, at the end of the current game year and we've just reached Roland Garros, I will be getting my first trainer. For those that already use them, some stuff will be different I'm sure due to faster/slower game worlds and whatnot, but I'm curious what you've learned about trainers through the process? Specifically anything that might not have been obvious at first? I'm curious if there are any insights, have some thoughts of my own that I'm working on and I'll do a longer post on it when the time comes, but I'm looking forward to going trainer more and more, partly because it's been a relatively crappy year on the courts for my players this year.

Alf

03-23-2016, 06:35 PM

How do you actually use those trainers ?

Is it while not entering tournaments nor practice ? Or is in in parallel of tournaments and practice ?

law90026

03-23-2016, 07:57 PM

My thoughts below.

For Trainers, they don't necessarily synergise well with practice weeks. Reason being that a player can sometimes be held out of matches if their fatigue is too high, and that can sometimes be anything in excess of 200, rather than the 300 theoretical cut-off.

What I've found is that I can only confidently use my trainer from Friday onwards after the last practice matches are done.

Trainers tend to be useful during tournament weeks where it is possible to maintain the 300 fatigue cap.

In theory, I suspect a good trainer might actually get you more xp than a practice week. Using Iker Gauba as an example, he gets Teo Rask about 19-21 xp each session and the fatigue cost is about 23-32 each time. If you start from 0 fatigue, that should theroretically allow me to get in between 22 to 24 sessions in a week, which would be about 428 to 456 xp. This is higher than what I normally get for a practice week unless it was a very good week in terms of number of matches and the quality of matches. The issue I face is the micro-management aspect of it in a faster world plus the fact you seldom start from such a Low fatigue level.

Bear in mind as well that Iker is only a 4.4 trainer so a 5.0 trainer would be even more effective I suspect.

Brian Swartz

03-23-2016, 10:12 PM

Or is in in parallel of tournaments and practice ?

Primarily this. The obvious scenario is when you have more fatigue than you use during the week. This can happen for practice weeks especially for particularly high-endurance players; it can also happen if you unexpectedly lose early in a tournament. One example that can be common at a certain career stage is for example losing in the quarterfinals of a Slam or one of the two-week masters events. Then you only get one match, and have to fill the rest of the week through friendlies. Trainers are better than friendlies.

What law said about training possibly being better than practice weeks in some cases is interesting to me though. That's the kind of thing I'll need to experiment with.

kingfc22

03-24-2016, 12:08 AM

Oh man. Why did I click on the Dynasty Thread? Now I'm going to get sucked in.

kingfc22

03-26-2016, 01:57 PM

Read this thread a couple of time and still a little foggy in one thing. When your player is not in a tournament, that will lower their form to an acceptable level. But during these weeks are friendlies or practice tournaments the right strategy or are these players simply taking the week off

Brian Swartz

03-26-2016, 03:02 PM

As far as having form too high, you want to play practice tournaments. Friendlies are a last resort if you have no other way to use your available fatigue(they're better than nothing).

britrock88

03-26-2016, 03:09 PM

Only competitive tournaments contribute to form. But any play contributes to fatigue. The trick is keeping your form in the 15-30 range while consistently using your fatigue allotment to earn XP to improve your players' abilities.

kingfc22

03-26-2016, 03:18 PM

As far as having form too high, you want to play practice tournaments. Friendlies are a last resort if you have no other way to use your available fatigue(they're better than nothing).

Only competitive tournaments contribute to form. But any play contributes to fatigue. The trick is keeping your form in the 15-30 range while consistently using your fatigue allotment to earn XP to improve your players' abilities.

Got it. Now it all makes sense

kingfc22

03-27-2016, 05:23 PM

How often do "new players" show up in the for hire section? Is their a weekly, quarterly, etc influx?

law90026

03-27-2016, 06:39 PM

My understanding is that it's either every Monday in the gameworld or Everyday (based on some posts in the game forums).

Which world are you playing in?

kingfc22

03-27-2016, 06:49 PM

My understanding is that it's either every Monday in the gameworld or Everyday (based on some posts in the game forums).

Which world are you playing in?

Two players in World 3 and two players in World 4

britrock88

03-27-2016, 11:03 PM

Two players in World 3 and two players in World 4

Who are your guys in GW3? I moved from GW1 to there lately (sorry, Brian, it's just too slow!).

kingfc22

03-28-2016, 01:09 AM

Who are your guys in GW3? I moved from GW1 to there lately (sorry, Brian, it's just too slow!).

Christo Henche and Randolf Brown.

Brian Swartz

03-28-2016, 01:23 AM

My understanding is that it's either every Monday in the gameworld or Everyday

Every few Mondays in the gameworld actually.

I moved from GW1 to there lately (sorry, Brian, it's just too slow!).

Sorry about what? That just means less competition for me :P.

digamma

03-30-2016, 09:28 AM

Minor development for me in GW 11. My man Ron Ashman was seeded for the first time in a Grand Slam, albeit at #32. He's played to form, but will likely bow out against the #7 seed in the third round.

Alf

03-30-2016, 10:16 AM

GW11 too : in Juinior, my young Belarus Piontkowsky got offered to play in doubles with a spanish guy (ranked in the top 16). They won their first grand slam at Rolland Garros when Piontkowsky turned 17yr and 0wk. So cool. Piontkowsky is now ranked #19. In singles, he got seeded as the #11 guy and lost in round 3 (round of 16).

My other guy just got into the top 100 recently but at 25y9wk, I am not sure he is a long term prospect there. I might as well try to get a future trainer now rather than later.

Edit for links

Nikola (http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=player&extra=185714)

Jean-François (http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=player&extra=179846)

Umbrella

03-30-2016, 02:15 PM

digamma

03-30-2016, 02:33 PM

You guys talked me into it, and I signed up. My questions are very noobish. My two starting players are pretty bad. One is a 14 year old, ranked 1004th, the other is a 21 year old ranked 2106th.

1. Since these guys are so bad, is it better to just do a lot of practice? And does it matter which practice tournament you enter?

2. If the answer to #1 is to practice, when to enter tournaments? When form gets close to 15?

3. I understand junior tournaments are for 18-, but what are amateur? Are these for the truly awful players, like mine?

edit to add

4. I entered my young guy in a tournament, which showed only two other players. However, he ended up having to go through qualifying. Where did all the other players come from?

5. For the entries on tournaments, what are the numbers before and after the slash?

I'll start and others can supplement.

1. You will get most benefit from practice as a young player, in part because they are guaranteed matches (subject to fatigue) for an entire week. That said, your ranking doesn't improve unless you play tournaments. So, I think the common strategy is to play tournaments when your form is between 16.5 and 25 and then let it sink back down to 15-16 through practice, then play tournaments again. Depending on endurance this may be one tournament every three to four weeks.

Brian has some stuff on selecting practice sessions. You can click on the link of the practice session and see who has registered for the session to date. The best practice session would put your player in a group where he is with similarly ranked players but he's near the bottom of the group. You get a slight experience boost for losing matches and for playing longer matches. The ideal scenario then for practice is coming up just short in very competitive matches.

2. I answered much of this above. Others may have more thoughts.

3. I've only played amateurs with one player. I think the more common path is to play the juniors and then move into the lower rated futures tournaments, which you'll be competitive in if you've trained regularly until the junior is 18.

4. The computer owned players join at the last minute to fill out the bracket.

5. The first number is singles players in the main bracket and the second is doubles teams in the main bracket. This doesn't include the qualifying rounds.

Umbrella

03-30-2016, 02:46 PM

And I'll add another. How do you gain manager points?

britrock88

03-30-2016, 03:09 PM

You guys talked me into it, and I signed up. My questions are very noobish. My two starting players are pretty bad. One is a 14 year old, ranked 1004th, the other is a 21 year old ranked 2106th.

1. Since these guys are so bad, is it better to just do a lot of practice? And does it matter which practice tournament you enter?

2. If the answer to #1 is to practice, when to enter tournaments? When form gets close to 15?

3. I understand junior tournaments are for 18-, but what are amateur? Are these for the truly awful players, like mine?

edit to add

4. I entered my young guy in a tournament, which showed only two other players. However, he ended up having to go through qualifying. Where did all the other players come from?

5. For the entries on tournaments, what are the numbers before and after the slash?

6. What exactly is a futures tournament?

And I'll add another. How do you gain manager points?

1. Regardless of how good or bad your guys are, practice is an essential part of players' careers. It's the primary method to earn XP that you use to build up players' skill/service/doubles abilities. When players are young, the primary focus is on practice, while playing tournaments to keep their form above 15.

Choosing practice tournaments doesn't have to be too complicated. Digamma's point is a good one, but may be more nuanced than you need. My main thoughts in choosing among practice tournaments is 1) what surface season is it? and 2) what surfaces do I want my players to be better on? Question 2 is more important when your players are younger, as added exposure increases their affinity to surfaces, but that effect decreases over time as players accumulate more total tennis experience. And always enter both singles and doubles for maximum experience.

2. Mostly covered already. This changes, though, when you have a player that you're trying to have climb to the very top of either the junior or general rankings.

3. The breakout of tournament types is essentially this: Major tourneys are open to all; Challengers are open to players outside the top 30 or 32; Futures to those outside the top 200; Amateurs to those outside the top 1000.

As Digamma has alluded to, there are junctures in a player's career where it is important to match his abilities to those he's playing with. Early in a player's adult career, it's hard to break through with a very low ranking, so you spend sufficient time earning ranking points in one level of tournaments so that you can consistently compete at the next level of tournaments.

4. Computer-managed players do not register for tournaments in advance. The list you see if of human-managed players that have entered the tournament.

5. The X/Y denotes the number of singles and doubles entries in the main tournament field.

6. Covered it in 3.

7. I think manager points are mainly gained by having your players win practice matches. There could be more ways to earn points, but I honestly haven't looked into it much.

Umbrella

03-30-2016, 03:48 PM

And always enter both singles and doubles for maximum experience.

So if I choose doubles, will it just randomly assign a partner?

digamma

03-30-2016, 04:10 PM

Yup, unless you have a partner already who is playing in the same tournament. (You can send partner requests to other players.)

Brian Swartz

03-30-2016, 11:22 PM

1. Others have pretty much covered this, but a couple additions/clarifications/whatevers here. Keeping form 15 or above is the big thing, so if you are below 16.3 you want to play a tournament the next week. Whether you can micromanage this week to week or want to play two or three events in a row to make sure you don't dip too low will depend largely on your time and how fast of a world you are playing in. It basically doesn't matter what practice tournament you enter until you have a highly-ranked player, because they will pair you with similarly ranked players. However,

always enter both singles and doubles for maximum experience.

This is only true above a certain endurance threshold(I think somewhere between 2.5 and 3.0 though I haven't nailed it down precisely). Below that, just singles will be enough for your needs.

3. Amateur tournaments are only available if you are ranked outside the Top 1000. They are the lowest rung of senior(i.e, not junior) tournaments. I think they are great as long as you are eligible, because if you lose early you're not good enough for futures; if you don't, you can get in more matches in a week and therefore take more time off for practice. This is because the field is larger than you'll find at higher levels.

4. Others have answered correctly. I'll add that this becomes less and less of a problem as you ascend the rankings, because more and more of the players for the better tournaments are human-controlled. At the lower levels, I gauge what tournaments to enter by looking at the results for recent similar tournaments. I.e., for your player, you might look at who was seeded at recent JG4 and JG5 events to see what the ranking range tends to be for them.

6. Britock's answer to #3 is a good quick summary.

7.

I think manager points are mainly gained by having your players win practice matches. There could be more ways to earn points, but I honestly haven't looked into it much.

Partial credit only for this answer :P. You do get them from practice matches(the higher group you are in, the more you get per win; 45 for the top group, 25 for the second, then 14, 7, 4, 2, 1. if you are down low enough, I think Group 9 or below, you get nothing). However, you also get points equal to the ranking points your player earns in tournaments. For example, winning a Masters is 1000 ranking points and 1000 manager points.

Once you start accumulating manager points, you will also notice another aspect: you lose some of them weekly, so if you do nothing your manager points will decline. If you are VIP you lose 1.5%; free managers lose 1%(this is to off-set the advantage of the VIP managers getting four players instead of two). At first this means basically nothing and is not noticeable. As you move up though it's more and more noticeable; I lose almost 500 points a week this way, so if I'm not bringing in a considerable amount on a particular week, my total will drop.

And now, my standard answer to a question you didn't even ask, since I'm an annoying twerp:

My two starting players are pretty bad. One is a 14 year old, ranked 1004th, the other is a 21 year old ranked 2106th.

Firstly, your self-awareness is admirable :). Secondly, I would consider restarting(you can fire your players and reset to 150 points at any time). And third, the best way to start is with a young player(well done) and the best mid-20s player you can find(you can do better than someone in the 2100s). From there, the path is this:

Earn enough points with the 'mature' player to hire the best trainer candidate you can find. This will be a player in their mid-30s usually. Typically this is in the 600-800 points range but it can be less. Once you have enough, fire your mid-20s player, hire the trainer, and turn them into a trainer as soon as you can get them to 5.0 or as close as possible to that. I can point you to more info on specifics here if need be in terms of how to calculate trainer ability, how to identify the right players, and so on.

While that is going on, regularly look for better youngsters(almost always in the 14-year-old range). When you find one with significantly more potential than the one you have, fire and replace. Lather-rinse-repeat. Once you have your trainer in place, you'll want to get a second young player, and off to the races you will be.

