Ads and Disads of short term training

[PilotMan]

I brought up a point on mIrc last night that opened a can of conversational worms.

I mentioned that the MISFC were embarking on a training experiment and that for the rest of this season we were going to be training passing. This was met with mixed reviews.

There were really 2 schools of thought:

1) That is was very costly and a bad move, due to the amount of valuable traininig that someone would lose. And would hurt the club in the long run because it would prevent training in an area that would really make the most money for the club.

2) That it could be very beneficial because it could significantly increase the teams ability to attack, without having to dig deep into the pocketbook for better players.

I am curious to see what other opinions there might be, as well as, I plan to update here the reseults of the training and see if it does indeed have an impact.

As far as my team is concerned, I am at a point where to improve my team is going to cost a significant amount of money that I am not in a position to be able to raise. So always the analyst, I looked to see what my best options were for improving the squad. I hae been training PM for almost 2 seasons now, with the exception of a break to train my starting GK to excellent at the begining of this season.

I am resonably satisfied with my current squad and predict that I would probably have 2 or 3 PM pops before the season finishes if I stick with PM. However, since I have no plans to sell my trainiees thery will be here next year too, and the extra week isn't going to kill me as my starters arn't going to die.

Therefore, it is my hope that by getting 4 good weeks at passing. All wings, mids, and forwards will benefit, and increase the overall attack of my squad. Now it may not pay off finacially, but if my team becomes just a bit better, we could make D.III next season, and possibly this season, if we win all remaining games.

Am I crazy, or am I just willing to sacrafice for the overall good of my team where the average hattrick manager isn't?

[KevinNU7]

Seems like you have made your decision. My only question to you is, are any of your trainees 19? I personally would get as much playmaking training in before they turned 20. If none of them are then I could probably rationalize this move for myself.

[PilotMan]

It wasn't so much a forum for advice as a forum for discussion.

[PilotMan]

After looking at tonights training, forgive me I am in Sarasota and don't have access to HAM, it appears that I had to passing pops.

The first one is a 21yr old 1st team middie, who went from wretched to poor, whoopty doo, but still better than nothing.

And the second is one of my second team middies, trainees if you will, a 19yr old, who went from solid to excellent. Now to me that certainly just made his stock rise. Especially, when you consider that he is not far from reaching solid PM. He may be ready to replace one of my old goats sooner than expected.

I may be able to give a better update when I get home, stay tuned.

[PilotMan]

Last weeks training was accurate, and now for this weeks training update.

Rotating starting striker Pablo Rodriguez popped from weak to inadequate. That immedialtly makes him a top 3 striker.

Our coach popped to weretched, whoohoo.

18 yr old, Polish, winger/middie, Artur Wegrzyn, saw an increase from poor to weak.

2 more weeks to go, certaily we are seeing changes where we need them. Hopefully, we will see an increase in our production with 2 more weeks to go.

[Qwikshot]

I think at some point you have to do short-term training...I've done it, for those few guys you want to sell, a couple weeks of stamina training, or form training...maybe you want to get rid of that one winger...he'll look better with a passable winger than inadequate...passing takes longer than it should, but it ranks up there with stamina training as something you /should/ do at some point...I train strikers now, the best thing that I've done, but I grabbed a few old middies to give better attacks for my strikers (two of my starting middes were hurt or out of form), I grabbed one too many (actually two too many) and decided well I'll train stamina for the next two weeks to boost all my players, but with the intent to sell off two of the least desirable mids...they didn't pop but my one wingback did, and I managed to sell him for about 70k.

[Qwikshot]

btw that wingback that I sold, was bought for 2k, was weak at playmaking, inadequate at defense, weak at stamina, and inadequate at wing...

After all my haphazard training, he went passable at defense, inadequate at PM, and excellent at stamina...

Now I know if I had stuck with just one thing, his profit margin plus that of others (dependent on one set training) that he may have sold higher, but I wasn't going to train PM, defense, or even stamina again...that's not a bad profit for a guy that initially I bought on an impulse buy.

[Doug5984]

I must have missed this thread the first time- One of the concers I would have with training passing is that the players you train probably won't be the players you keep long term, except for the ones you are also training in PM. What I am saying is- Right now if you have 2 solid scorers (or excellents even) that if you train them up a level or 2 in passaing great, it will help your attack a little but to be in Div III I would think you need ATLEAST formidable/outstanding forwards...so what you are doing now is training players that will need to be replaced shortly, I think training the trainiees up and selling them and using the money to buy better forwards is the way to go, but I do see your point in doing what you are doing....and good luck with it....I have been considering doing something similar but training set pieces for the final 3 weeks of every season, i think a 20 year old formidable defender with world class + set pieces could sell for a ton of $$$$$$

[Havok]

you know my stance on this Pilot :) But i'll try to explain it better then i did in IRC.......