Umbrella

03-31-2016, 10:12 AM

Thanks Brian. I have already tried the fire/rehire method in both my worlds. The things I did differently were to focus more on endurance than talent, although the pickings were still pretty slim. What I also did was focus on young players only. I enjoy the challenge of trying to bring them up the ranks.

I had come on here to ask the singles/doubles question that you preemptively answered. I've been entering my guys in both singles and doubles for practice, and they are only playing a couple of matches per week. I think I will stick with singles only for practice week, and try singles and doubles for tournaments, to give them additional matches if they get bounced early.

Umbrella

03-31-2016, 10:28 AM

Earn enough points with the 'mature' player to hire the best trainer candidate you can find. This will be a player in their mid-30s usually. Typically this is in the 600-800 points range but it can be less. Once you have enough, fire your mid-20s player, hire the trainer, and turn them into a trainer as soon as you can get them to 5.0 or as close as possible to that. I can point you to more info on specifics here if need be in terms of how to calculate trainer ability, how to identify the right players, and so on.

For trainers, are the 600-800 points you are talking about manager points, or the experience points?

britrock88

03-31-2016, 11:05 AM

I had come on here to ask the singles/doubles question that you preemptively answered. I've been entering my guys in both singles and doubles for practice, and they are only playing a couple of matches per week. I think I will stick with singles only for practice week, and try singles and doubles for tournaments, to give them additional matches if they get bounced early.

You're actually showing the more correct and more nuanced understanding here. Playing practice tournaments for fatigue and playing tournaments for form are different. Maximizing the form you get is always good, whereas with fatigue you want to just barely exceed 50 per day.

For trainers, are the 600-800 points you are talking about manager points, or the experience points?

Manager points are the cost to hire players.

I'll make one qualification to Bryan's point--I've found great trainer candidates for many fewer points. I think the 5.2 trainer I have in GW3 cost 85 points.

Umbrella

04-01-2016, 12:08 PM

Thanks for the advice everyone. I entered my senior player (ranked 1153) in an amateur tournament, and he won singles, and made semifinals in doubles. My gut tells me winning lower level tourneys is better than bowing out early of higher level ones.

However, there was a FT3 tournament in a couple of weeks in his country that I want to enter. But since he made such a good run in both singles and doubles, his form is pretty high. By my calculations, his starting form will be 23.8 for the FT3 tournament. Using this, I am planning on only entering him in singles. For the more experienced players, does this sound like a decent strategy, or should I forgo the tournament until his form is lower?

MarkBGregory

04-01-2016, 01:29 PM

Good evening all,

(Well, evening in my part of the world)

I've been a RR player for a very long time, having picked it up around 4/5 years ago before dropping out and restarting again this February. I'd noticed how dead the forum was on the website itself and stumbled across this website (I honestly can't remember how) that had a thread about a Sri Lankan legacy and this one. It's great to see people are still enjoying the game and actively talking about it.

I'm on GW2 and GW12, and my username is the same as it is on here. Anyone wishing to check out my players can do so, the best two (potentially, at least) I have on each world are linked below:

Christian Kulle (GW2) (http://rr2.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=player&extra=335908&match_type=tournament&bclr=1)

Ralph Dyer (GW12) (http://rr12.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=player&extra=269099&match_type=tournament&bclr=1)

I've flicked through the thread and seen a lot of advice given out, which for the most part has been similar to my train of thought while playing the game. There's nothing much for me to add in terms of training and such like, but I'd like to throw in my two cents when it comes to finding a future star player, and what specifically to look for.

If you accept that the MOST IMPORTANT statistics in the ENTIRE game are Skill and Service, then at 14 years of age, you're looking out predominantly for Talent and Endurance, because combined, they allow you to get more experience which leads to a higher Skill and Service at the peak of a player's career. Secondary attributes are Strength and Speed, as they contribute smaller amounts to Skill and Service respectively, while Mentality is seen as tertiary. Home Advantage is just a bonus.

Let me provide you with an example: in GW12 right now, there's a 30-year-old player called Guillaume Saint-Waleri. He's roughly 4th/5th in the rankings, but was world number one for years. I checked out his stats when I re-signed up in Feb and I was like, eh, they don't seem that great. Speed/Strength was around 3 at 100%, while Endurance and Talent were 4.5+ - that is, he wasn't necessarily that strong or fast, but he was able to gain experience super, super quickly. I noticed that his Skill level was at 5.2(!) which was at least 0.2 ahead of everyone else - so despite his relatively weak Strength and Speed, it didn't matter because his Skill was so much higher than everyone else. That's why he was top of the world.

So, myself and a friend of mine came up with the following, and ranked our own players according to it:

(Bear in mind that all the values discussed are when a player reaches 100%)

a) Talent and Endurance totals (TE):

1) 9.0+: HIRE THIS PLAYER AT ALL COSTS. Even if the other stats are a little disappointing, you have a brilliant chance of making the top 10 at the very least. Top of the world if it's backed up with good other stats, and even if it's not. (see below).

2) 8.5-9.0: HIRE THIS PLAYER, but make sure they have fairly high other stats. At this level, players might get off to a slow start, but generally have good enough endurance to get through a full week of singles/dubs practice, plus a couple of training sessions/friendly matches, and can be competitive at the top.

3) 8.0-8.5: Worth hanging on to, especially if their other stats are high. In quiet gameworlds, and even in busy ones with the right schedule, these players can still push towards the top 10, but they will need good aging factors and strength and speed to maintain a high position, because otherwise their Endurance will drop too quickly and the player will start to decline.

4) Below 8.0: Don't bother.

b) Speed and Strength values (SS)

Assuming you've hired a player with at least 8.0 TE, then you want to look at their S+S potential, because obviously a player with 8.5 TE and 7.5 SS will do worse than one with the same TE but 8.0 SS

1) IF you can get a SS at 8.0 or higher, that's ideal. Players with 8.5+ TE and 8.0+ SS are generally going to be pretty strong.

2) If your SS is between 7.5-8.0, you could still have a pretty successful career with a player whose TE was 8.0+.

3) If your SS is between 7.0-7.5, then you really want 8.5+ in terms of TE to offset the poor physical stats.

4) If your SS is below 7.0, then unless you have a TE of 9.0+, it's not really worth training this player.

c) Mentality value (M)

Mentality is viewed (by us) as more of an 'added bonus', and we generally don't factor it in to our calculations when deciding whether or not to hire a player. If you're in two minds on a player (maybe one that has 8 TE and 7.5 SS), then if the Mentality is 3.5+, you might want to train the player up until a better option eventually comes along. Apart from that, a TE 9.0 player with 8.0 SS is going to rock, even if the Mentality is zero.

Generally speaking, if your Talent, Endurance, Speed and Strength totals at 100% (TESS value) is 15.5+, then your player has a decent chance of making it.

Examples

All of those numbers might be a touch confusing, so let me give you a couple of in-game examples. Some are my players, some aren't.

1) Guillaume Saint-Waleri (GW12)

The best example of mediocre stats backed up by huge Endurance. At 100%, Saint-Waleri had a TE = 9.2 (Talent 4.4, Endurance 4.8), but a SS = 6.3 (Strength 3.0, Speed 3.3), and a M = 3.3. Not exactly jaw-dropping statistics. Yet thanks to the ability to constantly pick up experience week in, week out, Saint-Waleri won 9 Grand Slams and 15 Masters 1000 events, with his first Slam coming aged 22y46w, and his last aged 28y46w. At 31 years old, he's still 4th in the world.

2) Valentino Dotto (GW2)

Another excellent example of the above. At 100% (and bear in mind that Dotto also has an aging factor of 102%, proving early-peaking players CAN be successful at senior level), Dotto had a TE = 9.4(!) (Talent 4.8, Endurance 4.6), but a SS = 6.9 (Strength 3.4, Speed 3.5), which again are hardly mind-blowing statistics. Yet Dotto, at 28, is still world #1 and has 10 Slam titles, 16 Masters titles and 1 World Tour Finals title.

3) Jean Paul Demercastel (GW2)

Here's an example of strong SS values but a lower TE value, and as a result, a less successful player. Demercastel, at 100%, had a TE = 8.0 and a SS = 7.9. 7.9 is generally pretty decent for an SS, and better than the SS of both players above by some margin. However, at 30 years old, the highest Demercastel reached in the world was 9th, having never won a Masters tournament and only 3 ATP 500s. He didn't even win Roland Garros despite being a specialist on Clay and being French!! Still, getting into the top 10 is a pipedream for many RR players, so not bad going, all in all.

Now we come to the My Players section. Obviously, having only been signed up since February (this time), none of players have hit their peak, but here's what I'm expecting from the best ones:

4) Ralph Dyer (GW12)

My best and most exciting prospect. At 100%, Dyer will have aTE = 8.5 and an SS = 8.0. Obviously, this isn't a sky-high TE, but I'm hoping his excellent SS value (and 4.1 Mentality), might just nudge him in the right direction. With better stats than Demercastel above, I'm expecting him to break the top 10.

5) Anton Barth (GW12)

...That's if Anton Barth doesn't get there first. Barth has a slightly better TE = 8.7 but slightly worse physical stats SS = 7.6 and a Mentality of 3.0, so only time will tell as to which of these guys will be the better player.

6) Christian Kulle (GW2)

This could be another example of a Demercastel. Kulle is a hugely talented player, with a SS = 8.0 to match that of Dyer, but his TE = 8.1 isn't necessarily the biggest and may mean he never fully lives up to his potential: especially given his aging factor of 105% may mean he starts to decline before he fully get the chance to compete at the very top of the game.

I hope this analysis has helped some of you out, rather than confused you. One last pointer:

Generally, when aged 19y39w, your player should have at least 144 experience points. If he does, then you're on the right track.

britrock88

04-01-2016, 02:34 PM

Welcome aboard! And thanks for this contribution.

Umbrella

04-01-2016, 03:21 PM

Welcome Mark, and thanks for your input. Reading it opened up some more questions from me.

Next to a player's age, there is a percentage. I'm assuming that this is their total potential reached. For example, if the percentage is 70%, and their skill on the training page is 20, the skill level indicated by the tennis balls should be (40/20)*0.7, or 1.4. I can verify this on my player's page.

However, in the help file, it claims age affects skill, service, strength, speed, and endurance, with endurance being counted twice. Skill and service I can calculated directly. Does the same apply to strength and speed? For example, if my player in the example above has 2.0 strength, when he fully matures, does that mean his top strength will be 2/0.7 or 2.9?

And finally, with endurance, does this happen twice? Keeping the same player, if his endurance is 2.0, will his final endurance be (2.0/0.7)/0.7, or 4.1?

On a different topic, when it comes to trainers, there is a formula in the help file which defines the trainer rating. So I was looking around, and found a guy who looked to be a good candidate down the road when I get enough points. But I noticed he had a 70% next to his age. Does that mean he is declining? And will his actual ratings will be much better, or are the tennis ball ratings what are determining his trainer value?

Also, when hiring someone to be a trainer, my guess is that you can't make him one right away. You need to build up 7500 experience points. If it is a guy in his twilight, is that difficult to do?

britrock88

04-01-2016, 03:46 PM

britrock88

04-01-2016, 03:52 PM

MarkBGregory

04-01-2016, 04:40 PM

Additional data for context with Mark's breakdown...

My GW2 guys, Sean Mendez and Andrei Lebedyenko, are cresting right around the #16 spot in the world at 27yo and 90% athleticism.

Mendez had a peak of 4.4 talent, 3.3 endurance, 4.1 strength, and 2.6 speed. That made him a 7.7 TE + 6.7 SS = 14.4 TESS player.

Lebedyenko had a peak of: 4.4 talent, 3.5 endurance, 3.9 strength, and 3.0 speed. That made him a 7.9 TE + 6.9 SS = 14.8 TESS player.

Interesting. Both players are pretty high in the world, considering I said above to "not bother" with players with a TE below 8.0! I wouldn't even say their SS stats are that exceptional either. You must have trained them exceptionally well, britrock. I think they also have the advantage of peaking late, which very few of my players have. I've buddied you in game, btw.

It makes me feel confident of success with some of the players I have. Igor Borowski, for example, should be heading towards a TE of 8.3 + SS of 7.6 = 15.9 TESS. Even Elezgueta, who I'd perceive as my worst player, has a TE of 8.0 + SS 7.3 = TESS 15.3. But Elezgueta has 104% aging factor, so that will probably hold him back.

Obviously all this stuff above is pure conjecture, and I could be overestimating or underestimating certain abilities, but it does seem Endurance and Talent are crucial to training up a top, top player.

Umbrella

04-01-2016, 05:03 PM

Dumb question. How do you fire a player?

MarkBGregory

04-01-2016, 05:08 PM

Go onto "Your Players" on the left side bar.

Click "Fire". ;)

Umbrella

04-01-2016, 05:15 PM

OK, I knew that was a dumb question. Thanks.

Brian Swartz

04-01-2016, 05:42 PM

it does seem Endurance and Talent are crucial to training up a top, top player.

Definitely, and thanks for your contributions. It's interesting to read the perspective of someone who has also been around for a while but has a slightly different approach. I don't value speed and strength as much, mentality more so, and most importantly I can confidently say that endurance is more important than talent. They are the most vital though, no doubt about that. None of my players has ever reached 7.0 SS(my latest will be the closest, at 6.8). They've been a little below 9, about 8.6-8.9 I think all are on the TE 'scale', which at least in a relatively low-competition world has been enough to challenge for #1.

law90026

04-02-2016, 10:23 AM

Thanks for the shared approach Mark!

I think what I'll try to keep track of soon is to play around with Teo's training on his off weeks. I'm thinking of testing:

a) just coaching;
b) pushing past 300 fatigue every day on a practice tournament week;
c) keeping fatigue at not more than 250 at the end of each day on a practice tournament week.

For (b) and (c), I will be testing out using tournament weeks using just singles vs singles + doubles.

So here are my thoughts:

a) I want to see how viable pure coaching is versus a practice tournament. Reason being that a practice tournament is somewhat random at times;
b) I want to see whether it makes sense to keep fatigue below 200 in a practice tournament week because I've found that players have a higher chance of sitting out once they hit 200 fatigue;
c) I want to see whether it makes sense to play only singles because doubles matches have a xp penalty and they may therefore render a practice week more inefficient because of the increased fatigue.

Brian Swartz

04-02-2016, 12:20 PM

For C, doubles matches do have an xp penalty but they also have a fatigue penalty. I found the ratio to be the same.

kingfc22

04-02-2016, 01:25 PM

britrock88

04-02-2016, 02:15 PM

Is there any benefit to registering for multiple tournaments in a single week? Seems like the game lets you sign up and register for more than one tourney but not quite sure what the implications may be.

Ooh, yes, there is! This is particularly useful in fast game worlds, where you may not have the chance to check in on your guys every few hours.

First, a couple things that the game ALWAYS does if you sign up for multiple tournaments:

1) It places you in a highest-level tournament. For instance, if you sign up for a 500 and 2 250s, you'll end up in the 500.
2) If you register multiple players for the same tourney(s), they'll end up in a tourney together. This is true regardless of whether they're playing doubles together. The game is also not perfect about maximizing your players' seeds when they're in a tourney together.

Otherwise, the site will place your player(s) in a tournament that gives them the best seed. I believe it does so irrespective of surface, host nation, etc., so you'll want to exercise some judgment about signing up for multiple tournaments.

Multi-signups can work well, though. If I know I want Lebedyenko to play an indoor 250 and don't care which one, I'll just sign him up for both and let the site sort out the best option. It's also useful with young players, when there may be 10 JG4s or FT3s on the schedule.

On net, I do this pretty often, and try to refine my choices as each game Sunday draws closer.

daahdeedaa

04-02-2016, 04:57 PM

So longtime lurker, previously had an FOFC account which I posted like twice and forgot the e-mail associated with it.

Anyway, I started playing rocking rackets because of the Sri Lanka dynasty :).

This is in reference to Law90026's pure trainer > practice idea.It's like Brian and other have been saying, practice > training. I ran a study on 3 of my players. I basically followed how much experience they got per point of fatigue and compared it to this same ratio when training with a 5.1 trainer. Note I took a sample size of around 50 practice matches over an 8 week period per player.

Player A 4.4 Endurance (I did not not distinguish between singles and doubles practice of this player)

0.84 xp/fatigue from trainer
1.07 xp/fatigue from practice matches

11% of total practice matches were noticeably less efficient than trainer (that is they had <0.79 ratio)
17% were about just as efficient (~0.79-0.90 range)
72% were noticeably more efficient (>0.90)

Player B 3.8 Endurance

0.63 xp/fatigue from trainer
0.83 xp/fatigue from practice matches

0.86 Singles xp/fatigue
0.75 doubles xp/fatigue

6% matches less efficient than trainer in singles
12% matches less efficient than trainer in doubles

Player C 2.0 Endurance

0.37 xp/fatigue from trainer
0.38 xp/fatigue from practice matches

0.32 Singles xp/fatigue
0.50 doubles xp/fatigue

69%!! less efficient in singles
7% less efficient in doubles

-----------------------------------------

So I think you can see from the data, that on practicing beats out training even though some of your practices end up poorly. The only real outlier is player C singles and I think have an adequate explanation (curiously enough player C's crappy singles practices is what lead me to do this study in the first place).

Player C is currently the #3 ranked doubles player in the world. He is also an unranked singles player. That means in singles practice he is matched up with other unranked singles player. This is usually 19 year olds or super washed up players (either way players with low service/skill). While player C is 34 years old he still has relatively solid 4.4 skill rating and 3.6 service rating. So he is being matched up with pure scrubs even though basically still has the skills/service game of a top 100 singles player. The only time he has decent matches is when similar high ranked doubles player with really low single player ranking is in a practice match with him. As a result, I've basically stopped entering him into singles practices and just spam training him as a supplement to doubles practice matches.

For Player B, I suspect a similar scenario as to why the doubles practice lags noticeably behind single (though still more efficient than using a trainer). Player B is the #23 singles player in the world and ranked #192 in doubles. His doubles rank is a bit lower than it should be because I started omitting him from doubles tournaments when he hit the top 50 in singles. So while the disparity is not as great as player C, his doubles ranking is lower than it should be resulting in him being placed in "lower level" doubles practices then he should be playing in. Still, he still gets more xp practice from doubles practice than if I would use that fatigue through my 5.1 trainer.

Basically the conclusion is only use you trainer for extra fatigue not used in practice/knocked out early in a tournament (what Brian suggested), or if you somehow know you're gonna get super shitty practice matches (like Player C in every singles practice week).

Unfortunately this doubles/singles thing for high-ranked doubles player is the only repeatable scenario I've found for predicting potential poor practice. If you can more reliably predict a poor practice week than you might have something.

Brian Swartz

04-02-2016, 05:18 PM

More great info, thanks! Another scenario that I think might be possible for is for a very high-ranked player. Practice sessions for my top singles players often suck, because there are very few players who can give them a good match. I would think also it is probably best for Player C to just do doubles practices, and then fill in with training if needed(shouldn't be needed much at a 2.0 endurance).

MarkBGregory

04-02-2016, 05:59 PM

Daahdeedaa!

You've got one of my ex-players on GW12, Adam Tisserand. How's he treating you?

And welcome!

daahdeedaa

04-02-2016, 07:31 PM

Not bad, he's probably going to end up #1 junior player for the beginning of next year. He's number 5 right now and the rest of the top 10 "graduates" this year. Long term, if only he didn't have that 105% aging factor...but I guess that also helps guarantees his stud junior player status.

Tisserand though apparently not of your standards, is one of the best 14 year olds I've been able to hire :). I'm finding world 12 more competitive than the other one I'm in, 7. There seems to be 50% more people playing so not a surprise I guess. Not surprisingly all my players in world 7 are better potential wise.

britrock88

04-02-2016, 07:37 PM

3D (that's your new nick :) ), nice data! Also... get that doubles champ a few singles points!

law90026

04-02-2016, 09:35 PM

Love the info 3D!

daahdeedaa

04-03-2016, 02:53 AM

Thanks for the kind words guys. Kinda interested in what Brian said about top-ranked players and their practices. May do a simple analysis similar to what I did with my players on the Hero/Villain (Mehul/Iglar) who inspired 1000 FOFC Rocking Racket players (ok probably like 10-20 more realistically haha).

Another small thing I examined when I first started playing was how much should I value talent over other attributes. Talent was easy enough to figure out. I just hired a bunch of people at different talent levels in a universe I wasn't playing and waited a day to see how much xp they got (you get the same amount every day).

Talent Chart (first number is talent, 2nd number is xp per day)

3.5 - 23
3.6 - 23
3.7 - 24
3.8 - 25
3.9 - 25
4.0 - 26
4.1 - 27
4.2 - 28
4.3 - 28
4.4 - 29
4.5 - 30
4.6 - 30
4.7 - 31
4.8 - 32
4.9 - 32
5.0 - 33

So the difference between a 5.0 and 4.5 talent player is 3 xp a day. Over a 13 year development (ages 14-27), this would be a difference of 14,196 experience.

Ok this is where my calculations get a bit rough but I think my logic makes some kind of sense. Looking at my #3 doubles player (a former #1 singles player) has 120 raw skill. Mehul who has been trained in a perfect 2:1 skill:service xp ratio and is a top player has ~120 raw skill based on his aging factors and current skill. At the 120 skill level, it costs 7289 experience to gain an additional skill point (120-->121). Therefore the talent difference between 4.5 and 5.0 player nets you approximately 2 raw skill. This is 0.1 tennis balls.

You can use this baseline to compare to strength which we know is worth 0.2 the value of skill according to the help files. So a strength difference of 1 tennis ball = 0.2 skill. Therefore 0.5 strength = 0.5 difference in talent at the 5.0 - 4.5. Therefore if I have 1 player with 5.0 talent and 3.5 strength, this is equivalent to a 4.5 talent player with 4.0 strength.

The chart isn't quite linear (4.2 talent is the same as 4.3 talent same for 4.5 and 4.6) so if you want to be sure you'd have to do calculations, but for the most part it follows this trend of difference of talent = difference in strength.

Something else I've thought about but was too lazy to calculate is how can we relate endurance to talent (and strength also)? I figured I would start with 350 fatigue per week to spend and relate it to endurance and xp gained/point of fatigue but I realized I would have to figure out that formula and also figure out what is a typical xp gain for a player over various stages of his career and said %#(@ this lol. Maybe someone more mathematically inclined could figure this out easier.

Brian Swartz

04-03-2016, 03:51 AM

Something else I've thought about but was too lazy to calculate is how can we relate endurance to talent (and strength also)? I figured I would start with 350 fatigue per week to spend and relate it to endurance and xp gained/point of fatigue but I realized I would have to figure out that formula and also figure out what is a typical xp gain for a player over various stages of his career and said %#(@ this lol. Maybe someone more mathematically inclined could figure this out easier.

Heh. Interesting. You are right on with Mehul, he is at 120 raw skill, and 90 service for what it's worth. On the endurance front, when I was looking into the talent and endurance thing(I made an absurdly long post about this, a couple of them actually, in my dynasty thread if anyone cares to look 'em up), I looked into just the weekly xp gains. Here's how that worked out.

** As your scale points out, a highly talented player gets about 30 xp a day. In my case, Mehul and Girsh each get 29, while Mooljee gets 31. We're talking here just over 200 xp a week; 203 to be precise for the first pair of players. I found that I could average about 500 xp a week total gain for a player with high endurance somewhere near maturity(say 4.0 or higher endurance, both were around 4.3 to 4.5 at peak). This depends on a number of things; long matches in Slams or WTC boost it, I've had 700+ xp weeks, and of course some practice weeks are lower but consistently getting at least 425-450 even on the low weeks was not difficult. So as an average, I think 500 is slightly low for a mid-4s endurance player, probably for a 4.0 endurance it would be about average. This is 'back-of-the-napkin' math stuff, but I wanted to get an estimate, not spend an amount of time on the subject that might be more appropriate to researching a doctoral thesis :).

** The above stipulates a player with roughly equal talent and endurance, at their peak. In that circumstance, at least 60% of the weekly xp gain was coming from matches(endurance) not talent. And I must again mention the 'britrock caveat' that in a suboptimal environment such as you often have in a fast world where you can't maximize everything, talent may be relatively speaking more important. But assuming you have the time available to properly micromanage everything, one reason for playing in a slow world IMO, endurance is significantly more important.

** The 60/40 split is only one factor, since talent is static and endurance is the thing that changes the most due to it being 'divided twice' or however you want to look at it by the current aging %. This means endurance is less of a factor for a player that is quite young(or quite old, but by then who cares since they are 'past' the development curve). More of a player's experience is going to come from talent, relatively speaking, when they are younger -- they can't play as many matches and the ones they do play generally won't be worth quite as much, since they don't get the 'major events' bonuses that a top 'senior' player will get.

** As to how endurance is used formula-wise, I had that figured out at some point, or so I thought. Turns out what I wrote wasn't really accurate. I have a basic idea of how it works but not enough to narrow it down to a clear and simple formula. But basically, the more points you play in matches, the more tired you get. Sort of common sense there.

Conclusion

Players spend most of their developmental years(and earn most of their xp) at a level close to physical maturity. At that level, all other things being equal, endurance is more important. For example, using the 14-27 age range as noted, a player will be in their mid-80s or so in terms of age % at a minimum by the time they are out of juniors with still almost a decade left of improving. Talent's important, but endurance is #1. By my calculations, the incomparable Eric Gorritepe from my world that I've discussed, the unquestioned greatest of all time, wasn't that special of an athlete. He did have somewhere around a 5.2 endurance at peak, at least 5.1. Davydenko on steroids(hopefully that phrase isn't redundant) in other words. As a result of that and proper management, his ability to train up was basically off the charts.

daahdeedaa

04-03-2016, 09:06 AM

I decided to test out the possibility that top ranked players get poor practices by examining FOFC tennis hero, Anil Mehul.

I looked at his most recent 7 weeks of practice, which consisted of 24 singles practice matches and 25 doubles practice matches.

For the trainer comparison I used a 5.2 trainer on a player who has 3.7 endurance (Mehul has 3.6). My 3.8 endurance player achieved a 0.63 xp/fatigue ratio, my 3.7 endurance player achieved a 0.62 ratio, I don't think it's crazy to estimate that Mehul would have an 0.61.

The Maths
---------------

0.61 xp/fatigue from trainer
0.69 xp/fatigue from practice matches

0.73 Singles xp/fatigue
0.59 Doubles xp/fatigue

0% matches noticeably less efficient than trainer in singles
48% matches noticeably less efficient than trainer in doubles

---------------------------------------------------

Mehul was pretty consistent in singles practices over these few weeks. Maybe because he's always playing the top players but he never destroyed anyone so badly he didn't get decent experience. He literally had 3 matches out of 24 that were below the trainer ratio and they barely under that ratio (0.59 and 2 matches that were 0.60).