I wanna win..... i like winning... its fun to win. With that said, im 99% sure the best way to win in HT is to have a kick ass training program. Every week is valuable to me, espically since i train PM and i have to waste a week here and there training stamina.

The best way to get a good training program is to stick with the same training and youth.... Get rid of your older guys and get some younger ones. Whats the point of training a guy thats 25+ years old??? Unless he's a national teamer, then i can understand it. But if he's not, your just throwing money away.

Now this brings me to short term training, its a bad idea IMO. Espically something like passing. Passing could be great if your whole team had passable or higher passing to begin with. Then when they pop to solid or excellent passing there value if sold would shoot up. But its to risky and it takes to long to train. Buy trainee's with good passing if you like passing that much. Don't waste time training it.

Now the reason you said you wanted to train passing is because your team won't get much better unless you buy really expensive guys. But how are you ever gonna buy expensive guys if you don't have a good training program??? The way to improve your team in HT is to train guys up, sell them, buy good players in other postions you don't train, buy another 17 year old trainee, Rinse-Repeat. You can't rely on the Youth squad or ticket sales to really improve your team. Way to unpredictable.

Your team is good now Pilot, but your trainees are very old. Training a 28 and a 29 year old is a big time waste, plus your in no hurry to get to divison III... you'd get slaughtered. I'd sell those 2 and buy some nice trainee's and stick with PM training.

The only short term training that i've seen which i kinda like is what Masked is doing. He trains PM, but he also has some good young wingers. So every once and awhile he throws in a week of winger training and since winger traininng is so fast. he sees pretty decent results. But training a secondary skill like passing for 4-5 weeks is a serious waste IMO.


Now, if you play HT strictly for fun and don't worry so much about winning or losing. Then by all means do what makes you happy, if training passing for a whole season makes you happy, do it. Lytic's wife trains set pieces.

[terpkristin]

I like to win, too.
But I switched to GK training temporarily to train up 2 youngish GK's to excellent.
Sold them immediately, made over 1.1 million to drag myself out of debt, buy some recruits for my PM program, and (eventually) build my new stadium.

Besst thing I could've done for myself in HT, so far as I can see, I was drowning in debt and couldn't buy young trainees for my PM, and was losing more money every week.

~tk

[daedalus]

My laptop, my palm, my minidisc player...who needs anything more?Must . . . resist . . . joke . . . must . . . resis . . .

[Richards]

just an anecdotal comment about passing increasing the value of a player. I had a youth pull a couple of weeks ago:

Samuel Butterfield (16832441)
18 years, inadequate form, healthy
A controversial person who is calm and upright.
Has disastrous experience and weak leadership abilities.


Speciality: Technical

Nationality: USA
Assessed value: 166 000 US$
Wage: 1 420 US$/week
Owner: Delirium Oliphants FC
Warnings: 0

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


Pretty average in all respects. His high value could mean he's a high PM passable, but maybe not, due to a lot of secondaries.

He sold for 164,000. A fluke newbie bid? I don't think so, there were four or five bids between 125000 and 164k.

I attribute this to his high secondary passing stat. Had he had "poor" passing, I would expect him to go at MAX, half of what I sold him for. What else could it be? EDIT: Actually, I did have a youth pull with very similar stats a few weeks ago, except with POOR passing, he went for 51k.

This seems to tell me that a valid training regime would be to buy cheap passable PM trainees, and train to to passable-solid or more passing and make a nice profit.

[Hobbes-]

Originally posted by Richards
This seems to tell me that a valid training regime would be to buy cheap passable PM trainees, and train to to passable-solid or more passing and make a nice profit.


so lets say you buy a "poor" passing / passable playmaker like the one you sold for 51k.. now lets train him up to passable passing.. so how long would that take? (to train 3 levels of passing.. ) I'm not sure the time it takes to train passing but if it's anything more than 2 weeks, it'd be silly. In my mind one level of primary skill is equal to 2 levels of secondary. so a..

solid pmer/inad passing/inad def

excellent pmer/weak passing/weak def

are pretty close in skill..

i guess the whole thing i'm trying to say is that you're taking too much time just to raise the guy 3 levels to make 100k profit? And if it takes any more than 2 weeks to train a level of passing, you're crazy. If it takes 4 weeks, that's a whole season just to make 100k.. I could have trained a primary skill twice and made a 400k+ profit... so a 400k+ profit doesn't equal a 100k profit.. the money just isnt there..

okay i'm done rambling..