Mehul likely suffers from the similar fate that my doubles player does except in reverse. He's an unranked doubles player but his true doubles skill level is greater than that. I think the effect isn't as bad because he has a partner to drag down his performance so he doesn't kill the opposition in practice as often. Overall he didn't lose much over this 7 week period by not skipping doubles practice and using a non-existent trainer.

He had a great doubles practice week in Great Britain as he was placed in the first doubles group despite usually being in one of the worst doubles groups. No prominent doubles players practiced there that week and he got a randomly decently ranked partner.

As a side note, these are the scores in terms of points that produced poor xp (they were all doubles wins):
48-20, 51-18, 51-27, 52-27, 55-30, 48-19, 48-14, 48-23, 49-13, 57-29, 48-13, 52-16.

I think everyone knew it already but to reiterate you can achieve good xp by losing by any score, barely winning, or even handily winning. You just can't completely demoralize the other player :).

britrock88

04-03-2016, 12:15 PM

This is making me think that it may be fairly useful to have every competitive player enter a couple futures tournaments during the year-end dead period in whatever they don't play, singles or doubles, so that their practice sessions will be more effective for the next year.

Brian Swartz

04-04-2016, 02:23 AM

I think everyone knew it already but to reiterate you can achieve good xp by losing by any score, barely winning, or even handily winning. You just can't completely demoralize the other player

Actually, you get penalized for losing badly also. Anything less than 40% of points won by the loser will start dropping how much xp you get. It's better to lose badly than win badly of course, but really close matches are what is best. The rest of that was quite valuable though, perhaps I'm not doing as poorly as I thought in practice weeks.

daahdeedaa

04-04-2016, 05:49 AM

Actually, you get penalized for losing badly also. Anything less than 40% of points won by the loser will start dropping how much xp you get. It's better to lose badly than win badly of course, but really close matches are what is best. The rest of that was quite valuable though, perhaps I'm not doing as poorly as I thought in practice weeks.

Losing badly actually seems to be the equivalent of winning a close match or even losing a close match. The real xp apparently comes from losing comfortably but not getting destroyed.

Recent 2 week singles practice results for one of my players:

32-65 L - 32/33 xp/fatigue = 0.97
103-101 W - 68/69 xp/fatigue = 0.99
54-27 W - 18/27 xp/fatigue = 0.67
88-89 L - 60/60 xp/fatigue = 1.00
59-42 W - 28/34 xp/fatigue = 0.82
45-64 L - 43/37 xp/fatigue = 1.16
49-71 L - 48/41 xp/fatigue = 1.17
58-31 W - 21/30 xp/fatigue = 0.70
62-36 W - 24/33 xp/fatigue = 0.73
54-30 W - 20/28 xp/fatigue = 0.71

I think the only real concern with getting destroyed is that you may not use enough of your fatigue if you get destroyed and/or destroy the opponent in multiple matches a week. You'd have to use the inefficient trainer to use up the fatigue.

If you're a young junior player or older player, I'd argue it might actually be beneficial to getting destroyed every week since you're going to use your fatigue up anyway. Now just have to figure the proper strategy to place yourself in a spot to get destroyed in practice all week :). This is all theory crafting though based on numbers though. I'll be the first to admit I'm fairly new to the game and haven't experimented much.

On a side note, if you could somehow partner Mehul with someone who had decent doubles rankings, you could gain an xp benefit from playing better competition. Probably not practical because any manager who was actually persuing doubles probably doesn't want Mehul as a partner and it's not worth one of your roster slots to function purely as a mehul doubles practice drone lol. What britrock suggested seems like a more reasonable solution, just try to increase doubles rankings when possible.

Finally a stupid question, how do you get the rankings year to date that you use to track which players are on pace to be in the WTF in your dynasty?
I've been searching forever but I only see current rankings based on the last 52 weeks and not YTD.

Brian Swartz

04-04-2016, 06:20 AM

If I may demonstrate though, none of your examples are bad losses though. Remember the minimum 60-40 split. The worst of any of your listed matches was the one you bolded, in which you won a third of the points. Note how the xp gain was worse than any of your other losses and in fact even worse than a close win listed next. Now it's a lot better than winning big, that I grant you. But close matches are still better. The first round of a Slam event is a good place to find such mismatches. There was one in the most recent Wimbledon in my world where the point count was 74-17. The loser in this particular case did about the same in terms of xp as they did in a decent practice match loss ... even with the considerable bonus that you get for a Slam match. Such lopsided scores don't happen often of course, but ...

Anyway, as to the other question:

how do you get the rankings year to date that you use to track which players are on pace to be in the WTF in your dynasty?
I've been searching forever but I only see current rankings based on the last 52 weeks and not YTD.

That's something I put together myself, it's not in the game. Under each players' ranking detail(VIP) you can see what tournaments they've played in the past year, organized by type and week and points and so on. The Race is composed of all the Slams, Masters, up to 4 500s, and up to 2 250s from the current calendar year. I just ignore all the ones from the previous year when I add it up. After you get used to doing it, it only takes seconds to put each player's total together.

What britrock suggested seems like a more reasonable solution, just try to increase doubles rankings when possible.

The problem here is doing that consumes form, which you then can't use for singles matches, and a top player needs to maximize their ability to play well in the big singles events. There are very few places in the calendar where it really is feasible to do so. The relatively small amount of experience that better doubles practice would add isn't worth it in my estimation, particularly considering the bonus you get for matches in the Masters and Slams. I do still do it from time to time, but it's once in a blue moon really. If Mehul wasn't one of the top few players in the world it would be different, but since he is there's a little different dynamic at work.

daahdeedaa

04-04-2016, 06:48 AM

I have a feeling I'm not just interpreting correctly what you mean by 60-40 split? I mean my player won 33% of the points, isn't that a 67-33 split?

law90026

04-04-2016, 07:55 AM

Just a little anecdotal information re training: do not maximise your fatigue on practice weeks because that reduces the chance of your player getting games. If you can get it around 200-249 max, that's good.

As illustration: I did 2 practice weeks where I maxed out fatigue after my practice matches and got very few matches. Averaged about 350 xp or so these weeks.

The week where I consciously kept fatigue at not more than 250 each day, Teo got 4 singles matches and his xp for the week was around 450+.

Stool going to test but it suggests use your Trainers only if your fatigue is really low or from Friday onwards.

daahdeedaa

04-04-2016, 08:29 AM

digamma

04-04-2016, 08:31 AM

I'm fairly sure you can play other tournaments and still play JG tournaments the normal graduation day.

MarkBGregory

04-04-2016, 08:53 AM

I have a question on junior eligibility and practice strategy.

I'm starting to notice one of my top ranked 17 year old junior players is getting more frequent bad practice weeks. I imagine this is only going to get worse next year when the current crop of 18 year old is no longer in junior.

I've thought about having him play some AMA or FTs in lieu of JG1 events to increase their singles (non-junior) rankings when they need form. I imagine this will let me get them ranked or at least out of the junior practice pool where he can practice against 19 year olds.

2 questions, can I still play JGA/JGS events or will I have "lost" my eligibility? Has anyone tried this and found better practice results than staying "pure" junior and practicing only with your age group?

If you're talking about Tisserand, then I suggest you play him in AMA events, maybe even Futures, before he graduates the junior tour.

I've done it before, on GW12 I had Anton Barth ranked around #700 in the world, and at the same time he finished the year ranked #1 in juniors too.

However, unfortunately it doesn't mean your player will start playing practice events with other seniors. Until Week 52 of the final year of junior eligibility (i.e. after the Casablanca Cup), all U18s play junior practices. It was a bit of an issue for Barth, because he was significantly better than most of the other juniors at the time, and so his practice weeks were barely scraping any exp, because he was winning 6-0 6-1, 6-1 6-1, 6-0 6-2 etc. all the time.

I know some managers deliberately hold back on using their experience points in the final year of junior eligibility if this looks like it's going to be the case, i.e. "store" exp (up to 20000 points) without using them to boost skill and service. That keeps things a little more even and, while it might mean you don't sweep all the junior competitions, it probably works better for long-term growth.

Umbrella

04-04-2016, 12:12 PM

Interesting reading on trainers here. I finally have my first trainer, and I think I did it right, since he is rated a 5.0. It seems like the consensus here is practice>training. I guess his use would be if a player got bounced early from a tourney.

ETA: I just picked up a new junior player, and set my trainer to train him on Friday. Does this train for the whole week, or just one day? It's now Saturday, and it says he is training, but both of my players are available on the pull down for the trainer.

daahdeedaa

04-04-2016, 12:39 PM

It doesn't train him for the week or even day, it's one training session that lasts around 2 minutes real time and uses variable fatigue based on your players endurance, usually 20 to 60 range. You can train multiple times in one day. So if the trainer has a drop down available he's get to train your player again

daahdeedaa

04-04-2016, 01:18 PM

If you're talking about Tisserand, then I suggest you play him in AMA events, maybe even Futures, before he graduates the junior tour.

I've done it before, on GW12 I had Anton Barth ranked around #700 in the world, and at the same time he finished the year ranked #1 in juniors too.

However, unfortunately it doesn't mean your player will start playing practice events with other seniors. Until Week 52 of the final year of junior eligibility (i.e. after the Casablanca Cup), all U18s play junior practices. It was a bit of an issue for Barth, because he was significantly better than most of the other juniors at the time, and so his practice weeks were barely scraping any exp, because he was winning 6-0 6-1, 6-1 6-1, 6-0 6-2 etc. all the time.

I know some managers deliberately hold back on using their experience points in the final year of junior eligibility if this looks like it's going to be the case, i.e. "store" exp (up to 20000 points) without using them to boost skill and service. That keeps things a little more even and, while it might mean you don't sweep all the junior competitions, it probably works better for long-term growth.

Thanks for the info and advice. Yes, it's tisserand. What's weird is if you look at augosto colarte, number 8 ranked juniors player in world 12. He apparently was able to practice in juniors, singles and doubles week 17, 19 after getting a singles rank. Probably just a bug since he is cpu controlled. He's what originally made me think of getting to tisserand to regular practice (though I admit I didn't realize he was also doing juniors practice the same week)

Umbrella

04-04-2016, 03:48 PM

I have yet another question. Sometimes there are players with a WC for their seeding. What does this mean?

Brian Swartz

04-04-2016, 03:56 PM

Brian Swartz

04-05-2016, 04:13 AM

have a feeling I'm not just interpreting correctly what you mean by 60-40 split? I mean my player won 33% of the points, isn't that a 67-33 split?

I neglected to clarify this initially. You are understanding it correctly. You're 100% correct that this is a 67-33 split. All I was saying is it's not far enough below the threshold to have a huge impact. It's a lot worse if you get into the 20s, or down around 18 like the match I mentioned. You still got not-horrible xp in this match, just wasn't as good as a more competitive loss or even a really close win. That's the only point I was making.

MarkBGregory

04-05-2016, 04:17 AM

WC means wild card. I don't know what criteria the game uses, but for example there are a few extra Americans that always make the real-life USO field by use of these exceptions. Usually they are players who wouldn't make the field otherwhise and would have to qualify.

I don't know the exact criteria, but I do know that if you're outside the direct entrance cut off BUT the country the tournament is in is the same as your nationality, then you're very likely to get a wildcard. Otherwise, generally the game just gives them to the next three/four players in line for direct entry.

digamma

04-05-2016, 09:53 AM

MarkBGregory

04-05-2016, 12:10 PM

Coming into year end, I have a player who sits 35th in the singles rankings. He is playing in a CH+ right now and will likely do no worse than make the semifinals. I haven't analyzed the points the three guys in front of him are set to lose, but it is like he will be within 25 points of 32nd, with one final week of CH tournaments before the end of year hiatus.

Is the play to try to get him the last tournament in to get into the top 32 or tank to stay out of the top 32?

I think it depends on how ready you think the player is for top 32 tennis.

If you get inside, you'll then be required to play all the major tournaments and potentially risk losing vital experience by getting beaten early on in all of them. Alternatively, you're pretty much guaranteed a seeding at all the Slams, which generally sees you through at least two rounds, and if you push on to the top 16, you'll be guaranteed seedings at the Masters events too.

If he's not ready for going up against the big boys week-in week-out, then maybe it's better to stay outside the top 32. That way, you can pick and choose the bigger tournaments you think he'll do best in (on his preferred surfaces) and more than likely still find yourself inside the top 32 and with more chance of being competitive the following year.

Like I say, I feel it depends entirely on the player in question.

Brian Swartz

04-05-2016, 01:32 PM

daahdeedaa

04-05-2016, 02:32 PM

So my doubles player is reaching his shelf life, I've done the math and if I convert him to trainer right away he becomes a 5.0 trainer, that said he's only 35 so I could have him use up a roster spot and boost his stats for another 10 years of I wanted to. What kind of difference should I expect between a 5.0 trainer and say a 5.5 one?

digamma

04-05-2016, 03:53 PM

That's quite sensible advice. I would say don't base the decision on points or ranking; base it on whether you need the matches from a form perspective to get through the end-of-year break. If you don't, go ahead and take the extra week off. If the player's ready to be up in the Top 32, to piggyback off Mark's points, you'll get there next year anyway.

This is essentially the approach I took. I needed another tournament given the upcoming time off, so I am playing him. In doing the math, it looks like he'll come up short in any case and finish 33rd or 34th at year end.

BishopMVP

04-06-2016, 01:05 AM

Let me provide you with an example: in GW12 right now, there's a 30-year-old player called Guillaume Saint-Waleri. He's roughly 4th/5th in the rankings, but was world number one for years. I checked out his stats when I re-signed up in Feb and I was like, eh, they don't seem that great. Speed/Strength was around 3 at 100%, while Endurance and Talent were 4.5+ - that is, he wasn't necessarily that strong or fast, but he was able to gain experience super, super quickly. I noticed that his Skill level was at 5.2(!) which was at least 0.2 ahead of everyone else - so despite his relatively weak Strength and Speed, it didn't matter because his Skill was so much higher than everyone else. That's why he was top of the world.

So, myself and a friend of mine came up with the following, and ranked our own players according to it:

(Bear in mind that all the values discussed are when a player reaches 100%)

a) Talent and Endurance totals (TE):

1) 9.0+: HIRE THIS PLAYER AT ALL COSTS. Even if the other stats are a little disappointing, you have a brilliant chance of making the top 10 at the very least. Top of the world if it's backed up with good other stats, and even if it's not. (see below).

2) 8.5-9.0: HIRE THIS PLAYER, but make sure they have fairly high other stats. At this level, players might get off to a slow start, but generally have good enough endurance to get through a full week of singles/dubs practice, plus a couple of training sessions/friendly matches, and can be competitive at the top.

3) 8.0-8.5: Worth hanging on to, especially if their other stats are high. In quiet gameworlds, and even in busy ones with the right schedule, these players can still push towards the top 10, but they will need good aging factors and strength and speed to maintain a high position, because otherwise their Endurance will drop too quickly and the player will start to decline.

4) Below 8.0: Don't bother.

b) Speed and Strength values (SS)

Assuming you've hired a player with at least 8.0 TE, then you want to look at their S+S potential, because obviously a player with 8.5 TE and 7.5 SS will do worse than one with the same TE but 8.0 SS

1) IF you can get a SS at 8.0 or higher, that's ideal. Players with 8.5+ TE and 8.0+ SS are generally going to be pretty strong.

2) If your SS is between 7.5-8.0, you could still have a pretty successful career with a player whose TE was 8.0+.

3) If your SS is between 7.0-7.5, then you really want 8.5+ in terms of TE to offset the poor physical stats.

4) If your SS is below 7.0, then unless you have a TE of 9.0+, it's not really worth training this player.

c) Mentality value (M)

Mentality is viewed (by us) as more of an 'added bonus', and we generally don't factor it in to our calculations when deciding whether or not to hire a player. If you're in two minds on a player (maybe one that has 8 TE and 7.5 SS), then if the Mentality is 3.5+, you might want to train the player up until a better option eventually comes along. Apart from that, a TE 9.0 player with 8.0 SS is going to rock, even if the Mentality is zero.

Generally speaking, if your Talent, Endurance, Speed and Strength totals at 100% (TESS value) is 15.5+, then your player has a decent chance of making it.I've got two guys pushing these boundaries in RR12. Wanted to try raising a smaller country up the RR rankings, so Luxembourg's Arnoud Martens is a poor 5.7 SS with a 104% aging - normally two things I'd try hard to avoid. A solid 8.4 in TE, although unfortunately Talent at 4.9 & Endurance topping at 3.5 (and again, with a short peak). I'm not real certain yet on how high I can get him - being able to get all the extra WC points playing singles/doubles helps a little, but he's still only a 14.1 on the TE scale Arnoud Martens (http://rr12.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=player&extra=264743)

And the crown jewel, Tommy Simms, who's probably just about peaking at 5.1/3.8 (hoping I can get to 5.2, but I just went early on a serve point because I'm in a slam final). 7.6 SS at his peak, only 3.1 Mentality, and missed out on a lot of WC teams because he was in a bit of a golden generation for Americans with Burle, Hoar and Eizaguirre. Just topped the 8.5 TE barrier. In 4th place right now, just lost a 2nd Slam Final, and facing strong contenders all around for the Slams. Eizaguirre's a grass specialist (unfortunate as Simms has 34% Grass pref and would be a shoo in to win multiple Wimbledon's without a top 10 player who's a grass specialist who's his exact age!), Moretta etc dominating clay, Burle/Jarinov two really solid hardcourt specialists with hardcourt pref just higher than ours. Did just pick up a Masters win, so I've proven I can win at that level. Will have to do a better job managing his form next "year"
Tommy Simms (http://rr12.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=player&extra=258966)

MarkBGregory

04-06-2016, 06:01 AM

I'd noticed Arnoud Mertens! Because my other eldest player, Anton Barth, is the same age but graduated a year later from the junior tour. He's doing exceptionally well for his age group, constantly at the top of the 19-and-under players, although I'd like to think Barth is hot on his heels... ;)

The rate things are going, the pair could be firm rivals for a few years. I notice their head-to-head is one each, with Mertens winning one at Junior level and Barth winning in last week's Shanghai CH3 final... ;)

digamma

04-07-2016, 01:56 PM

This is essentially the approach I took. I needed another tournament given the upcoming time off, so I am playing him. In doing the math, it looks like he'll come up short in any case and finish 33rd or 34th at year end.

My guy quickly moved into the top 32 at #30 and is seeded 29th at the Aussie Open.

The opening round match was a triple bagel over an exhausted Swiss qualifier. The poor guy only won 7 points in three sets.

MarkBGregory

04-07-2016, 04:21 PM

Some advice on the following issue from other gamers would be much appreciated.

Basic question: when do you stop playing your players in both singles and doubles tournaments, and start focusing them on just singles?

Example 1: I have a few players starting to make waves in GW2 and GW12. The most notable, simply because he's the oldest, is Juan Jose Elezgueta in GW2. At 21y35w, he has 4.5 Skill and 3.5 Serve. His aging factor is 105%, so he's already down to 99% - already declining as a player. He's currently ranked 76th in the world, going into Wimbledon in Week 27 next week. He defeated the world #14 Aniceto Lopezcastro in the Rome Masters a few weeks back. So far, I've continued to play him in both Singles and Doubles in all tournaments, simply to keep maximising experience each week. But when should I start focusing just on singles? When he gets in the top 32, or sooner?

Example 2: On GW12, I have a player hitting similar levels as Elezgueta, only sooner. Anton Barth is 19y41w as we head towards the end of another game year. Graduated from junior level last year. He has 4.3 Skill and 3.4 Serve. Again, aging factor 105%, which is a pain. Currently ranked 128th, but reached the second round of Wimbledon through qualifying and has two CH2 titles already this year, as well as a host of Futures. With a new year coming up, should I make the choice to try and get him further up the rankings, or should I continue to prioritise experience for another couple of years?

digamma

04-07-2016, 04:27 PM

As a further aside to my post above, my player got a somewhat tough draw in the Australian Open. He cruised through the first two rounds but is now up against the #1 seed Daniel Wira. Wira is 25 and already has 5 Slams. He's got an Aging Factor of 95%, so he could well be in the top spot for some time. I hope we score more than 7 points.

Brian Swartz

04-07-2016, 07:21 PM

Basic question: when do you stop playing your players in both singles and doubles tournaments, and start focusing them on just singles?

Good question. First, my general answer is, as you suggested in part of your post, when you get to the Top 32. I talked about some of the why in a post earlier in the thread, but scheduling is really the reason here. The biggest scheduling change is when you go from playing challengers(at least largely) to playing Masters/Slams as the core of your tournaments, and optimally that's when you hit the Top 32 so you can be seeded at Slams and IW/Miami. At this point you no longer need to prioritize xp over ranking because they are both served best by the same thing -- getting as many matches in at the big events as possible. Due to the significant xp 'bonus' you get from matches in those events, the #1 thing to do for both concerns is to go as deep as you can in Masters and Slams, which means having your form peak in order to so is the top priority. At this stage I stop playing doubles all the time and only play doubles in the WTC or when it's useful to get form where I want it to be. What tends to happen is, the further you progress up the rankings, the less you need doubles matches to do this, and the very best players will basically not play doubles at all because it's counterproductive(pushes form too high).

Example 1: I'd say keep playing both until, as mentioned, you reach the Top 32.

Example 2: Even with the high aging, keep playing both. It's a frustrating point to go through trying to get up there, but until you are good enough to consistently win the top Challengers, you aren't good enough to make a lot of noise in Slams. Make the most of that short peak by training up as much as you can before you get there :).

law90026

04-11-2016, 03:23 AM

Figured this might be a better place to post.

So I'm wondering when is an ideal time to retire a player and make him a trainer? As an example, my main guy in world 2, Teo Rask, is probably on the downward swing of his career. Sure I could hold on for a year or 3 but he's never going to really have the chance to win anything.

So with that being said, any reason not to convert him to a trainer asap once I get enough for a 5+ skill as a trainer? I was thinking he might be able to play doubles with one of my other guys and get them do that way but not sure it's really fun worth it.

Brian Swartz

04-11-2016, 08:28 AM

It's turning into a spam-posting day for me I guess. It depends on what your goals are really. I don't think there's any reason not to convert him when he reaches 5 or whatever you want your trainer to be. Sooner you do it the sooner you open up a spot for another up-and-coming player. I try to keep some years in between my players so that Sri Lanka will always have a couple of players who at least fairly close to their prime to let keep pushing as hard as possible in the WTC, but unless there's some particular timing thing like that you are waiting on I would think as soon as the player is ready is the right time to go.

Umbrella

04-11-2016, 02:01 PM

I just picked up a youngster who is currently ranked 4th in his country in juniors. How can I tell who is on the team cup teams?

digamma

04-11-2016, 04:34 PM

Here's another WTC question. I've got a guy from Bosnia who made his WTC team cup squad. Looking at the history, Bosnia hadn't been in the WTC team cup for 20 years. This season they get reinserted, and we've got a match for the Level 4 finals, going undefeated through pool play. Any reason they would have been left out for 20 years and then come back in at Level 4?

digamma

04-11-2016, 04:34 PM

Umbrella,

The singles picks are the top two rated singles players in the country. I haven't tracked how the doubles teams are selected.

britrock88

04-11-2016, 05:00 PM

Umbrella,

The singles picks are the top two rated singles players in the country. I haven't tracked how the doubles teams are selected.

I'll add some shading to this.

At the senior level, the top two singles players play singles (2 matches each), and the top two double players play the doubles match.

At the junior level, the tournaments are broken out into 18U, 16U, and 15U divisions. I can't tell you exactly what gets non-competing teams in and out, but note that a player might compete at different levels of JTCs over the course of his junior career.

As for selection for JTCs... the top three eligible players (determined by overall juniors ranking) for a nation's JTC squad have the following responsibilities: #1--2 singles matches, #s 2 & 3--1 singles match, 1 doubles match.

digamma

04-15-2016, 03:58 PM

Brian Swartz

04-15-2016, 09:32 PM

That's 'fun' ...

kingfc22

04-17-2016, 06:40 PM

Do players go into slumps? My 16 yo was winning every JG4 with ease and then made it to the SF in 3 straight JG3's. Now he can't get out of the first round of a JG4 or JG3.

Brian Swartz

04-17-2016, 07:50 PM

There's no mention of it in the game documentation, but I think they definitely do. I've seen players over or underachieve for up to a year and a half. On the other hand, I don't know what your sample size is and it's possible you can have also have a bad run of luck in terms of facing unusually tough early-round opponents.

Alf

04-19-2016, 04:44 AM

I activated VIP for one week (but I am likely to at least get it for the first 3 months stint).

I am looking for a potential trainer (and I am playing in Game World 11) and looking for any possible hint from board pundits.

Eduard Van der Berg is a likely candidate (and frenchman ;) ). (http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=player&extra=173710)

I'd appreciate other hints.

law90026

04-19-2016, 07:29 AM

Alf

04-19-2016, 08:02 AM

I've got M. Ngui and V. Borzakov down as a 4.9 trainer and 4.88 trainers respectively, if my corrected spreadsheet is now correct.
In the "poor" games help, I don't see ageing factor in the trainer formula, but I guess you have it included ?

here is a copy/paste of gmaes help page : (skill+0.75*service+0.33*doubles)/2.3

Brian Swartz

04-19-2016, 08:06 AM

It's based on the raw numbers, not after adjustments are made due to aging.

Alf

04-19-2016, 08:11 AM

MMh, not sure how I then see raw numbers. It's all mystery to me. I hired the "russian" guy nevertheless.

Alf

04-19-2016, 08:19 AM

Once hired

http://shared.rockingrackets.com/images//flags/RUS.png (http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=nationinfo&extra=RUS) Vladislav Borzakov (36yr51wk) (http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=player&extra=168762) http://shared.rockingrackets.com/images//icons/info.png>" class="icon"> (http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=train&addb=player&addv=168762) (5919 points)

<table class="realtable"><tbody> <form action="index.php?page=train" method="post"></form><tr><th width="20%">
</th><th width="20%">Points</th><th width="20%">Age%</th><th width="20%"> </th><th width="20%">Train Cost</th><th width="20%">
</th></tr> <tr><td class="emphasis" width="20%">Skill</td><td class="even" width="15%">120</td><td class="even" width="15%">68%</td><td class="even" width="15%">
</td><td class="even" width="30%">7289</td><td class="even" width="20%">
</td></tr><tr><td class="emphasis" width="20%">Service</td><td class="even" width="15%">102</td><td class="even" width="15%">68%</td><td class="even" width="15%">
</td><td class="even" width="30%">5486</td><td class="even" width="20%">
</td></tr><tr><td class="emphasis" width="20%">Doubles</td><td class="even" width="15%">82</td><td class="even" width="15%">100%</td><td class="even" width="15%">
</td><td class="even" width="30%">1332</td><td class="even" width="20%">
</td></tr><tr><td colspan="4" class="emphasis">Make trainer (retire)</td><td>7500</td><td class="even" width="20%">
</td></tr></tbody></table>

I plan on playing him a couple of seasons (at least). Is it betetr if I then up his service or doubles rating ? (or will that end up the same trainer wise) ?