[FrogMan]

First of all, Hobbes-, I agree with your view about training passing vs training a primary skill, especially since from what I saw on the Hattricks site, one level of passing is 5 weeks (17yo, solid coach, blah blah assistants and all)...

What I want to comment on is this:

Originally posted by Hobbes-
solid pmer/inad passing/inad def

excellent pmer/weak passing/weak def

are pretty close in skill..


Overall, they may be two equivalent players, but, given the same stamina, the second one will help you much more in the midfield. What I'm saying is with three inner mids like the first one, you'll have a better all around team, but won't control the ball as much. I'm sure you knew that, I just wanted to point out the different between the two in my eye...

FM

[Bee]

Originally posted by Richards

Samuel Butterfield (16832441)
18 years, inadequate form, healthy
A controversial person who is calm and upright.
Has disastrous experience and weak leadership abilities.


Speciality: Technical

Nationality: USA
Assessed value: 166 000 US$
Wage: 1 420 US$/week
Owner: Delirium Oliphants FC
Warnings: 0

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


Pretty average in all respects.

That's a VERY nice youth pull. If he had been 17, he'd have gone for even more. I'd kill for a youth pull like that. Most guys like that at 18 will go for at least their assessed value.

[Richards]

Originally posted by Hobbes-
so lets say you buy a "poor" passing / passable playmaker like the one you sold for 51k.. now lets train him up to passable passing.. so how long would that take? (to train 3 levels of passing.. ) I'm not sure the time it takes to train passing but if it's anything more than 2 weeks, it'd be silly. In my mind one level of primary skill is equal to 2 levels of secondary. so a..

solid pmer/inad passing/inad def

excellent pmer/weak passing/weak def

are pretty close in skill..

i guess the whole thing i'm trying to say is that you're taking too much time just to raise the guy 3 levels to make 100k profit? And if it takes any more than 2 weeks to train a level of passing, you're crazy. If it takes 4 weeks, that's a whole season just to make 100k.. I could have trained a primary skill twice and made a 400k+ profit... so a 400k+ profit doesn't equal a 100k profit.. the money just isnt there..

okay i'm done rambling..

You make a good point. This possible training regime would be a niche regime at best, because I think you would have to hunt for the right kind of trainees.

But, if you maximize your gains, you might make some money this way. First, let's say you are going to train passable pm's, wingers, and forwards to passable passing.

I don't think it would be worthwhile to train poor and below passing stats like in your example. I'm making some assumptions here, but I'll assume you can get "weak" passing players without paying the higher price for a good passing stat, ala passable. Maybe some inads if you can find them for cheap.

I don't know the weeks it takes for passing. Hattricks 2.1 says 5 weeks avg, (before the 25% increase?) so I'll say 4 weeks, which is the same figure you use.

If you buy them at weak passing, it will take statistically on average 2.5 weeks to get to inad, then another 4 to get to passable, 6.5 weeks +or- 2

Here's where I think the passing regime might make up it's value. Trainees take an avg of 6 weeks from buy to sell, AND, you can train 14 per week. In the 3-5-2, thats 4 wingers, 4 forwards, and 6 pm's. I don't know how much the passing raises the value of wingers, but as a forward trainer, it's raises it a little, but not nearly as much as for Inner mids. So 6 primary trainees and another 10 secondary trainees.

There's a lot of variables missing here, and my math might be wrong, but it might not be as cut and dried as you think.

[FrogMan]

Originally posted by Richards
I don't know the weeks it takes for passing. Hattricks 2.1 says 5 weeks avg, (before the 25% increase?) so I'll say 4 weeks, which is the same figure you use.


From what I know, Hatricks has updated all of its training time to HT6.5, so that 5 weeks is indeed 5 weeks...

FM

[DukeRulesMAB]

2.1 has winger training at 5 weeks, when my understanding is that the base is 4 weeks, so it may not have updated.

[PilotMan]

Just to update from this weeks training.

We had 2 more passing pops:

17yr old Winger Glenn Champion, has gone to inadequate, and

24yr old Winger Delano Schouten has gone to solid.

2 more weeks of training to go, and we are hoping to see striker pops soon. Also a couple of the younger middie trainiees would be nice. We shall see.

I really think that I will see the difference after next season, when my trainees are ready to take over for my aging starters.

[daedalus]

Woohoo! Congratulations, PMan. :)