Edit : looks like I just can't increase his service rating :)

Brian Swartz

04-19-2016, 08:33 AM

Up his doubles at this point. I'm a little confused because I didn't think serve could be trained past 100, but you can use the trainer formula to decide what is better to train.

Example: currently takes 1332xp to train doubles. If needed serve xp is more than ((doubles / .33) * .75) -- which produces 3027, well under the 5486 listed -- then you want to train doubles before service. You can do similar math for comparing it to skill, etc.

Edit: You can't 'see' the raw numbers for players you don't have hired, but you can estimate it with some basic math. Doubles aren't affected by aging, so if a player has(for example), a 4.0 in doubles he's got about 80(multiply by 20). For skill and service, you multiply by 20 again and then divide by aging factor. So with the 68% aging, if a player had 4.0 skill, they would have about 80/.68 for their raw skill, or 117-118.

law90026

04-19-2016, 08:57 AM

Edit: You can't 'see' the raw numbers for players you don't have hired, but you can estimate it with some basic math. Doubles aren't affected by aging, so if a player has(for example), a 4.0 in doubles he's got about 80(multiply by 20). For skill and service, you multiply by 20 again and then divide by aging factor. So with the 68% aging, if a player had 4.0 skill, they would have about 80/.68 for their raw skill, or 117-118.

Pretty much this except that I use a spreadsheet. I just chuck all the information for players on to it by copying it from the website (I'm sure someone will know some way to automate the process) then manually enter their aging factors to get their rough trainer ability.

I do the same for the 14 year old players every few days just to see if anyone pops up that might be interesting.

MarkBGregory

04-19-2016, 12:50 PM

Question:

Does home advantage JUST count in the country in which they're from? Because my Belarussian player always seems to do exceptionally well in Ukraine and Russia...

Brian Swartz

04-21-2016, 04:56 PM

Yes it just counts in their hope country.

A little something I thought would be useful here, the whole 'create player' thing which is basically VIP only. I posted about this in one of the dynasty threads, so to start with, here's what I wrote there:

You're basically guaranteed to get a good player, they just may not be great. More on that in a bit here. I always create a new player on Sunday of Week 52. The first thing you have to do is fire an existing one, since you can't create a new one without an empty spot in your roster. This can make things a little interesting if you have enough credits to create more than one player, since if you want to try for someone better you have to fire someone first, and then if the RNG doesn't treat you well you're kind of sunk due to somebody else hiring whoever it is you got rid of. Doing it at the beginning of the week lets you use that week for xp before you enter any tournaments. A small thing, but grab every advantage you can. IIRC the players start off at exactly 20 form so you'll have time to put in a few practice weeks before you need to do your first junior tournaments.

You have three things you can control in terms of how good the player is. Name and nation obviously don't matter here. I don't remember the exact terminology the game uses, but I'll be creating a new player in less than two weeks now so this stuff is fairly fresh in my mind having done it a few times.

** Aging -- Three settings, something like Peak Early, Peak Normal, or Peak Late. I always choose the one that gives a low aging factor, for longevity(and poor juniors/early development of course as the tradeoff).

** Best Attribute -- You can choose one of strength, speed, endurance, talent, to have a better chance to get a good 'roll' on. I think those are the only ones in there but I would double-check it as I don't recall for certain. I go with endurance. As has been discussed it is in my opinion the most important. Having said that in a fast world I would consider whether talent may be more important for you.

** Worst Attribute -- You also have to choose one that has a better chance of being lower. I have always chosen one of the athletic ones, strength and speed. I think speed is probably the best choice here as strength is probably a little more important but you could argue that either way.

Finally, cross your fingers :P.

Prospective Results

I've created four players so far, with at least one more coming soon -- I have the credits to do two more at the end of the year here, so if the first one goes bad I have a 'backup' so to speak. Three of them are players I'm managing right now, the fourth wasn't quite as good so I jettisoned them. Here's how they came out on the TESS scale:

** Anil Mehul -- 8.9 TE(4.4 Talent, 4.5 Endurance), 6.6 SS(3.4 strength, 3.2 speed), 95% aging. Best of any of them in endurance and aging factor, but relatively 'meh' talent and athleticism.

** Girish Girsh -- 8.7 TE(4.4 Talent, 4.3 Endurance), 6.1 SS(2.9 strength, 3.2 speed), 96% aging. Girsh was the most developed(most starting skill and service) so that mitigated at least somewhat the fact that he was a little more limited. He also had a higher mentality(3.8), Mehul was at 3.4.

** Shyam Senepathy -- 8.8 TE(4.5 Talent, 4.3 Endurance), 5.7 SS(3.5 strength, 2.2 speed), 96% aging. I haven't written much about him because he's the one that I 'threw back'. This was mostly because of the low speed around the court. Another 3.4 mentality here. He's not terrible by any stretch, mismanagement has him barely inside the Top 300 at age 20, but he could have been good -- just not quite as good as the others.

** Prakash Mooljee -- 8.9 TE(4.7 Talent, 4.2 Endurance), 6.8 SS(3.5 Strength, 3.3 Speed), 97% aging. On the TESS scale he is the best I've turned out; on the other hand he was the least developed in terms of skill/service, sort of the other end of that process from Girsh. He's doing very well though. Mentality came out at 3.4 again.

Conclusions

The game promises a strong but not necessarily world class player, and I think these results bear that out. There has been a great degree of consistency in an admittedly very small sample size. From reading the forums years ago on the subject, it is or at least was possible to get a really fantastic player significantly better than this, but quite rare. I imagine it's also probably possible to get one somewhat worse. I do think you can expect to get players who are better than the ones you can hire in a busy world(unless you are consistently lucky and quick) this way.

Since I'm creating a player today I thought I'd add a bit to this. If you go to 'Hire Player' you can see whether or not you are able to create one(basically you can do so four times for each VIP payment you make, but you have to have a free slot in your players to do so).

Step 1: First Name, Surname, and Country. Pretty self-explanatory and they don't affect your players ability, with the exception that because of the number of US tournaments, US home advantage is reduced.

Step 2: Here's the important part. You can choose a different number, familiarize yourself with the process by trying an Example player(who you can't keep even if you really like them, it's just to give you an idea of how it works). Then, make sure you have all of the following as you want them before you click Create Player. Can't really emphasize that enough, because you can't change your mind afterwards. The game does at least give you a warning to check your work and confirm.

So these are the things you can impact:

** Age: 14, 15, or 16. I don't know why you'd pick anything other than 14. Maybe you could play around with Example and it gives them more development at the higher ages, but the younger you can start the better. So 14 is the only choice here.

** Surface(1st). Top surface for preferences. I'd go with hardcourt but it's trivial to change this as a junior so it doesn't really matter.

** Surface(2nd). Clay is my choice here but again not a significant thing.

** Strong In -- Now we're talking. This is the attribute to emphasize, options are Endurance, Speed, Strength, Mentality, and Talent.

** Weakness -- Same choices. Now you actually can select the same attribute for both, I've never tried it but I assume that it would basically cancel itself out and you'd get a more 'balanced' character that way.

** Aging Factor -- Peaks Early, Average, Peaks Late. Age and these these last three options are the key ones, see my recommendations in what I quoted.

Brian Swartz

04-28-2016, 01:29 PM

I don't remember who and don't feel like going back into the thread and check, but someone mentioned training serve more for young players to minimize the double faults that are a really big issue. I've thought about this for a while and am trying it out with my new player. What I'm going to do is train serve and skill evenly at first, then gradually tilt it more towards skill as he improves, so that by the time he's a top player it will be at the usual balance of twice the cost for skill as service.

brett32z

04-29-2016, 11:57 AM

So this isn't entirely rambling, let's talk about Court Preferences. These can play a significant role, certainly during the initial years, but even at the highest level they play a big role each week. My goal right now is to get as close to a 60/40/0/0 split as I can on my players, making sure that one of Hard/Clay is built up, and then tailoring his secondary one based off his current percentages when I pick him up or maybe what courts seem most prominent in his country. (I know that's dumb, but when it's not a big difference I also try signing up for tournaments geographically close to his home country... unnecessary sure, but helps a little with my immersion!) I'm not sure if they are solely based off what percentage of your past matches have been on each surface or there is a little bit of hard coding built in for individual players, but they're definitely fairly set in stone by age 21/22. One other thing to note is that by that top level I've arrived at (Tommy Simms just turned 23, 4.9/3.6, ranked #23), practice sessions on grass (his secondary preference at 35%) are much less useful than practice sessions on hard/clay, partly because he's one of the best players in the world on grass but mostly because very few top players end up in those, and even being placed in Tier 1 I'd only get 2 decent practice matches at best in a week. So if you do try specializing in grass/indoor it might be worth baking a couple extra points in during those 18-22 year old years, because you'll likely be losing them once you're in the top 30 and playing such a varied schedule/dominating most practice opponents below the top 50.

Does anyone have any other thoughts on court preference strategy? I have a soon to be 15 year old in GW11 with 49%H/37%G/10%C/2%I. Should I be actively shaping that one way or another?

Brian Swartz

04-29-2016, 12:06 PM

Depends on how good you think he's going to be a bit. I definitely think the grass is high though. It will help you at Wimbledon -- but that's about it. Sometimes a clay specialist can get enough points there(3 masters + 1 Slam) especially if there aren't many other clay player in the world.

If you look at the top-level events(Masters + Slams + Tour Finals), points available as are follows:

Hardcourt -- 9000
Clay -- 4000
Indoor -- 2500
Grass -- 2000

I'd definitely keep the hardcourt high, probably roughly reverse the clay and grass you have going, and move indoor up into the teens. Really depends on your preferences and what you are trying to do, but that will give you the best chance to do well on the surfaces that have the most opportunities -- again, assuming you have a player who can get to the elite level.

brett32z

04-29-2016, 05:44 PM

Thanks! The points breakdown was exactly what I needed.

Assuming I did the math correctly, my player's peak stats should be:

Strength 4.3
Speed 2.1
Mentality 3.8
Talent 4.3
Endurance 4.8

The endurance looks great but none of the top players in my world have speed that low so... I have no idea how good he could be. I'll definitely let grass drop and try to replace it with clay though.

Brian Swartz

04-29-2016, 06:50 PM

Should be quite a good player there if well handled. By Mark's TESS system, he's got 9.1 TE, 6.4 SS. The speed is low, but the strength is high enough to largely counterbalance that. I'd guess Top 10 for him. most important is to make use of all that endurance, which isn't easy in a fast world.

Alf

04-30-2016, 09:54 AM

Haven't posted my latest junior pickup to pair with my Junior ranked#1 guy :).

Hvalimir Kavazovic (http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=player&extra=186402) has spent nearly all season as #1 ranked junior. HE only let his #1 ranking to another guy for a couple of weeks as the other guy cheated by entering JG1 tournaments ;)

Last offseason, I tried pairing up kavazovic with the highest rated 17yr old guy and found this one Eberhard Leitner (http://rr11.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=player&extra=187253)as pairing with a guy with a highly ranked would nearly assure me of Kavazovic keeping his title. The plan went as scheduled as they won all 4 Grand Slams + All JGAs so far.

Now onto the interesting part is that Leitner is a 8.8 TE prospect with 7.3 SS. I will very likely dump the #1 ranked junior guy to try and develop Leitner instead. That was unexpected to start with.
(http://www.operationsports.com/fofc/)

MarkBGregory

05-02-2016, 07:09 AM

Okay, here's one for you.

VIP Players, this may be of more interest to you.

When you 'Enter Tournaments', your players are positioned left-to-right in a seemingly random order.

Is it random?

Because I'm pretty sure they're ranked in order of how good that player might be in the future. Because on both of my worlds, my best players are on the left, and they gradually decline towards the right.

For example, in GW12, Ralph Dyer precedes Anton Barth, who is ahead of Charles Gayrard, before Nasir Kodumudi. I rate those four players also in that order.

Similarly, on GW2, my players are ranked Christian Kulle, Igor Borowski, Harald Babbel, Juan Jose Elezgueta.

Random? Or coincidence? And does anyone else feel this way?

law90026

05-02-2016, 11:16 AM

So just a sidenote as I've been playing around with a couple of juniors in world 10.

The difference in talent is astounding between world 2 and world 10. Using Brian's rating system, here are a few differences:

No of players above 10 rating: World 2 has 3, World 10 has 1
No of players above 9.5 rating: World 2 has 24, World 10 has 17
No of players above 9 rating: World 2 has 75, World 10 has 38
No of players above 8.5 rating: World 2 has 184, World 10 has 105

The depth of talent in world 2 is significantly better than world 10. Not sure whether it would be similar in other worlds.

My point? World 2 probably should be a no go for someone just starting out because of how competitive it is. It's made me consider switching out my VIP status to another world when it's time to renew.

Brian Swartz

05-02-2016, 11:58 AM

Wow that's insane. It also totally throws off my recommendations, at least to a degree. Guys like Mehul and Girsh would probably do well to be Top 5 in World 2. Mooljee(currently in the 60s) probably wouldn't even be Top 100 yet, or if so barely.

I'm also impressed that you went to the trouble of rating 200 or more players! For my world ...

10+ rating: 1(Iglar)
9.5+: 6
9.0+: roughly 30

So, as I've noticed, it's not even quite as deep as World 10 -- although this is a low spot, it's usually got more in the 9.5+ category. I've got it real easy over here, in other words.

Brian Swartz

05-02-2016, 12:01 PM

When you 'Enter Tournaments', your players are positioned left-to-right in a seemingly random order.

Is it random?

Because I'm pretty sure they're ranked in order of how good that player might be in the future.

Interesting theory. It seems to be the same order they are listed on the 'Use Experience' page, only there it's top to bottom. First, it's not random. Girsh and Manohar kept flipping spots every so often for me, which tells me it's something(who knows what) other than how good they are. Manohar was a complete waste of space compared to my other players, so if that's what it was he should always have been last. He wasn't. So I don't know what it is.

Alf

05-09-2016, 04:05 AM

How do you guys project stats peak ? I know age% comes into effect but I still haven't been able to figure out how ?

Could anyone help share their formula ? Thanks.

law90026

05-09-2016, 08:05 AM

You can calculate the strength, speed and endurance by taking the current score and dividing by the % next to their age (not to be confused with the ageing factor). For endurance, divide twice.

Alf

05-09-2016, 08:22 AM

Peak talent = display talent (unaffected by age%)
Peak strength = display strength/(age%)
Peak speed= display speed/(age%)
Peak endurance = display endurance/(age%²) ?

Am I correct ?

law90026

05-09-2016, 08:32 AM

Yup looks right

Brian Swartz

05-09-2016, 08:47 AM

Yup. Additionally mentality/home adv. never change. Skill/service/doubles depend on how well you train the player and how much xp you can gain with their endurance/talent levels.

roeldaboy

05-09-2016, 04:00 PM

Hi guys, I'm a RR player as well. I play in rr2 and maybe you know Amir Abdullah? He was one of my pupils who won Roland Garros in rr2 some years back. Anyway, I hoped any of you guys have an indication of how many players actively play the game worldwide. For a while I thought there werent many, but after reading this my hopes are a little bit up ;).

Alf

05-12-2016, 03:45 AM

Alright, back to my trainer question. My russian Borzakov is now

Skill : 121 (trainable)
Service : 102 (maxed out ++ :p )
Doubles : 100 (maxed out)

He is a 5.0 trainer already. I am wondering if it would be useful to continue upgrading his skill or make him a trainer already.

britrock88

05-12-2016, 12:13 PM

Well, do you already have a trainer? Do you have players with high enough endurance that they could make use of training?

Alf

05-12-2016, 01:15 PM

Well, do you already have a trainer? Do you have players with high enough endurance that they could make use of training?

No, and not really yet (I have a 4.8 Talent + 4 endurance - 101 age% 19yo, though).

Brian Swartz

05-12-2016, 02:16 PM

That player could definitely make use of training. I'd do it now, that's just about the right age, or maybe a year younger, that I've seen significant use from trainers.

Brian Swartz

05-14-2016, 05:16 PM

Thought I'd throw a little something out here I've been using since my players all just reached their birthdays or are about to. Several in-game years ago, I started 'benchmarking' my players; tracking their raw abilities by age so I could compare how well I was getting the next guy trained up comparatively. Here's how the list looks now with at least one player at most ages recorded:

42 -- Manohar 108/91/89 -- 4.47 trainer
40 -- Manohar 108/87/85
39 -- Manohar 108/84/82
38 -- Manohar 108/80/78
37 -- Manohar 108/77/73
29 -- Mehul 122/91/1
28 -- Mehul 119/89/1
27 -- Mehul 117/87/1
26 -- Mehul 114/84/1; Girsh 114/84/0
25 -- Girsh 111/82/0; Mehul 111/81/1
24 -- Girsh 108/79/0; Mehul 107/78/1
23 -- Girsh 104/75/0
22 -- Girsh 99/71/0
21 -- Mooljee 94/66/0; Girsh 94/65/0
20 -- Mooljee 87/60/1
19 -- Mooljee 80/53/1
18 -- Mooljee 72/46/1
17 -- Mooljee 62/37/1
15 -- Dudwadkar 20/19/0
14.29 -- Dudwadkar 7/4/0 -- 2.45 rating'

The three numbers are raw skill/service/doubles respectively. It's remarkable to me how similar they have been so far despite some variances in starting skills, periodic screw-ups now and then that I've mostly eliminated, etc. Having a trainer now will help with the younger two guys I have but probably only marginally. Every little bit helps though. Mehul and Girsh have both peaked at about 5.3/3.9, 5.3/4.0 for a while. I'd like to get to 5.4/4.0 which I haven't been able to sustain for more than a few weeks. Hopefully one of the youngsters can do it.

kingfc22

05-15-2016, 07:14 PM

Looks like you move away from the 2:1 skill to serve ratio once they leave Juniors?

Brian Swartz

05-15-2016, 07:28 PM

Well on all the previous players I've gone 2:1 from the start; but when I say 2 skill for each service, I'm talking about the experience required, not the raw number itself. For example, Mehul is at 122/92. Obviously that's not 2:1, but the xp to get there is -- 7.7k/almost 4k. The theory, in case it isn't clear, is that skill is more valuable unless you can get service for half the price. If you can, train service.

As I briefly mentioned a while ago, I'm doing a bit of an experiment with Dudwadkar though. He's going to train them both up evenly for a while, then when he hits 1.0 service he'll start gradually moving more over into training skill, getting to the 2:1 ratio about the time he hits 3.5 serve, by which point he'll be in the big time. I don't know if this is better or worse but it's worth trying due to how many double faults you cough up as a young player with a crappy serve.

kingfc22

05-15-2016, 07:56 PM

Ahhh...this whole time I thought you were referring to 2:1 raw numbers. Guess my #3 junior should build up some service a bit more now. :P

roeldaboy

05-16-2016, 07:36 AM

Is the benchmark at 21 for example at 21 years and 1 week or 21 years and 52 weeks?

Brian Swartz

05-16-2016, 08:33 AM

21 and 0 weeks.

Brian Swartz

05-16-2016, 09:33 AM

Ahhh...this whole time I thought you were referring to 2:1 raw numbers. Guess my #3 junior should build up some service a bit more now. :P

I could be wrong about this. I don't think I am, I think it's the best way, but I'm the only manager with top players in any of the worlds I've seen who 'tilts' his players towards skill this much. Most of them stop at 5.0 or a bit higher in skill and then work on service. This does give them some more aces, but they're not as effective on return. Iglar for example is 5.0/4.1, the current #1 in rr2, Andres Ulson, is 5.2/4.1, and in rr11 it's Daniel Wira at 5.0/4.3. When my guys are at 5.3/3.9, they don't have the serve these players have, but they are better from a rally standpoint. Even the record-setting oprice in my world doesn't train his players the way I do, and frankly it's the only significant difference between us because he's a near-perfect manager strategically in all other aspects from what I've seen.

In my experience, you just don't get enough free points(aces) to convince me that it's better to go that way. Over a long 5-set match even it's maybe a half-dozen points more you get from that, and the better returning from my players at least neutralizes that from what I've seen. It's also just plain logical -- skill is used on all points, but service on only half(the ones you are serving for, obviously), which is where the idea comes from. I just think it's good to throw out the caveat since all the other elite managers don't do it. I'm bucking the trend here so to speak -- but I think the trend is a little bit suboptimal :).

roeldaboy

05-16-2016, 04:04 PM

Brian I think you are a great manager, however I disagree with you on this matter. When playing on your best surface for example or when you have a lot of power this adds to skill, so therefore you might be right considering a player with less than average power. However, in other cases I think a little extra serve is of greater importance than a little extra skill, since skill is influenced by other factors as well like I mentioned before. Your serve however isn't and when playing in higher tournaments everything stands and falls with your ability to win your service games. Of course its also important to be able to break your opponent, however other factors will influence a players skill nontheless, where service isn't and is just as good on hardcourt as on clay. On top of that I think the past has proven serve do be of major importance and I think you just underestimate its importance.

Brian Swartz

05-17-2016, 02:42 AM

Thanks for the post. After considering this I think you are partly correct. I need to crunch some numbers on the matches between the top players in my world, but I think I'm going to making an adjustment to my player 'overall rating' formula.

Brian Swartz

05-21-2016, 09:36 PM

A few -- eh, maybe more than a few, but not too many -- thoughts for anybody who is still playing.

Of course its also important to be able to break your opponent, however other factors will influence a players skill nontheless, where service isn't and is just as good on hardcourt as on clay. On top of that I think the past has proven serve do be of major importance and I think you just underestimate its importance.

I wonder here if you are talking about real-life tennis on the ATP tour or tennis as represented in the game of Rocking Rackets? Obviously one is modeled on the other but they are different -- for example, real-life is hardly as predictable in terms of career development. Some of these differences are even arguably good in terms of making a more enjoyable game.

At any rate, I took a look at the documentation in the game when thinking about how to respond to this post and was surprised by a couple of things I found. It seems that information has been added that wasn't there before, as of several months ago when I came up with what has been called my '10 point player rating formula'. This is quite curious, since there literally hasn't been a post in the RR forums in a year and a half. It is now specifically defined for all to see how much home advantage, mentality, and surface preferences impact a match. This was quite surprising to me, and gave me an opportunity to lay aside some of my assumptions.

There are also some interesting statements which are not new about serving. It's stated to be only slightly less important than skill, and the trainer formula uses 75% of service with 100% of skill in the formula, both of which would indicate that my approach is flawed. With clear definition of the other elements, it seemed useful to me to conduct a test. It just so happens that my world presents a great scenario. The top three players over the past several years have played each other in the pro ranks 37-38 times. Actually just a bit more than that, but that's where it was when I took the match statistics are started to analyze it. The details are pretty complicated so I won't bother with a full writeup of them unless somebody is particularly interested, but I did come away with two primary conclusions.

** Mentality isn't as important as I thought it was.. I had it pegged at 40% of the value of skill. According to the documentation it is only 30% when it is applied, which isn't most of the time. Key points like breakpoints and tiebreaks only. I thought I might be a bit high on mentality, but I didn't think I was off by that much.

** I was undervaluing service, but not by much. Despite the documentation's statements about it's value, the actual description of what it does indicates it simply isn't close to skill in importance. It's far more important than any other rating, but not nearly as important as skill. Aside from not being used at all when the other player is serving(as obvious a thing as obvious gets), it is also weakened by the returner's speed. Against an elite player, who is going to have at least decent speed, that is not an insignificant fact, and there simply aren't enough aces to make it a close call.

New Player Rating Formula

So, having analyzed the statistics from dozens of matches making up the mentioned sample, I have come to the conclusion that I can somewhat improve my formula. I like having a 10-point scale but this is nearly a true 10-point scale -- in this case, nobody is going to exceed that. I'll be very impressed if anyone gets to 9.5 and 9.0 flat would be just fine for me. For comparison, Iglar ends up at 8.82 right now, and the sublime Gaspare Cabrara from world 2 is, at slightly past his prime, recording a 9.29. He's a rare freak of nature, however. Here are the five elements of the new formula:

-- Skill * 0.95
-- Service * 0.515
-- Strength * 0.19
-- Mentality * 0.175
-- Speed * 0.17

I definitely understand how the game simulates matches a lot better now. As you can see here mentality is the big change, and as mentioned service is slightly more than half of the value of skill now. It's important to remember that some players overachieve with others underachieve. It is also true that service is slightly, but not all that much, more important for particularly old players since they don't have the speed to get as many returns in play and force as many rallies while receiving.

Hopefully this information will be of use to those of you still enjoying Rocking Rackets. I'll be making a few training adjustments, but not all that many -- thankfully it does not appear that I was very far off.

law90026

05-21-2016, 09:47 PM

Thanks for the post, always helpful! To be honest I didn't think your original formula was too far off as the ratings tended to be reflected in the rankings at the highest levels. My players also tended to play within a ranking range of their rating relative to the rest of the world.

Will try out this new formula to see how it changes things.

kingfc22

05-21-2016, 10:44 PM

Thanks for the info Brian. My best player just turned 19 and he's a bit ahead of Mooljee. Going to see how he trends moving forward.

Brian Swartz

05-21-2016, 11:11 PM

I'd say he should turn out well then. Right now Mooljee is slightly ahead of the pace of my other successful players, so you probably have a good one there.

digamma

05-22-2016, 06:45 AM

I think I can be a test case for the new ratings. I've fallen off the wagon and haven't been active in a week or so. I'll likely need to fire my current set (sorry, dudes) and start over.

MarkBGregory

05-23-2016, 03:03 PM

Still playing. Your 'updtaed' formula intrigues me. I've not quite cracked a Slam yet, but Borowski (GW2) is currently 6th and Barth (GW12) is currently 7th in the world. High aging factors not helping, but hoping one or both might be able to grab a slam before they start fully deteriorating...

Alf

05-24-2016, 11:50 PM

How to use a trainer ? :

I've got that new shining toy, but I haven't found a way to assign him to train a player automatically. Only way to use him is by assigning him to play firendlies vs my guys. Is there any other way to use a trainer ?

Brian Swartz

05-25-2016, 12:46 AM

There's no way to do it automatically. You wouldn't really want to either -- trainers aren't as good as practice or tournament matches. The training sessions are better than friendlies against other players though which is the point: when you lose early in a tournament or run out of fatigue during a practice week, etc., they are the best option for plugging the gap.

Alf

05-25-2016, 01:30 AM

Gotcha

law90026

05-26-2016, 12:57 PM

So fyi, apparently the tournament calendar has been updated.

Brian Swartz

05-26-2016, 01:03 PM

Yep. I've got another year before it takes effect though. Apparently Week 26 as of a few hours ago is the cutoff for having the new schedule next year as opposed to the year after. When it shows up, I'm going to have recalibrate a few things on my scheduling.

Umbrella

06-01-2016, 10:06 AM

law90026

06-01-2016, 10:36 AM

I'm a little confused about points and ranking. I had a guy win a JG4 event (40 points) and made the semis in doubles (15 points). My assumption is that he would get 40 points, plus 15/4 (lets say 4) points for a total of 44 points. Yet in the rankings, it looks like he only got 25 points from the previous week. Does anyone know why?

It depends on how many events your guy had played. At junior level, you only take the top 6 singles and top 6 doubles events to calculate the ranking points. So if you play a 7th event, you would only get those points less the smallest number of points you had previously gotten since the 7th event replaces one of the earlier 6.

So let's say you had 6 previous events where you had picked up 30 points each and then your picked up 40 points in your 7th event. You would only get a net increase of 10 points.

Hope that made sense.

Umbrella

06-02-2016, 11:43 AM

It depends on how many events your guy had played. At junior level, you only take the top 6 singles and top 6 doubles events to calculate the ranking points. So if you play a 7th event, you would only get those points less the smallest number of points you had previously gotten since the 7th event replaces one of the earlier 6.

So let's say you had 6 previous events where you had picked up 30 points each and then your picked up 40 points in your 7th event. You would only get a net increase of 10 points.

Hope that made sense.

Ah yes, that makes sense now. I forgot about that part of it.

hugazox

06-12-2016, 05:02 PM

I just read a lot of the comments and this thread was really helpful. I have just returned to the game and started playing in world 9. Currently i have 2 players:

http://rr9.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=player&extra=285775

http://rr9.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=player&extra=284627

Do you guys think they have a chance making it into the top 10?

NevStar

06-12-2016, 07:40 PM

Brian Swartz

06-12-2016, 10:02 PM

What NevStar says is correct. Having said that since I'm only active in one world it's not too big of a deal to switch them around.

Ivan Yuste -- 8.23 on my rating system. He's got 3-4 years till he peaks. Fairly unimpressive endurance and needs to train skill more but definitely a very good athlete and excellent mental game, serve is already pretty good. I think he can definitely be a Top 10 player, though such things depend on how competitive the game world is.

Ramon Estevez -- 8.10. Estevez is more of a long-shot. Top 20 yes, Top 10 seems less likely. Clay specialists have to be one of the best on that surface and I don't think he's quite there, he'll age faster, a hair lower endurance, not as good a player right now and a year older, etc. Probably less than three years until he peaks.

Both are very good players, Yuste definitely the better of the two though and should have a fine career. Top 5 wouldn't surprise me, again depending on balance of talent and how other factors develop.

britrock88

06-13-2016, 10:50 AM

law90026

06-13-2016, 12:10 PM

With Mendez/Lebyedenko near the ends of their productive careers, I fired them and took a sabbatical (which lasted all of 4 weeks). Surprised to see that no one has picked them up for doubles/trainer purposes.

Just getting started in GW8.

I've actually seen them around and I think one of my guys beat Mendez recently. No real need to pick them up because there are a lot of good trainer candidates in world 2 most of the time.

law90026

06-14-2016, 05:04 AM

So apparently the strategy a long time ago was to have your junior players not play any tournaments until they were 18 and then start in the amateur ranks. The intention being to maximise XP gain.

Is this still done or is the 10%xp penalty sufficient to make this a non-viable strategy now?

Edit: nm, the penalty was put in place to stop this practice.

MrBug708

07-29-2016, 11:50 PM

Reading this thread has been helpful, but man is there a lot of math

MrBug708

07-31-2016, 09:15 PM

law90026

08-01-2016, 04:14 AM

So I'm not sure how I am doing. I think I messed up my initial hire, but think my Junior player is doing alright as a stop-gag. I have no idea what to do with my other guy. The first one I hired was probably dumb, my second one isn't great, but Im not sure what I should do.

Peter Lillesoe (http://rr12.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=player&extra=271723)
Toshiro Arita (http://rr12.rockingrackets.com/index.php?page=player&extra=281637)

Any advice would be helpful. I'm in World 12. I dont understand the training aspect really. I have 89 points to work with. I don't know if I should play every week, play both S/D every week or take some days off. My Junior play seems to have a run of playing well then playing horribly.

Don't have time to post anything substantial but here goes.

Your players should be playing every week. They should be playing practice tournaments (S/D) and playing actual tournaments when their form is about to reach 15 the next week. Typically this means you should be playing a real tournament the week after one where you form is in the 16.3+ to 17+ range.

Choice of tournament is important although a lot less so for juniors. At junior level, you play each level and, once you begin to reach finals or win at that stage, you can begin moving up to the next one. For senior players, seeding is important because it helps your player's chance to reach the later stages of a tournament.

Don't overplay your players. Your goal is to improve your skills to a certain point, not trying to rush a particular ranking. If your player is good enough, he will have a good chance of reaching the ranking his skills should allow him to reach.

Brian Swartz

08-01-2016, 08:58 AM

man is there a lot of math

True, but a lot of it has been done for you at this point.

I dont understand the training aspect really.

Specific questions are the best.

don't know if I should play every week, play both S/D every week or take some days off.

Usually you should play every week, practice weeks until your form gets down to 15 as law mentioned. Always S/D for tournament weeks to maximize the matches you get. I usually do only singles for juniors in practice weeks until they reach the point where they can handle doing both from an endurance standpoint. That's usually around 3.0 or higher endurance. Monitor how they are doing fatigue-wise ... you lose 50 fatigue per day and start getting big penalties if you get over 500. Usually you won't get any practice matches when it is higher than 200-300(but not always, the game logic seems to be a bit buggy in that area). Only time a player should ever have a week totally, completely off is if they have 350 or more fatigue going into it. If your fatigue ever gets to zero, that's a bad thing since you are wasting potential experience gain from practice or matches.

My Junior play seems to have a run of playing well then playing horribly.

This is pretty typical, partly because of double-faults due to low serving for young players, and partly because there simply isn't as much difference between them in overall level of ability at that age.

As far as your two players are concerned, I would say keep going with them, regularly look for something better in the new juniors players as always and work on earning points so you can replace the older one with a trainer candidate.

MrBug708

08-06-2016, 09:59 PM

A few questions I have come across: (apologies if asked before)

1. What is the best way to get down form? Practice? Skipping weeks of tournaments? How much does it factor into performance?

2. What exactly is aging factor? My 15 year old has an aging factor of 102%. Does that mean his skills will develop and regress faster than the average player? I also see a age percentage next to my players age, in parenthesis. It's at 79% for my junior player.

3. How do you know when to move up? I'm asking for my Junior level 15 player, he seems to do well mostly on J5 and doesn't have success on J4, other than with a previous junior player I had in doubles. That player was solid at J4, but I'm wanting a trainer.

4. Does playing both singles/double have disadvantages/advantages? Does ability go down with playing two separate brackets in the same tournament?

5. I'm working on a trainer, about 1000 experience points away. Had no idea what I was specifically looking for. What makes a trainer good/bad? When I hired him, he had 4600 experience points. Is there any idea how to know how many EXP points they have saved up or is it pure luck? My soon to be trainer does have over 3,000,000 in prize money in his career, so he couldnt have been that terrible, right?

6. Is there a natural progression of training I should follow? Like 2.0 of kill, 1.0 of experience, before moving up? Are doubles points worth spending on? I'd imagine the more options to gain points, they better, I just dont want to spread it out and find my player is grossly underskilled for his age.

Brian Swartz

08-07-2016, 11:04 AM

First I should recommend taking a look at the game's documentation. Some things are answered there. There's a lot of information on various things here and in other threads, so it can be hard to find specific information certainly.

1. Practice weeks. Skipping a week entirely means you will lose out on experience. The only reason to do that is if your fatigue is super-high. At less than 15 or more than 30 form, you lose 0.1 skill and 0.1 service from your playing ability per point of form outside that range. Even worse, you also don't gain as much experience; that penalty gets worse the further you are outside the range. So there's basically only rare situations where it is justifiable to have less than 15 or more than 30 form.

2. Aging factor you have nailed; the range is 95-105%. Lower is better for longevity; faster will improve early development, making for better juniors players, etc. Age % is different though the two are easy to confuse. That's your current level of aging. That means you would currently have 79% of your max. strength and speed, are only using 79% of your skill + service, and so on(doubles, talent, etc. are unaffected). Endurance is a special case as it gets multiplied twice: current endurance is the maximum * 0.79 * 0.79, or whatever your current age % is.

3. General rule of them I use is to play the highest-levle tournament that I'm confident of being seeded in. It's not helpful to play a tournament that you will lose in early - that means less matches and xp that week, and less weeks off for practice before the next one. In juniors, I usually wait until a player has won 4-5 events at a particular level before moving up. This 'maxes out' their ranking and ensures they are ready for the next step.

4. You won't play any differently due to playing in both brackets, but you will have form and fatigue go up faster. This is a good thing unless you are a successful pro in roughly the Top 50, at which point maximizing your form for best results in big events will become more important. Before that though, there's really no drawback to playing both and you get more matches and xp that way.

5. There isn't any way to know how many xp they have saved up. Using the 'raw' numbers from the Use Experience screen, NOT the tennis ball reading which shows your current ability including age %, the trainer formula is as follows:

** Skill +
** 75% of Service +
** 33% of Doubles

All of that is divided by 2.3 to get your trainer's ability. Divide again by 20 to get the 'tennis ball' rating, instead of the 100-point scale. It's worth taking the time to get a trainer at least 5.0. You can actually go above that(I've seen 5.2 or 5.3) but it's pretty rare and I've never had one that high yet so I don't know how much a performance boost you get. The best trainer candidates are usually mid-late 30s guys.

6. I would look at my player rating formula not far back in this thread for a guide. You don't want to invest in doubles at all unless you want to be a doubles player. If you want to do well in singles you need to focus on that instead. As far as skill/service, skill is almost twice as important(since service is only used when you are serving, skill is used on all points), so in general you want to train skill unless the points required are almost twice as much as service. I have started experimenting with training both equally until a new player has about 1.0 or so in service, since at first they will have a ton of double-faults otherwhise. I think the jury's still out on whether that's a good idea, it certainly isn't a necessity.

thehitcat

05-18-2017, 09:41 PM

Partial credit only for this answer :P. You do get them from practice matches(the higher group you are in, the more you get per win; 45 for the top group, 25 for the second, then 14, 7, 4, 2, 1. if you are down low enough, I think Group 9 or below, you get nothing). However, you also get points equal to the ranking points your player earns in tournaments. For example, winning a Masters is 1000 ranking points and 1000 manager points.

Once you start accumulating manager points, you will also notice another aspect: you lose some of them weekly, so if you do nothing your manager points will decline. If you are VIP you lose 1.5%; free managers lose 1%(this is to off-set the advantage of the VIP managers getting four players instead of two). At first this means basically nothing and is not noticeable. As you move up though it's more and more noticeable; I lose almost 500 points a week this way, so if I'm not bringing in a considerable amount on a particular week, my total will drop.

OK so two questions 1) when do you get Manager points. Do they come as soon as your player completes a practice round or exits the tourney they are in or do they come at the end of the week. And now 2) and this is the one I'm having the most trouble with.

So I currently have 95 manager points that I can use for hiring players. Here is what my 4 players did this week.
John Hart got knocked out of his JG5 tourney in singles in Qualifying and shows no points but he and his partner Seamus won the Doubles in the same JG5 and he shows 20 there. Since that's a doubles win I would expect 10 Manager Points.
Seamus Hughes was the other half of the doubles team that took the crown so again 20 becoming 10 MPs. He also progressed further in Singles and ended up with 15 pts for bowing out in the Semis so I believe I get all those points so 25 for Seamus or 35 total MPs so far.
George O'Shea got 2 points for a QF finish in singles and 3 for a SF in doubles. Rounding down I see that as 3 MPs or now 38 total.
Richard Hanlon my fourth player had a practice week and played singles only. He went 3 and 2 in Juniors group 2 with his listings being 3 Pts 2+, 9+, 1-, 2-, 7+ so did he earn me 45 MPs for the 3 wins or the points listed in the boxes 2+9-1-2+7= 15? I am totally confused.

Basically I thought I was going to have enough saved up to buy a trainer in last nights overnight and came in 56 points short which tells me either a) the points are getting added on the fly and I'm not doing a good job keeping track which is eminently possible and/or fixable or I have no effing clue how the points are being awarded and I just need to be patient hoping that I stumble onto a way to earn what I need piecing together the info I laid out above.

In short HELP!! :) :banghead:

Thanks,
Dave